Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

No one paid any mind to a warning that couldn’t even be called a threat. Ron and the others temporarily lowered their weapons and strolled into the last remaining territory of this bygone kingdom.

The village roads were dilapidated, the buildings were a haphazard mess, and trash was strewn everywhere, filling the air with a pungent stench. Upon seeing Ron’s group, both humans and demons showed open disgust. They all shut their doors and windows. The few who couldn’t get away in time would hastily turn their backs, muttering curses in low voices.

But for at least half the people in Ron’s group, this kind of treatment was nothing at all.

”Look on the bright side. At least they’re not throwing rotten eggs at us,” Delaford said, constantly making strange faces at the onlookers. He scared one Timid Demon so badly that it shrieked ”Timid Demon!” and fled for its life. ”When I was a kid engaging in petty thievery back in my village, the villagers treated me way worse than this.”

”Of course! I don’t need to do that kind of thing anymore.”

”Well, you goblins at least have your own lairs,” Silvia said, unfazed by the villagers’ reactions. ”Freak, demon, cursed child... Before Carolina took me away, I practically swam in those kinds of insults.”

”I heard plenty of that even when I was a slave—my ears have grown calluses,” the Vampire Descendant said, theatrically digging a pinky into his ear.

Sera and her clan had received more than their fair share of dirty looks when they first arrived in Fromm; Aive had even gotten into a fight with them. As for the Ghost Witch—that went without saying.

The pale-skinned Yelena, on the other hand, fared relatively well. The Crow Queen’s Shadow Spirits were renowned across countless planes. The powerful couldn’t be bothered to spread gossip about them, and other creatures avoided them like the plague.

Within the entire group, perhaps only Ron and Victoria were truly uncomfortable.

”I never thought I’d see the day,” Victoria said with a forced smile. ”Almost every stranger I meet treats me like a demon, yet the actual demons are acting all prim and proper... Did you see it? That Worm Demon!”

Following Victoria’s gesture, Ron saw a short, stout creature with the head of a worm. It was peddling its wares under the eaves of a house—some handmade wooden carvings and other small trinkets.

These crude toys were very popular with the village children, and a few demons were joining in on the fun. The whole scene looked incredibly bizarre, yet not a single creature in the midst of it seemed to think anything was wrong.

The Worm Demon couldn’t even speak the Common Language. From its mouthparts, which split into four segments and took up most of its head, came only a skin-crawling hissing sound.

”A Worm Demon peddler? I’m sure that’s a rare species,” Yelena said with a smirk as she walked over, a small, light green Array glowing in her hand. ”They’re formed from the souls of gravediggers. Don’t be fooled by their appearance; this stout body is actually its ’armor’. Outside of a host, its true form is a worm with four long tails. In that state, they’ll crawl into any humanoid corpse and control it.”

”In the wars between devils and demons, they’re one of the most common battlefield units. But if you look at their true nature, they’d much rather disguise themselves as ordinary people on the Material Plane, taking up professions like Gravediggers or Sweeping Manure Workers to indulge in desires similar to those of a Ghoul.”

”Don’t you bully Uncle Mute!” The Shadow Spirit’s use of Magic on a ”normal person” drew the intense ire of the local residents. One particularly brave little boy even tried to push Yelena away from the Worm Demon, wanting to protect the kind-hearted ’Uncle Mute’ with the pitiful backstory.

”Get away from me, you little brat.” Yelena’s expression suddenly darkened. She had no interest in stooping to the level of a filthy little mud-monkey. In the past, she would have already drawn her Thorn Chain.

”That’s enough, Yelena,” Aive snapped in a low, displeased voice. ”We’re not here for this!”

”No good deed goes unpunished...” Yelena shot the child a disgusted glare before unwillingly pulling back. ”Human lifespans are already short. Consorting with demons for extended periods during childhood will only further shorten their already pitifully brief time.”

”Abyssal corruption is no joke.”

”All the more reason not to waste Energy worrying about them, right?” Ron said, using the light of a roadside torch to get his bearings. ”Let’s go this way. The Wise Man’s voice came from over there earlier.”

After twisting and turning through the haphazardly laid-out village for a while, a brick house that was considered fairly well-constructed for this place appeared before Ron and the others. The building looked weather-beaten, yet it was only half-finished. The side facing the stream was completely open, lacking a wall.

And after pushing open a wooden door that was little more than decoration, Ron saw the ”Wise Man” that all the villagers had praised.

It looked gray and hazy, shrouded in shadow.

”Do demons have male and female forms?” Sera asked, her eyes wide as she sized up the figure’s build. No matter how she looked at it, it seemed to be a female...

”They don’t. It’s the same for demons and devils. Their appearance depends on what they want you to see,” Yelena snorted. ”But some are born closer to a humanoid form, like the one before you—a Pollution Worm Demon.”

The light of an ever-burning torch illuminated the entire room. The demon, which had the slender figure of a human woman, lifted its tongue—which was almost longer than its body—to block its moth-like face. Behind her, two pairs of tattered dragonfly wings rested listlessly against her back.

”Stay away from it. Don’t get within reach of its tongue,” Polly said, raising a hand to signal for everyone to back away. At the same time, she gave the creature a kind and benevolent smile. ”Under any other circumstances, I’d be more than happy to push these folks your way for you to lay your eggs in, but not right now. I’m working for them.”

”It’s already very difficult for me to lay a single egg now,” the Pollution Worm Demon—or Moth Demon, as it’s also called—said with a faint sigh. Semisolid shadows and smoke wove a flowing, transparent robe around its body. ”You must have found this place because you ran into those escaped priests, didn’t you?”

”If it were the old me, I never would have made such a mistake and let them escape. I could have even kept their servants to expand this village.”

”But you didn’t do that. Not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t, right?” Polly made herself at home, finding a place to sit and pulling out an assortment of bottles and jars to fiddle with. ”How many days does it take for you to lay an egg now?”

”When your mother was here, I believe it was still one every two days, wasn’t it?”