John was not a big fan of American churches. This wasn’t a comment on religiosity or organized worship, but purely on the buildings. After having seen glorious cathedrals and even the stone churches of Europe, the wooden constructions that decorated smalltown America just felt inadequate. Many of them seemed like a two-family home that had a cross and a belltower slapped onto it.

‘I suppose something good could be said about the homely feeling that gives the entire thing?’ the Gamer tried to play devil’s advocate while walking towards the white-painted building. The town and fields around it were devoid of all activities. Under normal circumstances, the winter might have been attributed to that. The simpler, if supernatural, explanation here was the fact that they were inside a barrier. Which was also why his entire harem could tag along as he walked, with their magical appearances and their far from conservative clothing.

They were still in the south of New Libraria territory and that put them in the outskirts of the Bible Belt. John thought better of his fellow Americans than throwing stones at a scantily clad woman, but the particularly zealous folk were at least going to give them the stinky eye. Especially since they were heading towards the church. Avoiding those people was a value in and of itself.

The bus was parked behind them and Beatrice was tasked with defending it from potential nasty surprises. Similarly, John tasked Sylph to fly up and oversee the perimeter, while Metra, Aclysia and Gnome were to look over things on the ground. Siena went invisible and snuck around the back entrance of the church. The rest of the group headed for the front door.

While nothing seemed off about their surroundings at the moment, John was not about to take advancing into an unknown Illusion Barrier as a light matter. There were very few obstacles that could stand up to the fighting force that was his assembled harem. Still, a minimum of precaution had to be taken until they knew what kind of people were in charge of this territory.

“A fucking church,” Eliza cussed, when John knocked on the door. “Why did they have to take a house to the imaginary asshole and make THAT their base?”

“A good question,” John hummed. The reason why Eliza was asking it was that she was raised by abusive, highly religious parents. That had understandably caused her to despise everything to do with religion and Christianity in particular. Because of this, her question was more rhetorical in nature. The Gamer was honestly curious.

It did work out for them that this particular building had been chosen because it was right by the main road. However, it was still odd to pick a church as one’s base of operation. Especially since this one was so mediocre. There were a bunch of nicer houses around, including some sort of half-mansion with a large garden.

The immediate two reasons that John could think of, for an Abyssal to take this particular building, were accessibility or entrapment. Being next to the road did mean that a person could drive out with a mobile generator without issue. It also meant that anybody, like John, with a mobile generator could stumble over it.

‘That would mean the person who made this barrier wants to be found, though,’ the Gamer thought. “Alright, I’ve had enough of waiting,” he declared and raised one leg. A moment later, the two halves of the entrance door flew into the foyer behind it.

John tensed up immediately. Not because of what he saw, it was a lovely little room that he would have expected his grandparents to have decorated, but because a specific smell reached his nose. An iron stench that he recognized as something sinister. Next to him, Eliza growled. All of them hasted through the next pair of doors and into what would usually have been the mess hall.

What had been a copy of a place of worship had been turned into a twisted mirror of itself. Shackles hung off the walls, which were decorated with symbols drawn in blood. The benches for visitors were covered in phalluses and the many stains on the carpet made it clear they were not a very peculiar choice of armrest. Where Jesus would normally be mounted to the wall was an incredibly detailed pentagram with the face of some kind of demon depicted in gold in the centre.

“Guess that answers the why they picked a church,” John mumbled and walked up to the basin that would have usually been filled with holy water. While the marble thing was empty at the moment, the toilet smell wafting from it left little doubt about what usually went in there. “Defiling a ‘sacred’ space like this is pretty disgusting.”

“Whatever floats their fucking boats,” Eliza stated, glancing at the bloodstains. “Not defending the torture or any of that shit, but why shouldn’t people be allowed to piss all over religion?”

“Allowed, yes,” John responded and stepped away from the basin. “I’m not about to tell people what they can do with their bodies, but you have to agree that this,” he gestured at the stinking den dedicated to demons, “is utter degeneracy. If they kept it to STD-tested orgies to the glory of Satan, I would be halfway on-board. For all I care, people can be into watersports. Pissing into holy water and making a mockery of religious gatherings is in poor taste, to say the least.”

Eliza didn’t respond to that, but neither did she seem to feel as strongly about this as him. As understandable as her hatred for religion was, it did make her flawed in entirely different ways. Today wasn’t the day to unwrap this.

They penetrated deeper into the building by using a door at the back. Immediately they were back in a normal looking house. Everything was exceedingly orderly. However, where a normal person would have potted plants and pictures, the person living here decorated their surroundings with axes, swords and sex toys. ‘I wonder if this is how people think I live?’ the Gamer thought, trying to keep himself from getting too alienated by his surroundings.

“So, what’re we dealing with?” Rave asked.

“A sociopath, a demon worshipper, a demon, or a combination of these factors,” John told them. “I don’t exactly have more info than that shrine… Also, it seems there’s nobody else in this Protected Space but us. Gnome, Sylph and Siena haven’t found anyone yet. They would have to be exceedingly good at hiding to trick all of us.”

“How could someone who isn’t a sociopath create that mess?” Rave wanted to know.

Nia had the answer at the ready, “Could be their own blood.”

John nodded and added, “Wouldn’t surprise me if a sermon that included sitting on a dick and being blessed with urine also included blood harvesting. Doesn’t require sociopathy to have ideas like that. The Aztecs sacrificed tens of thousands of people for religious reasons and ancient humans used to create holes in their skulls for some unknown reason.”

“Gross,” Rave commented.

“Pretty much,” John agreed and opened another door. He found a disorderly bed and an open closet inside. Clothes were randomly thrown all over the place, many resembling the garb of a nun but given the stripper treatment, with a roughly rectangular spot being left open on the foot end of the bed. “Someone was packing their bags.”

‘I found something,’ Siena let him know and sent him a mental image of a computer.

‘Well, turn it on,’ John told her and turned away from the bedroom to head to her location. At this point, he was fully relaxed. He was in some sort of deliberately defiled, demonic and degenerate den, but he wasn’t somewhere dangerous. There were a load of questions he had about New Libraria though. Was the guild tangled up with demonic worship or did this place exist independently or merely by toleration of the governing entity?

Siena was upstairs, in a small office they then all squeezed into, including the girls he had originally left to check the outside. Only the midnight elemental got to sit in the office chair, courtesy of arriving first. “I like this,” she commented on a hole in the backrest, through which she could thread her tail, “a bit narrow though.”

“I think it’s meant for a species with a thinner tail,” John pointed out.

“A succubus?” Nia suggested. “Would fit with the outfits.”

“Potentially,” John agreed.

“Hmm, we might have an issue,” Siena said and gestured at the single screen. “Unless any of you know the password.”

“Inquiry: should I call Scarlett?” Beatrice chimed in.

“No,” John responded. “Type 800851E5.” Siena’s nimble fingers danced over the well-used keyboard and a moment later the password screen disappeared. Everyone looked to John for an explanation. “Look, we’re dealing with some degenerate sex demon, not a genius,” he pointed at a whiteboard to his right. “It says the password right there ‘Boobsies in numbers, capital E’.”

“…World’s greatest detective right here,” Rave remarked in a dry tone.

“Better than you, honey,” the Gamer grinned. “Anyway, what’s on there.”

“Steam,” Siena responded, as she tapped the surface of the table repeatedly. The PC seemed to be an older model and was positively cluttered with autostart programs. Boredly, the midnight elemental continued to list program names until everything had concluded and she closed the Adobe Flash update request. Then she clicked on the start icon and opened the local files. “Let’s check the images first!” she declared with sadistic enthusiasm.

The room at large groaned and was swiftly validated as they found a heap of visual records on the ongoings of the defiled mess. Looking away as much as he could, he still learned several things. One, the people sitting on the benches had been predominantly male. Two, the owner of this ‘church’ was a black haired demonette with red skin and an exceedingly muscular body. Three, the blood used to paint the walls had been harvested by flogging the people that seemed very okay with that situation.

“Okay, so we are only dealing with absolute degenerates,” John pointed out. That made things somewhat more palatable. Even if he was personally disgusted by what these people decided to do with their bodies, they were still their bodies. “Can we please look at something else? If I wanted to torture myself like this, I’d watch Two Girls, One Cup.”

“I suppose this avenue of pain has been… exhausted,” Siena giggled and closed the image view. “Let’s see what else we have here…” She clicked through the registries in search of something eye-catching. “Work files… an attempt at a romance novel… oh, a diary… want me to skip to the most recent pages?”

While John was positively surprised she didn’t just bombard them with unnecessary details to sadistically harvest their reactions, he did have to deny that one. “Do the early pages say something about who she is and where she came from?” he asked. Demons were such a rare encounter that finding one running a church in the middle of nowhere tickled his curiosity.

“Name appears to be Yumeniela,” Siena told him as she glanced across the document for further details.

“Inquiry: should I call Scarlett?” Beatrice chimed in with the same question she had earlier, albeit for a different reason this time around. “Explanation: our time could be used more wisely.”

“Maybe, but I don’t really want to expose her to all of this… information,” the Gamer told them. “I make her do enough without scooping through the private files of a muscle girl succubus with a watersports fetish. That aside, we’re in no hurry. If there’s no signs of Lorylim activity this far down south, I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Says here she is a fiend, actually,” Siena finally got back to him. “More of a combat-oriented demon, I guess?”

“My demonology is no better than yours,” John told her and looked over to Nia. “What are the chances Richard taught you about demons?”n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

“He did.”

“How much?”

“A bit.”

“Can you tell us about fiends?”

The blonde stared at him for several seconds, then explained, “Fiends are generally humanoids with red or blue skin. Rarer or more powerful specimens can grow an additional pair of arms. They have a tail of up to 75 centimetres in length. Usually, they have goat-like horns. Females often possess male reproductive organs.”

“Well, this one doesn’t,” John grumbled.

“Apparently there is a semi-stable Kingdom connection to some demon world further north,” Siena continued. “At least the writer claims that’s where she is from. New Libraria mages tried to summon her through and she obliged.”

“So New Libraria are a bunch of demon summoners?” Rave asked.

“Could just be degenerate fucking nerds that needed to summon themselves some pussy,” Eliza suggested.

“Now you agree with me that they are degenerates?” John teased.

“I never said they weren’t, just that churches can fuck off and burn.”

John rolled his eyes and smiled amusedly at the same time. At least they were in agreement that this was beyond the comfort of their fetishes. The Gamer was really comfortable with the level of bondage they went into and didn’t want to expand on the pain or filth front. Anal sex was about as dirty as he wanted things to be. “Anything else?” he asked Siena.

“Not that I can see immediately…” the midnight elemental responded and scrolled through the pages. “Was summoned, partook in an orgy, was recruited into the militia, had freaky sex with a bunch of people, saved up enough money to move away from Neo Alexandria – does not mention where that is aside from further north – and opened up this place.”

“Okay, so Neo Alexandria is their centre of operations and they have a way to bring demons into this world…” John scratched the top of his head. “That could explain their secrecy. I can’t imagine their operations were particularly large though. Otherwise, this would have leaked to the outside world ages ago…” He kept his questions about logistics and secrecy to himself for the moment because Siena’s body language suddenly shifted. She became stiff and leaned towards the screen, reading carefully. “What is it?”

“Latest entry mentions that she is going north because of a message she received about New Libraria being invaded. That was six days ago.”

“The Lorylim?” John asked. It would be a suspicious delay.

“No… invasion from the west by people in heavy armour.” She turned in the chair to look at John. “Seems like your redheaded friend had the same idea you did.”