The Blank Book

"I'm afraid that I'm already busy with something."

Terma lunged to cling onto Lothair's waist like a spoiled child.

"Come on~! Just a tiny weensy bit of your time, yes?"

"Puppy eyes didn't fit you. Instead of pity, I feel like I want to stab you even more," said Lothair, holding his book as if it was a knife.

"You're weirdly straightforward for a demon…"

"Doesn't it make things easy if we just display our intent outright?," said Lothair, as he kept stabbing the edge of his book onto Terma's head.

"If everyone becomes like that, then the whole continent will turn into a shambles." Terma's presence immediately disappeared, until he was found again on the available seat within the reading section. "Not only that such behavior is harmful, it's degenerating the future generations."

"Is that so?" Lothair placed his book back onto the table and began immersing himself in the content. He couldn't care less about this unwanted company. "Since when has a demon ever cared about the future generations?"

"Well, enough of this playing-house then." Out of nowhere, Terma already grabbed a book of his own to read. Opening the first page, he then began to flimsily flip the next pages without really perusing the content. "There is a deeper section of this library where the most horrifying and terrifying of the forbidden tomes are being sealed.

"Only two students had gone there before. The first one died after opening a record about an Outer God, while the other had her mind completely wiped after reading a book with holy sacrilege.

"There have been twenty four attempts to find this section of the library ever since. Three of them never came back, and the rest never succeeded."

"Sounds like a made up folklore that an academy would have," said Lothair with no impressions whatsoever. He just kept jotting down his quill onto his notebook as his eyes permanently latched onto tome's content. "But if you really want to find a hidden space inside a protected place like this, try tracking the expansion of energy pulses instead of the linear flow."

"That will be downright time-tasking, no? This place is big, and a converging hint of energy is everywhere. It might take a year to jot down every detail."

"Then try to focus on doing it on the corners, if the flow is impeded, then that corner might as well be just another section of a really long wall."

"..." Terma stared at Lothair with a clear 'Are you serious??' expression on his face. "Many attempts to check the layouts of the academy to find the disparities of space have been deemed null. There is no hidden room. It would be either somewhere in the middle of this maze of racks, or inside an unnoticeably cramped space.

"Then again, this place has already been casted with a high rank distortion spell. Heck, I can't even pinpoint our exact location if the building schematic is on my hands right now.

"Even if there's one long section of forbidden archives, I don't think that it will be big enough to be noticeable." Terma placed both hands on the back of his head, carefreely leaning onto the chair.

"That's a misconception, actually." Lothair switched the large tome in front of him with one of the tall stacks sitting on the corner of the reading table. "There are probably more forbidden records, tomes, and books over the course of the history of this continent, no?

"The Magus Academy rightfully declares that they have every record of spells and knowledge that the Nether Country can get their hands on, both the forbidden and the well known.

"With how the demon society could declare a measly act such as healing and being healed as a taboo, don't you think that there will be a lot more forbidden books than the widely accepted one?"

"..."

Immediately after, Terma vanished from his seat. At the same time, he appeared right behind Lothair with his hand placed on the uncaring demon's shoulder.

Terma whispered right above Lothair's ear, "You shall be obliged to walk with me towards the promised neverland."

As Lothair darted his gaze to his side, the eccentric man was nevermore. Like a breeze of wind in this deceptive world. Arriving unpromised, and leaving on a whim.

"What a weirdo." Lothair gave a side-glare to the direction before Terma disappeared. "... Still, a forbidden book should be burned at stakes the moment it was found. Who in their right mind wants to collect and keep them?

"Unless…"

Lothair came into a very terrifying conclusion. Before his mind was corrupted by the realization, he decided to snatch back his consciousness before it was being taken far away from his body

"Right… There is a reason why it's called 'forbidden' in the first place." With a tired smile, he went back to continue his research. "Even just coming to a conclusion can corrupt your mind, I'm lucky that mine has been broken in those years of being enslaved."

With the new reminder, Lothair wasted another day within the library yet again.

There was curfew amongst other things, but that won't stop Lothair from becoming a book hoarder and silence himself inside one of the large space of rack for the whole night. He had some food that he stashed within his usual hiding place. If there was another question on whether it's allowed to bring food into the library, let's just say that an empty witness is an empty punishment.

Days went by after that day. There wasn't a single sign of Terma trying to ambush him within that time frame. If it kept going for another day, Lothair decided to deem him as K.I.A.

"He's probably dead, heh." A smile danced onto his cheeks.

And then, one week had passed after he deemed Terma to be dead.

"... Aaa… aaaa."

Lothair immediately went underneath the reading table before hurling his lunch out of his stomach. Gastric juice leaked out of his mouth with his guts feeling like wanting to commit an intense sudoku - with airbags instead of numbers.

"This… this is abhorrently disgusting.."

It was only after a few eighty pages that he clammed through the content of the 'blank book'. At first, there wasn't any kind of attachment whatsoever when he plowed through without being able to read the ancient language, but now that he was able to put his feet knee-deep into the storytelling, Lothair suffered greatly because of his nature as a demon.

If the giant sentence on top of the most front illustration with the boy raising his sword is the name of the book, then the book was titled 'Nagel Symphonia'.

The story started with a young boy, a farmer who forcefully inherited the heritage of agricultural land owned by his father who was found dead on the outskirts of the village. This boy bore the name of Jin. With no notable features aside from having a black hair, he looked like a harmless and fragile being purposely to evoke pity from the readers.

Lothair couldn't feel any pity nor sympathy for him, though. Just like any demon does.

Restless and anxious, Jin dragged his small stature to work at the farm. Now that he had no guardian and was the only child of his family of dead father and contextually-missing mother, he was tightened to bore self responsibility and early maturity for his age.

Socializing, maintaining relationships with merchants and the inner organization of the village, he blindly and courageously attempted something that was very much unknown and scary to the eyes of a child to survive and be content in this small yet peaceful society.

As a result, Jin was liked by many villagers. And as a response, he held them all very dear to his heart.

Then, in the usual and cliche fashion, the fated day arrived.

Armies of what presumably demonic beings began to trample the village alongside its settler in literal and figurative sense. Bodies were put at stakes and giant nails were pushed through the guts of the villager before homes of many got desecrated by the raging fire that those sadistic beings seemed to be immune to.

Jin gritted his teeth as he watched everything unfold through the wooden hole of a carriage, and the gaping hole of a leather bag made to store vegetables to be arranged neatly inside the wagon. It shakes and wobbles occasionally on that hell theater session as the heat began to spread from the outside but failed to thoroughly go through the very interior of the carriage.

After everything ended, Jin exited his temporary haven. He was plunged into dread, hatred, and despair. Shakings, he picked up a giant nail the size of that of a medium sword and gripped tightly at the rusted, stoic surface.

From that day, the boy vowed to vanquish those demonic beings to the roots of their concept.

The story continued with Jin venturing the world outside his village, encountering all kinds of people and places that were beyond his understanding and imagination. With the giant nail strapped on his waist, he greatly partook in both heroic and communal acts as he attained new strength and new resolution along the way.

Lothair, a demon who bore little to no grasp on the morality portrayed by the protagonist of the blank book, was utterly perplexed to the point of disgust. How come, someone who once lost everything was able to get up no matter the adversaries standing in his way.

The worst of it all, was the fact that Jin would always throw himself headfirst into the fire to save someone in need of help, where he himself was actually the one who needed help the most. Without expecting anything back, on top of that.

His cries and prayers inside that hell theater were ignored, yet he always tried his best to make the plea of others into fruition.

Unwavering kindness and compassion.

The most destructive poison known to demonkind.

"Not to mention…" With weak arms, Lothair flipped to the next page of an action scene. "Why in the Tartarus' damnation that everyone in this book is shouting their moves in every battle!???

"'Magnitude Blast'! 'Greater Slash'! 'Dynamite Smash'! GAH! The amount of goosebumps I get whenever they exclaim their technique with such integrity is enough to deem this as a horror story! Why do they do that!?? Who wrote this loathsome piece of junk food??" Lothair might not have noticed, but the entire time, he was grinning excitedly through the course of this so-called 'horror story'. "I feel extremely embarrassed reading it, even though there is rarely anybody here in this part of the reading section…

"Still, I wonder what kind of demon they are. Their appearance is quite bland. It can be assumed that the kin of this Human Tribe is the early form of demon before they converge genetically and evolve many survivalist traits. Wait, doesn't that make this book an important piece of reference for our history?" He leaned to his chair with the 'blank book' held close to his face, letting the silent janitor clean the waste below the reading table he occupied. "I apologize for the mess, sir."

The janitor with a swirly mustache merely nodded. He left immediately after finishing his business.

Despite all of the signs of disgust, Lothair kept on immersing himself into the world of the 'blank book' like there was no tomorrow.

To him, it was really intriguing how just from reading the 'blank book', he managed to grasp numerous controversial concepts and subjects within demonic society in a much more visceral way than just researching on those topics.

And despite his innate nature of being a demon chewing his guts away when he read the 'blank book', he kept reading, to the point of casting an artificial pain to keep on going.

It was at that moment, Lothair found a terrifying train of thought. Something that should immediately be deplatformed when created by the demon's mind.

The weaponization of this unnerving kindness and compassion.

Just by consuming this media of picture and words, it was enough to inflict him with a blood curdling amount of unbearable nausea - someone who had gone deep trenched into the world of pain and psychological scars for 30 years.

Then what would happen if a demon, an existence that was allergic to kindness, was directly exposed to such a riveting act?

The thought of him helping those truly in need just like Jin from the 'blank book' made him hurl another bucket of guts' content.

"Yeah, I need to breathe some fresh air…"

The next morning.

It was his first time to eat his breakfast in the cafeteria after months of embodying a book gremlin within the academy library. The atmosphere didn't really change that much. Spell projectiles were still being thrown left and right in the background, the same uncaring mass of clique with the elites of the academy shrugging them all with a barrier spell thicker than a concrete, and the same annoying chatters that was sometimes louder than the explosion of the wild projectiles.

Except one major difference.

"You're being meanie today, Newt-Wick," said Terma with a wide glee on his face.

"I'm not proud of my title, but it's Nerd-Wick," said Lothair with his usual plain smile. "I thought you already got terma-nated?"

"Constructing puns, are we? Anywho, can I have those mummified bacon strips?"

"No."

"You can have my boiled minified lizard eggs."

"No."

"Come on, it's been a while since we ate at the same table since that festival."

"Now you're making up something that won't even ever happen."

"Is this because I ate all of the magma pies you made back then?"

"Your attempt at gaslighting has come to a desperate level."

"Regardless of that." The food that was on the table in front of him had vanished, along with Terma himself. Just as Lothair was flabbergasted by what was happening, Terma reappeared behind him, whispering in his ears, "I want you to come with me to the 'forbidden section'."

"... I'm afraid that I prefer a female demon."

"... I meant it literally, not metaphorically."

"I simply jest." Lothair uncharacteristically chuckled as he got up, picking a single mummified bacon from his plate as an on-the-way snack. "I've been meaning to see the fabled forbidden section myself one day, didn't really think that it would be today."

Terma placed his index on his chin, donning an amused smile as he made a way for his new partner to leave the table.

"Mmhmm, so in a way, you're using me to see if that part of the library exists or not, ey?" Terma pointed his knife that came out of nowhere on his hand. "Wew, you're surprisingly dangerous. Well, as they say, the most poisonous stinger is the one you can't even see."

"Well, even if what you say is a lie." Lothair took a chunk of his bacon. He then used his thumb to wipe his lips before licking it with glee. "I can just easily dispose of you, no?"

Seeing how the well-known magus demon who's bad at casting any complex spells exuded such a confident presence, Terma started to doubt his sensory skill.

'Did he already find a way to kill me while bypassing the supervision of the academy?'

Terma's mind began to unwillingly race without him knowing.

'No, I've appraised his flow of Ein, he didn't have enough proficiency to cast destructive spells faster than my spell sensor. But why the confidence…? Could it be?'

With his chantless spell, he immediately scanned his own body of foreign substances. His eyes widened when he found nothing, he ran the same check once again, only to come with the same result.

Terma glared with desperate bloodlust. "What have you done to me…?"

"... I thought a demon should coat their tongue in layers. You said it yourself back then, no?" Lothair wryly grinned, exuding both hint of satire and concern. "You can relax though, I am barely able to cast anything more complex than a bug repellant spell."

"Ah, so it's just a joke…"

"You bought that completely, huh."

"Nope." Terma donned a simple smile. "It definitely did not."

It was the first time for Terma to be fully incapable of reading someone. As they headed to exit the cafeteria, Terma's eyes were latched at Lothair's direction the whole time.