Thankfully, Indena was recovering quickly after being exorcised. Miss Cynthia claimed she had a very weak form of corruption, so it wasn’t anything too difficult to deal with for me. But a couple of questions appeared in my mind that needed an answer.

  “We’ve seen people corrupted by darkness before, why was Indena not turned into a skeleton or something?”

  Back at Urnan and Verrenville, people who were being controlled by those demons were forced into horrific states of change that made them much more demonic. Indena didn’t seem to have dealt with that at all.

  “There’s a few different forms of demon oppression…” Miss Cynthia started. “The first is where mana is stolen from the person. This changes them into those dark beings you had to face before.”

  “So the skeletons and dire hags,” Indena mentioned.

  “Don’t forget about those bowalkers, no?” Marek added. “I hated those…”

  He had every right to hate them when he took an arrow to his knee.

  “Those are all examples of that,” Miss Cynthia nodded. “If any being loses all of its mana, it becomes full of dark energy and transforms.”

  Thinking back to when the mana was being stolen in Elysium, even the animals and plants were changing. “So the transformation is independent from whether a demon is stealing it or not.”

  “Exactly,” Cynthia nodded. “There are anomalies all over the world where mana just suddenly disappears, changing the environment to be hostile. Either the church inquisitors or a magical girl like me will go and deal with it.”

  “You’re a maid, so how do you have time to go and do all that?” Indena asked.

  “I’ve actually been on leave for a while,” she claimed. “My heart just…hasn’t been in the right place.” She looked at Marek with a sad face.

  “I was going to ask where Pun-pun was…” Marek started, “but if you’re not working, I suppose you’ve been away from him.”

  “Pun-Pun?” Indena and I snickered together at such a silly name.

  “I’d rather not talk about him…” Cynthia’s face clenched uncomfortably, causing her to turn away to hide her pouting expression. “He and I are not on speaking terms at the moment…”

  That seemed like a can of worms I didn’t want to pry open. Although, if I had to guess based on my knowledge of anime magical girls, Pun-pun was probably her little mascot friend who helped her power up.

  “Um…” Marek spoke up. “So, anyways, you were talking about the different types of demon oppressions?”

  “Oh…” Cynthia breathed in deeply, preparing us to refocus our conversation on the topic at hand. “Yes, forgive me for getting sidetracked. The next type of oppression is a bit more personal. It’s known as possession.”

  This was a form of demonic oppression where demons or evil spirits would enter into a person and possess their bodies. It had a few different stages and variations, but mainly the demon would be in control of the person’s body, emotions, power, even their will. It could get pretty ugly depending on what was taking over.

  This was where exorcisms started to come into play. If a person simply lost their mana, I’d found that stabbing them in the chest with stardust was enough to break the shell of darkness around their soul, allowing their spirits to jumpstart the mana creation process and save them. With possession, stabbing a person would kill them, since they didn’t transform. So that wasn’t a good idea.

  An exorcism was the next best thing. By pulsing stardust into their bodies, the demon inside of them would be washed out or destroyed completely. They normally got pretty aggressive during the process, but that required the person to be subdued and held down, much like we did with Indena.

  Then after possession, there was one more type of oppression. It was known as a covenant. Although dipping into similar territory as possession, a covenant with a demon was more of a two way street. Both the person and the demon stood to benefit in some way. Usually the demon would have access to the body’s mana or the body in general, and in return the demon would provide some sort of service to the individual.

  Belphegor must have had a covenant with the guy he possessed, because he was trying to make both of their dreams come true.

  Those were tricky to break, because that sort of bond wasn’t going to be severed by an exorcism or just poking the demon lord. Their souls had to be broken in some way, usually by convincing them to split apart.

  “I guess that explains why Belphegor gave up instead of continuing to fight,” I mentioned.

  “It’s worth noting that once the demon and the person are separated, he’ll likely be wide open to attacks,” Cynthia mentioned.

  “So break their will, then go in for the kill,” Indena rhymed. “That sounds easy enough.”

  “You didn’t fight Belphegor…” I gave her a scrutinizing side eye. “He was anything but easy.”

  If it wasn’t for the fact that we were in a dream world, I was pretty sure that beating him would have been impossible.

  “They usually don’t go down without a fight,” Cynthia said. “Did you really defeat Belphegor?”

  Her question told me that she knew a little more about him than the average person, so I thought it was a fair shot in the dark to assume she was knowledgeable about some demons.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Kinda… You know him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not personally. But I’ve…heard a few names while out and about on missions.”

  I wasn’t too sure she was telling me the whole truth, but I had no reason to really doubt her.

  Getting back on track, it sounded like Indena really didn’t have any of those oppressions. From my understanding, she was just tapping into dark energy in the air.

  But that couldn’t have been possible, since I wasn’t detecting any darkness around. My instruments were very sensitive to that too.

  Honestly, the lack of anything made me super suspicious… There’d always been a bit of background darkness in the air. Why wasn’t anything in this house?

  “Something’s bothering me…” I put a finger to my chin. “How did Indena tap into darkness if there wasn’t any in the air?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Indena spoke up. “There ‘is’ darkness in the air.”

  “No, there isn’t,” I argued. “I’m not sensing any at all.”

  “Then your sensors are broken, because I was definitely using it.”

  Empirically, yes, she was using it… But that didn’t explain how two very contradictory things were true at the same time.

  Miss Cynthia explained that the barrier was keeping out any outside dark energy from entering into the estate, so her idea was that Indena must have somehow accidentally smuggled the darkness in with her.

  But, that didn’t make sense to me either, since Indena didn’t have anything evil I could detect before.

  “Didn’t Yamin have the grimoire with her?” Marek mentioned. “Perhaps it was giving off power, no?”

  “If that were the case, I would have sensed it,” I said. “I’m not exaggerating when I say I didn’t detect anything at all until Indena started using it.”

  Even when Yamin’s book was activated to push Adalyn aside, I should have felt something. But it was just so darn empty.

  “How the heck did she get that book in here at all?” I rubbed my chin. “It was going to take a blessed seal container to get Yamin’s evil grimoire into the grand cathedral,” I said. “Which, if this barrier works the same way, then…” I had an aha moment, “…then Yamin’s stardust layered backpack must have allowed her to take that in here, acting like a blessed seal.”

  That book was evil, no doubt about it. By all accounts it should have stayed beyond the barrier, but it still came in because it was encased in stardust.

  “So am I some blessed seal then?” Indena asked.

  “No,” I shook my head. “You said you were channeling it, not producing it. Maybe something else in the house is producing that darkness.”

  “That doesn’t explain why nobody is able to sense it,” Cynthia said, lowering her brow in a nervous expression. Her breathing increased slightly and she swallowed deeply. Marek took to her side and rubbed her arm for comfort.

  She must have been worried about this darkness situation, especially since she was the one who suggested Yamin stay here for safety.

  “Maybe it's being masked,” I suggested. “Kinda like how a radio signal can be jammed.”

  If it were hidden from us, then it was likely that something was keeping the dark energy invisible. But what could it have been?

  I snapped my fingers and pointed at Indena. “I’ve got an idea!”

  “Huh?”

  I took her by the hand and brought her out of the sunlight into the darker part of the hallway.

  “Light a black flame.” I ordered.

  “No…” even though she said no, she lifted her hand and lit a black blaze in it anyways. “Alright, what's this all about?”

  It was freaky how easy it was for her to do that, and I didn’t like her using it, but my idea needed to be tested. Plus, I only intended to have this active for a few minutes at most. Otherwise, we had a huge risk of corrupting Indena again.

  “W-what are you doing?” Cynthia clenched tightly to her skirt. “Why do something that could put your friend in danger.”

  Her scolding voice wasn’t very commanding. It sounded uncomfortable and uncertain.

  “Indena will be fine,” I said, taking her arm and turning her body, closely watching the black flame as her body twisted around.

  “Just focus on keeping the flame steady, okay?” I told her.

  “What is this?” Marek asked.

  The flames twitched and grew for a moment while facing east, also doing the same when facing south.

  “Aha!” I cheered.

  The black flames were being channeled into Indena’s aura from some source of darkness that we couldn’t detect. However, that meant it was working like a radio. Depending on the direction of the source it would be stronger or weaker.

  Seeing as the flames grew a tiny bit stronger when facing east and south, the source, or sources, of darkness had to be coming from those directions.

  “I think I’ve figured it out,” I said, snuffing out Indena’s flame with stardust gas.

  Spawning in an inverse cape and a big detective cap over me through my INVENTORY, I became an investigator and began running south down the hall. This outfit gave me a bonus to my intelligence!

  When I realized nobody was following me, I turned back and shouted for them to get a move on.

  “I don’t feel like it…” Indena yawned, stretching her arms up in the air. “You go figure it out yourself.”

  “I agree…” Marek said in a dry tone. “It’s been a rough day, why don’t we take a break? I would like to spend time with Cynthia, but not stressing out...”

  "Yeah, that sounds fun. She's pretty cool and all."

  I didn't realize Indena thought Cynthia was cool...

  “Okay...?” I said in a confused tone.

  That wasn’t like them, but I guess it had been a pretty big morning.

  No… Something was wrong with them.

  “Sammy, guess it’s just you and me looking for this darkness, yeah?”

  Samael peeked out from under my big detective hat and conked his head on my forehead a few times.

  “Sss…?” he hissed.

  “I know they’re acting weird…” I turned back to Cynthia. “Hey, can you make sure to take care of them both?” I shouted.

  She smiled and bowed her head, accepting my command. “Of course, Mistress Yalda. I will ensure they are both tended to properly until you return. Best of luck.” she said in a relieved tone of voice.

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