Chapter 65

This long night had yet to pass, but the ancient castle finally welcomed a moment of peace—at least it sounded peaceful.

But if anyone could see the scene in the central courtyard of the castle, they would probably not be able to remain calm.

A demon over five meters tall sat cross-legged in the center of the ancient castle. Even sitting down, he made Hao Ren feel like he was looking up at a giant. The flames and lava constantly bursting from the demon’s body illuminated the surrounding area for dozens of meters, turning it red. The pile of stones beneath him had partially melted into lava, making it seem as if the demon was sitting on a lake of lava. The demon and Hao Ren had already confirmed each other’s identities, and the latter had even double-checked with his data terminal. Now, this heart-stopping mission seemed to be successfully completed.

The result left Hao Ren feeling a sense of unreality.

“My name is Izaak,” the demon spoke, always subconsciously leaning forward when talking to Hao Ren. This was a polite gesture, but it made Hao Ren have to jump around to avoid the splashing flames and molten slag. The demon’s voice sounded like thunder, mixed with the crackling of fire. The demon’s language was complex and hard to pronounce. If it weren’t for the data terminal’s powerful translation function, Hao Ren would have been completely unable to communicate with this giant—whose Chinese sounded like Japanese-accented English. “Nice to meet you, I hope I’m not too much of a bother—this is how you greet someone for the first time, right?”

Hao Ren wiped the sweat from his forehead (he had been sweating all along, as it was too damn hot around the demon). He thought to himself that this scary giant was actually quite talkative, and he wondered how the mysterious Raven had found such a peculiar being. He nodded at the demon who called himself Izaak. “Sure, sure. Just call me Hao Ren. Um, did Raven 12345 tell you the other details?”

The demon’s face seemed to show a hint of a bitter smile. “Yes, he did. I know the situation here. Don’t stand so far away, I don’t eat people… I know demons aren’t very well-liked in most worlds, but you don’t have to be like that, do you? You’re an auditor.”

“Why do you seem more familiar with the term ‘auditor’ than I am? I just started the job,” Hao Ren looked at the demon curiously. “I’m not afraid you’ll eat me, it’s just that your voice is so hot…”

The demon laughed with a rumbling sound. “Ha, interesting. I’ve had a little interaction with the Xilin pantheon and received some help from them before coming here, so I know a bit. Bring those two girls over, don’t be so guarded. I’m not dangerous, I just want a place to live quietly, a place to stay.”

Hao Ren looked at the demon’s face in surprise. From the rugged, obsidian-like face, he didn’t see much menace (he had been startled at first, instinctively feeling it was menacing). The demon’s voice sounded somewhat dejected. From the mention of “receiving help from the Xilin pantheon,” it seemed something had happened before he came here. But that wasn’t what Hao Ren should be focusing on now. He turned and waved to Vivian and Lily. “Alright, you two come over. Vivian, put away the bats, Lily, put down your brick—by the way, that thing is called a city wall brick, not a brick, and it’s over a meter long!”

Lily casually threw the massive rock, which weighed several tons, to the side, causing a loud thud. She and Vivian cautiously approached. Neither of the two women understood the demon’s language, but they had a general idea of the situation from Hao Ren’s conversation with him. Vivian looked at the massive, burning creature in amazement. “Is this our new neighbor?”

“Yes, his name is Izaak. He doesn’t seem to speak human languages. I’ll check with Raven 12345 to see if we can install a translation program for everyone, so you can communicate smoothly.”

The demon noticed Hao Ren introducing him and immediately grinned at Lily and Vivian, showing a smile that was over a thousand degrees Celsius, which made Lily’s tail hair stand on end.

“…He speaks demon language?” Vivian looked at Izaak with a strange expression. “I’ve dealt with demons before and can speak their language, but this doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like a tape being played backward, completely incomprehensible.”

Hao Ren also found this a bit strange, and considering the incident when Vivian tried to seal the Demon Stone, he became curious about Izaak.

“Oh, I come from another world,” Izaak answered straightforwardly. “Not another planet, but another universe, quite far from your universe, but with highly consistent physical constants. The planet I lived on was a bit larger and had stronger gravity, but it doesn’t matter much to me.”

The demon then added, seeing that Hao Ren was silent for a moment, “Actually, I was initially assigned to another containment point in your universe, about 2.3 billion light-years from Earth, but I didn’t like the high oxygen content there, so I was sent here.”

Hao Ren’s mouth hung open for ten seconds before he finally spoke, his face showing a strange expression. “Well… I understand what you mean, but why do you speak like this? You should say you come from another plane or another dimension, summoned by Raven’s magic to this world, and that the elemental forces are similar… I think that’s how a demon should speak. You’re a demon, a legendary race, you know…”

Izaak scratched his head, sending a shower of sparks. “Why should I speak like that? It sounds silly and isn’t very precise. It’s a bit like the way heroes spoke in the novels popular a thousand years ago in my world.”

Hao Ren: “…I just find it strange to hear a magical creature use terms like planets and light-years.”

Izaak shrugged. “We discovered our planet was a sphere a thousand years ago.”

Hao Ren: “…”

Alright, it seemed this wasn’t a topic to delve into further. Hao Ren realized he should remember and adapt to one thing: anything related to the Xilin pantheon was never normal!

Hao Ren turned to explain Izaak’s origin to Vivian. The vampire girl was amazed. She had found the concept of aliens fresh, but now seeing a being from another universe made her feel the world was incredibly vast. Lily, on the other hand, remained calm—she didn’t understand.

Actually, Hao Ren’s surprise wasn’t much less than Vivian’s. Even with the “Temporal Administration Bureau” badge, he had never truly experienced time travel. Saying he wasn’t surprised when he heard Izaak was from another universe would be a lie. But he had to maintain his cool in front of the two women—after all, he was a Temporal Administration Bureau employee and couldn’t act like a bumpkin when he saw a foreigner.

“I don’t think this is the place to continue talking.” Hao Ren wanted to chat more with the demon to learn more about him, but he finally noticed the faint light of dawn in the sky. He realized he had spent the entire night in the ancient castle and that someone might notice the abnormalities at any moment. So he quickly stood up and said.

Actually, he was very worried that someone had already noticed. After all, Izaak’s arrival and Vivian’s disturbances had been quite noticeable. But he had no time to worry about these minor issues—he needed to figure out how to transport Izaak back!

Hao Ren looked up at Izaak, who was still taller than a house even sitting down, and then at the two women beside him, feeling a deep sense of despair. “How am I supposed to get you back?”

Raven 12345 hadn’t told him the new tenant was a five-meter-tall human-shaped volcano! He wondered if it was too late to contact international smugglers and arrange a giant container, but even if it wasn’t, what kind of container could withstand Izaak, whose bottom was almost a lava pool?

But Izaak just smiled calmly. “Oh, that’s simple.”

As he spoke, the demon’s body rapidly shrank, and the flames and lava around him slowly retracted and transformed. In the end, he became a rugged giant about two meters tall.

“See, isn’t that better?”

Hao Ren: “…Why didn’t you say you could transform earlier?”

“You didn’t ask.”

Hao Ren: “…”

(I’ve been out all day… completely unable to write, so I’m using saved drafts. I don’t know how long they will last. I’ll be updating individually for a while, mainly to save drafts for the release. I don’t want to have a gap in the first month after the release. =.= Please understand, maintaining a double update while studying for my driver’s license has been exhausting.)