Strawberry Devil in a Fantasy World

"It's simple, I'm the leader of the demon faction."

"Oh, and here I thought you are his lackey."

"You mean De Planck? He's only a side show. What, you look displeased."

Huh? Is he joking? He has to be. He's probably a puppet. his way of speech is nothing like a mastermind I imagined. No, he's definitely just a disposable tool.

"Really. I was expecting someone a bit more unique and maybe powerful to be the mastermind. You're a disappointment, seriously." I shook my head slowly.

He cackled maniacally, "Aheha...ha. You're a funny one! Let's make this quick. Hand over your soul or should I get rough with you like I did with your little one? Kehaheaha...!"

Just moments before I rushed to save Smoothie, I had quietly used my void barrier to wrap this small section of the north wing, only leaving a few gaps to allow signals to pass through as not to disrupt any links between De Planck and the |devious| trait possessed by this demon. Though, I still couldn't be sure if it was De Planck who was controlling him.

Oortez was on standby elsewhere by my order.

I guess no one else is coming? Better less fish than broken net. One catch is good enough for now.

"Go to hell." I replied coldly.

The swap was instant. In its place was the a replica already prepared within my subspace. It wasn't a perfect replica but only those with keen eyes would notice the differences. After all, I wasn't omnipotent.

Once we were within my subspace, everything else was easy peasy. I could quarantine whoever I wished and however I wished with no limitations whatsoever. My ability to sever space was something I was absolutely confident in, at least within my subspace. Mending spaces together, well, there was room to improve.

The first thing I did was to simultaneously erase the magical seals and quarantine this demon within my void barrier. There was no way I would risk triggering any unknown mechanisms.

As for the demon, I had plans for him. He was stuck inside my void barrier with his time slowed to a crawl such that even if he had a way to escape, it would take hours my time. One could never be too careful thus I stacked another four layers of void barrier on top.

Oortez who was on standby sprang into action. I gave him a lot of work. He was surprisingly obedient for some reason, whether he was acting or not didn't matter as long as he had done the tasks I assigned to him.

Immediately after the transfer, I teleported Smoothie and I into my bedroom. Then, I carefully laid her on my soft and comfy bed.  

"What... What just happened...?" Smoothie murmured.

"You had a nightmare. Close your eyes and rest. Let me fix your fey core first. I won't let you disappear on me." I said, putting on a brave smile before I altered her state of consciousness into that of a deep slumber. It was something I was able to do after I had evolved.

Destroying a fey core was easy. Creating my own fey was mostly automatic. The issue was fixing a fey core that didn't belong to me. In addition, I had to return the leaked soul energy back to Smoothie. Fixing it should be easy per my understanding but I asked just to be sure.

Echo, how do I fix her fey core? Tell me.

[Your understanding is correct.]

It totally read my mind just now.

Alright, here I go.

There were two ways. The easiest way for me was actually just to create a new fey core and transplant her soul before sealing it. However, there was a risk of energetic repulsion. The other way was to create an outer fey core, and over time the two would merge into one. I picked the latter because it was much safer.

Since time was of essence, I quickly created a blank fey core to stop the leakage. Then, I immediately healed her back to full health and had her rest in my bed.

Oortez was still busy healing the other folks which none of them I recognized except for Haelley. Surprisingly, even though Oortez was a demon, he was still quite adept in the healing art. As for the reason no one was saying or shouting was because Oortez had put them all into coma using forbidden magic. Of course, this was by my order to prevent needless outrages and struggles. To be frank, no one wanted to be near a demon.

Once I confirmed that Oortez hadn't tried anything aside from my earlier orders, I began gathering traces of Smoothie's soul energy from our surrounding. That was when I noticed a strange property with her soul energy.

How come her soul energy immediately gravitates toward my core?

Thankfully, my barrier stopped any of her soul energy from interacting with mine that would have otherwise mix together. In normal circumstances, soul energies didn't readily interact with other energies. They were kind of like noble gases of the periodic table of elements. Occasionally, they would also repulse. Or at least, that was based on my experience so far.

Out of curiosity, I examined her soul energy in secret.

Hmm...? Why do they feel like my own memories? It couldn't be, right?

There were likely gaps in my memories but since I didn't have them, I couldn't tell which ones were missing.

My stance to forgetfulness was that if I couldn't remember it then it likely wasn't anything important. However, to think Smoothie's soul energy contained my memories only further confirmed my suspicion.

Smoothie wasn't from this world.

I examined the memories further. Since I had none to compare with, I couldn't come up with anything conclusive only that they very likely were the memories I was missing. I couldn't identify who Smoothie could have been either.

Looks like I have to ask her when she's fully rested.

My current self didn't need memories of my past life thus I promptly returned her soul energy and carefully sealed it within her fey core.

After I altered her state to that of deep sleep and enveloped her in my void barrier, I went to check on how the others were doing.

"Good work, Oortez."

"Milady, I am unable to restore all of them to full health." He stated politely.

He had started calling me that a few hours ago after that facade in the city. Whether he was acting or had a change of heart because one of his demonic trait had stopped influencing him, I couldn't tell. However, I found his current behavior interesting and peculiar in a good way regardless of his prior trespassing.

"That's fine. I'll take over."

Not everyone was injured but those who were had severe injuries.

I could restore fey bodies because I used to be a fey being. Fey bodies were quite simple compared to real flesh and bones. Because of that, I wasn't confident I could restore physical lost limbs and heal serious wounds even with my new powers. Again, I wasn't omnipotent.

"Oortez, would you like to check with your knowledge in my possession related to healing arts?"

"Unnecessary. I leave the rest to you."

He seemed so disinterested even though this was a great opportunity for him.

"Ah, alright, I'll see what I can do."

Technically speaking, within my subspace, my creations could last indefinitely. Therefore, I decided to just use apply fey magic to restore the injured folks. In this manner, I would patch them up with fey bodily material, and with enough time, their physical body should restore to full health after completely assimilating all the fey parts. 

Generating fey parts was easy as pie since I'd been doing that for ages. Luckily, I knew what these winged beasts originally was supposed to look like so I quickly patched them up. Only a few of them were in bad shape to begin with out of the ten I found there.

To think those researchers were this eager to butcher them for research materials... What has the world come to? It's probably not just the humans either. Who knows what the other nations are up to?

Obviously, there weren't excessive bleedings from anyone since the researchers probably planned to harvest mana from these captured winged beasts.

Speaking of the captives, there were a few who weren't winged beasts. It wasn't like I could just return them to that facility. Using what information I had, I patched them up to the best of my abilities.

Oortez who was simply bored now had his interest piqued somehow. He was now carefully examining and studying the ones I had personally healed.

I can't fault him for that. He's certainly true to himself.

Once my healing work was done, I swapped the phantom facility with the real facility again before dissolving the former. Keeping a phantom that size was seriously mana intense.

With all that said and done, I transferred myself to the demon I had captured just earlier.

"Since you love dissecting others for knowledge and resources, don't expect your death to be painless. Actually... I'm not sadistic. Tearing up your soul and learning from it will be quite a treat. Thanks for the meal! And... You won't be missed. Oh, perhaps that Hero King will miss you. I don't know, but we'll have a nice chat. I'm sure he'll come to an agreement with me. Anyway, enough of my monologue, let's get started!"