My Reincarnation as a Chicken

After flying blind for 5 days straight, I returned to the river bank, only to meet a shellshocked Atlas and Fiends, grouped up in front of the Andromeda, listless.

My first reaction to this was 'Eh? They're alive agent?'

Of course, the cheeky bastard replied with a 'I never said they were dead.'

Almost causing an argument in the air, but I needed to remind myself that no one else could hear the agent. Having an argument with it would simply cause everyone to look at me like some kind of madman.

I descended next to them and put on my most relieved face.

"You guys are al-!"

"Was it you!?"

Stopping my movie-perfect reunion shot, Atlas and his fiends glared at me.

"Eh?"

"Did you consume all the souls we kept locked up, damn it!?"

Ah… well fuck. I'd been caught red handed. Best way out of this was to tell a little white lie, I guess.

"N-No."

I told the lie almost too perfectly because now even the fiends were holding Atlas back from jumping on me. They must have believed me.

"You even consumed the pure soul which was bait for tainted souls! You fu-"

He proceeded to list a dictionary of curses at me. Some familiar, some new and some just down-right scary.

"I'm sorry, ok? And I really mean it."

This time, truly, I felt bad. Not only did I not check to confirm their status, I outright stole from them after they'd been so kind to me.

"Sorry isn't going to get us out of this shithole. Even worse, we couldn't get the divinium! Could this crappy day get any worse?"

"Oh! How about I go get the divinium then?"

A lightbulb lit up in my usually dull brain. The gears were finally moving.

"Be my guest if you want to be exposed to enough divine energy to give yourself radiation poisoning for the rest of your miserable life."

He requested in the kindest form he could have. All the fiends were in agreement with my idea and even the agent said it wasn't a bad attempt, meaning we could actually do this.

According to him, the divinium reserves were in the direction of the massive tree I saw earlier when I was flying. Once I got that down, I wasted no time in flying towards the destination.

I met a couple of fiendish looking creatures. They had raven black wings and black halos above their heads. They're bodies were mostly pale skin, but their head simple displayed their iron skulls.

Cautiously, I approached these reaper-like beings and they ignored me. They were Death's dogs so to speak. Their mission was to simply carry out any orders the King of Hell granted them and they mostly didn't care about anything else.

Still, I tried my best to avoid being sighted and went to the roots of the tree. The aura it gave off wasn't so bad. It was just like a really hot summer's day which, in of itself, was torture, but I pulled through. Unfortunately, the moment I tried to break a piece of the tree, the Death Dogs noticed my presence.

One of them attacked me, but it was easy to dodge him. Rather, the difficult part was me trying to attack them. Magic was practically impossible for me given the circumstances, but this was supposedly how it was for normal people back in Elecryea.

I'd need a couple of years of training to have that kind of efficiency in here. Time which I didn't possess, so I tried to use brute strength in this fight. I easily closed the gap between my enemies and myself and punched them down one by one, the only real issue being the reaper with a golden skull.

He managed to match me in speed, but his strength left more to be desired so I ended up defeating him.

When I was done, I quickly ate them up, discovering that they had a bunch of souls on them. Basically, it was a blessing from above… below. I got to satiate my hunger and get the divinium Atlas needed. With this, I'd be back on my way to the 6th layer's inner circle, then the 9th layer, then into the King of Hell's palace with no invitation whatsoever, then sneaking past some of his guards who are potentially stronger than myself, then stealing his super important book that contains information so great it made him the revered king of hell, then I go back to help my familia fight an inevitable war against humans.

This was all going to be super easy. Barely an inconvenience.

When I was done overthinking things, I went to work chopping away at bits of the tree. That was when it hit me that I never asked Atlas how much divinium I needed to take.

Either way, I guess we just needed a lot. If I brought excess, I could simply take some of it back to Larm with me to see if we could put it to use. I was sure Sylphie and Kara would love to take a look at it.

Immediately I was done, I flew back to Atlas. It was very evident I brought too much divinium because he almost died from exposure to it.

It then brought up the question, why was it that in my devil state, I was barely affected by this divinium?

Oh well, a question for another day. For now, I had a more important question.

"Why are we spending the night here again?"

I asked while looking into the blue fire Atlas' fiends had set. We sat around it in a circle, just looking at it. There was no moon in hell, so that meant there was no light when night time came. I was confused by this odd phenomenon and asked if there was a sun, but got no concrete response to that question. Even the agent wasn't completely sure what gave hell its light during the "day time".

"Because the river will sink us when it's night."

At the declaration, the sound of hallowing souls pierced my ear drums. The river bank trembled as the river's speed increased far drastically from how it was before. It had essentially transformed itself into a raging typhoon.

I could fear intense fear coming from the river. The souls were terrified of something so their behaviour turned haphazard. I was put on edge by this discovery.

"When it's night, the souls become absolutely terrified because of the total darkness. This causes them to move about without reason or care for their own safety, turning the river into a raging sea on a Stormy night. Even Andromeda would be sunk in that sort of situation."

Atlas so kindly explained to me. Afterwards, we were left with an awkward silence between us. The only sounds that entered my ears were the cries of the souls as they bashed on the river banks seeking some sort of salvation from what it is they feared so much about the darkness.

I could understand being on edge in the darkness. You lost a crucial sense of yours that you relied on for most of everything you did. You instantly became powerless. And that was a feeling no one would ever like to endure.

Powerlessness was an absolutely terrifying nightmare. One I absolutely loathed with every fabric of my being.

However, the best way to overcome the fear of the dark is by becoming one with it. It's exactly the same situation as that one time in your infancy where you decide you can sleep without a night light. It's scary the first time, but once you assimilate into it, you notice that the darkness isn't nearly as terrifying as you once perceived it to be.

Personally, I liked the dark and its untold secrets that only those willing to listen could hear.

0"I'm not sure what happened, but the first thing I remember was seeing Pai's mask."

Atlas started to talk about something, drawing me from my thoughts. My ears perked up in interest and my gaze fell entirely on him.

"She told me my name was Atlas and that I was a member of the Ars Goetia, lucky to have survived after being ganged up on."

'Oh? So he's the reason they keep assuming I'm a former Ars Goetia member.'

"I don't know why, but I immediately trusted her words."

'Some sort of skill maybe?'

"I know it wasn't any skill or magic spell. I checked myself behind her back to see if something like that had been done to me, but I couldn't find anything of the sort. It was simply some sort of trust that went beyond just being acquaintances of allies with the same will to survive. It felt like… she was a long-lost family member."

"Oh?"

This was starting to get curious.

"But devils don't reproduce, so I figure it's all just in my head."

The concept of devils being unable to reproduce just felt somehow wrong. It wasn't like I wanted more of Satan's allies, but to never get to know what it was like to have an overbearing mother, a quiet father or bratty little sister… that just sounded unfortunate.

"Pai took care of me while I was confused and weakened. Together, we built our lair to protect ourselves from high-ranking devils since we found out that my growth had been permanently stunted."

'Permanently stunted? Aren't you giving me a bit too much personal information? Like, I'm not against it, but I could turn on you at the drop of a hat, you know?'

"After a while, on her way from one of her usual scouting trips, she found an unconscious devil that had survived a fight against some high-ranking devils, also with no memory of their past."

Obviously, the one he was referring to was Malius.

"Oi. Doesn't that mean Malius was once a member of the Ars Goetia then?"

The deadpan silence after my question was possibly the loudest answer he could have given me then.

"Oi, oi. So you, Malius and Pai are all previous Ars Goetia?"

"No. Pai is different. She's always been like that according to her."

Atlas immediately refuted my claims. But I couldn't just accept her claims as gospel just like he did.

'Agent? Do you have any idea who they are if you check their characteristics with previous Ars Goetia members?'

<<Yes. The owl matches perfectly with the Cosmic Prince Stolas. Malius and Pai have multile possible identities. Would you still like to hear them?>>

'Of course.'

The agent then listed the possible identities of Pai and Malius. I was kind of impressed with the list, but none of that even mattered since they would never be able to regain their former power according Atlas himself.