After minutes of staring down, the girl had cracked ready to reveal information to get rid of the gun pointed towards her. Crim wanted to know what grudge she had, because despite him knowing a lot about him.
Fletcher never interacted with others unless at the executive table.
"He kidnapped and killed my best friend." The girl admitted attempting to let out a tear despite her eyes being dry, "Out of nowhere, we were just practicing magic in the forest. And told us we were noisy and drowned her with water magic."
Crim believed it fifty-fifty, having worked with him he wouldn't do something so bothersome for simple chatter. A few details were missing, The young man thought it was intentional.
-'We got company.' Scizon said, dazzling Crim.
-'You can detect presences? You more useful than I thought,' the young man responded, massaging his shoulders. He had an excited grin as he slowly got up.
-'They're only grunts, none of them have a mana core big enough to use magic.' Scizon illiterates and Crim sighed. He didn't know if he could beat a mage without his fire magic. Thankfully, now wasn't the time to find out.
-'Dimwit, teach me how to do that weird telepathy thing when I'm done.'
The demon mind nodded, as three men of various sizes jumped down from the overlapping balconies connected through the merged apartment buildings. The first one to rush in was a bulky dude, with a scar on the eye visible despite his ninja-like mask.
He wore simple plate armor that covered vital points such as the heart and the liver. He threw a right hook, that took the young man by surprise, barely managing to lower the damage by jumping to make it miss his chin.
-'They know martial arts, just my luck.' Crim sighed taking a mixed stance that resembled a lizard.
Once again cocky with his luck, the bulky man delivered a hook, now prepared the young man avoided it with a simple head roll and delivered an uppercut that served considerable damage.
Now with the man dizzy, Crim landed a kick to the man's Achilles heel, lowering down his head before finishing it off with a high kick to the temple. In response, the two others jumped together:
One had a short figure while the other towered over him.
They started attacking without waiting, delivering knees and jabs left and right, Crim found himself unable to escape the blunder taking hit after hit trying his best to protect his vital areas till they tired out.
When they did, he splattered blood on their eyes temporarily blinding them.
Crim also delivered another kick to the downed man to make sure he didn't get up, while the girl stared in awe, with a mix of fear and admiration.
Now with the proper distance, Crim took out the deagle and shot the legs of the lowly as soon as he saw them reaching for a weapon.
"Don't ruin the moment with a knife." He said shooting their hands for safe measure.
"AHHHH, AGHHH" they screamed in unison rushing in like wild beasts after cleaning the blood in their eyes. In simple response, Crim shot their upper legs making them plummet down to the ground.
-'Out of ammo' Crim pocketed the custom deagle.
-'So what now?' Scizon said, 'You gonna steal their clothes and sell them?'
'For a devil, you are quite innocent huh, quess for a demon 120 years is young?' He teased and continued, 'I'm gonna torture them while that woman watches. I dislocated her legs, so she couldn't run since I was curious about that friend of hers. And with a pinch of added trauma, she should spill the beans faster than a rat on the street.'
-'Efficient, but is it necessary? She's a normal teenager.'
Crim was tempted to reply so am I. But in the end, he was anything but normal, wasn't even human anymore.
"Now now, who sent you," Crim said mused, before dislocating the legs of the knocked-out man just to ensure he didn't get up. He seemed to be the leader after all.
"We will never tell," said the bleeding duo.
-'Did blood always smell this good?' Crim pondered, the disgusting stench had felt like the aroma of lavender dancing in his nose.
-'Your blood stocks are low, so you probably wanna eat them or drain them of their blood. That means you are either a ghoul or a lesser.' Scizon recited a textbook he used to read.
-'F*ck' Crim cursed at his situation, he might be crazy but he didn't wanna be that insane.
He took the taller one by the neck and hoisted him up to the sky, his eyes flicking between yellow and gray. The young man reversed the thug's blood flow, luring it into his hand that absorbed it like dimensional storage.
Crim felt himself freshen up, and the smell of blood once again became rotten.
In the end, when he felt full, the Tall man had become a human raisin that looked older than a 200-year-old monk. He was dead.
Crim turned toward the other conscious one, while the girl watched with eyes of terror.
-'Scizon, tell me how to harden the blood as you did.'
The demon nodded feeling pity at the victims.
-'First, you gotta imagine the blood going cold like it was water put into the fridge for days, then imagine it melting like fire before getting thrown into the freezer again.'
The young man followed through with Scizon's explanation:
While reversing the blood flow had been a challenge despite him being able to grasp ahold of it quite swiftly, cooling it down proved even more difficult.
He had always been better with fire-based spells than water, and he stuck to his roots.
So, he decided to stick with what he knew best—"fire magic". Instead of envisioning a freezer, he pictured himself as a kettle heating up on a campfire's flames. He began to move his hand up and down, performing the hand signs for a relatively weak fire spell, Heatwave.
Under normal circumstances, it would generate a gentle wave of heat, but when cast within the body, it caused the blood to constantly fluctuate.
This internal manipulation targeted the crucial areas, acting like an oven to make the blood boil. The grunt, now in agonizing pain, screamed out, and his blood churned like a frog's throat. While it wasn't potent enough to be lethal, Crim knew it would work well against someone without mana veins—a form of torture akin to being pricked a million times by small needles.
"HELP!!" The thug screamed before Crim turned him into a raisin-like companion.