Demonic Devourer's Development

Of all places to hide, the pipsqueak chose the village's cesspool. I wouldn't have noticed him at all, if in the deathly quiet of the dead village, my sensitive hearing didn't hear him shifting amongst liquid manure.

I wasn't particularly sure that the boy hid under, but just to test it, I loudly said, "I know you are there, pipsqueak. Get out now, or I will cut you into pieces from where I stand."

A second passed in silence. Then, with a loud squelch of the disgusting mass, the boy's head appeared on the surface. Next to his mouth he held a hollow bone, which I before took for just a piece of junk. It appeared that he used it to breathe under… under-dung.

"Smart. Cunning." I approved. "Willing to survive no matter what. You will make a good demon one day, if you don't get lucky enough to end up in Heaven."

The pipsqueak waddled through the dung to the edge of the cesspool, where he tried to wipe his face with a sleeve, but ended up only moving shit around. He looked at me with tightly pressed together lips, defiance and hatred.

I rolled my eyes and pointed at the water stream. "Oh, go wash yourself, then we will talk. I won't eat you now, anyway. I'd have to be starving for that."

The boy didn't need another command from me. In a blink, he was splashing his face with water and ferociously rubbing it over everything he could reach. It wasn't even nearly enough, but after a dozen minutes, at least the boy's face and hands were clean. Cleaner than they were before he went to swim in the cesspool, actually.

"So, tell me, pipsqueak. Do you still want to do everything you need to survive?" I wondered. I found myself empathising with him a little. Wronged by fate, wronged by his own people—I didn't forget the way they shun him before… This was just so like me! Except, I didn't have my own people, but some people definitely wronged me.

"Y-yes." The boy's voice and shoulders shook. His eyes flickered to where the corpses of his people laid. I didn't get to eating them yet, since I was busy looking for him.

"Do you want to get revenge on me in the future?"

"Even if I did, why would I tell you? You'd just kill me!"

I grinned. "I still might, so if you want to have a nice life, you will have to work hard for me. First things first, though. There's a river somewhere around, underground river. Do you know the way there?"

After some thinking, the boy nodded. "It's far, but it's away from the blessed water, so monsters there are weaker. We would fish there sometimes…" his eyes dropped on the dead people again and his voice fell. "Together, for safety."

"Alright, pipsqueak—"

"And my name is Gi, not pipsqueak!"

"Whatever, pipsqueak." I grinned at the anger this brought to him. I had to push him to greatness, I decided. It would be nice to have someone to impart my cruel and selfish wisdom to, to meld them into my likeness. I never thought about doing something like that before, but now it felt like a natural, instinctual desire. "Get stronger and then I will call you by name."

The silent resolution on Gi's face told me he would, one day.

"Me, you can just call me Voren. Here's the deal, pipsqueak. You will bring me to the river. I will bring you to the surface and to some people who will make care that you have clothes, food and a roof over your head. But you will have to work for all of it and train hard to become my equal. If you want to take revenge on me, good luck with that. Just so you knew, I plan to kill the bastards who call themselves gods and take over Heaven. Do you here even know about these? The Twelve."

Gi nodded. "We do, but we don't pray to them. They are surface gods. We have, had," his eyes focused on my chest, "the mountain's heart. I knew it wasn't really the heart of the mountain…"

I patted myself on the chest. "I will be so kind to share its power with you as we go. So, do you agree, or should I kill you?"

"I agree!" Gi didn't hesitate. "B-but, surface? Really? Won't the sun turn me blind?"

I shrugged. "Doubt it. If it will, then you will learn to live and fight by your hearing alone, or I will kill you for uselessness."

Gi grit his teeth, but didn't retort, so I considered the conversation to be over. I left him be and went towards the nearest corpse, feeling Gi's eyes on me all the time. Ignoring him, I brandished my claws and began to cut the body into convenient for chewing chunks.

"What are you doing?!" Gi rushed towards me, as if to stop my hand, but faltered at the last step.

"Didn't I tell you? I was going to eat you all." I threw him a cool glance, then continued what I was doing. "Eating things makes me stronger. Like that magic stone of yours, or yourselves. If that bothers you, you are free to look away."

"This is awful. Awful. Awful. You can't just…"

"Yes, I can." I swallowed a piece of meat. "Told you already. I don't care for your sensibilities. I think you have potential for greatness, talent that is worth it to be nurtured, but spare me that whining."

"Awful," Gi said for the last time and fell completely silent. For a while he sat there, just looking at his hands, and then went to keep washing shit off himself again.

The rest of my meal went in silence. I was glad to find out that these humans, just like I suspected, were worth more EXP than on those on the surface—five times as much on average. Much better than even adventurers.