[TTIABAD] Chapter 115: Finally all on the same page

“What?! You’re a human from Earth?!”

I’d barely gotten my words out for half a moment before Tyler screamed that for all the world to hear. We may be deep in the jungle Tyler, but come on. People can still hear you, damn it. I repressed the urge to glare at him. He was shocked, rightfully so, even more so than when I learned he was from Earth. I wouldn’t get angry at him.

I continued with my story. I said how I’d been summoned using a Gem, pulled from earth in half remembered demon summon ritual, that had changed my race. I briefly mentioned I’d ‘gone through hell as a soul’ without elaborating. We’ll get there in time. I told them about how I arrived broken and confused, my mind torn to pieces, and how it slowly began to heal. How I decided to help kill the baron and his men in that state, only to run into their group days later.

“That must have been very hard on you.” Konohora said, eyes full of pity.

I chuckled mirthlessly. “I thought I had died after Riary blasted me. I saw nothing, felt nothing, just black. I was sure, positive, I had died. The trip was… well… that really fucking sucked.”

I looked over to Riary… who was shaking like a life in a storm, her eyes wide, the flames in her eyes jumping erratically. Tyler looked at her, a little confused, and I could practically read the look in his eyes. He probably thought she felt guilty, the way he looked at her with slight pity.

That was not Riary was feeling, not yet at least.

I had just told a Racist, with views born of horrible trauma, that it was possible to become the race you hated. Body transformation was one thing, that was maybe possible in this world… but a whole entire Race change? That was fantasy even for this world. There was no ‘becoming a demon’ in this world.

Riary’s mind eventually seemed to settle from the absolute shock I had delivered and-

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Riary said, looking extremely green around the edges.

I continued talking, saying how I thought I was gonna die if I stepped a toe out of line.That all I wanted to do was get to the Elven town to form a plan and go from there. To figure out what the hell to do. And then Vanessa Vilconoff came along and fucked up everything.

Konohora’s eyes seem to widen further at that.

“You went from your home world to facing a strong B-Rank threat in less than a month. And won. That is… miraculous.”

“Well, I didn’t do it alone. We were all needed there you know? And I have the benefit of not feeling pain. A leftover from my trip from Earth to Hell to Ero. Still… yeah, that was, that was… going to be real honest with you now. I still have nightmares. Of waking up, with my heart torn out. It’s… it was horrifying. We didn’t win a fight, we miraculously defused a bomb, and only by the slimmest margins and only because said bomb decided we were more fun to play with than kill. She never took us seriously. Not for a single moment. Now that I have other B-Ranks to compare to… I’ve only seen one in this entire town stronger than her. Anyway, so after that, we began to travel again. It was much easier this time and…”

I continued my story. I didn’t really spare them from how I felt either. I was lost and confused and stressed and that first night with Silinthia… it had been the second best feeling. The first had simply been feeling free from them. That they couldn’t just kill me anymore. That I had actual protection against being murdered in the form of guards.

Tyler clearly wanted to protest but Konohora gripped his leg, silently telling him to be quiet. He had no right to protest, no matter how he felt. I had nearly been killed by them.

Then I’d just wandered the town aimlessly, happy, learning. I loved learning about societies and cultures and architecture and I could finally enjoy the fact that I was in a fantasy realm. That this was a whole new world with all it’s small quirks. Life wasn’t about constantly fighting or constantly rising in power, it was about the journey. No one in their right mind would get a video game, or a book, or a show, and simply click ‘Finished’ on it if they could. It was about the experiences along the way.

I talked about that for a little while, still happily remembering so many small details. The shopkeeper, the way elves make their houses, the entire elves way of life, the way religion seems so much more… organized and more like a small military or miltia instead of just faith, and more.

And then I met Happy Go Lucky and my mood soured hard. I wasn’t the only one, as I saw three faces of hatred and frowns peering back at me.

I talked more about that, talking only briefly about Riary’s suspicions. No one really wanted to be reminded that she’d kept a Gem hidden for a week… especially not me, with what I was going to say soon. I got to the part where we teleported after my blade had smashed into the Gem and paused. Because now… it was time to reveal my second secret.

“For this next bit… you need context. I’ve read a little about Hell here. It’s not the same. I also talked to the caravan guards about it a little, picking up here and there from conversation, and well… in short, there’s more than one hell.”

Everyone nodded at this, even Tyler. This was common knowledge.

“No, I mean, I’m not talking about there being multiple levels or circles of Hell where demons roam. I mean… an entirely separate plane of existence. And this Hell… Tyler knows what it is.”

Everyone looked confused, especially Tyler.

He looked at me, not getting it. I stared hard at him, giving him a moment, and slowly, his eyes widened. They widened more and more and more, his breath becoming shaky and his thoughts clearly being blown to pieces.

“No… way…” He said.

I nodded.

“In our world… there is a Heaven and Hell in mythology. It’s not real. Our religions aren’t real. There is not a single amount of evidence for them and never has been. People still believe though, and each their own. But we have no Gods or Goddesses or people with faith based powers. The entire Heaven and Hell thing… there were religions before they existed, and religions before even those existed. Many of them with strange or varied beliefs. But almost all of them had a ‘bad’ place and a ‘good’ place.

“Hell in our mythology… it’s where all the bad people go. They go there and they are tortured forever, relentlessly. Eternal damnation. Burned in fire, their souls eternally tortured, unimaginable pain and suffering. Forever. I can tell you… I’ve been to that Hell… and it is so much worse.”

My voice took on an unnerving quality, as my soul battered against the door of the barrier in my mind. A small amount of pain leaked through, like a burning in my gut, and I had to force myself to move on. To not linger on those thoughts.

Everyone looked more than a little visibly disturbed.

“I… won’t talk more about it. I can’t. My soul… ha. My soul was nearly destroyed just going there. It reformed, taking my experiences with it, and it’s what caused my mind to crack. All I remember is… a trillion, trillion souls. An Endless plane of suffering. Tortured. Screaming. Forever and ever and- pain. Pain. PAin PAIN PAIN So much PAIN. ENDLESS PAIN. ENDLESS. ENDLESS-”

“Derek! Derek get ahold of yourself!” Tyler was screaming and blood was leaking out my nose. My soul barrier was flexing more than it ever usually did. I took a deep, deep breaths. A few. A dozen. I stared at the ground, I couldn’t even lift my head.

“...my mind broke.” I said quietly. “Broke like an egg. Shattered. Fell apart. My soul and mind couldn’t connect, so a barrier was made. My mind healed afterwards. I can’t remember anything except the facts of it. Endless torture, with more souls than a billion worlds could produce. But if I push too hard… the barrier weakens. I’m not… mentally okay. I’m better though.”

“Derek… you…” Riary said, her voice thick with emotion. Pity maybe. Guilt, possibly. I didn’t know.

“There’s… a reason I brought it up. I was summoned by a Gem. That Gem… and the black space we traveled…”

I explained. About the four ‘higher’ tier gems. About how mine was somewhere inside me. About how I felt like it could open the way to there. How I’d die before I so much as showed it to the world, how I worried if one man with a shitty half remembered demon ritual could summon someone from Earth, and force them to go through that… then what could an actual Kingdom or Empire do with it? Open a direct portal? Accidentally shove the whole damn world through it?

And then I told them Happy had one. How I felt like it was ‘Nothing’. That there also existed a ‘Heaven’ and ‘Everything’ Gem.

By this point, Konohora had begun to curse.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. Telling a truth priestess this is… Fuck. Shit.” Konohora began and did not stop, getting more creative over time. Everything she said was the truth… but that clearly didn’t stop her from swearing like a sailor.

Tyler was stunned, mumbling… “Heaven is real…?” over and over to himself.

Riary’s expression was as grim as they came, realizing our enemy was stronger than ever. He didn’t have three massively powerful gems, he had four, one that eclipsed the others by a wide margin.

I eventually began again, going over my interactions with Konohora and Happy in the Jungle. Well, the ones related to the Gem. We’d had more than enough time to go over everything else before hand. The main takeaways was that my Gem had interacted with the Life Gem, straight up causing it terrible pain.

And then that brought us all the way back to here and now. I’d continued the journey with them, for strength and more, so I could complete my own goals. However…

“I don’t want to deal with Happy. This is a large world and I’m already doing more than my part by keeping this thing safeguarded.” I tapped my chest. “Someone else can kill that fucker and deal with all the Gems. It’s not my goal, not my duty, not my mission. Still… I’ll kill him if given the chance. He’s too dangerous to be kept alive with that much power.”

Tyler’s face became angry.

“Derek, how can you know all of that and still say that?! We have to-”

I held up a hand.

“I am not a hero Tyler. You can be one if you want and I’ll help you. Ah, that does bring up one more thing though.”

I explained how Konohora and I had talked about her suspicions… and then told everyone how Xilvia had sussed out that I had True Hero Potential… which I did technically, because, well, I was a ‘True Hero’.

“I fucking knew it.” Was Riary’s immediate words. “I knew you were getting way too strong, way too fast. You were on par or even surpassing Tyler. There was no fucking way that was possible with just your biology.”

“Xilvia knows? That could be dangerous.” Konohora said, finally coming down from cursing up a storm.

“I trust her. Well… I trust her to have my best interests in mind. We talked, she warned me… I really think she takes being my master seriously. And I take being her student one as well. Besides, she talked to you Konohora. I’m sure she mentioned at least once about how she didn’t want to kill me or see me dead or something.”

Konohora cautiously nodded, remembering at least one exchange with her, no doubt.

I finished up, going exactly into what Xilvia and I had talked about, and then smiling.

“And that’s everything. All my secrets, revealed, out there in the open. Mainly. Mostly. You know how it is.”

Everyone was silent for a while, going over everything. I’d dropped a lot on them. Tyler especially seemed dazed and lost in thought, glancing at me every few moments. Yeah buddy, I really, really get it. I’m earth, there’s a Hell, there’s a Heaven, there’s apparently a ‘Nothing’ and ‘Everything’, one of which Happy has. It’s a fucking mess.

Riary was surprisingly the one that spoke up first. With a glare in her eyes.

“And I thought dealing with Tyler was bad enough… Why on Ero did a ticking time bomb like you appear in my life? This isn’t fair at all… Your existence could cause a world war… This is absolute horseshit…” Riary half talked, half muttered.

I could only mirthlessly chuckle. But apparently Tyler hadn’t connected all the dots.

“Wait, what? A world war? Why on earth could Derek cause that?”

“Tyler… he’s a demon True Hero.” Riary said, thought her voice caught on the word demon pretty hard. She was still reeling that in fact, she had been beating down on a human who had become a demon this whole time. Hopefully she could deal with that revelation in time and it might even improve our working relationship.

“...and?” Tyler asked, looking bewildered. Riary groaned.

I stepped in and quickly told him just how serious people took True Heroes and how Xilvia had mentioned that a kingdom, larger than the current population of the US, had been killed to the last person in the Dark Era as a final warning bell that True Heroes were no longer allowed. And that demons were naturally stronger than damn near every other race. Couple that with the ‘semi’ weakening of people overall on a mass scale, the current tensions between demons and everyone else, and throw my Ability into the mix… at the highest level, in like a few hundred years, I could make a serious bid for ruling the entire world.

“I… what… that’s… they really…” Tyler looked like a dried sponge at that moment. I thanked him deep in my heart, the image would be stuck with me forever.

“Hey wait, you never went over your Ability.” Riary said.

“What about it?”

“Well… how did you get it? What is it really?” Riary asked.

“I… I already told you. It’s Analyze. I can know everything, given time. That’s it. There’s no ‘more’ to it, thank god. It’s just tuned to Power because that’s what I needed to know at the time. It’s slowly expanding but shifting it seems… nearly impossible. As for how I got it…” I shrugged. “Just luck of the draw. I woke up with it.”

Now it was Riary’s turn to curse the ‘Damn luck having demon’.

“Derek. If you may permit.” Konohora asked. “I have one more question. Why do you wish for a body changing potion?”

Riary blinked. “Isn’t is obvious? It’s so he can go back to being human right?”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Konohora said, causing Tyler and Riary to be hit with yet another surprise. “He has talked about it and lied about it a few times. And told the truth on it in surprising ways. So, I am curious.”

“Well…” I said with a smile. “That’s a secret.”

“What? Come on, more secrets?!” Tyler said, clearly feeling fed up at this point in time.

I just chuckled.

“Not a serious one. Not dangerous or anything. Just mine. I really wasn’t lying though… I have a few things and hangups and let’s just say that having my eyes change color… un-fucking-acceptable. I’d search for that damn potion for no other reason than to change my eye color back.”

“Now, we should really go check on the caveman village, because I’m pretty sure they’ve been fighting a group of adventurers for the past fifteen minutes.”

“””What?!”