Alcott smiled, "He is one massive boy." As he leaned back on his couch, Neil stared at him for a long while, trying to imagine what kind of horrific monstrosity this man’s son would be. To be able to even tame that woman, Nina. He could remember hearing the news of her massacring an entire army just because a noble wanted to marry her, and for the longest time, he saw her as nothing more than a rampaging beast.

Even among the S-rankers, Nina wasn’t someone to be fought but to be avoided. She just doesn’t fall or die, and fighting her would always be more pain than the entire world is worth. She’s working at the guild and is now getting married... Did she mellow out, or is everyone just trying not to trigger her rage?

Neil didn’t want to find out. He would be very happy to never get within a day’s march of her. Shifting the conversation away from the Bloody Berserker, he tried to figure out exactly what they were going to do.

"Let’s talk about the quest. Let’s say we find one of those bombs, what then? Do we carry them back? Seal them with some kind of spell, or should we just mark the location and have Merlin handle the rest?" As he leaned forward. "I want to know all the details."

Alcott pulled two papers that they had on the table and showed them to Neil. "The first part of the plan is like you said. We’ll search for the orcs, neutralise them and confiscate all the explosives, then seal those bombs with magic, and call Merlin to take them away."

"That’s just the first part?" Neil lifted an eyebrow, and Alcott smiled. "The second part... You won’t be needed for it. But we’ll be feeding those bombs to my son. He is recovering now and could use a bite or two."

Neil’s pale and wrinkly face paled even further. "Food? We’re talking about bombs that could erase several cities as big as this one we’re on. No, I get it. You mean using them in some kind of magic to siphon power? That might be possible."

Alcott started at him, pretending to be eating with a fork. "I mean this... to eat. Those bombs are food to him. He can eat them the same way you and I eat a boiled egg." Neil couldn’t wrap his head around it at all. Those... are explosions, not food. How can someone... something, eat them? Just how massive, horrifying, and with what kind of demonic biology does that thing function?

"Alcott, my friend. How many times have we told you to keep your thing away from demons and monstrosities? Just what kind of child did you have?" As he sighed and rubbed his face. Alcott laughed. "Well, you’d be surprised to see her face. But you don’t have to worry. My son is quite the normal-looking kid."

No one in the room understood what part of Arad looked normal to Alcott, but they didn’t speak. If they did, they’d just confuse poor Neil even further. Of course, one of them did end up talking, and it was Kali.

"Do you remember the Ascendence of Sol? The new sun divine." As she asked, Neil’s face shifted back to a calmer expression. "I do; she is burning brightly in the sky alongside Amaterasu. I never expected that I would live to see the day a second sun is born."

Kali smiled from ear to ear, creeping him out. "That’s Eris, one of Arad’s wives. He fought her and won. That sun in the sky, he can defeat it, consume it, and erase its light from this world." Her head twisted, and her neck cracked as her limbs grew longer. Her bones shattered, her muscles tore, and her entire body grew bigger as her skin turned blue, and the palms of her hands turned blood red.

Shrouded in pure demonic darkness, Kali didn’t seem to have a face or a clear body, just a pure blob of darkness and demonic fury, burning and writhing like an endless abyssal pit. "I didn’t lose to him, but that is to be expected. I’m not just a demon; I AM THE DEMON." She smiled, and the entire room started cracking.

[MORTAL, DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE WORD DEMON COMES FROM? IT REFERS TO DESTRUCTION MONSTERS; DE-MON. AND I AM THE PRIMAL DESTRUCTION.]

What was talking now wasn’t a mere demon, a little girl, or a goddess. It was a primal force, a law of nature, an unavoidable end. Everything that has ever come to be is bound to destruction, the same way death binds life. It doesn’t matter if it’s a god, a castle, a continent, a world, or the universe itself. Everything is bound to be destroyed one day, and that power itself was now glaring right at Neil.

Seeing that Neil was already getting too terrified, she shifted back to her little girl form and jumped on the table, sitting with her legs crossed. "Arad is that powerful, and no, Father-in-law didn’t bear him with any demon. Even though his mother is scary, she is just a dragon."

Neil gasped for air, but then his eyes seemed to spark with light. "Wait...wait... destruction, primal demon? Are you Asura?" As he asked that question, it was Kali’s turn to be shocked; she even froze in place for a few seconds.

"Wait... people still remember my father?" As she gasped, Neil quickly shook his head. "No, a few decades ago, I found some old ruins underground where some old inscriptions survived. It belonged to a demonic cult that worshipped a primal demon of wrath and destruction called Asura."

He then closed his eyes. "So... you’re not him, but his daughter..."

Kali smiled. "Father died, and I now carry his power and legacy." She looked down at herself. "This form is just so you mortals won’t die just from my presence. As well as a goddess of demons and destruction, you might also know me as the divine patron of orphans, little boy Neil."

After that, Neil was silent for a whole minute before he started bawling his eyes out and crying. "Wait... Kali, that shrine we huddled under?" He could remember his childhood, a poor child of a prostitute who threw him on the street months after he was born. A poor family picked him up, but they also soon threw him out when he turned three.

Neil wasn’t alone. In the harsh cold, families could barely support a single child, so the streets were filled with abandoned kids like him who had nowhere to go. But there was a place that didn’t kick them out, an old, tattered shrine that was in the middle of the deadly forest filled with monsters. No one went there, except the starving and hopeless.

But... to those kids, when they walked through the deadly forest, none of the monsters dared approach them, and even though the shrine was just like any other abandoned ruins, it at least sheltered them from the biting wind and hungry beasts.

Sometimes, they would even find food left at the offering bowl. Old bread, dried meat, and sometimes even fruits, which were a rare thing here in the north. At the time, they thought maybe some people still came to worship at the shrine and left the food there. They did eat it, but felt bad, as if they were disrespecting the god that the shrine was built for.

When Neil had gotten older and reached his early teens, he joined the adventurers’ guild to support himself, and it was on one of his missions that he noticed the traces of battle all around the shrine. It wasn’t that the monsters didn’t try to approach it, but that something or someone was killing them silently and without alerting anyone.

"That was my shrine, still is. You kids did renovate it when you grew up, so I’m grateful for that. Many other children after you would get to use it and survive." She smiled, "The guardian is still there; when we pass by it, you can see him."