We reached Igeston. Or rather, what was left of it. Before the city lay a village drowning in fresh blood. We quickened our pace. Right before our eyes, some man casually slit a guard’s throat as if he were performing a daily chore.

  He turned around. A predatory, broken smile; a maniacal gaze.

  "H-h... G-g... Gre... Gre..." He tried to say something, but his tongue wouldn't obey.

  Not waiting for an answer, he attacked. The leap was unnaturally high—the man simply soared into the sky and crashed down next to us, punching a decent-sized hole in the ground.

  Mira didn't even change her posture. "Can you even speak?" she asked coldly.

  Instead of an answer, he blurred through the air, appearing directly in front of her. But where he expected to meet resistance, Mira—with one short motion—pierced his stomach through. Her fingers locked around his spine.

  CRACK.

  She simply snapped him in half. The demon collapsed, twitching in the dust, unable to even move his legs.

  "HA-HA-HA! I... I’ll kill you!" he screamed.

  He tried to stand up, ignoring his broken back. Mira lazily walked over and twisted his head one hundred and eighty degrees. He fell again. And again, he started to rise. The guy had regeneration to die for, but there was clearly a deficit when it came to brains.

  Mira grabbed him by the hair, lifting his head off the ground. "What are you?"

  "I... I... I AM THE DEMON OF POVERTY!" he wheezed.

  "Demon of Poverty?" I thought.

  He abruptly shifted his gaze to me. "And you... who are you?"

  "Pick a better time to ask questions," I said.

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  Mira, wasting no time on pleasantries, simply ripped his head off his body. The head remained in her hands, continuing to rasp something. Mira picked up the guard's corpse and started pouring his blood directly into the talking head's mouth.

  The head greedily gulped down the liquid. Right before our eyes, a new body began to rapidly sprout from the stump of the neck.

  At that moment, the town guard gathered at the gates. They watched us with horror. "WITCH!" someone screamed.

  Mira simply waved her free hand, and a monolithic ice wall a meter thick surged up in front of the guardsmen.

  "Let's go, Zen," she said. "We’ll interrogate this wretch in peace."

  We retreated into the forest. I grabbed a couple of bodies along the way—as "fuel" for our new acquaintance. Mira continued to feed him blood. The body was almost fully restored, but there were no arms or legs yet—just a stump with a head.

  "What are you?" Mira repeated. "I told you... the Demon of Poverty." "What are you all? What do you want here?" "What are we?! A-HA-HA-HA!" The demon went into hysterics.

  Mira hit him so hard his jaw dangled. "Speak normally."

  "We are demons!" he wheezed, popping his jaw back into place. "We feed on your fears! The more people fear what we bring—the more powerful our essence becomes. My essence is poverty."

  "What happens when you die?"

  "O-OH, NO! We don't die! We return to our world, stuff our bellies with fear again, and come back out to sow our essence in a cycle!"

  He suddenly went quiet and squinted slyly. "Let's make a deal: I answer your question, and you answer mine..."

  Mira silently began to squeeze his skull. The bones crunched piteously. "Then why are you so afraid of death if you'll just be reborn anyway?" Her voice was quiet and terrifying.

  The demon's eyes began to bulge out of their sockets. "A-A-A-AH! Because it is our nature! After death, we forget the past! We reset! But the hatred remains! We hate humans! Death! Death to all the living!"

  He stared at me, sniffing greedily. "But you... who are you? Are you human? Strange... I don't feel any hatred in you. We feel it in all living things, but you... you're different."

  "So," Mira loosened her grip, "the more people fear, the stronger you get?" "Yes!" the demon spat blood. "Why are you so thick? Do I have to repeat it twice?"

  "Were you the one who leveled the city?" Mira gestured toward the ruins. "You seem far too weak for that scale."

  "No..." he trembled. "It wasn't me. That was the Demon of War."

  "Hmm. Interesting."

  Mira tossed him the last corpse. He buried his face in the flesh, and a few minutes later, a perfectly normal-looking man sat before us. He immediately tried to bolt, but Mira, without even looking, stepped on his shin.

  CRUNCH.

  "One more attempt to escape—and I’ll kill you for real," she promised. "I get it... I get it..."

  "Listen," I decided to put in my two cents. "If you guys feel fear, do you end up feeding the other demons?"

  "To the Abyss with them!" he barked. "We hate each other. If two demons meet—only one leaves alive."