That night Rudy, and I were only able to hunt a few demons. Some the demons we hunted were goats, a spider-type demon and a small demonic wolf. That demonic wolf, we…as in I…got it to join the pack.
It was easy, demons follow whoever is the strongest and can defeat them. The thing was small, and with my armor most of its attacks didn't do much. When we defeated it, it simply bowed its head. It had submitted Ruby.
The wolf didn't make a sound as it started to melt into the shadows. When it was completely gone, I felt the connection to it through ruby.
I laughed like a villain. Thinking about all the cool stuff I would do with a literal pack of demonic wolf creatures. Maybe, I should come up with a superhero name or something.
I might just start saying…ARISE!. No too cringe. My outfit was already borderline anime nerd edgelord. I didn't need to add more to this fire that was burning. The last thing I needed was to look at my past actions and cringe. There was nothing worse.
I went back to the library, and started to map out where I wanted to start working at. I figured I would start on the southern area of the city, and work my way up north. Spreading through the city, and basically conquering it. Once I had completely conquered it, I would then lay siege to the castle. The castle was where HE was, and I wanted to be as strong as supernaturally human as possible.
So, I made a plan. Conquer a little bit, and then study a little bit. Study body enhancements, life magic, and other forms of defense and offensive magic that can be used to fight demons. I also needed to learn healing magic, to be able to obviously heal myself.
I also needed to work on alchemy, and some other forms of anti-magic. This world had magic in it. With that said who is to say that someone couldn't track me or curse me or something like that. That is not even taking into account 'otherworld' which was literally full of demons and monsters.
It wouldn't be surprising if there was a demon that took your blood, and used it to curse the living shit out of you. Or trap you or something like that.
Looking at the list that I made of the things that I needed to do, I sighed. This was going to be a long time of studying, at least I could stretch my legs or something. Unlike when I had to sit here and study for a fucking year. That was torture.
The night ended with me reading a book of healing magic. I figured it was probably a good place to start.
When I opened my eyes, I felt warm and comfortable. Oh yes, the sweet spot. The perfect spot on the bed. Nope, not waking up today. I worked hard in 'otherworld', I get a break. There were no threats, the kids were safe, and life was good.
"MAX! ASHLEY AND MARIE TOLD ME TO GET YOU FOR BREAKFAST!"
"YEAH! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!"
Can I kill them? Xavier was already bad enough with his ball of morning energy, but now he had a very close friend Adam. The two were little devils that fed off of each other energy, forming a nuke of pure childish energy that destroyed everything near it.
"No…." I could only whimper.
"COME!"
"ON!"
""WAKE UP!!!!""
I got up like a zombie coming out of the grave. I looked at the two, and they looked back at me. Why where they staring at me like that? They both took at each other, than took a deep breath in and yelled.
""MAX IS A WIZARD!!!""
My ears, why!
I couldn't even yell at them, before they took off. They ran down the hall saying the same thing.
"MAX IS A WIZARD!"
God, I loved these kids like my own siblings but that didn't mean I didn't want to hang them up sometimes. Holy hell some of these kids were annoying as annoying could be. Best get up then.
I tried to rub my eyes, but realized that I had something on my face. When I took it off, and looked at it. I realized that it was the mask that I had Beholder make for me. I had kept it on, to get use to the enhanced sight, sounds and even smells.
Why was it here on me? Past experiments showed that I couldn't bring anything….
Jumping up out of body, I looked at my body and realized that I had on my robes.
"WHAT!" This was big, really big. Could I bring stuff from that world into this one? I think I had a claw in one of my pouches.
Fumbling inside the pouch, I was able to pull it out. The demon claw.
"HAHAHA!" The sounds of my laughter echoed through the building. I was beyond happy, this was great. I could bring things to this world.
"MAX ARE YOU OKAY!" Ashley came running through into the room, when she saw me. She stared at me for a few seconds before saying…
"what..on earth are you wearing??"
Immediately put my hood down and I took a piccolo aura farming pose. The words came out my mouth faster than my brain could process.
"Fear me punny mortals, for I have reached a new level in my power"
Ashley looked at when with a deadpan expression, she sighed and walked away. I could hear her say under her breath.
"boys…"
When she left, I wanted to crawl in a hole. Why…why did I do that? Why was I so cringe? Now everytime I try to act somewhat cool I will think of this moment, and the deadpan stare she gave me.
My life is over....god so cringe. This was going to be buried deep. Hopefully Ashley wont say anything…no she would. Her and the girls talked all the time.
"NNOOO!!!" I fell down on my knees dramatically like Darth Vader, the picture of the 'cool' dude was gone. Lucky for me no one was here to see this. When I thought it couldn't get worse. I hear someone cough. I slowly turned to see a group of kids watching me.
"…."
"…."
To make it worse, one of the younger kids came up to me and said in an innocent voice.
"Are you okay?"
I shot up faster than anything else, and totally threw this moment in the back of my mind. I acted like absolutely nothing happened. AND! That I didn't see the older kids deadpan at me like Ashley did. NOPE! Nothing happened!
"Yes, I am fine. I was…just upset that my swords weren't ready yet."
"WAIT! YOU GOT SWORDS!"
"YES. I will later. Now come on I am hungry."
The whole time we ate, the other kids looked at me. They asked a lot of questions like 'where did it come from', 'can I wear it' and 'can I have one'. The nerds of the grouped ask a question I wasn't expecting.
"So…are you like a wizard/warlock or…"
"HMPH. I am a multiclass sorcerer/warlock/fighter. I am all the classes. I could even be a warlock/paladin if I wanted to be."
"whoa…"
"this changes everything!"
"Dude..dude..my next character is that. Alright I call dibs!"
We continue to eat, ask questions, play tag/hide and seek/ and I showed the other wolf I tamed. He appeared the same way, like a small demonic puppy. The girls were beyond happy, as it looked like a younger version of Rudy. Thus, the children concluded with all their brain power that Rudy had a baby.
The new demonic wolf name was Rudy jr. shadow-storm Midnight. 'Baby Rudy' was the nickname. The demons couldn't care less about the name, but I did. Baby Rudy? That isn't scary at all. People would laugh in my face if I said "get him baby rudy". I need to think of a cool name and fast.
I couldn't think fast enough and told everyone that Rudy Jr. wasn't his name and that his name was emerald. Good enough I guess. It was about 1pm when I was finally able to make it into my office.
I had Mr.Carter send emails about the companies that I would be in charge of. What they did, how they ran, who was in charge of what. I also had him give me the financial breakdown of those companies, and of Playtime.
Ashley was always with me in this, because she wanted to learn how to run Playtime too. So, together we would look through reports, and talk about how to make the company better. What toys could we make that would happy people who are feeling alone, scared and sad. That was Ashley`s drive, she didn't want and I quote 'kids to feel how I felt'.
I only wanted the company to have the resources to do what she wanted to do. As we looked through, I got an email from Mr. Carter. The only thing it read was.
"You need to come in. Now, our friends want to meet you and they aren't taking no for an answer. Transport will be ready outside by 2pm"
Ashley wasn't stupid, no far from it. She was an intelligent young woman. She knew about the Foundation and other groups. It only took her a second to put two and two together. She looked at me concerned and said.
"Is it them? Are they going to take you away?"
"I don't know…I will try my best so that they wont. Trust me Ashley, everything will be fine. The Foundation might do evil things, but it is a well known fact that they have saved the world more times than Adam and Xavier can count. They aren't evil, but they aren't good. They keep the world safe. I..We will be fine."
She didn't looked convinced, but I guess thought it was better to trust me on this. We both agreed not to tell the other kids, we didn't want them to get worried about it. They were finally having fun, and having a good life. Best not to ruin it.
I waited outside Playtime I had decided to change clothes leaving my robes and other equipment to Rudy to hold on to. I kept checking the clock to see if I had maybe arrived too early. I saw a limbo pull up to get me. It was the same one that always transported me wherever I wanted to go. However, the driver was different. I got in.
The ride there, I knew we were being followed. The SUVs behind us maintained a small distance but still followed. This wasn't good.
We arrived at one of the office buildings that Mr. Carter owned. The walk inside the building was longer than I wanted it to be. When I finally got to the conference room, there was a woman sitting down with two heavy armored security personnel standing by her. She looked like someone that didn't know what a joke was.
Her expression was serious, and I couldn't get a read on her. She had long straight blonde hair. She also had sharp facial features. She looked like she was probably in her forties or something.
"Sit, we have much to discuss."