Chapter 12: Pre-battle Preparations

Gima sat on a cold stone bench in front of a church, her head propped up in her hand, deep in thought, contemplating the various clever and wonderful ways she could screw over George once they reached Salem City.

A sudden, violent contraction in her stomach and a loud, hungry gurgle interrupted her brilliant train of thought.

The thought of having to go find George for another "meal" left a bad taste in her mouth. Not only had her grand attempt at NTR failed spectacularly, but now she had to sell her own 'lewd service' to her sworn enemy just to survive. This life was too damn hard. She was, without a single doubt, the most aggrieved and pathetic Demon Lord in all of recorded history.

A pair of boots stopped in front of her.

“Little demon?”

A male voice drifted down. Gima looked up and saw a young priest. He was wearing a simple linen robe with a bronze holy symbol pinned to the collar. He looked vaguely, and annoyingly, familiar.

“It’s you. George’s little demon slave,” the young priest continued, his voice dripping with a strange mix of curiosity and contempt.

Gima remembered him. He was her first test subject from that morning. She remembered how his jealousy had flared up like a cheap torch when she provoked him, giving him a bad case of the green-eyed monster. And his jealousy, she recalled, stemmed from a rather pathetic, simmering lust.

Well, well. Perhaps he could also provide me with a meal.

“What do you want?”

Gima subconsciously tucked a stray strand of black hair behind her ear, a gesture she was starting to perfect.

The young priest looked left and right, as if sharing a great secret. “I… I was just wondering why George would leave you all alone. It’s so irresponsible. Then again,” he added bitterly, “geniuses don’t have to follow the rules, do they? The higher-ups all dote on geniuses.”

Let me guess. You have no actual business with me, but you’re greedy for my unparalleled beauty and are desperately trying to find any excuse to talk to me… Gima flashed her customary charming, yet completely fake, smile. “He’s a very good person.”

A faint, sweet fragrance began to rise in the air around her.

The young priest frowned, his face screwing up in concentration. He warned her sternly, “Succubus, don’t even think about bewitching me. I’m not like George, so easily charmed by your tricks.”

The people of the Holy Sanctuary could not lie, and sometimes, the unvarnished truth was no different from a stinging insult.

Gima felt that the lust coming from him had a sour, foul smell. The thought that this absolute nobody was getting horny over her filled her with a profound sense of disgust. She didn’t absorb a single drop of his lust. Instead, she raised a delicate hand to wave away the smell in front of her nose and muttered just loud enough for him to hear:

“What a sour stench.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, what a sour stench of jealousy.” Gima glanced at him dismissively, her gaze filled with the pity one reserves for a particularly uninteresting insect. In her past life, she wouldn’t have even bothered to look at such a weakling. “Sigh, a person like you has absolutely no bewitching value, okay? Don’t be so full of yourself.”

One good thing about the Holy Sanctuary was that you could trash-talk people freely. It’s not like they could actually attack you without a formal declaration of holy war.

“By the Dawn God… Look what George brought back. A foul-mouthed demon.”

“Stop bothering the old man Dawn God with your whining all the time,” Gima said, standing up and turning her back on him to leave. “If he heard you, he’d probably come down from the heavens and give you a good, swift kick in the ass.”

The young priest said nothing more, because George himself was now walking towards them.

“Gima, I finally found you.”

After her sharp-tongued tirade, Gima’s mood had improved considerably. Seeing her primary food source walking towards her, she couldn’t help but swallow a mouthful of saliva.

From now on, I’ll only get my meals from George. His lust has a much better vintage.

As Gima quickly walked over to George, he glanced at the departing young priest and asked, “If he was discriminating against you just now, I sincerely apologize on his behalf.”

“It was nothing,” Gima said with a wave of her hand. “That bronze-level ‘genius’ was just making some predictably vulgar comments about our… special relationship.”

George wisely chose not to discuss the topic. “Come with me to the armory. We leave for Salem City tomorrow.”

“Mm-hm.”

Gima took George’s massive two-handed greatsword and followed closely behind him, doing her best to look like a diligent and obedient squire.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the cold, dim armory. The guard at the door pushed open the large, heavy doors, and a single beam of light fell into the repository, reflecting off the polished armor resting on rows of straw dummies.

“Brother George, take your time and pick what you need. Just register it with me when you’re done.”

Gima put down the greatsword and curiously ran into the armory. Racks upon racks stood on the floor, and a grand staircase led to a second level. It looked like a library, a thousand-year-old library of death and dismemberment. On the first floor alone, Gima estimated there was enough equipment to arm a thousand warriors.

The weapons and armor were dazzling, strictly categorized into military weapons, simple weapons, exotic weapons, heavy armor, medium armor, and so on. Each rack had a neatly engraved plaque describing the equipment.

George couldn't wear his original, magnificent full plate armor to Salem City. Otherwise, the moment he showed up, every single person would know he was from the Holy Sanctuary.

Gima ran to the heavy armor section and spotted an enchanted breastplate she liked.

“This iron-gray breastplate looks good!” Gima said, lifting it from a straw dummy with a grunt. If she remembered correctly, the mercenaries in Salem City were quite fond of iron-gray armor the last time she was there.

She glanced at the plaque. It read: +4 Breastplate, suitable for a height of 1.8 meters. Loan requires 300 points. If damaged or lost, a deduction of 4000 points will be made.

“It’s even a +4 breastplate! This whole row is! The Holy Sanctuary is ridiculously rich,” she said, her eyes gleaming with greed.

“Gima, slow down. I haven’t taught you anything about enchanted equipment, yet you seem to know a lot.”

Gima was prepared for this. “It’s in my succubus inherited memories,” she said with a shrug. But she didn’t mention that her relevant knowledge did not, in fact, come from her succubus inherited memories, but from a lifetime of being a power-level-obsessed Demon Lord.

George glanced at the plaque, and his face contorted as if he’d just been punched in the gut. “Never mind. I’ll just… I’ll just borrow an unenchanted breastplate.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Not enough points.”

Points were the internal currency of the Holy Sanctuary, used to buy or borrow the various and sundry items they provided.

“But you’re the Hero who vanquished a Demon Lord!”

George handed his permit to Gima. She looked at it. It read: Mission Points: 1000. Previous Balance: -600. Teleportation Cost: -200. Remaining Points: 200

George continued, his voice full of a strange, heroic pride, “Cardinal Gregory even fought to get me these mission points. It wasn’t originally supposed to be this high.”

Looking at the pitifully small, almost insulting number of two hundred points, she emphasized again, her voice rising in disbelief, “But you’re the Hero who vanquished a Demon Lord!”

My castle held my entire life’s savings from thirty years of glorious, debauched hard work!

“Well, we couldn’t just rescue the Demon Lord’s female slaves and then abandon them, could we?” George said with simple, infuriating logic. “To get the slaves out of the demon realm, the other Demon Lords demanded that we leave behind all the furniture, decorations, and priceless works of art from the castle as a… a toll fee.”

“How very enlightened of the Holy Sanctuary,” Gima said through gritted teeth, silently adding the names of the toll-collecting Demon Lords to her little black book.

“As for the gold coins, gems, and magic items in the castle’s treasury, they were all sold for money to give to the slaves as severance pay. A few of them even requested to have their memories magically erased, so we had to hire a powerful mage for that,” George explained. “I also pitched in some of my own money to help them change their identities and avoid being troubled by vicious rumors.”

Gima remembered that many of her maids were high-ranking nobles, and one was even the princess of a small, wealthy country. She couldn't even begin to imagine how much money had been spent on bribes and arrangements to relocate them all. Her heart bled to hear it. It was a massacre of her finances.

“Later, I found out I still owed the Holy Sanctuary a lot of points, so I spent the last half a year doing missions to slowly pay it back. I had just started to build up some savings again, but then I heard about a hidden treasure vault under the ruins of the Demon Lord’s castle. So I used my points to buy the teleportation service to the demon realm. You, of course, know the rest.”

“George, you really are a good person,” Gima said, her facial muscles twitching uncontrollably.

She had originally envisioned George, decked out in a fine set of legendary-grade equipment, striding through Salem City like a conquering king. If not walking sideways like a crab, doing whatever he wanted, at least walking straight and tall, with no one able to stop him. He would have made great, invaluable contributions to her cause.

But with his current pathetic point balance, he could only afford one piece of barely decent, hand-me-down magic equipment.

“Do you have any actual savings left? In gold?”

George thought for a moment. “Mm… quite a bit, I think.”

“How much? Can you buy me a magic item to hide my succubus features?” Gima’s eyes lit up with a spark of hope.

“It’s all in the money chest back at the house. You were playing with it yesterday, remember?”

Gima immediately recalled the pathetic, sad little treasure chest she had seen yesterday. It was a rusty old box containing a shallow, pitiful pile of yellow and white metal coins, including some cheap, almost worthless copper coins. The whole lot was worth about 100 gold, maybe. That wasn’t even enough for her to have fun in Salem City for half a day!

So poor! How can one man be so catastrophically poor?!

Hit by the devastating double blow of hunger and poverty, Gima instantly lost all her energy. She pitifully, tragically put the beautiful +4 breastplate back on its stand.

“I’ll keep an eye out for more loot on this mission. I’ll do my best to get you a magic item that can hide your horns, wings, and tail,” George said, unable to resist patting her head to comfort her.

Being patted on the head like a common child by her sworn enemy did not, in any way, improve the former Demon Lord’s mood. Gima didn’t take his words to heart either. It was obvious he was just placating a little kid with empty promises.

“Sure,” she replied listlessly.

In the end, George used thirty points to borrow an ordinary, unenchanted iron-gray breastplate. He had wanted to borrow a full set of plate armor, but the other parts didn’t fit and would have taken a craftsman several days to adjust. There simply wasn't enough time. So, George had to spend another forty precious points to have a craftsman and a mage dye the other parts of his original full plate armor—the brilliant enamel dawn sun on his original breastplate was far too conspicuous and couldn't be covered up.

After a session of hammering and spell-casting, George finally got a full set of drab, iron-gray plate armor in the evening. With a brownish-gray cloak, he at least didn't look like a Paladin—if you didn't look too closely at his eyes, which were filled with an unshakeable, heroic sense of justice.

Another forty points were spent on a variety of miscellaneous adventuring gear. Healing potions and antidotes went without saying. A bag of caltrops, a flask of holy water, ten days’ worth of rations, a twenty-five-meter-long hemp rope, a large backpack, a two-person tent, a blanket, a map of Salem City, a waterskin, and two worn, but still playable, sets of Gwent cards.

Gima knelt on the floor, counting the equipment in the large backpack while complaining loudly:

“Even though this is all very ‘adventurer-like,’ isn’t it a bit much? I’m just a little succubus who was born less than five days ago, you know.”

“Then I’ll carry it.”

George put on his semi-rusty greathelm and jumped up and down on the spot. The heavy full plate armor seemed to have no weight on him at all.

“Never mind,” Gima sighed, grabbing the pack. “It would be strange for a wandering knight’s squire not to carry the backpack. Oh, right, we’re still missing two oil lamps.”

“Oil lamps? I have darkvision. And I remember that succubi have darkvision too.”

“But other people don’t know that,” Gima said, rolling her eyes. “If we carry oil lamps at night, people will subconsciously assume we don’t have darkvision. It’s called psychological warfare, George.”

“Are a succubus’s inherited memories really that incredible?”

“Oops, sorry. I seem to have revealed my evil, cunning nature again.”

In the end, George spent another ten points.

With the few remaining points, George bought some equipment for Gima: a small studded leather armor and a hooded cloak. Luckily, they fit her quite well.

With a short sword tucked into her left belt and a light crossbow hanging from her right, she was fully equipped. Gima dramatically threw her cloak back, put her hands on her slender hips, and shouted in a heroic, if somewhat childish, tone:

“Hey! This Robin Hood is going to Salem City to free the slaves! Huzzah!”

Then, she put on a pained expression, shouldered the large, heavy backpack, and let out an exaggerated cry. “The oppression of the knight is too heavy a burden to bear!”

She looked just like a long-oppressed, world-weary squire.

George smiled. “Thank you for your hard work.”

“Can’t be helped. If we’re exposed, we’re both done for. A single warrior and a little succubus kid? The Good Masters of Salem City would laugh themselves to death,” Gima said, then turned her head and asked, “So, George, on that note… can you pretend to be a mute?”

“Huh?”