“Hey, Zoey! Doesn’t it seem weird that we’re getting so many cases lately?” Tink flew alongside Zoey.

“There’s been a lot of daemons. Aren’t daemons born from the suffering of humans? Are there a lot of people suffering in the city somewhere?” Zoey climbed through the window of the abandoned building.

“I didn’t know that daemons are born from the suffering of humans. How do you know that, Zoey?” Tink asked.

“I thought you knew everything about the magji world.” Zoey was surprised as she began spreading her mahna outside of her body to sense the daemon inside this place.

“Yeah, the magji world! Daemons aren’t a part of that.” Tink corrected Zoey.

“Haven’t magjistars been fighting daemons forever? How come they don’t know anything about them?” Zoey asked.

“What would we need to learn about those man-eating monsters? We just need to kill them until they don’t pop up anymore.” Tink shared her thoughts.

“...” Zoey frowned at that response.

There was no way the magjistar community was really this ignorant, right? Zoey then thought a little about history. In her social studies class, they were going over the 1600s-1800s which was the era when slavery was prevalent in the country. Back then, people full-heartedly believe, and some people now still believe that black people are inferior. There was no valid research or studies done to prove this thought, just pure propaganda and brainwashing.

Although it was 2021, Zoey didn’t think it was any different for magjistars. She didn’t really have a good opinion of most magjistars when it came to knowing the difference between right and wrong. She would’ve excluded her friends from this group if it wasn’t for Hayato. It was kind of understandable why magjistars don’t try to learn more about daemons since they regularly try to kill and eat them on sight. There had to be some people that wanted to research more deeply about daemons, right? Wasn’t there a group in the magji world literally called the Learned or something? Zoey couldn’t believe they had nothing on daemons.

“Did I say something wrong?” Tink noticed Zoey’s silence.

“No. It wasn’t wrong, just different from how I thought.” Zoey stood behind the door with the daemons inside.

“Well, what do you think about daemons?” Tink whispered. They, too, sensed the daemons inside.

“Kikikiki. That poison daemon was right! We can feast on so many humans when we work together!” Turtle Daemon giggled.

“Was that our twelfth human so far? I think I’m getting a stomach ache, hehehe.” Mantis Daemon rubbed her scythes on her stomach.

“Who knew by starting a fake rumor that his place was haunted and filled with ghosts would have humans running over here in droves!? That poison daemon is brilliant!” Hedgehog Daemon rubbed the quills on his head in joy.

“It was right for us to swear our allegiance to her. She is not only smart but powerful as well. Did you see that huge daemon she has under her control? Even if we rushed him altogether, we wouldn’t stand a chance!” Turtle Daemon stood up and shouted.

“The only way we could join them is if we got stronger. We can’t be satisfied being Class Four daemons if we want to join the attack on the magjistars. Let’s quickly bait more humans and grow even stronger!” Mantis raised her scythe arms.

“Yeah! Kill the magjistars!” Turtle Daemon and Hedgehog Daemon cheered.

The door broke down as Zoey revealed herself along with Tink, who flew in behind her. The daemons screeched at the sudden intrusion and made some distance from the door. Zoey stared at the three humanoid daemons with animal and insect parts. Just as the turtle one was about to speak, Zoey used Dash and appeared in front of him.

Her fist came rising from a low angle near the floor as it impacted against the turtle daemon’s shell. He screamed in pain as he clutched his shell and fell to his knees. Behind Zoey, the daemon with scythes for arms swiped to take her head from her shoulder. Zoey didn’t even turn her head as she heard Tink shouting something behind both of them.

“Twist and Squeeze!” Tink threw her hands out toward the mantis daemon.

A shrill feminine scream came from the mantis daemon. Her thin legs twisted into a horrific state, throwing off her balance and making her sneak attack on the magjistar miss horribly. Zoey turned and looked at the suffering daemon without a bit of sympathy before making her way to the daemon with spikes all over his back. The hedgehog daemon saw how quickly she took down his allies and didn’t hesitate to make his way to the window.

Zoey pulled her arm back as she gathered her mahna in her arm. She threw a punch far away from the fleeing daemon in his direction. Just as the daemon was about to throw himself out of the window, the shockwave of wind and mahna slammed itself into the hedgehog daemon’s back. The force of the attack caused the daemon to bang his skull against the window. When Zoey saw that he wasn’t going to get up anytime soon, she gathered the three in a pile and stood over them.

“Just kill us already.” The turtle daemon said.

“Tell me more about this attack on the magjistars.” Zoey ignored his words.

“Heh.” The mantis daemon realized something. “You can’t kill us if you want to know information about the attack! Don’t tell her anything!”

Zoey grabbed the mantis daemon by the head and used Mahna Gathering Bomb. The feminine daemon initially tried to struggle, but soon she couldn’t even raise her arms as Zoey drained her mahna. Eventually, the mantis daemon turned into a husk. A husk that suddenly turned into smoke and revealed a magji shard?

Even Zoey was surprised at this outcome. It was her first time using this magji technique on a daemon. She mainly used it on Hayato to track him when he went all ghost. As she held the magji shard in her hand, she could feel that something about this magji shard was different from the others. It was like someone’s heart was beating in her hand…

The turtle daemon looked on in horror at what he just saw—something he’s never seen before in his life. Zoey pocketed the magji shard when she also noticed her gloves weren’t snapping at each other to try and devour it first. They were like actual dogs who tried to get any piece of food in front of them as quickly as they could. Even when Zoey disciplined them, the next time, they just tried to devour them faster before she could punish them.

“Will you promise to give me a painless death if I tell you all that I know?” The turtle daemon tried to bargain.

“Talk.” Zoey didn’t agree to anything with the monster that assisted in killing twelve people.

“They came to us first. Each of us was doing our own thing until they gathered us up and stuck us together. We were promised humans to eat as long as we followed their instructions. They killed anyone who had a problem with it and sorted the others into groups like ours.” He explained.

“This is your only warning. Don’t be so vague. Give me names or descriptions. How many daemons were there? How strong were they?” Zoey shot question after question.

“There were six of them. One was a feminine daemon with green hair, one looked like a normal human with brown hair, one looked like a human child, one had grey skin, one had big giant muscles, and the last one was an animal. There were dozens of daemons. I can only imagine they were Second Class daemons from how easily they gathered us and killed some of us.”

“Class?” Zoey was confused but was writing all of this information down in her journal.

“The strength of a daemon determines their class. First Class is considered a daemon king and leader of all daemons. Second Class is below that, and it goes all the way to Fifth Class.”

Zoey was upset. The daemons had their own way of ranking their strength that wasn’t S-Grade through D-Grade like magjistars, and she had no idea until now. She hoped there wasn’t much of a difference between a Fifth Class daemon and a D-Grade magjistar, or she was going to be even more upset at the magjistar community. Literally, all she had to do was ask this daemon, and he willingly gave her information about daemon culture! There wasn’t a single magjistar who thought to do this?

“What happened after you all were forcefully brought under their control?” Zoey asked.

“The green-haired daemon with poison told us ways how to lure humans and ambush magjistars. We just followed what she said, and this is how we’ve been living ever since.”

“Tell me about the attack,” Zoey remembered a few of those daemons, but some of the others sounded new.

“All I know is that there will be a big attack on the magjistars. They were going to call us together whenever that was, and we would attack together to exterminate the magjistars.”

“Alright.” Zoey placed her hand on the still unconscious hedgehog daemon and began to drain his magji as well until he poofed into a magji shard as well. “Do you know where the other daemons are?” She asked her final question.

“No. Now give me the painless death you promised me.”

Zoey felt she could do a lot of good with this information. She stood over the turtle daemon and brought her fist down on his head. His innards splattered over her gloves and body as she fished out his magji shard. This time, her gloves did try to eat the magji shard, unlike the other two beating magji shards. She smashed their heads together as she pocketed some proof that she completed this case.

“Here you go, Zoey!” Tink casted a spell and cleaned Zoey up.

“Thank you.” Zoey took out her phone and called the Cleaners to deal with the aftermath of this place.

“Are we going to warn everyone about the attack?” Tink flew next to Zoey.

“We can’t let innocent people die.” Zoey nodded her head. “We have to tell everyone.” The Council should be able to handle this.