What was a Demon?
I used to think it was just one of those things no one could prove the existence of, much like God. Just one of the type of monsters I had to choose as a tester of weaponized avatars.
But now, I had been reborn in this world as a Demon.
Miraculously, I still kept my former appearance, if only more grown up. Yet in the end, it didn’t change the fact that I was no longer human.
Still, was I a real demon?
The sort of demons I knew were the type to worm into the hearts of humans, to corrupt them and take their souls. And with my recent experience, I’d come to hold a vague suspicion: could it be that demons were corrupting humans because they gained more experience from souls of evil people?
[Absorption] was how I drained the lives of my enemies. Something that I was now doing without a second thought.
Perhaps human thoughts and desires had come together in a stroke of random chance, and the World Tree had taken it, given it direction, turning it into what I now was. An Artificial Demon.
I was indistinguishable from a real demon, yet at the same time our natures could not be any more irreconcilable.
I was still me, only now playing the role of a demon named Shedy.
Which was why I could become a Demon for another’s sake.