(A/N DO NOT READ THESE NEXT TWO CHAPTERS IF YOU CANNOT HANDLE GORE, TORTURE, OR THOSE KINDS OF TOPICS.)
When I had told Mother Alicia about my time with a spirit I hadn't lied.
Although I had only been with it for 2 months.
During the first month of my quest I was alone, then I met the spirit.
Following that I spent 2 months with it.
After 3 months in the forest and finding the ruins, the spirit left me as Fiadh who resided in the ruins scared them off.
The spirit and I's bond was unbroken by it's fear, since I didn't gain a curse.
I also didn't earn a blessing but that's to be expected.
My last month however, before I made it back to Avren town I was with a demon.
With is the wrong word for the situation.
I was tortured, and for a month.
This is where, my hatred of demons and knowledge of torture methods began.
The demon's name was Celeras.
I didn't even know he was active within the forest to begin with.
Celeras was a woodcutter you could meet in game, well the dlc.
He resided in the Svarmet duchy, and you could access him by marrying Aura.
He's part of the main quest objectives, but he also has a sidequest for you.
He asks you to chop down some wood for him as he's not feeling too well.
Depending on how early or late you go to his house, you may be met with a friendly lumberjack, or a deadly 6th tier demon.
But my interaction with Celeras completely flipped my mind on it.
I began to doubt the existence of the real Celeras.
I thought that perhaps the lumberjack never existed, unfortunately I was wrong.
Celeras, the demon so kindly explained while 'operating' on my body.
"The lumberjack actually had a wife and daughter."
"I lured the child to the nearby river, and using the screams of the child lured the wife."
"It was too easy."
"Unfortunately that lumberjack wasn't home and made things difficult."
"He found no one home, and began to ask around town."
"After not finding them he actually had a search party come to the forest."
I remembered this part particularly, since Celeras had stabbed me deeply as if aggrieved at the actions of the lumberjack.
He then began to open me up.
I wanted to dematerialize right there, but the basement of the cottage had a complete anti magic area.
There was no magic inside of the barrier anywhere.
I had to sustain the dragon egg with mana to keep it alive, lest I live past the demon only to roast at the breath of a dragon.
And so day in, day out, I was healed by potion, bisected, healed, mentally drained via mind magic to keep me lulled enough.
Eventually after I guessed about 3 weeks, my body began to get used to the mental magic, and potions.
I sealed off the portion of my brain used to think with a mana barrier and hid it, disallowing the mind magic to uncover and render me helpless.
I also gained resistance to the potions, so instead of upping the dosage, Celeras thought my body was reaching it's vitality limit.
He actually considered throwing me out to the forest to be killed and eaten by animals, to which if he had I would've escaped.
Unfortunately he would not do that.
Over the month I was tortured Celeras only talked about two things.
The first was the original Celeras, and the demon world, and his servant status.
He talked about his servant status very little and none of it added up to what I knew.
The demon Celeras served the 7th and weakest demon prince, Kalagor.
In total I had interacted with up to that point 1 prince, Kalagor.3
More specifically, Celeras a servant of Kalagor.
But what this Celeras deviated from my game knowledge.
In game when you kill him he says 'Glory to the prince of ashes.'
That is the 4th prince,
Neveraze.
A particularly brutal but rewarding demon prince.
But when I was being 'inspected' all that he would talk about was Kalagor.
So I decided that I would 'question' him once I was powerful enough to break the restraints on me.
At that time, I was merely a 3rd circle mage and a 3rd star swordsman.
And this was the event that pushed me into the 4th star.
***
I remembered waking up one morning, 29 days had passed, or at least that's how many I managed to count. I didn't actually count every day, but estimated it using a rotting piece of flesh next to me.
The basement was spectacularly clean except for the cage of rotting bodies.
Celeras pulled me off the wall unchaining me.
He pulled my cuffed hands onto the table before letting the table turn and rise to postion itself like a wall.
The it started to lean back and move towards Celeras.
Even if I hated the demon, I had to admit, the operating table was a incredible achievement of magic engineering.
As it stopped in front of Celeras he rechained my cuffed feet to the table.
He started with his lumberjack story again.
"After the search party ended, a few more along with that man came back and searched."
"The man had at least one other searching with him for 4 days."
"On the fifth, I called out to him on the riverbank using his daughter's voice."
I never had heard this part lucidly before, and it made me want to puke, although I really had nothing in me to puke.
"Ah, nausea. Perhaps the body's neural center has reached a collapsing point and other mental centers are pushing on the nausea center."
"Lie back down."
He said as he pushed my head back down.
I obediently let him lie my head down, as if I was still sedated.
"Anyways, before you so rudely interrupted me."
This self absorbed c-
Wait. He's a demon, of course he's self absorbed.
"I coaxed him to the river, watching him happen across his wife's and daughter's bodies."
"He fell to his knees and leapt into the flowing river."
"After that he dragged them out into the riverbank."
"And that's when I got him."
"I made a deal in exchange for his daughter and wife, I would obtain his body."
"Naturally he made the deal faster than he could blink."
"And so I obtained this body."
"Did you know the woodcutter actually had a wife and daughter?"
And it repeated again.
I hadn't understood how he brought the family back at first, but I soon I realized he didn't bring them back to life.
He said in exchange for his wife and daughter, not wife and daughter back.
He killed the woodcutter Celeras, allowing him to 'see' his wife and daughter.
Truly a twisted logic.
But not above what a demon would do.
After the 31st day, I felt my body ready to undergo the 4th star ascension.
Whatever the potion Celeras used to fix me, purified at least some of my imperfections causing me to hack up, further making him suspect my time was coming.
As he dragged me by the feet, to the operating table I used my brute strength to destroy the chains.
I was a 3rd star swordsman, but not omniscient.
I was easily able to break out of the chains with mana, but there was no mana, on top of that, he had sedated me with food.
I had no poison resistance at the time, and ate for the first time in 6 months human food.
But it was drugged and then I was chained up in the dungeon.
I quickly became unable to produce strength with little mana, but with my body's arrival to the 4th star, I had reached the superhuman body.
A body capable of sustaining an aura sword.
And for this weak 3rd stage demon, it was more than enough, since his true strength lied in his intelligence.
With no mana, he was unable to regenerate, or even cast, so my makeshift mace/flail made out of the chain and cuffs that were broken off of my wrists were enough to make short work of the demon.
It was a quiet and intense struggle between a weak demon, and a weakened unawakened 4th star swordsman.
However the battle, resulting in a broken foot of mine, which was due to him being unable to damage anything else.
Afterwards I grabbed another pair of chains and chained him to his own table.
Over the next week, I began to ask questions of my own.
I didn't understand how he created the potions, but he never answered as to how.
I believe it was a secret method, that was passed to him, that he was unable to explain.
Even telling him to blink to answer yes and no questions didn't yield any more answers.
So I changed tracks.
I tortured him with the very tactics he used on me.
He spilled everything else.
When I asked about the 4th prince, he told me that was who he planned to sacrifice his next victim to, and become a follower of as Kalagor had abandoned him.
He also explained the methods of how to create a demon crystal out of demon blood, how to read many demonic runes, and how to communicate to a demon in the demon realm.
He also spilled some other things, but they were of less importance to me currently, so I kept them in the back of my mind.
To me the unkempt boy, made demon hunter, I needed to get to Aura more than interrogate the demon so I killed him after a week.
I left the basement with a key I had found in Celeras' clothes.
I left the anti-magic basement, and my body gained a new star.
My body began to rapidly heal leaving me very hungry.
Thankfully Celeras had a few fresh kills on a few meathooks on the cabin walls.
I made a simple stew enough to feed 3 cows, and ate.
Once finished I blacked out for about 5 hours.
When I had reached the living room, it was sometime in the afternoon, now it was close to sunset.
I left to the bedroom where I was lying down in before the sedative got to me.
My sword harness and weapons were still lying there.
With that, I took the demon core and key to the basement with me into town.
I went to the chief with blood smeared all over me scaring some children and adults as I walked past.
"These are items from the demon Celeras."
"Celeras?!"
The village chief gasped.
"Yes. He was attacked by the same demon that got his family."
The chief and other around us began to weep for the woodcutter and his family.
"Take this demon core to the local church in the next town and get the village purified."
I handed him a gold piece.
"Who are you sir?"
"Just a knight on a quest."
I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had no idea that Celeras was a demon.
I didn't want to scare the village anymore, so with the key, gold, and core handed over, I left.
The village wouldn't let me leave without his crest however, so that is how I earned the recognition of the village of Affern, subsidiary village of Avren town.
The information I gleaned from Celeras, combined with my 3 weeks in the library studying demons along with planning was what took out Oskarog.
Now for phase 3 of the Princess assassination plan.
I was going to torture Oskarog with demon made torture methods.
After watching Celeras do it for a month I had also picked up a certain tic.
His fingers would click together as if they were a pair of tongs.
Apparently Oskarog recognized this.
"Why did Celeras teach you this?"
I leaned down to Oskarog's ear and whispered.
"He didn't teach me, he tortured me."
"I learned it, as you are going to."
I pulled away from the red boar man.
He looked extremely unwilling.
"I bet you've seen some of his work, and when I'm done you will understand, what it means to look like abstract art."
He started to scream as I began to pull out his intestines and began to tug him along the ground.
Blood began to pool around us.
My shoes sopping wet with demon blood.
I went to work slicing his flesh.
I cut his torso from his back to his stomach, from the waist up to neck.
I used the artifact to be more precise, in pulling and removing the flesh from his body.
He screamed even more.
"So do you want to tell me more about Alonso now?"
"How dare you-"
He tried to speak through his hoarse voice.
"Only answers."
I let the artifact cut off the entire bottom half of his index finger leaving only the upper part of the knuckles and fingernails.
"Alonso is the 6th prince."
"I know that dumbass."
"Tell me his recent plans, and his relationships with the other demon princes."
I pulled his arms together with my only hand and lifted him up as his intestines fell out of his abdomen cavity.