A Waste of Time-Chapter 21: Vanishing Steps

“Damn it, Ippo… you’re gonna starve me to death one day…” Daemon muttered, pulling up his trousers as he trudged back from the tree line. Ru shadowed him the whole way—silent guardian, swordsman, conspirator—eyes flicking to the underbrush with every step, just in case the forest decided it wasn’t done with them yet.
Back at the table, Daemon dug in the second he sat. Jia placed fresh cuts of meat and crisp bread at his elbow, refilling his bowl before he could even ask.
Mid-chew, he spoke around a mouthful of steaming stew. “Hey, Ru—these beasts Old Man Lou wants… blue-nosed deer, buff-tailed elk, snow-claw bear, long-tusk boar… you know where to find ‘em? What they eat? How they move?”
Ru settled on one of the makeshift stumps, posture easy, eyes glinting with the casual menace of a seasoned killer. “I’m no hunter by trade,” he began, voice smooth as drawn steel. “But I know enough to feed myself. Tracking is second nature—any assassin worth the price must be half a ghost and half a hound.”
Daemon raised an eyebrow, still shoveling food into his mouth. Ru’s grin turned feral.
“You’d think the snow-claw bear would be the hardest, right? Rarest, biggest, meanest? But you’d be dead wrong. Find their paths, find the caves they love, and it’s done—tedious, sure, but straightforward. Now, those blue-nosed deer?”
He tilted his head southward, gaze unfocused as memories danced behind his eyes—brutal hunts, blood on snow, the hush of breath before a kill. “They graze where the iron-back wolves roam. Demonic-beast territory. Ten-Thousand Beasts Mountain’s breeding grounds. Not somewhere you wander in lightly, unless you fancy your insides being fertilizer for the next generation of apex predators.”
Daemon’s smirk didn’t fade. If anything, it sharpened—teeth bared, appetite endless. Ru saw it and snorted softly.
Maniac,
he thought with fond annoyance.
“But none of it matters yet,” Ru went on. “Your leash keeps you here. That damn restriction wraps this forest tight around your throat. So focus on what you
can
hunt—buff-tailed elk, long-tusk boar. Plenty here, and worth the trouble.”
He leaned forward, voice dropping, eyes glittering like a blade’s edge. “Don’t break your back serving Lou. Hunt enough to train, sure. But your goal is the Asura Path. Major-Completion.
That
is what will buy your freedom, not some fat old merchant’s grocery list.”
Daemon nodded, licking his thumb clean. Ru’s calm mask never cracked, but Daemon saw the fire burning deep behind it—an old, hungry flame, looking for a chance to feed.
“If I must,” Ru added casually, “I’ll slip off alone. Hunt the beasts. Gather spirit resources. Sniff out that Lightning Spirit Stone. If it means replacing what Jia used, I’ll do it. If not…” His smile turned razor-thin. “Maybe I’ll visit the Assassins Guild. Take a contract. Spill some Cultivator blood. Been a while since I danced that dance.”
A hush fell across the camp. The morning breeze rustled the leaves overhead. Jia frowned at her brother, eyes narrowing to a glare that jabbed him right in the guilt. Ru only shrugged, unrepentant.
Daemon scraped his bowl clean in silence, letting the chill resolve settle in his bones like steel hardening in a forge. Jia topped him up again without a word—her hand lingering on his, softer than she meant it to be.
As dawn bled into day, Daemon rose and pushed his plate away. “Good meal, Jia. Perfect, really.” He ruffled her hair, earning a soft laugh, then asked: “You haven’t slept since we met, have you? Go. Rest. Even Cultivators need dreams sometimes.”
She tried to protest, but he was already moving, voice drifting back over his shoulder. “I’ll be in the tent. Something to handle—needs quiet. Protect me if you must.”
Ru arched a single brow. “Something to handle, eh?” His mind turned dark corners.
Dangerous places.
Jia squeaked, cheeks crimson, and scurried after Daemon—half scandalized, half desperate to believe he
didn’t
mean what her mind insisted he did.
But when she slipped through the flap, all she found was the boy sitting cross-legged on his mattress, perfectly still. Silent. Unmoving. Just like before.
Was I overthinking it?
Jia wondered, curling up beside him on the other pallet, the warmth of him so close she could almost feel his heartbeat in her bones.
Yet somewhere deep inside, that odd flicker of disappointment still smoldered. A secret ache she didn’t know what to name.
Inside Daemon’s mind, the world shifted. Six black-and-white tiles. A single die in his palm.
To his right, a palace of gold and pearl floated on a bed of clouds—wings and halos and music so sweet it made his teeth ache. Angels wheeled overhead, chanting in tongues that tasted like honey and burned like acid.
They smiled at him. Waved. Light spilled into rainbows. Flowers bloomed from the air itself.
“Ji ji ji ji ji…”
“Kekekeke…”
“Hehehehe…”
The sounds skittered down his spine like cockroaches. A thousand claws tapping bone. Daemon fought the chill crawling under his skin.
Something told him:
Don’t look left. Don’t do it. There’s nothing there you want to see.
But curiosity was a venom in his veins. He twisted his neck, ignoring the angels’ sighs—ignoring the way their light curdled to shadows as he turned his eyes.
The scent of flowers soured. Rot rose to choke him.
There—black soil stretching forever. Trees of writhing violet thorns, drinking blood from impaled corpses by the trillions. Limbs twitching. Eyes rolled back. Flesh shredded, devoured, reborn only to be devoured again.
Fruits swollen with pus and worms dropped from branches into mouths that laughed and screamed at once. Green rain fell—corrosive acid that peeled skin from bone in long, agonizing streams. Fire pulsed through thorn-veins, setting half-living bodies ablaze again and again.
Daemon’s eyes locked wide. His mind stuttered, thoughts freezing over as his body remembered
pain
it had never lived.
The stench filled his nose, cloying, impossible to ignore. He could
taste
the rot. Feel it crawling down his throat like spoiled meat.
His skin turned waxy, yellow. Heartbeat stumbling. Breath hitching. All his vital signs spiking downward, plunging him into a spiral he might not crawl out of.
In this world of dice and dreams and devouring thorns—Daemon teetered on the edge of something
vastly
worse than death.
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