Felix stood frozen in the grime of the back alley, his hand clamped tightly over his mouth.
Seven days.
His pulse thudded against his throat, threatening to crack his composure. His mind began to spiral into a mess of overlapping contingencies and afterthought. One week wasn't enough.
It was practically a death sentence for his current strategy. It's passive growth might've worked in the span of two, but one? Damn it, he growled, clenching his teeth.
What angered him even more was the laugh bubbled up in his chest, fueled by a sudden adrenaline that felt sickeningly like the high he'd felt after his rare pull.
He felt a surge of twisted excitement at the sheer impossibility of the challenge, but he quickly raised a hand and delivered a stinging slap to his own cheek. The sound echoed off the brick walls.
"Get it together," he hissed. He breathed out slowly, forcing the panic back into the hollow of his chest. The variables were coming too fast. Every time he tried to ground himself, the floor beneath him was swept beneath him.
If he stayed on this path, he'd be left with a handful of copper and a doubled price tag that would bury him before he made a mark. He needed an immediate attraction, or at least soon.
His fingers went to the fabric of his pocket, feeling the slight vibration of the contract. It was the only variable he truly controlled, yet it was the most volatile.
He had wanted to hoard it like a dragon — saving the paper until he was preferably standing in the shadow of a genuine overlord — but the recalibrated timer was a cruel reminder that he didn't have the luxury of patience.
He needed a signature, and he needed it from someone whose soul carried enough weight to break his bank out of the zero-soul rut.
Felix looked down at the unbelievable pile of filth combined with dust at his feet. The broom felt heavy and useless in his hand. He couldn't afford to be a janitor for seven days. He needed an alternative.
His eyes shifted toward the back door of the shop, then returned to the ground. With reluctance, he continued sweeping.
𓋹
By the time he stepped back into the dim interior of the shop, his panic had cooled into a hard, obsidian resolve."Doll-face! Get in here!" Barnaby's voice echoed from a door behind the counter Felix hadn't noticed before.
Felix shoved the broom into the corner before rounding the counter, stepping into what looked like a cramped break-room. It looked to be a makeshift living quarter, as a stained mattress occupied most of the floor space, flanked by a precarious pile of clothes and a single, flickering lamp.
Barnaby sat on the edge of the mattress, looking every bit the tired, century-old Imp he was.Barnaby pointed a gnarled finger toward a cracked porcelain sink in the corner.
"Wash your hands. I've got one last thing for you before I lock up." Felix complied, the cold water slicking over his white skin. As he dried his hands on his trousers, Barnaby held out a small, heavy leather pouch and a scrap of yellowed paper.
The moment the pouch neared him, Felix felt it. A wave of greed, low and pulsing, radiated from the leather. From his wave of greed that he'd thought of labeling 'meta-awareness', he'd immediately deduced what it was. Cash.
And a decent amount of it. His fingers twitched, glad that there was a layer of protection between him and the souls. "I'm closing up," Barnaby grunted, pressing the pouch into Felix's palm.
"Take this to the address on that note. Don't look inside, don't stop for a drink, and for the love of Satan, don't lose it. It's a delivery for a. . sensitive associate." He noticed that Barnaby said this with a sense of caution.
Felix looked down at the paper. The address was scrawled in hurried ink and abysmal handwriting that pointed toward a district deeper in the Pride Ring.
"You're trusting me with this?" Felix asked, his smooth voice masking the internal battle he was having with his system, which was practically salivated over the coins in his hand.
"I'm trusting that you're too smart to steal from the guy giving you a roof." Barnaby headed toward the front door to flip the 'Closed' sign.
"Now get going. And Felix? I probably don't have to say this but keep your head down. I know you survived your first time in hell, but this area is soft to the deeper parts of pride. The closer you are to the center, the worse things get."
Felix nodded, tucking the heavy pouch into his pocket. He could feel the weight of it against his thigh, a siren song of souls that could solve his 100-soul problem in an instant if he let the system devour it.
He stepped out into the red evening with the address clutched in his hand.
The walk toward the new direction was an insult on his senses. As Felix moved away from the relatively quiet outskirts, he noted the respective buildings that looked like they had been stitched together from Victorian nightmares and neon-lit decay over the streets, with most of the houses glowing with sickly bright color.
His two slit-like nostrils finally got used to the constant smell of sulfur and expensive perfume, but the strong metallic, eerie smell needed more time. Felix kept his pace steady, but his eyes were constantly scanning.
He noticed the demographic. While the fringes were a messy blend of freshly fallen Sinners, it was dominated by the Hell-borns. Imps were everywhere, but they were a far cry from the sketches one might expect in any form of literature.
He saw brute-class Imps with massive, boulder-shouldered monsters with thick, snubbed horns acting as bouncers for clubs that leaked muffled, screaming bass. Then there were the lanky types with long tails that seemed to have a mind of their own, scurrying between alleys like red-skinned rats.
It was here that Felix noticed a pattern. He watched a pair of Imps arguing over a glowing crate. One had thick, bold white-and-black stripes circling their horns — the male, he inferred — while the other's horns were a solid, obsidian black with only faint, thin markings of white — the female.
It was a small detail that Barnaby hadn't bothered to explain or mention, but Felix filed it away. It was a reminder that he still knew so little. That needed to change.
He passed a storefront where a Sinner was being publicly reconfigured by a demonic tailor, their screams ignored by the crowd. Further down, a group of demoness were leaning against a billboard, their wings tucked tight as they appraised the passersby with predatory boredom.
He looked down at the scrap of paper, then changed his walking pace to a casual jog.