DEMON'S VIRTUE

"You always looked like you did before..?" Arc asked with a slight frown, and the Imp just nodded his head in response, before continuing to speak about what he himself remembered about his life.

"My first memory is from when I was walking with the Horde. I was surrounded by other monsters all the time. I never grew up, I was always like this." The Imp explained, but it seemed like something was very wrong about that fact. He definitely didn't remember being any smaller than the Lesser Imp version of himself at any point in time. Sure, he was slightly smaller than the other Imps now that he thought about it, but it wasn't like any of the others were growing up either.

"Are there..." The Imp slowly started, unsure whether this was really something he needed to explore, "Books about this? Books about monsters growing up?" He asked them, but Arc just slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe, I don't know. We'll just have to see... I think we should get going and go shopping now anyway, right?" The young boy suggested as he turned toward the other children, all of which slowly stood up from their beds as well, while the Imp nodded his head.

He might be able to find out soon, but he should try and see if he actually could figure these things out before trying. The Imp didn't want to start anything impossible.

Soon, the group then made their way out of the room, but for another moment, the Imp stayed behind and made sure to really take a look at this place. He was feeling weird ever since they got to this town, so he wanted to make sure everything would be alright after they came back. And just to make sure, the Imp used a small trick that he picked up from Avalin.

There was a little bit dirt in his pocket, so the Imp pulled that out and closed the door until only his hand could fit through that slit, before throwing that dirt onto the floor in front of the door in the room. Avalin explained it only briefly, but she said it was to see if anyone came in at night. When the dirt was moved a bit, it would mean that the door pushed the dirt out of the way. This way, the Imp would need to make sure to squeeze himself through the door first, though, so that wasn't necessarily the best thing, but it should be fine.

Slowly after, the Imp closed and locked the door, before the group stepped down the stairs of the Inn and back out of the building, and Arc turned toward the Imp again. "Should we split up to get things done quicker?" He asked with a smile on his face.

For a moment, the Imp wanted to nod his head and respond with a 'Yes', but then, he once more felt this eery feeling from before creeping up on him. "No. We will stay together. Less Dangerous."

With a slight chuckle, Arc shook his head. "What do you mean, 'Dangerous'? You remember how Rudy can't be injured?" The young boy asked, but the Imp just stared at him and shook his head.

"Not injured, but captured. Rudy can not defend himself, and he is still weaker than many others. There are a lot of ways to hurt someone that do not need a weapon." The Imp told the boy, and the other children stayed silent, while Rudy seemed to start slowly freaking out about that idea, and then the Imp simply turned and looked around, trying to find the 'General Store' the man from the stables spoke about.

"Let's go." The Imp told them, waiting for them to get moving first so that he could have all of them in their sight at all times. Slowly, Sammy opened the door to the dirty, smelly shop while Rudy hid behind her, nervous about all those 'Ways to hurt someone' that the Imp just mentioned.

And when the Imp stepped inside of the shop after all of them, everyone went around the small space together to try and figure out what they may need. Dried foods, simple spices, and some simple clothes that everyone could wear while alternating between clothes while the dirty ones would be washed. Of course, they also got a lot of Milk, even if they would need to try and get something new at another town on the way, because this Milk would spoil not too long from now.

Other than that, they didn't really need anything important beside some cloth diapers, so after they bought those as well, the group wanted to make their way out of the building as well, although the Woman behind the counter spoke up about something before they could open the door.

"You don't seem to have that much money left... If you need some work, then maybe you should try and ask around town. Or you can sell some things you don't really need anymore." The woman suggested, and the Imp looked at her and nodded his head. "I will think about it. Thank you." He replied, and then turned back around before they left the shop.

It was true that they didn't have that much money left, at least not enough to spend the same amount they did just now again, but it shouldn't be anything to worry about. After all, everything in this shop was so cheap. The clothes were a normal copper coin at most per outfit, and while they weren't necessarily as 'Nice' or 'cute' as Sammy wanted them to be, they would do.

"Let's bring this to the room." Sammy said as she was holding Leon in her arms as well as a bag with some diapers hooked up to her finger, and the Imp shook his head.

"We should bring it to the carriage." The Imp said instead, and Sammy looked at him with a frown. "But our room is right across the street!" She exclaimed, and the Imp nodded his head. "If we bring it to the carriage we only have to carry this once." He replied, before Sammy looked at him annoyedly and rolled her eyes at him. "Right..." Sammy muttered to herself, before the Imp looked at the other children and then told them to get moving toward the stables.

There, they soon saw the man from before, who brought them to their carriage, and after bringing everything inside, the Imp noticed something weird. Nothing was out of place from how he remembered it, everything seemed to be like they left it. But there was a weird, lingering smell inside of here that he didn't recognize.

Sure to remember this, the Imp stepped out of the carriage again and they all then made their way along the main street, trying to look for the book-shop, while the Imp was looking at some of the other shops in the street, trying to look into the windows at the front to read the signs next to the items displayed there.

There was a small bottle with a red liquid inside of it for example, and it looked similar to the liquid that made Avalin heal so quickly back then. And surprisingly, on the sign next to it, it said '5 Large Silver', the most important thing that the Imp saw so far. And the shop was so clean and inviting as well, so it seemed to make sense for it to be so expensive.

But to the Imp's surprise, everything was that expensive in this street. There was something called a 'Jeweler' near the 'Apothecary' the Imp was at just now, and it sold some things in the small gold coin range, which really surprised the Imp. They could buy a lot of milk with that money, after all, and it was just for those small rocks and shiny stuff?

Either way, the Imp figured it wouldn't make sense to look at these things and continued, but over and over again, his attention was pulled to the different shops. A Bakery with incredibly expensive cakes displayed in the front of the window, and a clothes' shop with clothes that cost at least a small Silver at the cheapest.

Although, weirdly enough, all of these shops were completely empty. There didn't even seem to be anyone behind the counter, but they were so clean nonetheless. The only places that had any sort of customers were the dirty, run-down shops, of which there were only two or three in the whole town, while there were about a dozen of those luxury shops.

None of the people here were wearing anything but the same cheap clothes that Sammy complained about before that the group ended up buying. Not a single one of them was wearing any of those shiny things from the Jeweler, and if the Imp saw anyone eating anything, it was something dirty from the ground that even the Imp was hesitant about eating.

This was such a weird town, no wonder he was feeling all of these eery stares in the back of his head all the time. There was definitely something off about this place, but the Imp wasn't sure what yet. They should just stay the night and then get going in the morning again, that seemed to be the best choice.

"Ah, look! There it is!" Clementine exclaimed happily as she pointed into the direction of one of the dirty, run-down shops in the area, with a small picture of an opened book displayed on the wooden sign in the front. With a nod from the Imp, the group headed toward the shop and headed inside, before the Imp saw the biggest collection of books that he has seen so far in his young life.

And to his luck, the price-tags in front of the books read things like '1 Copper' or '8 Small Copper', so as the Imp thought, this was one of the cheap shops, even if that seemed rather surprising to the Imp. Books seemed so useful, they should be more expensive than diapers, shouldn't they?

Either way, in the end, the Imp didn't want to complain about this lucky turn of events and started looking around. It was relatively easy to look over the whole room in the shop from any place, so the Imp let the children roam around a little while he went to speak with the sickly, elderly man behind the counter.

And after the Imp made sure the man got his attention, he just smiled down at him with a shaking voice, although it seemed like that shaking was caused by weakness rather than surprise or fear like the Imp was used to. "Ah, yes, how can I help you, young man?" He asked, and the Imp quickly thought about what information he needed the most and narrowed it down to three topics.

"Books about Beginner Magic, General Knowledge, and Monsters." The Imp explained quite clearly, before the elderly man nodded his head.

"Of course, of course." The man replied and slowly stepped in front of the counter, moving his hand toward one of the shelves. "For one, 'Magic Theory and Practice'... and here would be a 'Monster Encyclopedia'... And 'General Knowledge' is the broadest topic of them all... There could be history, geography, economy, herbology, all kinds of topics that might be interesting..." The elderly man explained, and then moved his fingers through his small goatee, "Do your purchases have a general reason?" The man asked, and the Imp slowly nodded his head.

"I just learned Beginner Magic skills. We are moving through the forests alone, so I need to know more about monsters. And I don't know much about anything, so I need to change that." The Imp explained, even if he kind of hid a few facts about the seconds reason he named.

After all, he couldn't tell this man that he wanted to buy a book about monsters to find out if he was normal.