D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

This chapter is a bit of an experiment. It is not just from Sylvie's perspective, I want you to imagine she's actually the one writing the whole thing. That's what I am attempting at least.

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Hello, good morning, good evening and whatever other epithet you like to use as your greetings at this time. I am writing a letter, or would you call it a diary? I suppose I cannot know what you would choose to label this as, considering I am currently writing this alone in my room. Truthfully, I find this a strange exercise. I do not understand why anyone would find it interesting to spend time listening to my ramblings about my day-to-day activities.

Despite this, I do know that hearing of others' experiences can be very insightful and interesting enough just for the change it brings. With this in mind I will endeavour to make this as entertaining as I can for everyone reading right now. I do not really know where else to start but in the morning.

The first thing I do every morning is check messages from Kat. I have long since realised that the system Kat refers to as D.E.M.O.N.S despite being rather tightly bound to what may be programming has something more to it. I always receive my messages first thing in the morning. If I check them during a night time toilet break they will not be there, and if I check them during the day I will see nothing. Yet, I always have a message waiting for me when I wake without fail.

To say it is merely the product of chance would be erroneous. Despite many attempts to question it on just how random these dailies truly are, it will always insist they are in fact random with no set time to arrive. I am sure that this is at least partially true. It likely has the same limitations as Kat and other demons do. Unable to lie… yet I question how much it is able to mislead quite frequently.

I suppose it does not really matter. I was attempting to show you a glimpse into my world and mind and yet now I am already talking about the inner workings of an eldritch system I cannot hope to comprehend any time soon. Still, it is one of my pastimes, to wonder about things I cannot know. Truly there is so much space to explore between the things we know. Even if they are not likely to be true, at least most of them are not.

Let's get back to the letter. Once I have read them, my next job is working out what actually happened by using what I know of Kat, and what has been relayed to me. Take for example this recent letter…

Hello Sylvie, I've just had a bit of a big day today. I had to fight off a giant snake but I killed it in the end. Lily is fine, she got to stay safe with Xiang and Yang while I took it down. It's size is impressive and it had a few neat abilities that made the fight interesting. Currently, there is some debate about what to do with the corpse. Apparently it is quite valuable. Lily and I don't really care that much, and are mostly just letting it play out.

The first thing I should say is that Kat really needs a class in letter writing. She has given me sparse details that barely cover a fraction of her day. While I am sure that nothing else truly important happened, she barely described the fight with any detail. Simply that it was 'interesting' whatever she might mean by that. I do wish she'd provide more information, but I suppose the fact she sends out multiple notes to many people who are not just me means that it is unreasonable to expect something verbose…

However I also know that these letters can be written purely using the mind. I could produce a letter of such a length in less then a minute using the system and while I do not wish to demand attention from Kat I do believe, loyal sister that I am, I deserve more than a minute of her time each day. Especially when she is away. Part of me wishes to come along on journeys like Lily has managed to. Truly it surprises me that such a thing was possible. It makes me wonder how hard I would need to push and what leverage I would need for a similar arrangement. It does not look appealing to me right at this moment. The damage it would do to my social circle would take a long time to repair and while adventuring with Kat sounds great in theory I know what she does not say. Most of the time anyway.

Which I suppose leads us back to the letter. I am taking a rather round about approach to this am I not? I find that writing things down really slows down my thought process. To actually put it all to paper just takes so much time. I do understand the use of notes, short, sharp things that get the point across and jog a memory in the future. I also understand the use of essays. A concise way to sum up a large body of words that will likely never be read properly and end up mostly useless. Letters also made sense, once upon a time. Though once again I am getting distracted.

Looking over Kat's letter, the first thing that pops out to me is that Lily was safe with Xiang and Yang. This implies a great deal of things to me. Knowing, from past correspondence that Xiang and Yang are both cultivators and serious combatants in their own right, if not at all up to Kat's standards, the fact they were both watching over Lily implies certain things. The first is that Xiang and Yang did not participate in the fight, likely because they were not strong enough. The second was that Kat did not trust herself to keep Lily safe during that same fight.

Which gives me some concern of course. Kat does not refer to merely passing skirmishes as fights. Just the day before this letter I received word of her killing a number of strange beasts she did not deign to describe properly, yet it was not a fight against them no, it was 'dealing with' them. This tells me that Kat was likely at considerable risk fighting this creature. I do wonder why, it is so hard to worry appropriately when you have no details. Was it difficult to kill for its size and toughness? Was it fast and able to dodge her strikes? Did she reign down fire and ice upon it to no effect?

Kat doesn't even say how the snake was ended. Perhaps not something that is always included by quite regularly Kat will speak on that. Thus, I can likely conclude it was killed in a particularly gruesome or dangerous way. Perhaps both. Based on its size and the fact Kat tries not to focus on the snake much at all, and that nothing else happened that day, no mention of traveling further… well I suspect it was at great personal danger Kat ended the thing.

Now, I do take some solace that Kat is fine. I know from the first time she met Xiang that if she were in real danger she would not remain in that world long. Yet at the same time… it was when she was last with Xiang that such a thing occurred. I know not how dangerous this world is when you compare it to others, so perhaps it is not truly so different. Of course, I can't really know can I?  I have only experienced this one earth, and Kat dulls her reports down to what is suitable for a child my age.

Perhaps that is not entirely true. Kat treats me not just as a child, but someone with considerable intelligence. I recognise and appreciate that but she does so try to shelter me from the world. For some reason I do not, and never have found it stifling. I do not know if this is because I know she cares for me as if we are truly sisters, as I do for her. Or if it is more to do with the fact that she tells me enough. That I usually know of the details she will not speak on, or can at least interpret them to be close enough to the real answer.

I do not know. Perhaps I can never truly know. These things are the experiences that make me myself after all, and as much as I may try, may puzzle things out… I can always be surprised by other people. Not with regularity, but enough to know I am not right all the time. I do not really know what to make of that thought. Is it because I can never truly know everything about a person? Is it because they are a person, with unique thoughts and feelings? If I knew every thought, every feeling, every single thing… could I predict their future? Well of course not. I know all that about myself, and yet I still surprise myself. Though, it does seem I have gotten quite far from the 'Sylvie tells you about her day' concept I started with. A shame, this really is a good representation of my day, if perhaps in a much slower, more drawn out form.