“How long?” I asked.

  “Years.” He said flatly before raising his hands in defense when I glared at him.

  “What I mean by that is you coming here at least once a day for treatment. I cannot keep you here for that long due to what your mark and I have done to protect your life. Your resources have been severely drained and I even had to take a good amount of the experience, points, and attributes you would have received from defeating a lv. 50 monster.” He added quickly.

  “How much?” I demanded.

  “You are most likely lv. 15 or less from what I did to you. You would have been lv. 30 normally.” He told me and I sighed.

  “Would lv. 30 be considered high for a human my age?” I asked him, reluctant to hearing the answer.

  “Very much so to the point that you may done some rather…. ‘questionable’ things instead of what you did do. Lv. 15, on the other hand, is much more believable if not fairly normal for your age. I do suggest you keep your current free points in reserve for now though.” He answered and I sighed in relief.

  “Good, I didn’t really want to stand out too much when I next see people.” I replied.

  “True but you may be tempted to use them anyways once you feel how weak being tainted with miasma will make you while you are out there.” He pointed out to me, and I groaned.

  “Don’t tell me things like that!” I scolded him before sighing.

  “Either way, I take it I’ll be staying here for a while then?” I asked next.

  “Actually, you can leave whenever you want. It is just not a good idea at this time.” He corrected me and I sighed again.

  “Fine. Anything you want to do to me while I’m… semi-stuck here?” I inquired and the demon regarded me thoughtfully.

  Or, at least, I thought it was thoughtfully. It was hard to tell to be honest, considering he didn’t really have eyes or any of the other more normal facial features used to express one’s self. He didn’t even have any ears either now that I gotten a clear look at the sides of his head while he had been eating me. He was rubbing his chin with the side of a curled finger that I had seen other people doing while they thought. Watching him think also brought my attention a smear of red on the side of his chin and another, larger one on his neck.

  “You got a bit of something here…. and here….” I said gesturing to the two spots with my own as reference.

  “Hm…?” He went he turned to me and I gestured to the spots again.

  “And also, here.” I told him, pointing to the one on his far shoulder, once more using my own to show him where.

  “Ah! Thank you! Usually, I’m much better about cleaning myself up after eating like this.” He replied as he licked the spots clean with his tongues. The one from his main mouth got the one on his chin while he sought to use the tongue from a hand maw to get the other two.

  “The other shoulder and I’m surprise it isn’t worse. You were being fairly messy with… you know.” I pointed out to him and corrected him when I saw his hand drift over to the wrong one.

  “I know and I couldn’t really help myself either. At least I am…. gentler than I when I was younger and ate live prey more regularly…. there is just something about it that excites a darker part of myself. I refrained from doing during my later years though, keeping such things to when I was devouring demonics.” He explained to me, and I gave him a mistrustful look.

  “I did not need to know that either.” I told him and he just shrugged.

  “I am what I am. You would have found out about this sooner or later. Particularly if you ran across such creatures and have not gotten rid of the Fate you have.” He replied rather unapologetically.

  I grunted in return before swinging my newly reformed legs over the side to sit on the edge of whatever I was on. The motion had an effect on him I would have found disagreeable had I known. He had to suppress his instinctive predatory urge to pounce on a weakened prey that was summoned unbidden by that brief moment of fast movement. He also had to swallow down the drool that it invoked in his multiple mouths and shook the thought away. Luckily for him. I was distracted by the current state of my body and notice any of it at the time.

  “Why the heck I am still like this here!? I thought I was getting better!” I demanded as I stared down at the almost skeletally thin body that only prolonged starvation could give people.

  “Hm… I don’t know… Not really. Its…. never been an issue before.” He answered uncertainly.

  “Any idea of what could have… could be causing this?” I asked, feeling rather uncertain myself now because his reaction.

  “None at all really but I can guess at a few that might be behind this. Your ‘altered’ fate might be the main cause of this somehow. Or not. Or it could be that you have only been using only your skill to eat instead of doing it normally. Not that you have had much of a choice in the matter. I know how… reluctant you mortals are to consuming raw flesh. And it would have been wasteful too. That aside, eating or lack of it doesn’t really affect me or demons that inherit my Fate. As for demonics… well, they do plenty of both with and without the help of their Fate skill so it has never come up. My suggestion to you, is that you eat more normally when you finally get the chance to and see what happens. Those things aside, they also were never starved when they received my fate either.” He explained after taking the time to think about it. Then he paused, his mood darkening as he remembered something.

  "At least they weren't the ones who were starving...." He added, before going back to normal.

  “Soo… in other words, you didn’t do this to me.” I stated and the demon crossed his arms and turned to being a bit miffed at me at the comment.

  “No, I am not. Demons are not the cause….” He began before he noticed my gaze had drifted away from him to my feet and his voice trailed off. I heard him sigh and felt him cautiously place a hand on my shoulder, being careful not to let his claws touch me.

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  “I am not the one you are really angry at, are you?” He asked softly and it was my turn to sigh.

  “I don’t know. This world has been nothing but pain and trouble ever since I woke up here. In fact, it hasn’t really been much different than my old one. Only the trouble has come in a different, more dangerous form is all.” I told him after a long silence that had followed that sigh.

  He was patient with me, and I felt him take his hand from my shoulder before hopping up onto the… whatever the padded thing I was on. There was a lot of that going on in this… ‘place’ I was in. I was kept from dwelling on it by the demon draping an arm around my shoulders and holding me against his boney side in what he probably hoped was a comforting gesture. It was to my great reluctance, and I instinctively rested my head against his shoulder. I was spared the feeling of his…. weird skin on my face by the even weirder ‘not-cloth’ his clothing was made out of even if it did little to actually pad him any.

  “I am not certain what I should say to that, but this world has many wonders, and you have only seen a small part of it. I will… admit that you have had a very rough start in this world so far, but you have also started very far behind for a normal human. You could have chosen to start over and leave your past behind, but you did not. You could have chosen to not take on my Fate and try to destroy one of the Empire’s terrible machines. And, as far as I know, you could have chosen to let your life end back on your world or have chosen to stay there and struggle on until it did.” He pointed out to me, which I don’t think had the intended affect.

  “So, you’re saying it’s my fault then?” I said leaning my head away from him and giving him an unhappy side eye.

  “No, I am saying it is the Empire’s fault.” He replied and my look turned to one of confusion.

  “Too soon?” He asked me.

  “Yeah… also not enough context.” I told him.

  “True, you have only been here for a day or two. Perhaps some lessons in history and some other common knowledge things will be required when you come and visit. I cannot leave you to wander around so utterly clueless after all. That would be irresponsible of me. Not to mention you would not understand any of my jokes if I did not.” He replied in what I thought might have been a joking manner in order to help lift my spirits. It didn’t work and I didn’t really feel like trying to fake it either.

  “No good?” He asked before ‘squinting’ at me when he noticed the dull look in my eyes.

  “What? Did you leave something on my face?” I asked in return after a while. I heard him mutter something along the lines of ‘I thought I had fixed that...’ before answering me.

  “No… But I do need you to hold still as you can for this. It will make things easier for us both.” He told me as he moved the arm from around my shoulders.

  I could feel his claws sink painlessly into my lower back while something cool wrapped around my shoulders to pull me firmly against his arm. At the same time, he leaned forward and raised his other hand. I watched dully as he held it flat and brought it towards my stomach to press it fingertips first into a spot just below my breastbone. They passed into my body like it was made out of water and it took a moment for it to register in my head exactly what was happening. I could feel them inside of me as he eased his hand into my body before starting to feel around for something. It felt so surreal, that I couldn’t help but squirm a bit with a grimace at the movement going on inside of me in spite of how depressed I was feeling.

  Not finding what he was looking for, he eventually had to press his hand in deeper, causing me to grunt some at the spike of discomfort. I started to feel nauseous at movement then too and noted idly that his sleeve didn’t follow it in. Instead, it parted to crawl against my skin to assumingly brace me further. It felt cold but familiar and I realized that was what was wrapped around my shoulders. All of this kept me distracted from the faint idea that I should be feeling him touching my backbone if not all the way through me with how much of the limb was in me right then.

  Suddenly, he shoved it in even deeper after his finger claws brushed against something that darted way from his touch. I grunted again and weakly grasped at the arm to steady myself. My nausea began to soar as he chased the thing around inside of me and had to push his hand in deeper. Eventually his hand grabbed onto something round and solid while something else shot upwards and tried forcing its way out through my throat and mouth.

  I coughed, gagged, and heaved as he pulled his prize from my guts. It looked like bubble almost but it was far too solid to be one. The oddity didn’t really register though as whatever was coming up my throat didn’t seem to want to come out on its own. The demon had a solution to that though. He held the fragile looking sphere to my mouth and I felt the blockage get magnetically pulled into it with my next heave. The sphere lit up with whatever came to occupy it but I was too distracted with what else wanted to come up to notice.