Dante was happily drinking his second glass of orange juice while Megan and Camille discussed the "hunter's curse" with each other.
They knew its origin, but it was a story that they had never told anyone apart from a few selected people, as it was utterly unbelievable and would easily mark them as crazy.
However, after witnessing Dante using his supernatural powers, they thought that he might be the only one who would believe them.
Megan was the daughter of a man called Ganon Dunlap, who was the leader of the Jade Dragons—a mafia organization that worked with both criminals and the police force.
The Jade Dragons offered protection to several districts in the city of Novis, the capital. However, after a certain event that happened eight years in the past, the organization disappeared and was replaced by the Blood Dragons.
Megan was 15 years old, and she was living in a massive mansion where dozens of members from the Jade Dragons resided with their families.
Among those families, Leonardo Ragucci, known as the right-hand man of Ganon, lived with his blonde daughter Sophia.
The two girls were the same age, and being the only ones who had something in common inside the mansion, they became best friends the very first moment they met.
Megan and Sophia shared a room together, and one night, they were woken up by a loud sound in the mansion.
Wearing their pajamas, the duo left their room to investigate the sound, but the eerie silence and the lack of guards in the hallways gave them an unsettling feeling.
Megan had been training her entire life to become the next leader of the Jade Dragons, so she could tell that there was something wrong happening in their home.
Knowing that Sophia was the opposite of her in that sense, she urged her friend to stay in the room and hide while she looked for her father.
The blonde girl hesitantly agreed, and Megan started rushing through the empty, dark hallways until she reached her father's office, where she knew he would be present as he was always there.
In her mind, her father would be sitting behind the desk, imagining how he would ask her what was troubling her and calm her down.
Nevertheless, when she burst through the door, the sight couldn't have been more different from what she had in mind.
A tall monster with horns and obsidian skin stood behind the desk, holding Ganon's lifeless body by the neck, leaving Megan utterly perplexed at the sight.
Her eyes widened and filled up with tears while her body was stiff and cold from the terror that overtook her, and as the monster turned its head to glance at her with its glowing red eyes, she heard the voice of a man calling her from the hallways.
"Megan, get away from there!" the man shouted, tackling her to the side.
Simultaneously, an obsidian spike flew out of the office aimed at the girl, but after being tackled by Leonardo, it ended up taking his left arm.
"Mr. Leonardo!" she exclaimed as she glanced at the man, who was bleeding profusely from his left side.
"Here…" he muttered in pain, using his good hand to give Megan an earpiece.
"Get Sophia and run…" he continued, standing in the middle of the hallway and facing the office.
As soon as Megan put on the earpiece, she heard the voice of Camille, who was 20 years old at the time.
They had only seen each other on a few different occasions whenever their parents met, but Megan had nobody else to trust in that situation.
["Megan, if you can hear me, go back to your room and get Sophia!"] Camille exclaimed in her ear.
"Mr. Leonardo… I-..." she tried to speak up, but the man cut her off.
"There is no time, Megan. You must leave, NOW!" he shouted as the monster broke through the door's frame that was too small for it to pass.
Instinctively, Megan started running away from the scene and fixed the earpiece hanging on her side, hearing the sound of a blade cutting through flesh, followed by the grunts of Leonardo behind her.
When she reached her room, Sophia was sitting in a corner, where she was ready to crawl under the bed in case she needed to hide.
Megan didn't have time to say anything to her and simply grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the corner.
"Where to!?" Megan asked with distress.
However, the monster had already reached their room and broken through the solid frame as if it were made of cardboard, leaving them with no other exits.
["The window!"] Camille exclaimed.
Megan knew that they were on the third floor of the mansion, but her survival instincts kicked in quickly.
Without thinking twice about it, she hugged Sophia to protect her from the broken glass and jumped through the window that led to the backyard, turning around mid-air so that Megan was the one to fall on the ground.
The impact broke Megan's left arm and one rib, but the adrenaline she had allowed her to keep moving, holding Sophia's hand and rushing to the gates in the yard while the monster roared loudly from the room.
As the two girls ran, they noticed the members of the Jade Dragons were in the middle of combat with another gang. Luckily, they were shooting each other quite far from their position, so they were able to get out of the mansion from the back.
["The black SUV, quick!"] Camille instructed.
After the two girls boarded the car, they were taken to a safe location in the capital, where Camille took care of them until they were 18.
Dante was intrigued by the story and listened attentively to Megan. Still, he understood why they were telling him about it, as their description of the monster sounded very similar to a demon.
"What do you think? Is it possible it was a real demon?" Camille asked the warlock.
"I don't see how it would be impossible…" he replied.
Dante explained that the energy he used to cast spells, 'umbra,' was also used by demons to cast their own.
From the very little he had seen of Earth, he could tell that the mana supply in the air was relatively low compared to his old world. However, the flow of 'umbra' was at the same level, or even higher than in his past world.
"A wizard would probably have a hard time casting anything powerful here, but a warlock or a demon don't have that problem…" he continued.
It wasn't that there was more negative energy on Earth than in his world. On the contrary, since life on Earth was much better, there was also a vast amount of positive energy.
However, having such a dense population compared to the cities in Terra made the supply of 'umbra' more prominent on Earth.
"I'm still unsure what's common and what isn't here. But the description you gave me of the monster sounded an awful lot like a demon, and if there aren't any other beasts that look like that in this world, then that's the most possible explanation."