“Hmm… Interesting,” I nod to myself while examining one of the crime scenes. “Indeed, interesting.”

  What do I find so interesting? Nothing at all. Then, I’m sure you’re curious why I keep repeating the word ‘interesting’, and that reason is… isn’t this what detectives say to pretend they know more than anyone else? Am I right?

  Laura observes the crime scene with a pensive look, although she doesn’t get as near as I do. It must be because there still are remnants of that white substance scattered on the floor. There’s no corpse anyway, and nothing else catches my attention.

  “We kept the scene as it was.” As we investigate, or pretend to, the school’s director, the Imp, keeps babbling in the background. “The only thing we moved was the corpse. We couldn’t leave one of our dear students here, for all our students to see. If they knew the victims can’t be resurrected, they’d surely suffer a lot. We’re a venerable institution, we can’t allow our students to have a pitiful death like this… as if their soul was sucked away… Aah, it’s such a shame! They had so much to learn and improve. They had such a bright future!”

  Yeah… such bullshit.

  That’s why you torture and kill them in your classes, right? Because you can’t let them suffer or die, right? Say the truth: the only reason you’re worried is that they can’t be resurrected and tortured anymore. They managed to escape the eternal torture, and you can’t allow that.

  I ignore the Imp’s ramblings and continue scanning the crime scene. As expected, nothing at all.

  “Interesting…”

  At about the tenth time I’ve repeated the same word, Laura starts observing me instead of the crime scene. It seems she didn’t find anything relevant as expected. The problem is that she’s closely monitoring every single one of my actions, not sure if she should believe my actions or not. It’s like she’s expecting me to discover something relevant, but at the same time feels like I’m just fooling around.

  “Interesting indeed…”

  I am fooling around, so stop looking at me like that! Pleaaaase! I truly have no clue, but I don’t want to admit that I’m just pretending… I just want to look cool…

  Luckily for me, I don’t have to keep pretending, nor do I have to reveal I don’t know shit. After a few surprised shouts – which by the way sound very different from the agony and painful ones we’ve been hearing all the time –, we hear footsteps approaching us. Three students are running in our direction.

  “Sir Lootcifer, Sir Lootcifer!” The one running at the forefront shouts, “There’s been another incident! You must come with us!”

  Oh. So the Imp is called Lootcifer? I wonder if it has anything to do with the quest or is just a funny name…

  “...Don’t give me orders!”

  The usually gentle school director, who treated us as if we were important almost to the point of literally licking our boots, suddenly shows its true colors. A large fireball shoots out of his extended finger, burning the student to a crisp.

  Aha, I knew it! All demons are brutal beasts! They’re just too good at hiding their true nature!

  This reminds me that my companion is also a demon…

  Laura tilts her head when I start shivering, looking at her. Aaagh, she’s too good! I almost fell for her innocent act! I knew it! She’s dangerous too!

  The other two students leap backward to avoid the flames. For an instant, they seem surprised, but they quickly relax their facial expressions and watch the director, waiting for him to make the first move. They’re too used to these kinds of things.

  “You,” the Imp points at the left student, “take this fool to the infirmary.” More like the Resurrection Center, right? Hahaha. He then points at the right one, “And you. You wait here for now.”

  The Imp then turns back to us, wearing a smile. Haha, I won’t fall for his act. Not again, I mean. At first, I thought he was a cute and charming Imp, acting like an adult and wearing oversized clothes. I don’t think so anymore. He’s a demon wearing a sheep’s skin!

  “Dear guests, are you finished here? Would you like to go with me?”

  I nod. “Let’s go.” Uh, yeah. I mean, there was nothing to see here anyway.

  As soon as I start walking, the Imp chuckles, chasing after me. “Hehe, I’m sorry for their disgraceful appearance and behavior. They still have much to learn… This is why we need your assistance! They’re too young to leave us!”

  Fuck this… hearing the Imp buttering me all the time is getting tiresome. Furthermore, since he has a limited amount of lines, he keeps repeating them all the time. I don’t want to listen to him anymore!

  I’m starting to regret not bringing Cyam with me. Laura told me this dungeon was special and that we shouldn’t bring any monsters with us… but Cyam isn’t a combatant! Furthermore, I’m too tired of his buttering!

  Even if this dungeon’s NPCs aren’t hostile because of the modified AI, they’re still treated as ‘hostile’ by the game. We can engage in battle against them at any moment we wish to.

  This also means Cyam could turn them into stone, something I’d currently appreciate.

  I glare at Laura, who has taken some distance from me. To ensure the Imp will bother me exclusively. ‘Take my place!’ I shout with my eyes.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  ‘No way.’ She replies, shaking her head.

  ‘Can I kill him at least?’ I ask, gesturing with my hand. ‘He’s way too annoying.’

  She glares at me. ‘No way! What if he’s important for the quest later on? I forbid you from doing anything harmful to him!’

  “...” I grit my teeth. So unfair…

  It doesn’t take long to reach the place where the last attack occurred. A large student crowd blocks our way. There are a few demon professors in the mix.

  “Make way, you fools!”

  As soon as the Imp says those words, the crowd splits in two. Haha, it reminds me of that scene from the bible. Both the students and professors are too scared of him to defy his orders.

  Alright, I’ll admit it. He does have his uses.

  It’s fun that the ruler of this demonic school is one of the weakest units in the faction’s roster. Roleplay-wise, sure, you can do whatever you want. Stat-wise, though… any of those professors must be ten times stronger than the director, but they still fear him.

  It’s a surreal situation, but a fun one regardless.

  Itching for action, I rush to the corpse. What I find is more or less the same as what we’ve seen before: a human male sucked to death, and a white substance scattered near his nether regions.

  The medical personnel are inspecting the body. At least, they look like medical personnel. They wear nurse and doctor clothes, but their clothes are soaked in blood. Instead of white, they are a dark, intense red.

  Are they from the Resurrection Center, perhaps? If so, I don’t want to know how their clothes got this color.

  It’s now that I realize two things we completely skipped over earlier. The first one is evident, but the latter is because we didn’t dare touch the corpses.

  First, the student has his pants on! How could he have released… you know, that substance with his pants on? Second, why does he have a hole in his pants, near his butt?

  “...do male succubus exist?” I ask Laura.

  She raises one eyebrow, quickly understanding what I mean. “What kind of perverted fantasies are you having right now?”

  “Eh, uh…” I look away. Nothing. Nothing, I swear.

  “There are no male succubus,” she explains. “All succubus are female in DMA. The male version is called Incubus. They share the same Charming Eyes but not the name or stats. But, lore-wise, they aren’t attracted to males. It makes no sense.”

  Is that so?

  “I saw it! I saw everything!” One of the students pushes his way into the crime scene, through the staff demons pushing the crowd away. “I saw what happened!”

  Oooh! Finally, a clue! I almost shout, happy to get something to work with. I was starting to get worried we’ve been wasting our time here.

  The student stops in front of the Imp, who’s next to us and starts explaining.

  “I saw it, coming out of Mathias’ ass! It was a long and thick…” He shivers, and I shiver with him. Long, and thick? I gulp. It was long and thick, he says…? What was long and thick?

  My imagination runs wild while everyone, Laura included, waits for him to continue.

  “...It was a long, thick, and white worm coming out of his ass!”

  “WHAT!?” My brain stops working.

  After the student’s explanation finishes, confusion spreads between the demonic staff. They don’t know what that ‘long and thick’ worm is. In the end, the school director starts shouting to the crowd that they should stop wasting time, and everyone returns to their classrooms.

  “I’m sorry, dear inspectors. I must take control of this situation, so I’ll have to leave you for a while. If you need me, you’ll find me in my office.”

  Leaving those words behind, the Imp takes the remaining staff with him. They’re bringing the student’s corpse with them.

  I lock eyes with Laura. “What now?”

  “I’m not sure…” She shakes her head. Then, she points at the grating that, according to the witness, the worm disappeared into. “Does it connect to the ventilation system? We can start by investigating that. But this is a problem. A thick and long white worm… I don’t know of any Wicked Legion unit that fits that description…”

  If she doesn’t know, how am I supposed to? “Can it be a weird skill?” I propose. “You know, like the monsters I like to create, which have weird combinations you’d never expect.”

  “It could be…”

  We decide to go to the basement, where the furnace feeding the whole school with hot air should be. The Imp was so ‘kind’ as to tell us where the basement was when we passed nearby, so there’s no need to ask for directions. He repeated it every, single, fucking, time, we passed near the stairs leading to the basement.

  Now that I think about it, it might have been an important clue.

  We open the door. Dark stairs, going down to who knows where. For some reason, I feel like we shouldn’t go there.

  “Are you sure about this?” I ask. “We can still go back…”

  “Chickening out? Fufufu, I thought you were braver than this.” Laura goads me. To which I respond with…

  “I am.” …the truth. There’s no need to hide it, nor could I. My legs are shaking too much to hide it.

  It isn’t like I’m scared of dark spaces that could be filled with danger, okay? What I dread is having one of those worms doing to me what it did to those students. I know. I know it makes no sense because this is a game. But I can’t control it. It’s an instinctual fear. An instinctual repulsion.

  Laura observes my actions, grinning. But her eyes are firm: she won’t accept a no.

  “Fine…” I relent. “But you’re going first, just in case.”

  She shrugs and puts her feet on the first step. Right at this moment, shouts much louder than usual start coming from the nearest class.

  “Kyaaaaaaah!”

  “Help me, don’t leave me behi– Aaaargh!”

  The students scramble out of the class, running away from something.

  “Why is Professor Commodeus suddenly attacking us like that!? Shouldn’t he look for an excuse to kill us at least!?”

  I guess that, after being subjected to an awful experience for long enough, anyone would find it normal. Don’t you agree?

  “Uaaaah! No, nooooo! Don’t eat meeeeeee!”

  The unusual shouts make us reconsider our plan. Laura retraces her steps and meets me back in the basement entrance.

  “Let’s check this out first. We can go to the basement later.”

  “Sure!” I immediately agree.

  Perfect! I can avoid facing the worms! Luck smiles on me once more! Hahaha!