Demon's Virtue

With tired, lifeless eyes, the Lord of Sloth looked at the Imp, practically locking eyes with him. It seemed like the Lord wanted to say something for just a moment, but... he just sat down again and kept sleeping, without minding the young monster at all. On the other hand, the rest of the Demons in this room, as well as Leon, all woke up.

And while Leon was starting to cry due to being woken up like this, while held by a figure made of Shadows, the Guards came closer to the cage, and the Imp had to act quickly. He definitely wouldn't be able to fight his way through them, and he wasn't fast enough to get out through a gap while carrying Leon.

So in order to escape, the Imp just did something that only worked out due to pure luck. And that started by closing and locking the door of the cage.

The Imp let go of Shadow Magic Stone and instead grabbed one of the Holy Energy Magic Stones while activating the Three of Swords. Through that thread and the blade connected to it, the Imp was able to actually pretty easily let his mana flow to the outside. And so, the Imp ripped off part of his pants and used the cloth to bind the Magic Stone to the blade in a way that it couldn't get out.

Then, while pushing as much of his mana through the Three of Swords as he could, the holy energy that was given off was scaring away the other demons.

But the only thing that the Imp now needed to do now was pretty simple. He had to rely on his luck to an extent and just push open the door of the cage again, grab Leon, and then rush out of there while using the high amount of Holy Energy to get rid of the Demons. The Blade wasn't moving that quickly due to the extra weight, and it was straining the Imp pretty heavily, but this was the only way he could somehow defend himself against this many Demons while using both his hands to hold the baby.

And so, the Imp just did exactly that, and unlocked the cage again, quickly kicking it open while he went to grab Leon, and then just ran out toward the exit.

With the Holy Energy, the highly unmotivated Demons that were 'chasing' him were pretty easily lost, and the Imp could start rushing down the stairs. Although then again, this somehow seemed far, far too easy. He managed to break into three of the Castles, and break back out quite easily four times. Considering how strong these Lords were, that was just... unlikely. The Imp didn't really know why this all was going on, but he did know that he didn't have time to think about it either, and so just rushed down the stairs. Although he was soon met with a bit of an issue.

Part of the stairs were broken, and it was a pretty long fall until then that the Imp wasn't sure he could survive. He managed to somehow break his fall when dropping out of the Lord of Wrath's castle, but he didn't want to risk that again.

So instead, the Imp had to come up with some sort of idea, before he remembered something that he might be able to make use of himself. First things first, the Imp removed the cloth from the blade, and then tried to push that blade into the wall. It seemed like even materials like this somewhat reacted to holy energy, so the Imp was able to cut through it relatively well like this.

With a nod, the Imp then started to use the blade, or rather the thread, to 'bind' leon tighter to the Imp so that he could hold him safely with just one hand, before digging his fingers, which were covered in holy energy, into the walls. It wasn't easy, but soon enough, he was able to get a good hold of everything, and with a bit of faith, the Imp was able to try and hold himself up with one hand.

It was hard, incredibly hard, but it worked. The Imp was able to push his feet into some grooves in the wall sometimes so that he could properly dig through the wall further to slowly let himself down. And it really worked pretty well, at the very least until something that happened a little while ago happened again. Another loud explosion shot through the Demonic Town.

And thus, the Imp's third great mistake of the night revealed itself. The first mistake was to look out the Inn's window onto the street, getting his attention onto what was going on in the first place.

The second mistake was to open the door and look into the hallway, practically inviting the Shadow inside.

And the third mistake was averting his gaze from the wall in response to the explosion. The very moment that he did, he lost concentration and slipped, slowly falling backward.

Although, it probably wasn't actually that slow, it just seemed that way to him for whatever reason. And within that infinitely long, short moment, the Imp made a single decision, which turned the outcome of the third mistake away from the unfavorable death, toward an outcome that was pure luck deeply hidden in demise.

Quickly, the Imp held Leon as tightly as he could while making the Three of Swords push toward the wall, and instantly had it did itself as deeply inside of it as possible.

The Imp's fall was stopped for around a moment, when they were just a meter or so away from the ground, although it wasn't perfectly stopped. Because at that moment, something snapped.

And it wasn't the thread of the Three of Swords, but rather the thin threads inside of the part the whole weapon was connected to. The muscles inside of the Imp's finger.

Once the muscles snapped immediately, a loud crack followed while the Imp's whole right index finger was dislodged. Whatever happened after that was just a clear outcome, now.

Within a single split-second of a moment, the Imp's finger was ripped away from his hand, and the Imp stared at it while the Three of Swords turned back into a card and fell onto the Imp's together with his finger, still wrapped in part of the Holy-Energy soaked cloth, while the Imp was laying there, staring upward.

[-212 Health!]

[Critical Damage! You permanently lost one of your fingers]

Slowly the Imp stood up, still holding Leon tightly, and just tried to concentrate on stopping the bleeding on his finger for now by controlling his blood-flow through Water Magic. Dizzy, the Imp packed his finger and the card into his bag and stood up, slowly trying to make his way over toward the spot where he left Clementine and Sammy before.

The moment that he saw the two girls and they saw him, they rushed over toward him, seemingly scared because of the explosions from before. And then, they noticed what happened to the Imp's hand.

"Y-You... How?" Sammy asked, quickly taking Leon from him before taking a closer look at his finger, and the Imp just stared back at her. "I... I don't know... I fell, and then I wasn't falling, and my finger was off." He explained, and before Sammy and the Imp could react and stop her, Clementine grabbed the Imp's hand and immediately wanted to 'eat' the injury.

For a moment, it seemed like small bloody rips were forming on her index finger, but they disappeared nearly as soon as they appeared in the first place. Something that they found pretty confusing. Although Clementine was obviously feeling physically unwell after trying, and failing, to heal the Imp, she kept trying and trying, and soon, Sammy grabbed her hand and stopped her.

"Stop... Maybe it doesn't work on demons..." She suggested, but Clementine immediately shook her head, "No! I did it before! It definitely works on Mister!" The young girl protested, and Sammy looked at the Imp confused, before he just shook his head.

"Don't worry... It's fine..." The Imp muttered quietly, slowly scrambling through his bag to grab one of the small red Magic Stones, and then pressed it against the wound on his hand where his finger was before, pushing his mana into the stone. This immediately caused some flames to appear around the Magic Stone, together with some red notifications that the Imp simply tried to ignore, because he was well aware that he was taking damage through this.

But soon enough, the wound seemed to have closed after being burnt shut, and the Imp slowly grabbed a Water Magic Stone to clean his wound up, before drying it on his cloak and wrapping the open spot with the Holy-Energy Cloth.

"I'm alright... See?" The Imp pointed out as he held his hand forward toward the two girls, who were just looking at him confused.

"Why...?" Sammy asked as she stared at him, but the Imp didn't really understand the question, and just stared back at her with a questioning expression, before Sammy ground her teeth and stared at the Imp.

"I asked you 'Why'! Why are you helping us? Why are you reacting like it's nothing if you lose a finger for us? We saw it just there as well, your hand is completely messed up because you're using Holy Energy the whole time, right? So why are you doing all that to yourself just for us?" She asked, incredibly emotionally upset over all of this to the point of getting teary-eyed, and the Imp just looked back at her and shrugged.

"I just want to." The Imp explained, before swiftly grabbing the book out of the bag, quickly trying to read through it to look up more information about the Lord of Envy to find out how to get Rudy back best, before shutting the book again and looking at the two girls.

"Let's go." The Imp told them when he had all the information, grabbing the blanket that Sammy was wrapped in to help her cover up Leon as well, before turning around and heading to the street. It seemed like it was a little bit messy right now, with a lot of rubble and dead demons laying around there, but they could still rush through this part of the Demonic town properly to get to the regular town in the center the mountains around them.

It took a little while, and around two more explosions, for them to reach the Town again, where the Imp immediately made a single choice. Most Demons, even the Gatekeepers, seemed to have apandoned this place at the moment, so instead of heading toward the other side of town to exit there, he headed toward the Inn with the girls and the baby, and brought them to their room.

What the Imp had noticed was that while the Demonic Town was in chaos, this town here was in a practically perfect state, and the only dead body around on the streets was the Tenaga Jin that the Imp killed before.

Other than that, this place seemed like just a quiet town at night, if one ignored the red light from the 'moon' and the blue lights from the decorations. Either way, if it was like this, the Imp felt like this place would be safe enough to go ahead and leave the girls and Leon here while he went to go grab the other three.