[Passive Skill: Bind Resistance Lv.1 unlocked]
[Obstinance increased]
[Bind resisted]
[Obstinance notably increased]
Before Angelica stood a young man, roughly about her age, maybe a little younger. And he was looking at her with wide, confused, panicked eyes. “The hell?!” He took a hurried step back and grabbed some sort of magical rod from nearby. It looked a bit like her toy scepter, but far fancier, far more expensive.
Actually, the whole place was pretty lavish, now that she had a second to glance around. It looked like a large study in some swaggy mansion, the kind of home she felt far too poor to even be breathing the air of. “Uhm, hello.” Angelica waved politely at the tense lad whose debonair dress matched the scenery.
“W-what are you?!” he stammered. “Declare yourself, Demon!”
“Uhh…” She pondered on it for a moment and just decided to go with a simple greeting. “I’m Angelica. And you are?” She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. Normally, that would have been perfectly polite, but she’d just given her name to a Summoner. Couldn’t that potentially be really bad?
“What sort of trickery is this?! Your kind shouldn’t even be able to say that word!” Fortunately, he apparently didn’t believe her. “What’s your rank?! You clearly know Transfiguration. I thought you had to at least be a Gremlin first to get that. But no, you have to be an Imp. This circle can only summon Imps!”
Angelica looked down at the floor. She was indeed standing in a Summoning Circle, but it was nothing compared to the grand and intricate weave of sigils and art she’d covered her own floor with. This was barely a foot or two wide, and it looked more like the kind of thing a gradeschooler would doodle in the corner of their notebook when they were bored of listening to their teacher. The lines were wobbly, there was paint, or whatever the substance was splattered and dotted all around. It looked like it had been created in haste.
To get a better look at it, she stepped off to the side, not realizing that was apparently some terrifying act. “Holy frits, the binding failed?!” The young man panicked even more, hobbling backward behind a desk in the room. “I’m warning you now, this rod is enchanted with a Rune of Piercing Light. Make one move against me, and I’ll blast you full of holy magic!”
“Um, okay, sorry.” Angelica stepped back into the circle since it apparently was so important to him.
“Your Rank, what is it?”
“Sorry, I have no idea.” She was being completely honest.
“Don’t try to fool me, Demon, what does your Scrying Eye say?”
“Erm, my what? Don’t think I have one of those.”
“Impossible, all Demons have Scrying Eye!” he refuted. “Hang on, and don’t move!” The preppy lad rifled through the drawers of the desk. He pulled out a small red jewel and held it up to his face, looking at her through it. “So you really are an Imp… a fresh one, at that. And you’re Bound?! You have a master?!”
“Uhh, yeah, I guess so.” The only master she had was herself, but she wasn’t going to explain that to this stranger who was coming up with his own head canon.
“Poor creature. I almost pity you.” The man lowered his guard entirely. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need to be alarmed around a low-ranking Imp, if that’s what she was. “I think I get the picture. You must have been Summoned and Bound immediately after your creation. How old are you? A few days, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah, about that, I suppose,” she shrugged, trying to remember the exact date. “Maybe a week.”
“Yet you know Transfiguration?” He was still suspicious. “How did you get that?”
“Dunno. I think I’ve always had it.”
“Hmm, perhaps your master forced it upon you somehow.” The Summoner went off into their own thoughts for a bit. “Ah, maybe they gave you an artifact or branded you with a Rune. Yes, that’d make sense. But they’re forcing you to appear as a young human woman?! He must have quite particular tastes.”
“She.” Angelica corrected, regretting it again that she’d given away more information, but doubled down now that she’d spoken it. “The one who Bound me is a woman.”
“Well, explains why you don’t look like most succubi I’ve seen.” His tone shifted further, becoming almost casual. “You’re far too scrawny compared to them.”
That made Angelica really want to lash out, but she bottled it up, still not quite understanding her situation. And this man had been giving her a good sampling of information for questions she’d had, so might as well let him keep talking.
“So you were Bound by a Summoner, likely someone of high rank if their influence caused my binding to fail—I mean, I’m only a Novice, but still—and you were forced to transfigure to their tastes. They’ve likely made you do chores for them like cleaning, and now they’ve instructed you to answer summons to be even more useful, all without teaching you much about your own abilities or how any of this works. Does that sound about right?”
“Uhh, yeah, she told me I need to start earning my keep.” A lie, but not far from the truth. Really, Angelica just wanted the voices to stop. But since she was here, she might as well learn more about why Demons were summoned and how it all worked.
“And I bet she gave you the name Angelica so that you’d introduce yourself with it and get hurt.” The young man sighed again at her circumstances. “And yet it didn’t seem to bother you. High natural resistance, maybe? You wouldn’t know. If you don’t even know about Scrying Eye, you wouldn’t know your own name, either. Alright, everything makes sense now, let’s start over. It doesn’t matter if you’re experienced as long as you can still carry out my request.
“My name is Garvin. Not my real name, of course, but the one I picked as a Summoner.”
“You could choose any name, and you went with Garvin?” That accidentally flew right out of her mouth with a condescending chuckle. It was an inner thought that leaked unintentionally, so she tried to wrench away the smirk across her face.
“Don’t you dare mock me, Imp!” Garvin raised the rod again, his own douchey self-entitlement bubbling to the surface. But it eased away quickly when he remembered her ignorance. Angelica wasn’t quite the fan of how he looked at her, like she was a child that had been dropped on the head a few too many times. But she’d rather that than believe she was actually some Demon trying to trick him.
“I’ll forgive it this time, but know that we Summoners tend to be very protective of our names, in all aspects,” he hammered it home. “Just like you Demons are with yours. When you’re allowed to pick your alias, I bet you’ll understand. And I’ve been rude. I won’t apologize, since the situation was beyond my expectations, but you still accepted my request for aid.
“So let us get to my request. Let me confide something with you, Demon. It is hard for me to fault your ignorance when I, too, am new to this. You are the first I’ve summoned. I should not be doing so unsupervised, and if my master finds out, he’ll whip me good. But it had to be done.
“The Sect I belong to swears an oath to not use Demons for petty revenge, and yet, this is something that cannot go unpunished. A former… peer of mine, someone I went to college with before enrolling in the sect, he… This is hard to admit to a Demon, and you probably don’t understand anything I’m saying, but maybe it’s because you’re in human form that I feel I can be open.
“He bullied me all throughout our time together. And he continues to do so in ways unspeakable. So I need you to do something about that, to enact my revenge.
“Erm, let me just say, I won’t kill people!” Angelica put a stopper on that idea right out the gate. “Not doing it.”
“Strange, I’ve never heard of a Demon being reluctant unless it directly harmed their situation.” Garvin stated suspiciously again. “But you are a weird case—don’t even know what it means to be a Demon. Perhaps your master is attempting to raise you with human ideology. That would make even more sense. A strange experiment, but then, they shouldn’t have let you answer summons.
“No matter. I wouldn’t need you to kill him. I just want you to poison him. Not a deadly poison. I want him to suffer, to writhe in agony, so he can understand what he did!”
“Uhh, yeah, I don’t know about that, either…” Angelica thought long and hard about it. Would that really be something she’d be willing to do? She’d gotten plenty of information out of him already. Maybe it would be best to refuse and be done with it all. Though that wouldn’t stop the voices, now would it? Perhaps if she learned more about the process, she could get more details.
Or if she completed a request, maybe they would stop for a time. Perhaps she’d even get some new Skills out of it or something. It was worth at least considering. “Say I were to accept. How exactly would I poison him? Do you have a poison you’d want me to use?”
“I take it you don’t have any poison magic, then,” Garvin grimaced. “What sort of magics do you have?”
“Transfiguration, and, uhhh, Reprint!” The “Demon” didn’t know if either of those really counted as magic. And since she still didn’t know the specifics of what Transfiguration did, she probably shouldn’t be boasting it. But he knew about that one already.
“Reprint, that’s a Fabrication skill, right?” the Novice asked, not expecting an answer. “Why would your master want you doing fabrications? Writing in human language? Does she want you to impersonate being a human? No matter, not important right now. And you won’t tell me who your master is anyway, so it’s not like I could ask her these things myself.
“As for how to poison him, he’s a musclehead jock who is always working out. I’d see him with a protein shake all the time, so you could likely infect one of those or swap it out.”
“I see, I see.” She had no issues with that, but there was still one big problem. “And uhh, how exactly do I do that without him seeing me?”
That caused the most confused look yet, making the Summoner’s mouth drop with disbelief. “Y-you’re a Demon! He has no Magic Proficiency at all, so just turn back to your Demon form and you’d be completely invisible to him. Don’t tell me you didn’t know even that much?!”
When she shrugged, he could only groan. “Vissiem help us. Why’d I have to get the Imp that doesn’t even know what Demons are?! Whatever. It’s a simple job. If I could turn invisible, I’d do it myself. And I’ll see it done by any means necessary, even if I have to rely on you. So, will you do it, or not? Since the binding didn’t work, I can’t force the Order onto you. But please, help me get my revenge!”
“Okay… let’s say I’m willing to believe you about the invisibility thing…” Angelica rubbed her chin, really considering it. Did she have a Demon form? It was hard to accept. Whether it was true or not, she could probably find a way. But besides that, there were still her morals she had to contend with. “What did this guy do that was so bad? Is it really something worth making him super sick for?”
“Yes! He…!” Garvin paused, wondering if he should continue to confide in her. “He poisoned my rabbit! The scuffer knows I like to let her out in the yard to feed on the fresh grass, so he tainted it. She… she got very sick. She’s still very sick and weak. Her life isn’t in danger anymore, but it will be a long time until she recovers. I just want him to experience the same torment!”
“Okay…” Cherub’s fluffy face flashed through Angelica’s mind, making her think about what she’d do in his situation. “I’ll do it! I’ll poison him!”