I let out long groans of exhaustion as I walked up a hill.
Sand was getting stuck between my toes, and it wasn't the soft silly beach sand, it was the rough desert one.
Looking around all I could see were the orange desert hills.
Sand was being carried by the strong constant streams of air.
That came to my disadvantage cause I was walking opposite to the wind stream so it was only harder to keep walking.
I'd chosen a really poor time to take the mission, if I had exited my base just a couple hours earlier I wouldn't be faced with such inconveniences.
My destination was only a couple meters ahead, just beyond this hill, should be a mountain with a large overhang with a worn out house right below it.
This mission was barely an F level quest, even a child could exorcise the demon.
I found out about it while I doomscrolled through the online bulletin board.
Haunted abandoned house, inhabited by the demon of an old family from the pre-virus days.
The reason I took the quest was because my system was just one single mission away from giving me my next milestone award.
As I approached the hill's summit, the haunted house emerged into my vision.
Calling it your home would be degrading for yourself.
It was a cube of gray bricks, faint traces of paint were left on the walls.
The windows had been broken long ago, and the door was a mere suggestion, wide open for all the sand to barge in.
Although, it felt pretty ominous, there was light coming from the inside, which was weird.
No electrical poles could be seen in the distance, I didn't even see one while I walked all the way here.
I should really invest in some transport, my legs ache so bad, I'm pretty sure I walked like ten kilometers.
I slid down the hill, and swiftly approached the house's doorstep.
It's even uglier up close. The window frames were bordered with remains of shattered glass.
The inside of the house was bare. Sand was nested between the cracks that every brick showed.
It has a single room, I'm guessing it used to be a living room many years ago. Jeez, people back then had it rough.
A single decoration was present, a wooden chair. The edges showed splinters, despite the chair's age, it looked pretty good to what you would expect.
Most chairs from the old world would be completely rotten by now, just scraps of wood no sane person would ever use.
As I looked up I noticed the light that was coming from the lightbulb fixed to the ceiling.
The glass was completely burnt, with a long crack that ran all the way around it. If I touched it, I'm sure it would break and spread glass everywhere.
How the hell did that thing even work? No electric current, and it should be fried.
I'd heard about this before, read about it in a pamphlet. Category 3 demons are able to turn themselves invisible to the naked eye, but they cannot negate their energy output.
Meaning the light emerging from the bulb was not the one of electricity but from the demon's core.
A demon core was the part that generated the base energy for the demon.
The weaker a demon the more it tries to hide it's core, so this one was pretty weak, trying to camouflage it behind electric energy, clever, but too obvious for anyone with common sense.
I needed to disturb the category 3 so it revealed it's true form.
When a demon is invisible there's no way to harm it, but it can't harm you either.
Maybe I could break the bulb? But then it'd try to hide somewhere else.
The post mentioned this demon emerged from a family that used to live here, meaning I needed to figure out something related to family values that would disturb their peace.
The chair. It was too centered in the room, almost like it was intentionally placed there.
Many people have checked this place out, and no one dared to move the chair?
It could only mean one thing.
I lifted the chair from the legs and flung it across the room with all my strength.
It broke. It's pieces scattering everywhere. The legs flew out the window, the back rest landed straight into the floor and the cushioning hit my antler.
A loose splinter clung itself onto my thumb. It didn't hurt so I removed it as if was a leaf stuck onto a lock of hair.
My thumb didn't bleed and the skin didn't break.
The light in the room turned off in a second.
"Why must you disturb my domain?"
I glanced at the lightbulb. "I get paid."
With a loud crack that reverberated across the small room, glass scattered everywhere.
A veil emerged, trapping me inside the house. The windows were covered with a pitch black border, even the door was fully sealed.
A category 3 with a veil? That was new.
Veils are a high level skill, they take years of practice to master them, being a low level demon and popping a veil like it's nothing. Something fishy was going on here.
The way a veil works is simple, it's just energy distributed along a circumference, you focus most of it on the inside while keeping the outside frail. That focus makes it so it's almost impossible to break out from one, but incredibly easy to break into one.
"Darn it." I muttered. I hadn't placed a decoy to summon outside the veil, meaning I was effectively trapped inside.
"Show yourself"
[ Active Skill: Summon. Summoned Gladius ]
My summoning skill allowed me to recruit and store different demons to use as weapons.
Gladius was a knight carved out of stone, like a moving statue.
"If you summoned a veil... Your true form must be somewhere, hidden."
Hundreds of tiny pieces of glass began floating around before me.
They formed legs, then a torso, arms and head.
A man completely made out of thousands of glass pieces, standing in front of me.
Gladius unveiled his sword, presenting it to the enemy.
"I will not harm you, deerman. Please, listen to my story."
Deerman? That's a new nickname, I guess it fits.
"Fine."
[ Summoning: Retreat. ]
Gladius turned into a gray light before dissipating away.
"I used to live here in this house, with my wife and daughter, oh you should have seen her, she was so small and cute, she loved dolls and princesses-"
"Cut to the chase, demon. You're not convincing me."
"... Well, we lived a happy life, until the virus... First it took my wife, right there, in the corner, she perished in my arms. Then it took my daughter away, right on the doorstep, she fainted and passed away. Then it took me, I was sitting down on the chair you broke when I died."
My shoulder relaxed and I tilted my head, I felt some pity for him, poor man lost his family to the virus.
"Our souls, they merged. We all inhabit this place now and merged into one. So please, leave, and let us live peacefully, for eternity."
I rubbed my antler, contemplating if I should follow. "Y'know what? Sure, I'll let you go, I'm sorry for disturbing you."
"Oh! You don't know how happy that makes me! Every day with my family is another blessing-"
He was cut off short as explosions went off from all around the house.