Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

The party returned to a large amount of fanfare, it seems one of the villagers had been trying to find a monster to tame and saw the party moving through the woods with the spoils of their hunt. They had run ahead and informed the rest of the village who gathered near the northern entrance to welcome their new 'heroes' back from the dangerous hunt.

"Thank you so much adventurers, you really saved us! And you only did it in a day!" The village chief came out to greet them upon their return as well. Rena noticed him greedily eye the monster's pelt for a moment, but he did not say anything since he knew the guild's rules on spoils.

"Oh it was no problem! Honestly it went down a little too easy for a beast of its rank." Jen answered.

Rena was about to agree before she heard her best friend mutter under his breath, "For some of us anyway…"

After hearing Lucius say something like that, she could easily tell that he had a hard time. She was not able to see how things looked from his end. All she knew was that his distraction worked and helped to pull attention away at the right moments for them to attack. Granted, after the first attack he did not participate much.

It sounded like he had made a few other attacks, but they did not seem to be all that impactful.

That was when it hit her…he must have been feeling a little inferior after the fight. It was so easy for the rest of the party, and yet, for him…the bear must have seemed like an insurmountable wall…

"Hey Rena? You with us?"

Jen's voice broke through her inner thoughts.

"Sorry, I was thinking, what's up?"

"We are going to head over to the village chief's house to discuss some financial details relating to the pelt and claws we gathered. He gave us a house on the southern end for the night. It's just a ways before the gate we came here through when we first arrived. Can you and Lucius go set it up for us?"

She nodded in affirmation, then grabbed Lucius by the wrist and pulled him along after her. For a moment he looked a little confused, but soon enough simply went with the flow. It seemed he recognized the look on her face that said something like: 'you're not getting away from me this time' or something.

Since there was no longer any rush, they were actually able to take in the sights of the village a little bit. Rena had noticed that there were a large number of monsters and wild animals all around the village. There were so many kinds of F-Rank and Unranked Wolf monsters that it almost rivaled the amount they saw in the woods.

Rena had long known of the existence of tamers in the world. It was a subsect of dark magic. In fact, the same magic was once used to enact slave pacts during ancient times, though, thankfully those spells have long since been lost. However, taming magic has held on. The stigma behind it can be rather hard to shake due to the historical relation it has to the ancient slave magic.

However, it was tempting to wish for the ability to tame monsters. Whenever she thought about being able to cuddle up to a giant wolf every night, her heart nearly swooned.

Things in the village did not look like this was something they just did for fun. Rather, it appeared to be a necessity. The monsters were working on tasks and jobs throughout the village and it was often side by side with their masters. In truth, it was quite cute to watch.

They finally made it to the house that Jen directed them to. The inside was rather plain, but workable. There was no furniture, so they would have to make due with their camping supplies and such for sleeping… but this was not the time for that.

"You said you needed to talk with me, right? So what is going on…" she asked him.

Rena listened as Lucius explained to her what happened after the fight with the bandits was over. From the outside, he had vomited, and began to groan as though he were in pain. Everyone thought he had been poisoned for a moment, but other than a punch and a kick, nothing hat hit him to suggest he was poisoned.

However, after what she heard Lucius tell her about his side of the story, she could not help but pale in the face. She remembered the trial in the forest very well. She even remembered whatever the entity was that took over Lucius' body tell her that it had blocked his memories of the incident.

Now, it seemed like it no longer held those memories back…but why? Did the shadow entity want Lucius to start feeling all of the sudden? That did not make sense, what would it gain from such a situation. If anything, the apathetic Lucius that did not care if innocent villagers lived or died would probably suit whatever nefarious deeds it wanted committed on its behalf.

"Okay…so you remember what happened in the forest, that you killed my cousins as well as how you did it…but what does that mean? Did not remembering it make it easy to ignore the cry for help?"

"No…I feel…like I want to feel bad about it. I also feel like I want to feel bad about your cousins. Hell, I even feel like I want to feel bad about killing bandits…but every time I start to experience those feelings, something gets in the way and pulls it away from me." Lucius admitted.

The look on his face was pathetic. Rena had no idea what to do to comfort him. What she suspected was the thing that 'pulls away' his emotions had to be the shadow entity from the trial. Nothing else made sense to her. One thing she knew for sure, was that she was going to be here for him. She promised to protect him, both to the entity in the trial, but also she made another one to herself.

"If you ever feel like you can't decide what is right and what is wrong…rely on me. I'm not perfect, I make the wrong choices a lot…but if you need someone to double check your thoughts with…rely on me." Rena offered. Her hand was placed over her heart, a sign of her sincerity.

"Thank you…I will." Lucius said with a slightly sad smile.

Rena could not help herself, so she pulled him into a tight hug. There were a lot of unknowns right now for him: his is lack of power, the loss of his mark's activation, the inability to cast magic, and the control that he lost over his own emotions…it was all too much for a single boy to bear, so she would bear it with him.