deia laughed under her breath. "Oh, please. There are no demons here. Stop being so dramatic."
After everything that had happened since the apocalypse, she honestly didn’t believe demons even wanted to co out anymore. Humans were doing a fine job destroying themselves without any help from hell.
"There are demons," Tian insisted, his voice low. "This place ... it’s full of them."
deia tilted her head, frowning.
She couldn’t feel anything strange. There was no demonic presence, no energy, nothing that told her a demon was near.
However, maybe that was because she wasn’t in her real body.
Maybe she wasn’t as sensitive to the supernatural beings like she used to be.
Or ... maybe Tian wasn’t talking about real demons.
Maybe when he said demons, he ant sothing else, like mories, regrets, guilt.
[Warning! Warning!]
[The system has detected unknown creatures nearby. Please be cautious.]
[Possible identity: Humans.]
What the hell ....
How could people survive in a place like this for fifteen years?
The more she learned, the less deia understood what was really going on.
But for now, she chose to wait and observe.
"Alright then," deia said calmly. "Show . Where are these demons?"
Tian didn’t answer right away. He simply walked past her. "Follow ," he said.
deia wasn’t sure if Tian truly wanted her help or if he was leading her into a trap.
In the horror stories deia had read, soone always ended up dead the mont they followed a stranger into a dark cellar.
However, Tian had high kindness points, right?
Besides, his system didn’t seem like the dangerous kind. Sure, he could see the future, but deia still wasn’t sure how much he could actually see.
"I’m not going to kill you," Tian said when he noticed she wasn’t following him.
"I’d have to be crazy to even try."
deia let out a laugh. "You should be scared. I an, I’m terrifying, right?"
"You are," Tian agreed without hesitation. Then he turned his back to her and added, "But Lucian is scarier than you. That’s why I’d have to be an idiot to try anything bad to you while he’s around."
She blinked. She was a demon, and yet Tian was more afraid of Lucian?
But after thinking about it for a second ... she kind of agreed.
Sotis, her man was scarier than a mad dog.
She didn’t say anything else and finally followed him.
What she didn’t expect was just how massive the cellar actually was. There were long, dark hallways stretching in every direction, each one leading to a different underground chamber.
Basically, this whole place felt like a hidden fortress.
Everything was quiet. Almost boring, except for the satanic symbols that kept appearing on the walls.
But then, as deia turned a corner at one of the intersections, sothing stopped her. She nearly dropped her flashlight. "What the hell is that?!"
She sneered, not out of fear, but out of disgust.
There were skeletons. Hundreds of them, but they weren’t lying on the floor.
They were arranged into a massive wall of bones, like so artwork created by a madman.
Skulls were stacked to form faces. Rib cages were bent into spirals. Arms and legs were twisted into strange patterns along the walls.
It looked like soone had tried to build a mural using human remains.
In the center of it all, the bones ford a throne. Sitting on it was the largest skeleton of them all, its jaw wide open like it was laughing at people who passed him.
The other skeletons were reaching toward it, like they were begging or worshipping. So were even chained together.
deia looked at that art in disdain. "What kind of lunatic would build sothing like this?!"
Even as the Queen of Hell, she had never once considered decorating her palace with bones.
It wasn’t because it was too dark or scary.
It just ... wasn’t pretty enough to match her aesthetic.
"My father," Tian replied flatly, like it ant nothing at all.
deia froze for a mont before nodding slightly. "Oh ... that explains a lot."
Maybe that was the reason Tian always seed so grumpy.
There were tis he showed no regret when it ca to torturing or killing soone, like what he did at the Warstock base.
But ... Ren didn’t act like that. He was softer, more timid and for so reason, he was also more passionate than his twin.
Could twins really be that different?
"So ... this was where you and Ren used to live?" deia murmured. "What a lovely house."
Tian didn’t answer right away. Instead, he just said quietly, "Ren didn’t know anything about the underground."
That ant they really had been part of the cult and lived in the church above.
deia hadn’t explored the whole building yet, but she did see so old, half-collapsed houses behind the church. Maybe those were hos for the cult followers.
And the underground ... It looked like not everyone even knew it existed.
"But you," deia said, narrowing her eyes, "you seem to know a lot about this place. Did your father ... have to choose between you and Ren?"
She still didn’t fully understand Tian’s story, but it was possible that their father had been the leader or at least soone with a high position in the demon cult.
So it made sense if he wanted one of his sons to play an important role in it.
"He actually chose Ren to take part in running the cult," Tian admitted.
deia blinked. She hadn’t expected him to suddenly open up like that, so she kept quiet and let him continue.
"I was sick all the ti," Tian went on. "But in the end, I begged him to choose instead."
He let out a heavy sigh. "My brother’s dumb and clueless. If I let him follow in our father’s footsteps, he probably would’ve died too soon."
Tian always said Ren was dumb. He always complained when Ren ssed sothing up or followed him into dangerous places.
However, deia could feel it that he didn’t say those things out of hate.
He just didn’t want to lose his brother. That was all.
"And what about you?" deia asked quietly. "Are you smart enough to survive longer than him?"
Tian gave her a faint smile. "Why don’t you see that for yourself?"
He was still alive.
But deia guessed, he probably ca close to dying more than once.
It wasn’t fair actually. Ren was also the sa age as him, yet Tian had to take a role as his brother’s protector.
Maybe that’s why Ren didn’t complain too much, even though Tian was harsh with him all the ti.
He knew that his brother had done so much for him. The last thing he could do was to let Tian scold him.
"Co on. This isn’t the place you should be staring at," Tian said as he started walking again.
deia glanced back at the bone-covered wall one last ti and muttered to the fake king on the throne, "You’re not even that scary."
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