Chapter 455. An Exciting Night with Two Girls Outside the City: The Alleged Haunted Castle. (5/7) 

I’d been silent the entire time. I didn’t particularly like touching on the subject of god very much. It always left a bitter taste in my mouth. Rosa essentially said exactly what I thought for the most part. We’d occasionally talked about the subject of gods before so she had a pretty good idea about my take on them. We felt the same for the most part. It was a pretty simple one too, ‘Screw god, we don’t need him in our lives.’

Other people were more than free to believe in god, in fact, I believe those kinds of people were needed in the world. Not everyone had tempered their minds the same way we had and they needed something to cling to when hit by sudden disaster. People needed something to help them cope with how cruel a hand reality dealt them. 

Essentially, what god provided people was hope. A belief that there would be better days ahead so long as you persevered through the hardships you faced. Hope was something I accepted that people needed. It was just a matter of where people derived that hope from. If there was no hope for the future, all that would be left was despair.

But as for the two of us, we wanted nothing to do with god. If the grim reaper comes to find us, we won’t bend over and let him claim our lives easily. We won’t despair. We’ll fight him with everything we have and once we’ve exhausted all options we’ll take our lives into our own hands. We decide when and where we die. How we die. Not the grim reaper, the harbinger of death, not nature, and certainly not god.

“Haaaaah…” Dawn seemed a bit down as a sigh leaked out of her mouth and she said, “I guess… yuh might be right… Rosa...” 

“Sorry…” Rosa apologized when she realized she’d said a bit too much.

“No… it’s fine. Somewhere… deep down… I always believed if I prayed to god every day for it to happen my mom would return in the future so my dad wouldn’t be lonely anymore.”

“Have you ever considered praying to a devil?” Rosa shot a discreet glance my way as she asked that.

“No… I’d go to hell if I did that.”

“Well, maybe you should try it sometime. Who knows, maybe devils exist and one would offer his services to you.”

“I wouldn’t even know how to find or where to begin looking for a devil.”

“Oh? Did you not know, you don’t find or look for a devil. A devil comes to find you. You simply need to call for one.”

“Call for one? How?”

“Isn’t that pretty obvious? You just need to summon one.”

“But how do yuh summon them?”

“Hmm… a summoning circle…” Rosa tilted her head to one side before she added, “and maybe offering something they would want in exchange?”

“Yuh mean… like a soul?”

“Yeah, that’d probably work. Or maybe you could offer to be their woman or something. Don’t devils like virgin sacrifices or something.”

“That’s some defamatory propaganda, don’t go randomly sacrificing virgins when no one’s asked for that. Not all devils are going to want the same thing. I bet one devil just asked for a virgin sacrifice on a whim one time then everybody started doing it thinking they all accept the same thing.” As a devil, I couldn’t stop myself from retorting.

“Hahaha, is that so?” Rosa asked with a bemused expression.

“Yeah… probably.”

“You really sure about that, you didn’t sound very confident just now.”

“Forget it.”

“Hey, since we’re already in a place with the perfect ambiance, why don’t we try summoning a devil?”

“Summoning a devil? Here? That’s crazy, Rosa.” Dawn shook her head adamantly rejecting her sudden proposal.

“Why not?”

“Who knows what a devil will do. What if we die?”

“If he attacks us, we attack him back. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I doubt devils are that strong anyway. Their true power lies in their silver tongues, their ability to smooth talk and deceive people. As long as you’re sharp-minded and don’t let them deceive you into making a bad deal, you should be just fine.”

“But I’m not exactly that sharp though. I’d definitely be deceived by one.”

Yes, you would definitely be deceived. Considering how one’s beside you right now.

Rosa reassured, “You’ll be fine since we’re here with you. With us here, there’s no chance you’ll ever be deceived by some random devil. You can count on us.”

“Will a devil even appear if I’m with the two of yuh?”

“Devils are surely social people since they know how to talk their way out of anything. So unless that devil is somehow a misfit reject among devils and extremely antisocial - (like my boyfriend lol) - ehem or that devil only likes girls, I don’t see why he wouldn’t appear just because we’re with you.”

But... I am a misfit reject among devils and I’m also extremely antisocial. Are we actually trying to summon a different devil right now? I somehow felt perplexed. She was obviously saying these things just to take jabs at me.

“What was that yuh mumbled just now? I didn’t hear everything yuh said.” Dawn sought clarification.

“It’s nothing. It wasn’t important. Anyway, let's get to work.”

“Get to work? How do we even start?”

“Uh… drawing a summoning circle on the ground I guess.”

“What would it even look like?”

“A circle with a hexagram in the middle of it?”

I internally rolled my eyes. As if summoning a devil would be that easy. I only knew that since I’d already tried it out of desperation a long time ago in my attempt to better understand devils as a devil.

“The hexagram is the Star of David. Wouldn’t yuh use a pentagram, the seal of Solomon instead?” Dawn suggested.

Huh?

Rosa countered back with her reasoning, “What? But a hexagram has six points, a six-sided hexagon at the center, and six triangular spaces. So it’s 666, the mark of the beast, right? Also, I thought the seal of Solomon was the hexagram.”

I was under the same impression as Rosa. Movies always used the hexagram, didn’t they? Was that just some propaganda? The two of us were a bit clueless when it came to religion-related matters and I honestly had little interest in actually touching or reading the bible. As far as I was concerned, it was a work of fiction.

“Hmm… honestly, I’ve seen the seal of Solomon depicted that way too so I’m also a little confused about it.” 

So even Dawn wasn’t completely sure about it.

“In that case, can’t we just try both?”

“That’s true, but what would we even draw it with?”

“Blood?”

“Uh… Rosa, that’s a bit… extreme, don’t yuh think? We don’t even know how big a summoning circle would need to be. We might not even have enough blood in our bodies to complete one.”

“Who said we had to use our blood? We can just use animal blood.”

“I can’t agree to that. If yuh’re going to kill an animal it should only be to eat it.”

“Haaaaah… right… well, there’s nothing saying we can’t cook it and eat it after we’re done, right?”

“Mmm… though I do keep a revolver in the gun safe under the seat inside my pickup truck… hunting an animal down at this hour would be pretty difficult.”

“No need for a gun. I’ve got something perfect for the job with me. As for hunting at night, you can leave that to me.” Rosa had a mysterious smile on her face as her eyes narrowed.

Well, she had the skill set of an assassin. Hunting at night should definitely be something she’s practiced and well-versed in.

“Oh, right. Yuh’ve probably got a cooking knife among your things, right?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

I was pretty certain the first thing Rosa thought of were her nails rather than the knife in our bag.

“Alright then, while I go do that, you two should check out some of the floors above, find an appropriate location, and clear the ground so we can get to work as soon as I get back.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Dawn seemed strangely eager to meet a devil for a girl who’d been a devout believer in god up until this point.

I suppose that merely reflected how much she loved her dad. The two were one in the same, willing to sell their soul for the other’s happiness.

Really now, this father-daughter pair…