World's First Demon Lord 71 Sanctuary

May 3, 2:12 pm BT – 12:12 pm UT, Behind The Waterfall At The Gorge At The Iron Gate Pa.s.s, China

Irade woke up slowly.

It was a struggle to open her eyes; it felt like something had glued them shut. Even worse was her mind, which felt like it was sinking in tar. She could feel her brain working, slowly through the thick bog in her mind, trying to regain consciousness.

She just needed to open her eyes, just a little...

Slowly, she cracked her eyes open.

The first thing she recognized was the wavy, blue light of the pool in the cavern reflecting above her. She blinked as she tried to get her bearings.

She was looking up at the ceiling of the cavern. That meant she was in the cavern, and from this point of view, she was probably...

SPLAs.h.!.+

She tried to roll over while getting her bearings, only to realize she had been floating in water. She thrashed around for a while, before realizing the water was only up to her hip level. Embarra.s.sed, she got up, completely wet.

Her body felt weak and battered, like she had been hit by a truck, then tied to the back of it while it drove around three deserts and the Grand Canyon in America. And she was starving. She stretched her arms above her head, her aching muscles screaming at her to stop whilst also sighing in relief.

Huh, that was funny. Why couldn't she grab...

It was only then that she noticed. Irade stared at her left shoulder.

And the lack of arm attached to it.

Her brain refused to believe what her eyes were telling her. She was dreaming, this wasn't real. She had a left arm. She clearly remembered having one yesterday. She used it for all sorts of things.

But it wasn't there anymore.

It was gone. Her arm was gone.

This wasn't a game. This was real.

"You're awake," said a low, deep, growling voice. "Finally."

Irade looked up, instantly on guard. She reached down to grab the knife at her waist...except she didn't have the arm for that. Or a knife at her waist.

But there was no one there. Only Black Wind, dragging Irade's rucksack full of fish towards her.

"Know yourself, before you hurt yourself," said the voice. "Otherwise you'll lose another leg before long."

Irade blinked, her missing arm temporarily forgotten. That voice seemed to be coming from…

"You can talk?" she asked Black Wind.

Black Wind simply grunted. Irade could tell that he thought it was a stupid question.

"Eat," he said, pus.h.i.+ng the bag of fish towards her. "You haven't eaten for three suns."

Irade's stomach growled as the scent of cooked fish wafted towards her. She quickly made her way to the edge of the pool and started stuffing her face.

It was...weirdly difficult with only one hand. Although Irade was right-handed, she hadn't really noticed how much she had used her left hand. She couldn't hold onto the fish she was eating as tightly as she could have with two hands, and every time she tried to wipe her mouth with her left hand, she was reminded that she could not.

Black Wind watched her as she ate, gaze never leaving her. After a while, once Irade had slowed down enough to care about her surroundings, she looked back up at him.

He didn't look away, simply staring back with those electric blue eyes.

"Did you have something to say?" she asked.

"I'm watching how you're adjusting," he said frankly. "You seem to keep forgetting you have one less leg."

Irade looked back down at her left shoulder. There wasn't even a stump; her left arm was completely gone.

"I thought I still had it," she said. "I thought I used it to beat that...bear-man."

"That was your magic going out of control," said Black Wind. "That bear has a strange power to him that cause our magic to go wild, it seems."

"Magic?" said Irade before she could stop herself.

Oh right. Her Skills. Which meant…

She looked up her stats on the HUD. Sure enough, it was there.

[Left Arm of the Djinn]

"Magic, power, I do not know what you humans call the gifts nature has bestowed upon us," Black Wind snorted. "But if you don't learn to control that power, it will control you instead. As it did in that fight before."

Irade said nothing. She took another bite out of her fish as she contemplated Black Wind's words.

It wasn't like she had many issues controlling her Skills. Sure, MP managements was always an issue, but it wasn't like she could level up her Skills. Well, not until this one, anyway.

But that wasn't true either, was it? Irade realized that there had been nuances to using [Flight]. There had been certain mental hurdles in going fast, certain physical challenges in moving in air that weren't really displayed in the HUD.

Irade frowned, and also realized that it was the same for her stats too. There was no hunger stat, or tiredness/stamina stat. She had felt that clearly when she had been fighting the Naga, and when running from the authorities.

Not to mention, she didn't know what Intelligence did. It clearly didn't make her any smarter, not after all the dumb decisions she had made.

"How can power control me?" she asked Black Wind. "Isn't it mine?"

Black Wind glared at her, eyes piercing through her very soul. Then-

"AHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAAHAHAAA!"

Irade blinked as she heard the deep, throaty laugh coming out from the wolf in front of her. It sounded weirdly human, but also somewhat beast-like. It definitely wasn't pleasant to hear.

But it was also definitely a laugh.

"Humans," he jeered. "Thinking that you own something just because you use it. Do you own the river you drink from then? Do you own the fire you burn? The food you eat?"

Irade thought about it for a while.

"If I don't own it, who does?" she asked. "Maybe the river isn't mine. I made the fire and hunted the food. Doesn't that make it mine?"

"I see you are able to at least see how ridiculous it is for someone to own a river," Black Wind conceded.

"You see how you cannot control the river, and determine that you are not its master. Then tell me, do you control the food you eat as well? Do you control how hot the fire burns, how much fuel you have to feed it, how strong the wind is that day?"

"If you put it like that, then no one can ever own anything," said Irade. "We'd just be at the whims of nature."

"Are we not?"

"I mean...humans have built cities," argued Irade. "We've built places that can control the weather, to an extent. We've created systems that allow us to eat what we want, when we want."

"And where do you take that food from? Where do you get your power from?" countered Black Wind. "You humans steal power you do not have, use it irresponsibly, then cause everyone else to pay for your mistakes. Using something is not the same as owning it."

Irade supposed that line of thinking made sense. Just because someone was using a knife to cut food, didn't mean they could do it well, or that they wouldn't hurt themselves.

"Then what can we own?" said Irade. "Because if control is the only way to own something, then aren't we just a slave to our bodies and their desires?"

"You are your body," said Black Wind. "You aren't separate from your flesh. Those desires are your desires."

"Then aren't we just slaves to our desires then?"

"How can you be a slave to yourself?" said Black Wind condescendingly. "If you find fault in your desires, that's a problem of your own making."

Irade raised an eyebrow. Sure, that line of thinking may make sense to a beast, but in a world of humans, with peer pressure and societal expectations, that sort of thing was a lot more difficult to accept.

But as Irade was about to reply, she stopped. This argument wouldn't really work against an actual beast, would it?

"But this is neither here nor there, human girl," said Black Wind. "The point is that you cannot control something by forcing it to work for you. You cannot browbeat something into submission; that sort of control cannot last forever."

"To truly own something, to truly master something, to truly have power, one must learn to compromise. To know oneself, one's own desires, and to listen to the desires of that which one wishes to master."

Irade narrowed her eyes. She felt like Black Wind was saying something very important right now, but she could not understand it very well.

"To gain control, I have to...negotiate?" she asked.

Black Wind sighed. If he were human, Irade would've bet real money that he would've rolled his eyes.

"What a human way of putting things," he said disdainfully. "But in essence...yes, but no."

"I don't understand," said Irade.

"Evidently," Black Wind replied.

He walked over to the side of the pool, and lay down, looking down at his reflection.

"However, you are a child," he said. "You have not been so tainted by the world of humans that you are incapable of learning. That is what I have observed, watching you eat."

"...thanks," said Irade, unsure of what else to say. She looked back at her food, but realized that she wasn't hungry anymore. Instead, her body was aching, and she was thirsty.

She slowly got out of the water, grunting as she used only one hand to push herself up onto dry land. She crawled back over to the water, and after trying and failing to cup water with only one hand, she simply lowered her head down and started drinking water directly from the pool.

When she came up for air, Black Wind started talking again.

"If you would like, I can teach you to control your magic," he said.

That got Irade's attention. She raised an eyebrow as she looked over to Black Wind. She tried to say something, but nothing came out. There was too much she wanted to say.

Why? Can you really teach me magic? Was my power really magic? Sure, it used MP, but wasn't that just a HUD thing?

And also, why?

"You helped me in my time of need, without asking for anything in return," he said. "And you helped me defeat my greatest enemy."

"This is not payment for services, however," Black Wind clarified. "I am no human. This is simply a return of goodwill."

Irade stared at the wolf for a while, somewhat at a loss for words. She didn't really know what to think. It was just too much.

She sighed, and sat back against the wall, her head full of too much. Every time she moved it seemed to remind her that she no longer had an arm. The absence of it made her feel sick in a way she wasn't sure how to deal with. It was like she wasn't the same person anymore.

But who had she been before, really? Did Irade even know that?

And now, Black Wind wanted to teach her magic?

She woken up from three days of sleep, but already she just wanted to lie back and sleep again.

"You're still recovering. Take your time to heal," said Black Wind. "There is no rush to make a decision yet."

Well. That was one thing she could put on the back-burner for a while now.

But for now…

Irade could feel her brain slowing down again as her eyelids got heavier. Now that she had eaten her fill, her mind was sinking back into the muck.

"But you will need to make a decision," said Black Wind, just as she nodded off. "Whether you want to, or not."