Strangely however, none of the members of the hero party seemed to age too quickly.
Yeah, there was a wood elf in the group, who are expected to live long, but they also had a halfling, who were known to live for maximum ten years!
And here, the halfling still seemed to only look like a woman in her late twenties.
Then, however, everything changed.
On their second to last mission, which after completing it would make them go after the ruler of the deviled ones himself, they fought against a deviled one, who had gone by the name General Draegon Wolgenrad, general of the demonic forces and possibly the son-in-law of the king of the deviled ones himself.
Yeah, the party killed him, while Syzoth took it upon himself to make sure that the generals forces would intervene in the battle.
How did manage to complete this task?
One word. Poisonous potions.
Syzoths knowledge in alchemy grew in all those years
And with that knowledge, managed to conduct such a poison, that when he threw it, the poisonous cloud killed most of the deviled ones almost instantly.
Those however that were immune to the potion, Syzoth just threw a flammable potion at them, which possessed a liquid that would go out in flames, once it came into contact with air.
Then, when he was sure that he was done, he returned and decided to look how the battle against the general was going.
Well, the general was dead.
As for the party members, they were all tired and absolutely wreaked.
Syzoth brought them back into shape, and they decided to look inside the castle where the general lived in.
By the way, the party members didn't really even thank him for single handedly defeating an entire army of demons by himself. No one but the hero of course.
Then, they met a woman in the prison inside.
She was incredibly beautiful, and told them that she was a prisoner imprisoned by the evil general.
To Syzoths surprise, almost the entre party believed her, and started to comfort her.
The hero even seemed to have a specific liking towards her.
The party then decided to accept the woman as part of the party, which Syzoth honestly wasn't keen on.
But being the only one who voted against it, the woman was officially part of the hero team.
However, Syzoth couldn't explain why he didn't seem to believe her story.
Who was she? What was her name? Who was her family? What happened to them? Why did the general keep a woman inside a prison cell alone? How did she know so much about demon and deviled one culture and society?
These questions where mostly never answered.
She would always start to cry when Syzoth interrogated her.
And oh boy made that the other party members mad.
He also realized something else.
She came incredibly close to some of the party members.
Even while being a girl, she would sometimes just grab their assets behind someone, and sometimes hugging the girls in the party in a very, well, more than a friendly way.
Syzoth did try to tell his concerns to the hero, who seemed as the only reasonable guy in the party, but he just brushed it off as the girls being playful.
Yeah. Her kissing your girlfriend is just a girly play.
The woman, who called herself Eliana, also tried to make moves against Syzoth.
At first she tried to pretend she was actually interested in his alchemy.
She asked him all those different questions about him, his love life. His desires.
She would sometimes hug him when he was in the middle of making a potion which was dangerous to deviled one.
Yeah, Syzoth realized that she almost always appeared when he was making potions.
Syzoth also realized that she was constantly trying to make him drink a potion she brew herself.
Syzoth humored her, and drank it.
And then he realized what it was. It as an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac. He got turned on, he was feeling lustful, and then the only thought he had at that time was to just jump at the girl before him and, well, do the deed.
If it wasn't for his innate resistance to Alcohol and other drink, he would have been able to make an antidote to her drink.
After he drank the antidote, Eliana then started to apologizing, saying that she didn't know what she had made.
However Syzoth never drank what she gave him again.
He also from that moment on checked every drink, every food, and everything that the party members consumed personally.
And then one night, he had a dream.
Most of the time he didn't, but this time that was the case. In front of him sat the same being that gave him his powers 35 years ago.
And it gave him dreadful news.
Eliana, the girl the party saved all the way back then, was actually a devil.
She used the time she spent with the party to get closer and defile them. She started to corrupt them, and was slowly but surely turning them into her loyal slaves.
The being also said that she was currently seducing the hero, and should he fall, the world might face a threat even more powerful than the lord of the deviled ones.
She openly rebelled against his rule, which was why the general of the demonic forces had to personally take her down, and because he wasn't capable of killing such a beautiful being, he imprisoned her as his sole prisoner in his castle.
That was the moment Syzoth woke up