The Broken Halo

Chapter 8: Stealing

Simon had to make a plan to steal from a demon who was at the Fiend level, and his plan was based on what he knew about the demon.

He knew a lot about the man—his personality, behavior, habits, and even his normal day-to-day activities.

And Simon knew that the third day of the week was when the demon usually went out to drink with his friends, and when he came back home, he was always a drunk mess.

In the middle of the night, when it was completely dark, Simon chose to sneak out of the house while his mother was deeply asleep. Because of the stress, hunger, and weakness, her sleep was always so deep that people could be talking in their house and she would not know.

That was how weak she had become.

Simon left the house and then snuck his way to the demon’s house. There was no source of light in the tribe, and complete darkness engulfed the entire tribe and beyond.

And it was at times like this that Simon appreciated the fact that he had the demon cat lineage in him. He could see in the dark with his cat eyes, and the darkness did not affect him in the slightest.

Reaching the demon’s house, Simon found where the demon usually kept his spare bone key for the door, and then he opened it.

He heard the loud snoring and mumbles of the demon in his drunken state, but he completely ignored him and did not bother to peek at the demon’s current condition.

He went to the demon’s bathroom, and the stench from it blasted into his face. Fortunately for him, he came prepared, since he expected such a thing.

Although he called it a bathroom, it was nothing like a human bathroom. It was literally just a closed space with a hole at the corner of the room and a bucket of water at the center.

To his left was a makeshift curtain made out of beastskin, and Simon knew that no matter what, he must never enter that room.

Why?

Because that room was where the demon shat, and it was the source of the terrible smell in the house.

Demons did not bathe—especially demons in a declining minor tribe like theirs. Water was like treasure, and wasting it on something like bathing was not something any demon would ever do.

The terrible stench of low-ranking demons was something many hunters complained about back when he was a human, and Simon wondered how his previous self would react to the stench he was currently enduring.

Fortunately for him, he was a demon now, and he had gotten used to the stench of demons to the point where he smelled nothing unless it was truly bad.

And if a smell was truly bad to him, he wondered if it would be enough to kill an average human.

It was an intriguing thought, but one he pushed to the back of his mind.

His focus was on the bucket of water at the center of the bathroom. He approached it, removed the bucket, and then lifted the stone on which it had been standing.

A pouch appeared before Simon’s eyes, and his eyes glittered with relief and desire when he saw it.

Without hesitation, he took it and hid it in his makeshift clothes.

’I wish I had an inventory like humans do. Humans really have a lot of advantages in some things compared to demons.’

That was Simon’s thought back then, but it did not stop him from continuing his plan.

After stealing the pouch of bone coins, he placed the stone back and returned the bucket of water to its original position.

But he did not stop there. He brought out a bone the size of his finger. The bone had carvings on it, and he threw it into the bucket of water.

With that, he left the demon’s house, with nobody in the tribe knowing that he had just stolen from one of the richest individuals among them.

The next day, the entire tribe woke up to the enraged roar of the demon, which later led to a fight between him and another demon who was a bonecrafter.

His mother later told him that the man who was his previous employer was accusing another bonecrafter—his fiercest competitor—of stealing his money.

According to his mother, there was concrete evidence against the bonecrafter. A bone with the signature carvings of the bonecrafter was found in the water bucket of his previous employer.

This caused many demons to believe that he had stolen the money, since all evidence pointed toward the bonecrafter, and many demons in the tribe began pressuring him to return the money. But he vehemently denied all accusations against him.

This caused so much friction in the tribe because his previous employer threatened the tribal chief, telling everybody that he would migrate to another tribe since his hard-earned money was not safe there.

He told everyone that unless his money was returned by his competitor within three days, he would leave the tribe.

This was a major problem for the tribe because the loss of even a single bonecrafter would further damage the economic state of the tribe, and the tribal chief tried to find a solution between the two bonecrafters.

But how could a solution be found when the real thief was somebody else?

Three days of intense negotiations, arguments, and fights passed, and both bonecrafters left the tribe, further damaging its already fragile economy.

But Simon did not care about this, since he knew he did what he had to do to survive.

If his actions led the entire tribe to extinction, then he did not mind—as long as he and his mother survived.

Besides, it was not like he had a soft spot for demons after all. He had seen firsthand the chaos and destruction they brought upon a world.

What truly bothered him was whether he should tell his mother the truth—or keep it hidden from her.