Where Are They Now? (2)

"I killed them all and ate their souls," Blake replied as Vera stared at him with a very serious look.

But after hearing Blake's answer, Vera's eyes blinked a couple of times while still staring at Blake's eyes, now with questioning and surprised gaze instead of a serious one.

"You killed them all?" She asked with her eyes still on Blake's.

"Yes…" Realizing Vera reacted a little bit differently than usual, Blake continued asking, "Is that a bad thing…? Should I have not done it?"

Vera didn't know what to say to answer Blake's question and it took her a whole 5 seconds to finally answer, "No, it's okay."

"But I wonder…" She continued.

"How many humanoid demons did you meet and did they all have wings and could fly?"

"There were five of them. And no, not all of them could fly, only one of them that had insect wings could." Blake replied before he started recalling his experience in detail.

Blake then proceeded to tell Vera about each of the five humanoid demon's appearance and characteristics.

The skeletal wing demon that liked to use its wings to lighten itself before charging straight at his enemies, the insect wing demon that could fly albeit very slow, the long claw demon that only had its long claw as its notable feature, and the two demon mages that could cast spells that he had never seen before, particularly the plant roots that the greenish demon was capable of summoning.

And of course, Blake also told Vera about the delicious soul that belonged to the brownish demon.

Vera listened carefully to Blake's whole explanation and paid attention to every detail that the humanoid demons had according to Blake's perfect memory.

And after Blake had finished telling his story, Vera could finally heave a sigh of relief as her serious complexion loosened up significantly.

She was worried that the humanoid demons coming onto the remote island had something to do with her.

But after hearing Blake's story and the description of the humanoid demons, Vera was at least 80% sure that the humanoid demons were unrelated to her.

Just the fact that Blake and Robus could actually defeat all of them with ease was also a fact that made Vera more sure that it was the case, and the humanoid demons were probably strays that had found a way to somehow cross the ocean and reach the island where she was currently on.

"Are you okay now, Vera?" Blake worriedly asked as he noticed Vera's complexion visibly relaxed.

"Yes, I was just worried about something when you say you met humanoid demons way out here in the middle of nowhere."

"But from hearing your story and their description, it should be nothing to worry about."

Blake had guessed that Vera's urgentness and worry earlier came from her unexplainable circumstances that he still didn't know yet.

Blake wanted to know what was bothering her this badly since he had guessed that Vera should be very strong and could possibly force her way through almost every problem that stood in her way with her strength.

But from seeing how serious she was earlier, Blake began to think that wasn't the case, and there must be something complicated happening.

And as much as Blake wanted to know what it was so he could help her and repay her for helping him, he and Vera had made a promise that she would tell him about it when he reached the third demon realm, which was something that he couldn't even imagine as of now since he hadn't even traversed the first demon realm.

Realizing his powerlessness in this situation, Blake decided to change the topic.

"Vera, I want to know why one of the humanoid demon's souls tasted different from the others. Do you possibly know why that happened?"

Vera looked up to the ceiling for a few seconds with wandering eyes before lightly nodding her head and looking back at Blake.

"A soul could have a distinct taste that is different from the base savory flavor because of two things." Vera lifted two of her fingers up.

"It was either their souls had special properties that could have resulted in us tasting a distinct taste or the owner of the soul had received a very strong emotional feeling before the soul came out of their bodies that the emotions were brought in with the soul."

"Different demons tasted different emotions differently. Some found certain emotions to taste bitter while others found it sweet."

"So the reason why I tasted the brownish demon's soul to be very sweet was that it felt a very strong emotion before it died?" Blake asked after listening carefully to Vera's explanation.

Vera nodded her head. "It should be the case since demons with special characteristics that could have affected their souls were rare, especially in the first demon realm."

"The ones that usually have those were the variant type demon though. It was quite rare for a humanoid demon to have them."

Blake then stayed silent for a while as his thoughts began to speak.

Blake looked at the empty ceiling above him while remembering the last scene before the brownish demon died and its soul came out, 'Then that means, next time, I should try scaring my enemies to death again to see whether their souls would taste as sweet as the brownish demon's soul.'

Blake then shook off his head before he then asked Vera several more questions.

Blake asked about his spells suddenly getting stronger than they should have been, then about the greenish and the brownish demon holding their spell in half-activated mode.

Vera then explained that the former was a known trick that demon mages used to give their spells more firepower, but was not known yet in the first demon realm since the humanoid demons weren't intelligent enough to experiment and figure it out.

While the answer to the latter question was actually a very common practice that was used by demon mages, and the demon mages in the first realm used it since their casting speed was considered very slow and they used the method so that they could prepare a spell beforehand and cast it right away in certain, sudden circumstances as they couldn't cast spells in a matter of a split second.

The demons in the deeper realm also used them, but for an entirely different reason, and Vera didn't have a plan to tell Blake yet as she had a feeling that Blake would try to also do it while in the first demon realm, which would be very hard, and Blake would have wasted a lot of his time doing it instead of actually focusing on getting stronger and evolving.

After Blake had asked all the questions that he got to his teacher, Blake then said his thanks and asked what Vera wanted to eat before he began walking back to the door leading outside of the basement.

But what he wasn't expecting was that Vera would follow behind him and also go outside of her basement.

And for Vera to be doing that without food ready at the table was something that very rarely ever happens under normal circumstances.

"Where are you going Vera?"

"I have something to check." She replied before going outside the house, going outside the isolated space, and into the forest where Blake had met the humanoid demons a few hours ago.