This wasn’t the sort ument that Yumi expected to be having with a demon. It left her far more defehan she expected, uo remind herself of the reality of her fake world. “You kill humans, your very blood is lethal to humans! You’ve given no reason to see you as anything more than the enemy.”

  “A singur focus as a Hunter would be.”

  “I’m still alive because I ’t be anything else. It was you demons that taught me to be ruthless, as ruthless as you.”

  “As a warrior should be. Doubt is a waste.”

  “Then what’s the point you’re trying to make?”

  “That things are never perfectly binary like you seem to believe, but also that you ’t let that distract you when you fight.”

  Now it seemed that he was giving her advibsp; One moment he sounded like he was trying to sp her for not even thinking about what she was doing and now tellio do it. She really wished any of this would make sense. “Where is any of this going? You’re not making a lot of sense anymore.”

  “I don’t want you distracted the ime we fight.”

  “Saying I’m killing i demons isn’t really making that point.”

  “You seem to have the assumption we’re all evil and want only to kill humans.”

  “Is that an inaccurate assessment?”

  “If it was true, we could have easily wiped out the entire isnd of humauries ago and the Hunters would not have been able to do anything about it.”

  “That’s a bold cim.”

  “It’s the truth. It’s nanbsp; The weakest demon is strohan any human. A small band of demons easily wipe out a vilge and there are too few Huo stop it.”

  Yumi was reminded suddenly of the demon’s pretending to be human to py games on the vilgers. They just ighem. They didn’t always just go around killing. Most did seem to stick to their own business. “So what is this then?”

  “It’s war.”

  “War? That seems a little too simple of an answer.”

  “It’s an accurate one. Most demons don’t fight humans. Those that do are just as unique as humans. The ohat humans are more familiar with are the bloodthirsty ones. The rest however are merely fighting a very old war.”

  Chapter 406 – On the Side of Darkness

  The versation started to draw in Yumi as she lost herself to her curiosity. She felt like she was seeing a side that ran in trast with that of what she felt from the vilgers. While they weren’t blood craved for the death of the demons, she still could feel the fear ament in them. Even if they didn’t say it, they wanted all of the demons dead as well. The elder might not have wanted a war with the demons at the risk of the cost of his people, but he was no less pleased with Yumi’s killings. She felt certain of that, though she had no more proof than she did of what the demon told her now.

  But even if she didn’t pn on believing the demon, knowing what story they told on their side might give her some insight in how to deal with them iure. If nothing else, the demon wouldn’t attack her for now. He seemed too engrossed within the expnation that he told. “There’s a war between the humans and demons?”

  “Most of this is on knowledge, why do you act like ynorant of history?”

  “I teo fall asleep in history css,” she joked, tired to expin why she didn’t uand the way the world worked. Yumi also worried how the demon would take advantage of her ck of basiformation. She couldn’t lie her way through it. ‘I’ll just have to be ready to fight with what little strength I have.’

  “I’ll humor you and expin. Most humans have fotten the ins anyway and don’t tell it like it happened.”

  “And I trust a story that ’t be backed up?”

  “You going to listen or fall asleep?” Yumi turned away and started walking again, though did nothing to tell him to stop. He resumed the march to his Lord. “What you do with the knowledge is up to you. I’m not telling you to trust anything.”

  “Fine, get on with it before I do fall asleep.”

  “Humans only remember demons killing them and that’s how it has always been. Ask any of them and you’ll get the same story. But the reality is more plicated than they wish to accept. It was not always the same killing each other as it is now.”

  “How was it different? Did you actually get along at one point?”

  “Not so cliché as that. There’s never been peace between our two races, that much was clear from the start.”

  “So who started it then?”

  “It’s not quite what you’re thinkiher. We demons don’t e from this nd or world. The world of the demons is our old homend.”

  “So it’s that sort of story,” she muttered to herself.

  “What’s that?” Yumi shook her head dismissing anything that he might have heard her say. She said nothing more to stop him from tinuing. “We are explorers. There’s a multitude of worlds to travel and we’ve finished learning everything about our world.”

  “Then you’re invaders?”

  “That’s how the humans saw us. Our inal i was to figure out how this world funed. As we learned from our travels, each world has vastly different rules. So uanding those is important. But we didn’t have the ce before we were discovered.”

  Fighting her wounds, she crossed her arms left to think on what he reyed to her. ‘This isn’t quite the story I was expeg. Demons that are explorers? Who’s ever heard of that in any story? Did Yuki figure that out? No, this is too unlikely for even him to have seen it in one of his stories. Though I even believe such a wild story? It seems more likely that they were just ing to quer, not explore. Demon explorers…’

  The demon paused in his story, notig the ge in Yumi. “You doubt what I’m telling you.”

  “Of course, it seems too far-fetched to actually be real.”

  “Given our history in this world, that is no surprise. But I’ve no point lying to you about this.”

  “As a Demon Hunter, I kill demons. You wao stop.”

  “I want to fight you again, making you lose your desire to fight me because of guilt would not serve me.”

  “Even though such a story could do just that.”

  “I make a story up that makes it easier for you to hate us.”

  She sighed, still holding doubt about the whole thing. “Just tinue. I’ll decide at the end of the story.”

  “Very well. When we arrived in this world, it was already well poputed with humans. So it didn’t take us long to run across them. But they found our real forms far more frightening than we expected. They tried to scare us off thinking we were animals. We left to figure out more about the world before our iion.”

  “I’m guessing that didn’t go well.”

  “They sought us out. Giant animals running about on their nd, they wao kill us. They couldn’t really do that much to us, but that didn’t stop those among us from taking advantage of it. In the end, the humans were wiped out and the first blood illed. We thought that they were weak and nothing to worry about, but that turned out to be our mistake.”

  Now the story went to where she expected finally and just as she expected he pced the bme on the humans rather than the demons. ‘If he’s trying to cim them to be something more thas they wouldn’t have killed anyone. They couldn’t harm them anyway, they could just ighe humans a about their business.’

  “The humans had more power than we imagined and they sughtered our entire group.”

  This caught Yumi by surprise. She didn’t see that ing. “If they were so powerful to do that, why is there even any sort of fliow?”

  “A couple of reasons. Ohe explorers were not warriors. They would have been as powerful as any of those demons you slew today. But more than that, the humans of that period were more powerful than those today.”

  “They got weaker?”

  “No, we killed the powerful humans, leaving weaker bloodlio tinue. Meaning overall, humans would get weaker.”

  “You’re skipping ahead of things.”

  “Yes. After the explorers were killed, it sparked trouble in our world. Many wao aveheir deaths, while others said that it was our fault foing to their world. The resulting flict splintered us and a group angry over their death ihis world.”

  “Which is when the war began?”

  “That’s right. Those that ihis time were warriors and it became a battle of attrition. Despite what you might be thinking. The humans back then were very powerful, even for us. The heaviest fighting ended turies ago when they sealed off their world from ours. After that it became difficult to send more to this world, it takes a vast amount of energy to open portals between the worlds now. As a result, we’ve bee stranded in this world.”

  “And which are you?”

  “I was just following my Lord itle on the promise of a good fight. And I found plenty while I was here, though with the peak of the war over, it’s been b.”

  “B…”

  “Ohe campaigns ended, most of us just settled down into the territories that we took from the humans. We ’t get bad we’ve lost our i in tinuing the war as well. Not that the huma the same way.”

  “So it’s a war that will never end.”

  “Not necessarily, you just have to kill all of us and then the war is over.”

  “You make it sound like I’m the vilin here.”

  “We don’t really have much desire anymore to fight. Any sort of revenge we might have been seeking is lost or fulfilled, depending on who you ask. But we also ’t leave either, so you’re just going to have to share or kill us.”

  Yumi shrank a bit in thought. It was a straale than she was expeg from the demon. He had been quite chatty about the whole thing. She found herself more willing to accept it than just dismiss it. Though she had trouble trusting a demon, she didn’t feel like that was lying to her. Which certainly left her in a troublesome position. He might no longer have what he wanted from her.

  “But enough talking, we’ve arrived,” the demon spoke, revealing a rge structure that had a vaguely Japanese design to it. If she had to guess it was assed for demon architecture, as it looked like a home or in this case a mansion. The Lord likely had it built to fit his ego. But it still remained impressive, detailed out of stone and wood in something that likely took craftsman years to plete. It felt like a status symbol to show off more than anything.

  Worse though, Yumi wasn’t prepared for meeting the ohat was behind all of this just yet. She didn’t know where all the time went in their walk. But now she had to face the st threat and find out if Yuki truly was being held by them.