"Aaaah!"
Kaito woke up in the morning to Shiho's sudden scream.
"What is wrong?"
"I, I am fine... I just had a nightmare," Shiho replied after taking a deep breath and calming down.
"Do you want to go back to Japan? I will return to fulfill my promise, you do not have to follow me."
Kaito's first thought was that it was because of the number of people she had seen him kill lately, so he considered leaving her in Japan.
"It is not necessary, I am fine. Not having any nightmares would have been more worrying," Shiho rejected Kaito's idea.
"More importantly, what is this position?"
At her words, Kaito also noticed their position. He was holding her while she was curled up against his chest.
At first glance, it looked like a romantic position, but Kaito easily saw the truth, it was a protective position.
"I activated a skill so that enemies would not approach the room at night.
Enemies are suppressed and unconsciously move away. Allies, however, are the opposite, I give them security and confidence, so your body probably moved closer by instinct while you were sleeping," Kaito explained, although his thoughts wandered a little.
"Did she sense danger during the night while sleeping? Did she hear the noises outside, or was it something else?"
Shiho remained silent for a moment, looking into Kaito's eyes with narrowed eyes, before finally speaking.
"...If that turns out to be false just to get close to me, at least it is a very good lie, but I will believe you this time," Shiho said, getting out of bed.
"You said there is a strange cult here, right? I will take a shower while you deal with them," she added as she headed toward the bathroom.
"Good morning to you too," Kaito sighed before getting up and leaving.
"Magic is convenient, it saves me a lot of basic work."
Kaito thought this, since he could use a simple cleaning and organizing spell to take care of both the room and himself.
While thinking about that, the elevator doors opened, and Kaito headed toward the reception again, where he met the same person who had welcomed them before.
However, unlike yesterday, now he looked at him with fear and seemed nervous at his arrival.
"S-sir, do you need anything?" he asked, stuttering.
"'Sir' sounds too formal," Kaito said kindly with a smile. "You can call me by my name."
"T-this... you never said your name, sir" the receptionist said, still trembling.
"Right. I am Lucifer."
A name that would sound only a little eccentric to most people, but not to him. The receptionist began to tremble so much that it seemed as if he were standing before the devil himself after hearing those words.
"L-Lucifer? Like... like the devil?" he asked nervously.
"That is right. A very good name, right? Of course, I have nothing to do with Hell, it is not like it exists, right?" Kaito emphasized the last part while looking at the person in front of him, who fell completely silent.
"Changing the subject, I heard there is a rather exclusive club in this hotel, do you think I can join?"
"I-I have never heard of a club."
"Are you sure?" Kaito asked, releasing a bit of pressure.
---
In a hidden basement of the hotel, exactly ten people were gathered, all of different races and ages, wearing completely different clothes. Anyone who saw them would not understand what united them.
But the answer was simple, what united them all was a cube in the center of the circle.
"Who is that?" asked one of those present, actually a Middle Eastern prince, dressed in golden and luxurious robes, while looking at a young man on the ground, gagged. "The box reacted strongly to a guest in the suite, why did you not bring him?" he asked angrily.
An old woman beside him replied.
"Jhon said he could not get close to the suite, that something stopped him, fear, a horrible feeling of intense fear, that felt like prey walking straight into a wolf's mouth." After saying that, she laughed macabrely. "Damn excuses. At times like this, when we must ask for help from the other side, we are wasting time because of a useless receptionist."
"And what do you suggest?" asked a young girl who was part of the circle.
"I propose that we get rid of that useless man and then go after the sacrifice that the box wants," said the old woman.
"Are you crazy? If we are seen, even a little, people will suspect us," replied an adult man with glasses and sharp features.
But the old woman did not give up. "What does it matter? You know what is coming for us.
The Hell that the box connects to is not the same one where the objects came from. If objects that connect to this world could come from the other Hell, it not only means there is a hierarchy, but that the box's Hell is below it.
We have to give it a sacrifice, something powerful enough to summon someone powerful, someone who can deal with that thing chasing us. You saw it, its speed, its strength, its abilities. If that thing finds us, we are dead," the old woman said.
"There is no need to rush. Even if it is a problem, we are not like that idiot Charles, showing his object to the world, he cannot find us easily.
Besides, I already told you that neither of those places is really Hell in the exact sense, so that name is not correct..."
Ding!
Before they could finish, the elevator bell rang, indicating that someone was coming down.
"What is Jhon doing coming down now?" said another of those present, a boy who looked barely like a teenager.
But his words were answered immediately when they saw the person next to Jhon, the receptionist.
"No... how did he find us?"
"He is here."
"That monster caught up to us."
"What do we do?"
"We must perform the sacrifice quickly."
"It will not work, he is a normal human, a normal judge will come."
"Then what do we do?"
While most of them panicked, the only one who did not lose his composure was the man with glasses.
He looked toward the camera, and Kaito, as if sensing his thoughts, turned toward it and smiled.
"He is mocking me," the man thought, with a paranoia he himself had not noticed before, as he showed a determined look.
The old woman saw his expression and believed he had a plan.
"Will, what do we do no..."
Bang!
She did not finish speaking before a bullet entered her head between her eyebrows. The old woman fell dead instantly.
"What are you doing?"
Bang!
"William, are you betraying us?"
Bang!
"W-wait..."
Bang!
No matter what they said, William just kept shooting before anyone could react.
In the end, he crouched down and tried to gather the blood from all the corpses around him. It slipped through his hands, but he did not care, holding as much as he could and placing it on top of the box in the center of the room.
When he did, he began to rotate it like a Rubik's Cube. More and more strange pieces came out, as if the cube had different layers, but William just kept moving them.
"Please, I sacrificed my followers of many years, someone good has to come, please, I just want to live, I do not want to die.
I want to live!"
As he kept trying to solve the box, his mind became more and more paranoid and filled with fear, because he was running out of time.
Soon, William heard two sounds almost at the same time.
Ding!
Clack!
The elevator arrived, and Kaito stepped out.
The box was solved, and a portal opened.
Both things happened at the same time.
William saw the floor open in a perfectly geometric shape, forming a perfect rhombus.
But more than being surprised by that, he feared the footsteps growing closer behind him.
"You have something that belongs to me," Kaito said.
At that moment, William felt the urge to surrender and wanted to reach for the box to hand it over.
But the box had disappeared from its original position.
Both Kaito and William turned their attention to the being that had appeared before them from the crack and was holding the box in its hand.
A pale, almost white being, with a human and yet inhuman appearance, wearing ceremonial clothing in an abstract sense, and most striking of all, a bald head covered in what looked like iron spikes.
"System, does it follow the original rules, or was this changed too?" Kaito asked.
[Original rules]
"Good" Kaito said, stepping toward Pinhead.
William saw this and laughed.
"Ha, ha, ha, it is Pinhead, it is him, he is the strongest, you are dead, you cannot fight Pinhead, you are just..."
He stopped when he saw Kaito simply extend his hand and Pinhead hand him the box.
If they had fought, he would have been happy, looking for a way to escape while they did. Deep down, however, he felt that was unlikely.
In fact, he thought it was more likely that Pinhead would kneel before Kaito. He did not know why he thought that. It was simply that the judges they had summoned so far had always felt like servants, while Lucifer gave off a feeling of reverence, as if he were not a messenger, but a king.
Even so, he forced himself not to think about it, hoping that at least they would fight.
But his fears came true. There was no fight, nor any dramatic confrontation.
Pinhead handed over the box without caring, ignored Kaito, and walked toward William.
"W-what? Why are you coming toward me?" William said, sensing danger.
"Have you never summoned him before?" Kaito asked, watching everything like a show.
"N-no... not him, but his kind. They grant wishes, just with side effects."
"Side effects?" Kaito repeated with a laugh, not expecting them to consider their twisted way of fulfilling wishes as nothing more than "side effects."
Without any intention of continuing to watch, he turned to leave.
"I just hope you did not ask for something like living."
Kaito said this as he walked away. To Kaito, it was just a murmur. To Will, it was a death sentence.
He did not have time to understand it. Chains shot out of the air itself and pierced all his limbs, binding him as he was dragged into the dimension Pinhead had come from, where his wish of never dying would be fulfilled.
______________________________________
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)