Demonic Devourer's Development

My body cooled, turning from lava back into slime, but I still didn\'t move until Pest broke the silence in my head again. \'I thought I was so dead. If the other guy didn\'t just decide to die, he\'d suck me dry in a moment! Anyway, you gotta go outta here, Master. The Twelve—or is it the Eleven now?—are gonna be mad like wasps and on your tail.\'

That much was true. I knew that my time in the mortal realm was limited when I first got here, but now the ticking of the clock was audible. Whichever ways the Twelve Bastards used to find me, what was stopping them from finding me again?

Still… it took Goddess of Wizards some time to get to me. Whether it was because of what I did to Aivena, or because she was just that slow, though, was a question I had no answer for. Damn! Willorio\'s curse could\'ve told me that. Instead, he said all that stuff that would probably make Bishop ecstatic, but for me meant about nothing.

Well, almost nothing.

"I promised to kill whoever created draining curses… which means I have another reason to deal with you, bastards." I grinned at the Goddess of Wizards\'s dead and mutilated body.

It wasn\'t getting any warmer, so I knelt down and went on to finish the job I started—eating her to gain divine powers and a great satisfaction. Too bad I didn\'t have the time to drag out the process and enjoy it for a longer time.

The flesh of a god, no matter how bad the being was in being one, was filled with a remnant of power that gave it a unique spice. It was absolutely delicious and there was way too little of it. When I finished, I felt noticeably better than before, even though my inner wounds were still where I left them.

[Creature devoured. Gained 381121954 EXP.]

I had to pause to count all the digits in this number. That was a lot of digits. Too bad I got no evolution options… Did that mean that so-called \'gods\' were actually humans, after all? Or were there limits to what I could evolve?

It didn\'t feel to me like it was the case of the latter. But it was a disappointment. I hoped to get the ability to feel magic for myself after eating Goddess of Wizards.

What was it that made what looked like a more or less ordinary human into a god? Just personal power? A special ability they shared? Too bad the person who could\'ve given me an answer just died. Why, of all useful things it could\'ve told me, Willorio\'s curse shared that part?

At least I had Goddess of Wizards\'s tome of magic spells. I picked it up, noticing that the dust and grime from the ground didn\'t cling to it, and opened a random page. The goddess was so arrogant that she didn\'t even bother to put a spell on it to prevent me from doing so… Then again, did she ever let the book from her sight?

Well, now it wasn\'t leaving mine, even if I couldn\'t understand a thing written or drawn in it. \'Pest, can you use this book the same way Goddess of Wizards did? To do magic?\'

\'I guess, in theory? But there\'s a bazillion of spells, and I know about zero of them… I would need time to sift through it.\'

\'It should have a spell to teleport to Heaven, too…\' I mused. \'Convenient. Can you estimate how much time you will need? We are kinda pressed for it.\'

\'A lot, that\'s all I can say. I can\'t get much from the book unless you open the pages for me and look at them. I\'m not sensitive enough for magic that when they are all pressed together. Even then, well… Remember what I told you before about different ways to do magic? This isn\'t one I\'m that familiar with. That adventurers\' magic, again. Sort of. Not as crude, that\'s for a start.\'

I closed the tome shut, licked the last drops of blood from my lips and looked at the charred wasteland my cosy lair turned into. Too bad I didn\'t have time to evolve. I had to find a way to hide my tracks again, or I would be toast. Maybe there was a solution in the book of spells, but I didn\'t have time for that, either.

Was there any place I could get a week, or two, or a month of not being bothered?

\'Pest, if you were a god, where you wouldn\'t think to look for me?\'

\'How would I know? It\'s easier to tell where I would think to look for you. Hint—the place we are not wasn\'t one of these. And the goddess found us here, anyway!\'

That she did. She couldn\'t track me before, but then something changed. I was sure that if not her, then some other divine bastard would track me again. I was in a bind, and had to think up a way to get out, and quickly if I could.

\'Though, if I were anyone in general, and was looking for someone, I think the very last place I\'d look at would be the ones where I looked already,\' Pest suddenly spoke again. \'Get it? Because they already checked that their target wasn\'t there.\'

Hm… A place where they looked already… Would be that Aivena\'s lab? Ugh, no, I wasn\'t going back there. Besides, I felt like a more radical change of scenery was necessary. After all, if there was magic on their side, magic that already found me once in the middle of nowhere, why won\'t it find me again?

The idea that struck me was both brilliant and mad, just like all the best ideas. Impossible and stupid from the first glance, it made the more sense the longer I thought about it. The means of achieving this were there. And they surely won\'t expect me to actually do something like that…

I bared my teeth in a ferocious grin.. \'Pest, it seems like it is time for you to see afterlife for yourself, after all.\'