"Hello, Joseph. We o talk."

  I sighed, realizing that, yep, I was in fact dead again. I didn't like that I could already tell just from the feel alone, but... Oh well. Not like I could do much about it.

  "Let me guess, you're another aor of mih unsolicited advice," I said. "Perhaps my maternal grandfather?" I opened my eyes, and beheld... "...Napoleon Iro is not dead."

  "No, but he is your father," the being wearing the fay father said. "Now, Joseph. I'm given to uand you're fighting the cult of Demon King Paimon, am I correct?"

  "...Yeah, I am," I said. "Well. I was, before I died."

  "Your death is only temporary," he said. "You'll live. But before I send you back, we o discuss a few things. You see, as it stands, there are only three possible outes: One, you successfully rescue Emily from the cult before they make it to the ziggurat and use her to summon Paimon. Two, you fail to stop the cult at all, and Paimains his strength quickly enough to run wild on the mortal phree: You prove yourself as Lysander's heir and kill Paimon yourself with your bare hands."

  "...What are the probabilities of those outes?" I asked. "Because those don't sound like they're all equal probabilities."

  "Ten pert, sixty pert, thirty pert," he said.

  "...One in three isn't great odds, but it's holy better than I expected for me trying to fight a Demon King," I said. "Wasn't Lysander already twelve hundred years old in the first Dark Crusade?"

  "The odds are better than you think," he said. "The possibilities where you fail pletely include the possibilities where you run away, or simply die on the way to the ziggurat- once we narrow down the possibilities to those where you fight Demon King Paimon, the odds bee very nearly a fair fight."

  I gruhat was... actually, good news.

  "So, if I kill Paimon, what happe?" I asked. "Is that gonna go like Lysander killing Lucifer, and we're gonna have a new Dark Lord haunting the world for thousands of years?"

  "No, it won't," he said, shaking his head. "The Hikaano do not like this fact, but metaphysically, the only differeween Demon Kings and Living Gods is that Demon Kings happen to be from Hell and preferentially use ively-aspected vital essence. As such, just like Living Gods, Demon Kings be killed, and their deaths go in one of three ways. The most perma way to kill a Living God is to wield the Aspect of anod against them, which will pletely destroy their divine mantle. As you are not boo any god at all, this way is wholly unavaible to you."

  "That's not for a ck on my part, you know," I protested. "Anyhow, what about Faith? She's a Padin, and boo a god who has already killed a Demon King."

  "Hano's aspect is... situationally inappropriate," he said carefully. "Faith would do er against Paimon than you would. Now, the on way to kill a Living God is to kill them without wielding any divine Aspect against them, and this will simply cause them to reinate- the Dark Lord actually reinated within a year of each death, it simply took multiple turies for one of those reinations to successfully quer the ord begin a Dark Crusade."

  "Huh. The more you know."

  "And that simply will not happen with Paimon, due to the peculiarities of his oect," he said, sighing. "The third way is to turn a Living God's oect against them, which is called Usurpation for the way it directly traheir divine mao the one who killed them with their oeow, as it so happens, Paimon is the Demon King of Usurpation, and if I let you kill him as you are now, you will bee the Demon King of Usurpation, and his soul will slowly e to override your own, until you give in to his soul and Aspect, and begin to do terrible things to this world."

  "So," I said, quietly. "Is that it? Is that the only way this prophecy end, Father? Ih aru from a mad God of Usurpation, with the only real variance being over what that god's ears are shaped like?"

  "Of course not," The Father, Transdent God of Time, Death, and Fatherhood, said. "You need a theology lesson, young man: I am not a purely passive god who does nothing, merely representing 'the world as it is.' I may not be as active as The Mother is, but that is rgely because I don't o be to get my way. There are bes to being the God of Time, after all."

  "...Wait," I said, blinking.

  "Right now, however, I do o act," The Father tinued. "I must appoint a representative on the mortal pne, in order to kill Demon King Paimon aroy his divine mantle. And would you look at that, here is a young man who has killed before and will kill again, who has died before and will die again-"

  "How many times?"

  "You don't want to know," The Father said bndly, before resuming. "A young man deeply immersed in the history of his people, and deeply ied in their future, who does his best to uand the full scope of history, and who is a surprisingly petent aker."

  "Oh so now you're paying attention to my hobbies."

  "And ires to be a father, not only to his own children, but to his unity," The Father said. "A unity that, if he gets his way, will be very big indeed."

  "...Well, fair enough, I suppose," I said, sighing. "Well, Father, if this is what you io do?"

  "It is," The Father said, nodding. "Joseph Napoleon Iro, will you be my clerid take up the holy quest of destroying the divine mantle of Demon King Paimon?"

  I nodded. "I will."

  "Good. Now, at the moment, your tolerance for divine magic is not quite enough to do any meaningful amount of self-healing, so... you'll have to improvise a way to save your own life some other way. Any ideas?"

  "...Actually, yeah. Yeah, I've got an idea."

  "Alright, let's give this a shot."

  I was oeen, but I've been a maist since I was fourteen, and I've been w on experimental and vehicles for a lot of that time, even if I did start with just steam engines. And since I had been a Wizard that whole time, with a very skilled and supportive mentor in the form of my own mother, Ariel Silver, I'd developed a lot of simple, niche, spells that I found very useful in the shop.

  See, when you were w on a plex assembly of moving parts that required a lot of lubrig oil to keep things from grinding and to act as a t, that meant there were a lot of pipes carrying flowing oil, and a meically-plex oil pump to keep the oil moving, and a lot of pces where pipes joined or could simply be damaged and leak oil.

  The proper solution was to simply get better at maing so that you could get really solid tolerances and mating surfaces that sealed perfectly and didn't leak, and/or sther a whole bunch of sealing pound around every single joint until it stopped leaking.

  My solution was to spend literal months of my life developing a spell ssh entment that would both magically pump the oil ahe oil withiended pathways, with zero leaking.

  I'm not just talking about this because it was something I was really proud of. It had been hard, but to be ho a lot of the work was done by Mom, and it simply didn't matter to anyone who wasn't a maist or the owner of a motor vehicle. I was talking about it because it was immediately relevant to the problem at hand.

  In medical terms, my heart had been punctured, and without immediate treatment, I'd bleed out and die in a few minutes.

  In meical terms, my blood pump had broken and was leaking everywhere.

  And adapting this spell to work on blood instead of oil wasn't that hard, for someoh as much practice as I had.

  My heart did not beat. But my blood still flowed, I did not bleed, and life went on.

  "JOSEPH!" someone cried out behind me- either Talia or Faith, possibly both, and holy, I couldn't rule out Volex.

  I didn't bother responding, because I did still have that damn hellhound to deal with, but my bike was fast enough to run it down and skewer it through the back of the skull. After that, I just rode back over to Talia and Faith, who looked deeply, deeply fused.

  "You're... alive?" Talia asked. "How are... That sword's going straight through your heart!"

  "Sure, but that's on my left side," I said. "And I'm right-handed."

  "Now is really not the time for you to be a smartass," Faith said.

  "Yeah, I know," I said, sighing. "The short answer is... It's magic. The heart is just a blood pump, and I'm a Wizard who's spent a lot of time dealing with badly-made pumps that leak. I've got a spell for this."

  "...You have got to be shitting me," Faith said.

  "You know there's ans in the way, right?" Talia asked.

  "Wow, you make an amazing point," I said dryly. "I should go see a Healer, especially a trauma surgeon. Boy, I sure do wonder where the rauma surgeon is. Oh, that's right, they're in my van, driving off towards the Temple of Paimon. So stop yoddamn gawking, hop on the bike, a's go already."

  "I don't think I g to your back, there's a sword in the-" Faith cut herself off mid-sentence, her eyes going wide as I pulled the sword straight out of my chest. "...oh..."

  "This'll be a souvenir," I said, before putting the blood-stained sword into my pocket. "Now e on, we don't have time for this!"

  Faith rallied herself, hopping onto the back of the bike and grabbing onto me tightly, while Talia iurned into a rat and climbed into one of my pockets.

  I guhe throttle, and we sped off.

  AnnouAs always, if you like Iro and wao keep making it, the best way to do that is to leave a ent, here or on my discord server.