The Demon Lord was a human. That much was clear and unsurprising. His broken body, however, was nothing John had expected. His chest was bare, a simple cloth covered his legs, and his skin was barely visible under all the medical equipment. What had caused his current condition was obvious: two half-seared, half-scarred stabs that went completely through his chest. Each was a finger wide and about ten centimetres long. The wounds were perfectly aligned, with a hand-wide gap between them.

John knew exactly which weapon had created that wound. There was only one double-bladed weapon that was shaped like that or, at least, there was only one wielded by a person capable of creating a wound like this. “When did Sigmund attack you?” the Gamer wondered, while using Observe.

His empathy for the man’s situation had been fairly low from the get-go. Someone who led a guild like this couldn’t himself be a morally upright person. Now that John had confirmation, he sat down on one of the many steps without any care for the Demon Lord’s wellbeing. John wouldn’t do anything to worsen it, but he also wouldn’t feel bad about it. If anything, the current state of this lawful evil warlock showed that Sigmund had always been chaotic neutral.

It wasn’t quite clear which was scarier.

Which was why John only cared about the ‘when’. If it was before the 26th of June, the day he had used Thana to mortally wound the man, everything would be fine. If it was after, it meant that, somehow, Sigmund had both repaired his weapon and recovered enough to defeat Galku.

“In the… summer,” the Demon Lord barely managed to answer, past all of the medical equipment and in spite of (at least) one penetrated lung. That the spotty, grey-haired old man was still alive was a miracle in and of itself. Given his profession, perhaps calling it a curse would be more accurate. Existence for him surely wasn’t a hopeful thing.

“Can we get a bit more detail on that?” John asked and looked towards the two maids that had followed them. “A date.”

“The 18th of June,” the solely female one of the maids answered.

John nodded and returned to the matter at hand. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes…” the pained voice rung out, “…my…legacy… I need you to… take… it…”

“Undine, help him,” John instructed. If they were going to talk over the steady pain of the Demon Lord, they would still be there tomorrow.

“As you wish,” Undine responded and flowed over. If the Demon Lord had any protest, he wasn’t strong enough to voice it. Splitting into two, the abysstide elemental put her hands on either side of him and started to cast her healing magic.

A jolt of energy went through the warlock, so intense that every instrument he was connected to clattered from the sudden movement. All of the bodily aches the old man experienced were fixed in short order. All but the two stab wounds in his chest. Not even Undine’s potent healing abilities were enough to overcome the Hellfire damage sustained. As a result, what relief the slime brought was temporary. The issues created by having two lethal stab wounds that were only sealed by machines would return quickly and required Undine to keep the healing magic flowing beyond the initial gift.

“Haaaaaahhh, what a splendid feeling.” It was enough to give Galku the power he needed to speak clearly, however. His voice was deep and coarse, somewhere between a bass singer and the onset of throat cancer. “How undeserved that I will never know this clarity of body again.”

“According to Observe, you wouldn’t be deserving of any kind of eternal fitness,” John said in a dry tone. “Human sacrifices put you on my short list. Especially since I can guess where you got your sacrifices from. Murder and slavery are outlawed in Fusion.”

“Weakness and complacency are encouraged, then.” Galku rolled his neck. “A playground where the kittens tumble and the tigers have to pull their own claws out. What a disgusting waste of power.”

John looked around. “What a degenerate foregoing of responsibility.” Leaning back on the stone, the Gamer let out a theatrical sigh, “We can disagree philosophically for as long as Undine keeps you alive. Fact is that you will not survive the month.”

“True,” Galku responded with a bothersome smile. The Gamer had wanted to get a hit in on the arrogant old man, but it seemed the Demon Lord was well aware of his circumstance. “Once I die, the barrier will fall to the Golden Rose and the city will burn like the great parts of Alexandria before.”

“Your people seem rather relaxed about that,” John noted.

“My subjects falling into a state of panic would be counterproductive, so I told them things will work out,” Galku stated with a shrug. “They know better than to question me.”

‘Crusading lord on the outsides, tyrannical lord on the inside, what a fantastic day,’ the Gamer thought, even if he already knew who he was siding with in this particular conflict. “Tell me about this place,” he requested.

The ancient warlock raised an eyebrow. “I expected you to ask about how I expected you first.”

“We can start there if you want to, but the fact of the matter is that this civilization soon will no longer exist – for the better.” The Gamer leaned over and blew out one of the many candles. “I won’t cry for this place, every street corner here seems to be drenched in blood, but I would do myself a disservice if I didn’t know the history. Burning away and hiding the darkness of humanity just makes it easier for future generations to fall into the same pitfalls.”

“They could very well be inspired to strive for my heights.” Galku’s old face developed even more wrinkles from his wide grin. Simply shrugging, the Gamer waited for the warlock to tell his story. “Are you familiar with the Great Library of Alexandria?”

“Depends. The mundane building, I know a bit about. On the Abyssal side, I fear my knowledge is limited.”

“It was once a beautiful place,” the warlock sounded nostalgic, “a place of true magical research. Romulus had withdrawn into the depths of his palace, but the decree he had made about how much of the empire’s income was to be dedicated to the library was still in effect. The research he had wanted to personally control was funded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and without prying eyes. While I was hired only as an assistant, soon my latent power blossomed and I reached my rightful place as the head of the demonology research.”

“You’re a late bloomer?” John asked, just to be certain.

“That I am. My ability increases my power the more demons I surround myself with.” His grimace reflected his spite for the world. “It also made me rather talented in the field in general. This power motivated me to enact a plan…”

“You would summon demons to grow stronger,” the Gamer interjected. “Thus allowing you to summon more demons, thus allowing you to grow stronger, and so on. A pyramid scheme to grow your might.” He took a short pause and the warlock nodded. “Let me guess, you used the funds of Alexandria to acquire all of the necessary ingredients and human lives to start that project right there. I can’t imagine the locals took too kindly to that.”

“The plebians always insist that they are worth more than the crops they farm,” Galku sighed. “What a delusion, nobody is worth more than the weight that they can pull. Intrinsic worth to human life… whoever thought of that deserves a long night out in the wood with ten invalids.”

“And yet humanity has developed in that direction,” John pointed out.

“Truly understandable, the lesser will clamour for things they haven’t earned. It is in the nature of parasites.”

‘Why do I even try?’ John thought and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, they chased you out of Alexandria and you came here?”

“I tried to set my project up on several corners of the world. Each time some righteous mind would come to stop me. The Golden Rose is the last in a series of ‘heroes’ out to stop me.” Galku let out a pained groan as he shifted slightly. “What a joke that a brute with a large sword and Hellfire would be what ends my ambitions. I was so close. Finding this place took time and a fair share of luck. A stable connection to the demon worlds, this place was perfect to set up shop. The lack of people around here slowed initial operations, but eventually I stabilized the crimson tear. I trained apprentices to help me with the rituals. Created a society based on the propagation of demons. Utilized every trick I’d learned in my life to keep this place as secretive as is possible. Just another twenty years and I would have been past the breaking point… I would have been so strong the tide of demons could have been endless…”

‘Yeah, that was never going to happen,’ the Gamer thought, sparing himself the verbalization of things that would only be met with draconian nonsense. ‘You getting that close was a pretty big historical fluke. Any plan that requires a sizable and expanding operation to remain secret for several years is going to catch attention eventually. If it hadn’t been Sigmund, Fusion or the Golden Rose would have stopped you – simply at a higher cost to our organizations. In the extremely unlikely case you would have succeeded, you would have drawn the ire of Romulus sooner or later and an army of demons is just an army of nourishment for the Godeater…’

“I was so close to boundless power.” Galku didn’t consider any of these faults, simply lamenting his fate. “Foiled by a barbarian. The god of demons lending his support to that brutish moron, what a lapse of judgement.”

“It could never be your fault, could it?” That snide comment rolled off his tongue before he could stop it. Quickly, he followed things up with, “Anyway, did you want to thank me for getting Sigmund his comeuppance?”

“You didn’t even finish that job,” Galku spat out.

Eliza suddenly snapped into the conversation, “Go fuck yourself, you wasting sack of bones.”

Rather than answer, the warlock rolled his eyes and then focused them again on John. “I knew that you were coming thanks to your brilliant decision to broadcast your war declaration.”

“It wasn’t a war declaration; it was a vote on an expeditionary fo- you know what, never mind,” the Gamer sighed and stopped himself. It wasn’t easy. Usually, he had a blast teasing people so extremely certain of their position. Jack was enjoying it a whole lot at the moment. Between Lord Brighton, who reacted to every critique with self-righteous indignation, and the Demon Lord, who kept acting as if he was above it all, the latter just annoyed him. Both were brick walls, but one twisted entertainingly in attempts of retaliation, while the other just kept growing taller for no reason. “Tell me then, what do you want?”

“For you to preserve my legacy.”

John raised an eyebrow. “You know I won’t continue your little project. I find all necessary to enable it abhorrent.”

“And yet you will take some of it and allow it to continue,” Galku spoke as if he knew exactly how John ticked and, as he continued talking, it became apparent that he understood at least the rudimentary parts. “A person like you, someone so focused on helping the lesser people, would never let the Golden Rose do what they will once they get in here. We both know that they will take one look at my city, my work and my records and declare everyone inside this barrier a sinner. Everyone is present. Do YOU think everyone here is guilty?”

The answer to that was obvious. Even if the demons here were brought into the world through human sacrifice, they themselves were not inherently evil. Statistically speaking, they would make for rather poor neighbours, but that didn’t mean John could just let them die. Not when he had the power and resources to help them without hurting Fusion.

In order to assure that the people of Fusion wouldn’t be hit with a sudden and avoidable spike in murder cases from migrating demons, John had to vet them all. A problem on that front was that he had to do all of that before he got them out of the New Libraria territory. Unless the memory deletion, and the subsequent elimination of all evidence, could be discontinued. “Can you free them of their contracts?” he asked.

“I cannot,” Galku responded. That could have been a lie. Since Galku was guaranteed to die, he only seemed to care to leave as much of a mark in history as possible. To that extent, every demon that survived was in his interest. John had no way to verify if he was truthful or not. Until he closely inspected the grimoire and figured out how exactly these contracts worked, he just had to take his word.

‘All of this would be much simpler if I knew that I could make the demons follow the same orders as I gave the fairies,’ John thought. ‘Murderous tendencies don’t matter a lot if I can get it in contract that they have to kill themselves if they ever harm an innocent person. Exact wording pending.’

“Well?” the Demon Lord asked in an almost mocking tone. He already knew what answer John would give. The question was just if the Gamer even wanted to attempt to judge all of the people in the Illusion Barrier before evacuating them or after, when they had lost their memories. The exception to that rule were the warlocks, but John had a difficult time imagining any of them were innocent. Judging them would, at least, be easy.

“Fine,” John growled, never having been more unhappy to save people. Having his hand forced always sat badly with him, but given the quality of people he had to save didn’t make it easier. However, the Gamer knew that this was the right thing to do. Anyone could stand in defence of the innocent, it took very little moral fibre to do so. Helping those who were flawed to their core and expecting nothing back, that was the kind of thing that he hoped would have him written down as a good person.

Of course, a truly good person wouldn’t even have considered that aspect. The Gamer was either too wise, not wise enough or too paranoid to disregard that aspect. As a human and a character driven by accomplishments, the angle of personal enrichment simply could not escape him.

A sudden tremble in the fabric of reality distracted John from his thoughts. “Did you…?” he started to ask, then he felt control of the barrier slip from him. Usually there was a struggle involved in that, one magical might wrestling with the other. During friendly transfers, it was like a mental handshake. This felt as if a piece of oiled glass slipped out of his fingers while he wasn’t looking. The control was simply gone. “What the…?”