Demon King Ascension System

217 Reunited (3)

After the two of them went out of the orphanage’s gate, Robus felt that most of the annoyance that his best friend had had disappeared and decided to jump over back to his shoulder.

“Thanks for understanding, pal,” Blake whispered to the monkey’s ears, which made Amy stare at him with interest before she started talking.

“Is that a monkey you found in your new home, brother?”

“Ah, Robus? Yes. We met there and very soon clicked with each other and we’ve been best friends ever since.” Blake raised his fist to the monkey’s eye level, which then the latter extended his own fist, and bumped it with Blake’s hand.

“Robus? What a unique name,” Amy commented as she looked at the rather bulky monkey from the side.

“He looks both cute and strong at the same time,” Amy commented as she observed Robus closer. “I don’t know how I came to the second conclusion though,” Amy added as she slowly extended her hand in Robus’ direction.

Seeing the incoming hand towards him, Robus didn’t do anything right away and churn his mind. Of course, he was a prideful demon that wouldn’t just let anyone touch him freely as if he was a pet.

He had learned of that word after evolving, and his vocabulary and ability of speech seemed to have increased tremendously after his evolution. And he knew what the word pet meant, creatures that people keep as their plaything, or as a companion in the very best case.

Amy’s act of trying to extend her hand and rub his head had been identified by Robus as an act that made her think that he was a pet. Robus clearly didn’t like it as his hand threatened to slap the hand away as it got closer and closer to him.

.....

But seeing his best friend acted very nice to the girl, Robus succeeded in holding in his urge to slap the hand away, which might result in bruises appearing on Amy’s hand or a worse scenario, her wrist would dislocate from its place.

However, Robus didn’t let her touch his head either. Instead, he decided to compromise and also extended his hand to her, turning the attempt to pet his head into a handshake.

Amy’s eyebrows perked up in both curiosity and amazement as she saw the monkey act very intelligent, as she noticed even the eyes that the monkey possessed looked different from the usual animals that she had seen before.

“Nice to meet you, Robus.” Amy smiled as their hands shook.

“N-” Robus was about to exercise his newfound linguistic skill, but an unnecessary loud cough interrupted him.

“EKHEM!” Hearing the incredibly deep voice of his gorilla best friend was about to come out, Blake quickly tried his best to prevent that from happening.

He already had spouted enough bullshit back in the orphanage to make a barely believable story. If Robus revealed his ability to talk, then Blake would soon run out of bullshit as there was no way for him to explain that.

No matter how smart a monkey was, and although they have the ability to play basic retro games, a speaking monkey was still non-existent. Even with the mana seeping into his world and turning some animals into beasts, a case of a talking beast had never been found.

“Give her a reply just like how I’ve taught you, Robus. Do your usual growl,” Blake quickly added as the two creatures, one monkey and one little girl were staring at him with questioning gazes.

Blake’s words turned out to be quite puzzling to Robus. He was about to answer the girl, but Blake suddenly interrupted him and told him to answer her with a growl. ‘She wouldn’t understand me if I did that right?’ Robus thought to himself.

But of course, Robus trusted Blake with all the complicated stuff all the time, sometimes even including the train of thoughts that he had. So he didn’t question anything and just did what he was told to do.

“r.” A reply came from Robus as he nodded his head. But of course, Amy didn’t know what Robus was saying. But seeing Robus’s body language, and also his eyes, Amy genuinely felt like the monkey was replying properly to her words even though the words came out as a small growl.

It was rare to see a small monkey growl as they usually released high-pitched screams, but it just made sense to her brain when he looked at the monkey who somehow gave off a calm and mature vibe as if the monkey was even older than herself.

The two then parted hands as the three of them continued their walk.

Fortunately for Blake, Amy didn’t ask anything too detailed about what had happened for the past months since he had suddenly disappeared. She just asked some general questions about where he went and what he did.

Blake said that he was taken out of town with his new parents and they spent a lot of their time studying a lot of things and also training.

“Training?” Amy asked as she stared at her dear older brother. This time, she didn’t feel the same vibes that Blake gave off when he lied, which means that he was really indeed training. But thinking about her brother’s special condition, Amy was worried that he might be doing something reckless.

“Yes. Although I still could not use any mana, I found other ways where I could train and develop my body better. Don’t you see my body is not as weak as before?” Blake proudly pounded his chest.

Amy then scanned Blake’s body from top to bottom. Even a quick look was enough for her to know that Blake’s body had indeed grown a little bigger in such a short amount of time. And from her little outburst earlier, she could even feel his chest now had more robust muscles even though he had been quite athletic before.

“Yes, you’ve indeed looked far stronger than before, brother!” Amy smiled as she gave a thumbs-up while nodding her head.

Hearing the compliment, Blake smiled embarrassedly, his hand instinctively rubbing the back of his head as he felt his head heating up. Although he had cheated and not actually trained his body and he just pumped up status points to his physique stat, it felt rather good that someone had complimented him on that.

Amy had spent a lot of her time with Blake. From the way that he lied to the way he hid his sadness and frustrations, Amy knew them all despite her playing the oblivious role. As an orphan, it was given she was bound to be more mature at her age when she was already told to do most of the things herself ever since she was small.

And right now, Amy could feel that Blake felt genuine happiness when he talked about his life for the past month. Although she could feel her brother was hiding something here and there, she didn’t feel Blake was trying to cover up any depressing thoughts as if he had never felt like that even once in the one month that time that he had disappeared.

It was either he didn’t feel any sadness or the happiness that he felt far outweighed the bad things that happened and the bad things barely mattered.

Amy then stopped walking and looked into his brother’s eyes. Her own eyes stared so deep into his eyes that Blake was frozen in place. He didn’t even ask what had happened as he felt that Amy was about to do something.

With her eyes still staring unblinkingly at his, Amy’s voice left her mouth, her tone couldn’t be anything but very gentle. “Brother, do you enjoy your life back at your new home?”

Hearing this particular question, Blake stopped and thought about what he really felt for the past months that he had lived in the demon realm.

Without question, it was an unexpected and unforgettable experience.

Who would have known that he, a dud in the human world who couldn’t even manipulate a single drop of mana, was able to control nether as easily as if it was his own limbs after being turned into a demon.

Blake had his own guesses that he was a demon right from the start, which would explain his inability to use mana since a demon couldn’t use them, but he didn’t know that before. And having the thoughts of hating himself for his inability to use mana was a real feeling that Blake had felt before.

The treatment that he felt all this time in the human world could be summed up in a few words. Depressing, hopeless, resignation, and the last was hatred.

He had his own coping mechanism and Amy was one of the reasons why the human world could be said to be liveable. But the rest of his experience could be said to be dominant in those few feelings.

And comparing it to his life in the demon realm, even Blake had almost forgotten about those words as he spent more and more of his time in the demon realm.

There would be challenges and he would make mistakes, in fact, he had multiple of them and some proved to be almost fatal and took his life. However, in none of those times did Blake feel depressed and bitter. Blake did feel quite hopeless when his gamble had failed and he was almost killed by the flying humanoid demon, but he knew that he had fought with everything that he had.

Knowing that he had lost due to his own recklessness instead of the inability to even put up a resistance was a thousand – a million times better for Blake.

Blake learned the feeling of casting new spells, creating them himself, and even making something similar to mana engineering using the rune formations.

Although some negative adjectives might make it to his description of his experience, the ones that filled his heart were the happy positive ones.

So his answer to Amy’s question was a simple one. “Yes, I love it there more than anywhere else.”