Chapter 19.

Two weeks flew by in a flash.

“Oi, Greater Demon Retard, hurry up and go back to your castle already. My intention was to only let you stay that one day. I never said you could turn into a good for nothing bum and slack off at my place for two weeks straight. Don’t you have important demon affairs to take care of?”

“I took care of all my work before I showed up. Right now work is slow thanks to the idiot hero you’re guiding. If anyone’s to blame for my boredom and having no work to do right now, it’s you.”

The Greater Demon Retard had officially turned into a freeter. She laid down on her side on top of my bed with her entire body completely wrapped up like a caterpillar in my blanket with only her face visible. There was a semi-transparent screen floating in front of her. Her eyes had been glued to the screen with her usual dead fish eyes for the last two weeks straight. 

Aside from eating and sleeping, she hadn’t moved an inch from that spot since day one. She’d essentially claimed that spot on my bed as her territory. If someone else so much as approached her and she felt even the slightest bit threatened over her territory being infringed upon, she’d spit on them like a douchebag llama. 

Well, she hadn’t actually done that, but that was the impression I had while watching her at a safe distance. You shouldn’t pet exotic wild animals, else they become dependant on you and grow incapable of surviving on their own out in the wild. Was I viewing someone who other’s looked up to as a god as a wild animal? Yes. Did I give a shit? No.

As for what she’d been watching this entire time, it was a mix between the Hero and Demon Networks. The heroes didn’t know about it, but us NPCs had our own form of mainstream media channels for entertainment purposes. These stations were run by NPCs on both the demon and human sides across various worlds. They secretly recorded battles between heroes and demons.

Of course, these networks weren’t free from politicization. The hero network covered only things favorable for human NPCs while the demon network was more tailored and biased in favor of demons.

There were crackpot conspiracy theories that circulated online about these secret networks among the heroes in their world, but that was as far as it went, just rumors. Heroes didn’t seriously believe these networks really existed. Us NPCs were tight-lipped when it concerned our own entertainment mediums and even if a hero wanted to watch, they couldn’t. 

The streams were encrypted in a way so heroes could not see or hear it, only NPCs could view it. They were not only encrypted, frequency spectrums were modulated such that they were shifted outside of the heroes’ visual and auditory ranges. The heroes’ eyes and ears were encoded differently than us NPCs, what they saw and heard was not necessarily the same as us NPCs.

Of course, if an NPC was just watching a blank monitor it would be strange, so another signal was superimposed in the frequency ranges human eyes and ears could pick up. To them, it just looked like we were watching programs from their world. NPCs could view both streams concurrently with our ability to process information in parallel, so if an NPC was asked what they were watching they wouldn’t say something that differed from what the hero saw or heard.

In a virtual world like ours, it was quite easy to implement. It only required a digital high and low pass filter on the input signal to recover the two unique output signals that were superimposed. Once the frequencies were separated, with the decryption key already encoded into our eyes and ears, viewing it was the same as breathing to us.

“Haaaaaah. Hey, useless Greater Demon Retard, are you seriously planning to go around partying up with the hero?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Then why don’t you get lost and go find them so you can do that? It’s better than sticking around doing nothing at my place, right?”

“Don’t wanna.”

I started massaging my temples and asked, “And why exactly not?”

“Because I don’t wanna.”

“Can you cut the bullshit? Every time I try to evict you, you keep saying the same thing that you’re waiting for the hero to return and you’ll depart with them when they get back. You actually have no intentions to leave, do you?”

“I swear, when they’re back I’ll go with them.”

“You’re worse than a kid who won’t do their chores; when you tell them to take out the garbage they just say ‘I’ll do it later~.’ Later arrives and they say ‘I’ll do it tomorrow~.’ The next day, they keep putting it off. How old are you exactly?”

“You shouldn’t ask a lady her age. It’s rude.”

“You know what else is rude?”

“What?”

“My brick in your face as I send you flying out the window.”

I kicked the mattress up in the air in the direction of the window along with the caterpillar on top of it. While the caterpillar majestically flew through the air, I threw a brick directly at her face sending her flying out the window.

“Heal.”

She skillfully opened a rift in space directly outside the window behind her, both she and the bed appeared back in their original positions inside my room.

“That hurt, you jerk. Learn how to treat a fine high-class lady like me properly. Hitting a woman is also a crime, I’ll file an abuse report with the devs if you don’t start treating me with the respect that I deserve.”

“I didn’t hit you, a mysterious brick just magically materialized in front of your face, Miss Greater Demon Retard. And abuse reports aren’t for that you moron. Hehe, and as for respect?” I looked down at her disgraceful caterpillar form with an expression of pure contempt.

“What’s with that look? I’m just imitating you. What you do is no better than this. Does it annoy you when you see yourself in me?”

“At least I go outside.”

“You expect me to go outside just for snotty brats to throw stones at me because of the get up I have to wear? That idiotic get up is the only one that suppresses my demonic powers enough to prevent stupid humans from instinctively trembling in fear whenever they see me directly. The downside is it’s a ‘kids throwing stones magnet.’ I swear there must be some sort of hidden status effect that causes brats to want to stone the person who wears it.”

“Being the Greater Demon God sucks. I want to resign. I hate this stupid system. I want reforms. Actually, let's trade jobs. I want to be the guide or secret boss or whatever it is your role is supposed to be. You go be the Greater Demon God.”

“No way.”

“Ahhhhhh! I hate this! Stupid devs! Why’d I have to be unfortunate enough to be created as a role locked NPC?”

“Sucks to be you.”

“Ah. It’s them. About time, I’ve been watching in anticipation for two weeks straight for this.” The caterpillar with her eyes glued to the screen in front of her said blandly.

“What’s on that’s got you so interested?”

“What do you mean? Isn’t it pretty obvious? The heroes you sent to that place on a capture or kill quest.”

“Oh. So that’s what you’ve been waiting for.”

“Yeah. I wanted to see his reaction.”

“Move over, I’m a bit curious too about how things will play out.”

She unrolled herself from the blanket, sat up beside me, and wrapped the two of us inside.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve been told by my subordinates that it’s apparently more fun to watch a good show with someone else like this?”

“You mean the demon emperors and Lesser Demon Retard?”

“Yeah.”

“By the way, why are you still not even dressed properly after two weeks? You’ve seriously only been wrapped up in only my blanket this entire time?”

“It takes too much energy and is quite tiresome to get dressed properly without my personal maids around. Whenever I do it, I end up getting impatient and try to rush it, the end result is my dress slips off like it’s been lubed up. Anyway, it’s not like I’m going out anywhere, and it’s just you here, so does it even matter?”

“You’re literally a kid who can’t even dress yourself.”

“How rude, I can do it if I really focus hard enough and take my time.”

“Can you not stick so close to me?”

“Are you embarrassed or turned on?”

“Not in the slightest. I have no attraction to caterpillars, nor would I ever be embarrassed to see a caterpillar without clothes.”

“Then I see no problem with this arrangement. Since I’m just a caterpillar without clothes, don’t mind me.”

I really need to find a way to get rid of this idiot before I catch her stupidity.

“Now quiet down and just watch the show together with me.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

With the two of us closely stuck together, she peacefully rested the side of her head on my shoulder as the two of us watched the live broadcast on the screen floating directly in front of us.

It was finally starting, two heroes stood outside the front of an old worn down castle. A man and a woman.

The man had dark brown hair, donned a legendary armor, and carried a legendary dragon slayer sword on his back. The mantle attached to his arm fluttered up in the wind to his side as he looked up fearlessly at the castle before him.

The woman standing by his side had long waist-length white hair. She was on full alert with her dagger drawn unlike the still-green hero beside her.