Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 78: Demon

They heard a step. Then another.

The silhouette emerged from the shadow of a toppled, ancient menhir. She was small—no taller than a malnourished twelve-year-old. Her thin frame was covered in scars, half-hidden beneath a tattered fur cloak. Her tangled black hair hung over her body like it had simply given up trying to do anything else.

Her face... was almost human. Too almost. Like a cruel imitation of what a girl from another world might have been. Beautiful, perhaps—but in the way fire is beautiful, right before it burns.

And her eyes... two pits of burning obsidian. Locked on Dylan.

"My blood," she whispered, in a voice far too gentle.

Maggie immediately stepped between her and Dylan, axe raised.

"Don’t come any closer."

The demon tilted her head slightly. Like a feline intrigued by a squirming insect. She didn’t smile. Not yet.

"You think you can protect him?" she asked, her voice vibrating straight through their bones. "You don’t even know what he is."

Dylan took a step back, pale as death. His breath was shallow. His eyes flicked from her... to himself.

Élisa shot a quick glance at Maggie, then at Dylan. She saw it in their eyes—they had all just understood the same thing.

This wasn’t just some creature attacking them.

She knew something they didn’t.

The demon took one step forward.

"I’ve come to claim you," she said simply.

And just like that, all three weapons were raised again.

"Dylan is a lieutenant under my command. We’ve got nothing to do with your world—so you must be mistaking him for someone else."

The demon stopped — barely fazed. Her gaze drifted from Maggie to Élisa, then anchored itself back onto Dylan, as if the others were mere props orbiting the main scene.

"Your titles... or whatever you cling to, they mean nothing here."

She blinked slowly, then took another step — just one.

"I never mistake blood."

Dylan tensed, jaw locked tight.

He wanted to say something. Scream it wasn’t true. Laugh, maybe, just to shatter the absurdity. But no sound came. Just that vibration in his bones — a low, pulsing hum at the base of his skull. Something inside him — deep, rooted — responded to her voice.

Élisa hissed through her teeth.

"Maggie... I don’t think she came here to fight. Not yet, anyway. She’s sizing us up. Trying to get under our skin."

"And that pisses me off," Maggie replied bluntly, eyes never leaving the creature.

"Because if she wants us to hesitate, it means she’s confident she can rip us apart if we misstep."

The demon spread her arms slightly — inviting.

No weapon. No overt hostility.

Just... presence. Warped and wrong.

"He belongs to me. His scent called me. I left my mark on him."

Dylan choked. "What... mark?"

His hands trembled now.

A strange warmth surged beneath his skin — not fever, not magic.

Something older. Like an infection of memories he’d never lived.

Dylan had never been an old man.

Never had a family.

Never burned at a stake in the middle of some forgotten village.

None of that... was him.

"What are these memories..." Dylan croaked, voice raw and broken, each word like it scraped his throat bloody. freēnovelkiss.com

"They’re not mine—"

"They’re mine," the demon answered, calm and cold.

"I wove fragments of my soul into the essence of the hobgoblin chieftain you consumed. Through him... I branded you."

She smiled. Slowly. Sinister.

A grin more like a wound than a human expression.

Dylan collapsed to his knees.

His heart pounded against his ribs like it was trying to escape.

Something inside him spun — twisting, knotting.

His spirit — his core — recoiled, fought back, shifted.

An awful itch bloomed across his skin, like his body wanted to shed itself.

Maggie clenched her axe tighter.

The leather of her sleeve creaked under the strain.

Her jaw was tight enough to crack.

"You show up like this, in front of us — you didn’t stop to think we might kill you?"

The demon spread her arms wide — a gift, a dare.

Her smile grew wider still, consuming her face with a predatory stillness.

"Then go on. Try."

A cold wind rolled across the plain.

Even the stones seemed to draw back.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It thrummed, tense like a cord on the verge of snapping. The air was saturated with a strange energy — not quite magical, but older, more primal. Something even the stones seemed to fear.

Elisa stepped sideways, looking for a better line of sight. Her hand slid to the hilt of her daggers, eyes locked on the demoness.

Dylan, meanwhile, was wrestling with something invisible. His back arched, fingers clawing into the ground. Spasms shook his arms. His eyes rolled beneath his lids, his mouth muttering words in no known tongue.

Maggie shouted:

"Hey asshole, stay with us!"

But he didn’t answer.

He was changing.

Beneath his skin, black veins pulsed briefly, vanishing as quickly as they came, like they were hiding. His aura flickered — sometimes human, sometimes... something else. Something vaster, older than his own memory.

The demoness watched him like one might observe a rare flower bloom in a field of ash. Fascinated. Amused. Proud.

"He’s nearly ready," she said softly.

"He just needs to stop resisting. To give in to me completely."

Maggie spat on the ground.

"You talk like a demon would."

"Because I am one."

She said it without irony.

And that — that chilled Elisa to the bone.

In an instant, she no longer saw this creature as just an enemy, but as a monster that believed it loved.

A twisted love, deformed, unrecognizable by any human measure. The love of something ancient.

"What do you want to do with him?" Elisa asked, voice lowered.

The demoness turned her head toward her, almost surprised to be addressed with something other than fear.

"What is owed. To complete him. He was born incomplete... I will simply pour my soul into an empty shell, once his has fully faded."

Behind them, Dylan lifted his head.

His eyes — black, without pupils — glowed from within, like twin embers in a skull too young.

"I... I don’t remember... But I feel... something..."

His voice was no longer just his own.

It vibrated. A twisted chorus accompanied him.

A choir of ancient, distorted whispers, as if foreign memories were taking shape through him.

"They... speak. In me. Beneath me. Before me."