Perspective of the Pig Demon

"Did you find anything? Where is she? …Where's Emily?" Sora, the tengu, came back, and I noticed he was… alone.

"I don't know, I don't know, and I don't know." Sora slumped down into a chair in our meeting room.

"How uncharacteristically vague of you, Mr. Sora. Would you care to elaborate?" Asked Mizue, the kappa.

Sora described how they couldn't find Yuri-Ann in her house, the only strange thing there was a magic circle. When Emily touched the circle, she disappeared.

"I wonder if that perhaps may have been some sort of teleportation magic?"

"Or maybe a disintegration spell and now she's dead."

"Wait, you don't think it's actually magic, do you?" How are they entertaining it's real magic so quickly?

"Hinoko, I know what I saw, and it was like nothing else. It's not like Emily had a similar supernatural ability."

"Wh-what about Yuri-Ann?"

"Probably the same thing happened to her. Door was locked, and I did find the key inside so I doubt she went outside."

"Perhaps we should pay a visit to the witch." Mizuki suggested.

"The witch? But you…"

"Things are different now, as much as I hate to admit it." Said Sora.

I was confused. How did things change so suddenly. There was something I had to do, so I left.

"Why?" Tears were streaming down my face. I was holding my hand to the center of the circle, but nothing was happening.

"It's best if you move away from that. Although it seems Sora found a book with a replica of the circle, it's still evidence and we should preserve it." Mizuki's voice came from behind.

"Why didn't anything happen?"

"Perhaps the circle has been depleted of magic energy. Perhaps there's another condition required. We should get the assistance of the witch and we will hopefully understand its workings."

I nodded and stepped back from the circle. And then I was suddenly embraced from behind.

"Please be more careful. I know you're anxious, but we've lost two of our own already and I don't want to lose you too."

Perspective of the Blood-Sucking Demon

Ow, ow, ow.

It turns out I basically have different muscles between my two sides. My muscles weren't sore in my vampire side and since Emily actually has to sleep at night, I had my free time, which I mostly spent relaxing and reading some books that were in the guild. There was still much more for me to learn about this world as I'm living in it.

Emily and I were sharing a room together now, and she woke up as the sun rose, at which point I switched back to my human side and experienced a lot of muscle soreness. I was stuck on my bed and I couldn't move.

"Good morning Julianne. Let's get you some protein for breakfast for those muscles."

She then picked me up and brought me downstairs.

Emily was just putting food in my mouth when Kala and Yaten came down.

"Mornin' you two. Just getting her some nutrition, and then we can continue training. We could've started already if she eats more quickly." Let. Me. Chew.

There was a bit of a pause before Kala spoke. "Is… she alright?" · · .

"She'll be fine after she gets used to it. It can be a bit tough when you're not used to moving your body."

"Isn't this a little overdoing it?" · .

"We need her to get stronger for the trip, right? This is the quickest way I know how to do that."

"We're not in that much of a hurry." · . "There isn't a need to do things as quickly as possible." · . "She was gaining strength fairly quickly even before your training." · .

"If we leave things to her pace, it'll be a year before we get anywhere." − .

"There still isn't a need to go at this quick of a pace, right? How about we have a break today, it seems she can hardly move." · . "Also, at this pace, there won't be many monsters left for the other adventurers. We're already cleaning them up faster than we really should."

"Alright." Emily resigned. "What should we do then? I didn't really think of much else."

"Maybe we can talk about our worlds a bit? I'm curious about yours and I think learning more about this one could be useful. Also, we can go shopping and you can work on getting and increasing some Skills yourself. Your status is oddly bare, which could be suspicious for anybody who sees it." How about her red skin and two horns. Isn't that a little suspicious too?

After I finished eating Emily finished feeding me, she and Kala left and it was just me and Yaten at the table.

"So you rather like to take it easy, don't you?" He asked.

I replied in beeps. "Yeah. I didn't really do much in the past hundred years and that became routine. It was nice not getting hunted down all the time at least."

Kala and Yaten have been learning to interpret my beeps. It can still take a bit of time for them to do compared to Xedne, but they can at least understand it eventually. "Hunted down?"

"We were seen as demons, or enemies of humankind. Most of the humans thought we needed to hunt humans to survive, that our relationship will always be antagonistic, even though we can just drink animal blood. It seriously gets tiring after a while and once I saw a chance to get away from it all, I took it."

It took a while for him to absorb all of that. "…You've had a tough life."

"…No, not really. Many people have 'tough lives'. I'm just lazy, but the world, or worlds, just won't allow that most of the time."

"You're sounding different from how you usually are. More mature."

"Emily wasn't wrong, I can act like a kid much of the time. I don't really understand it well myself, it's not something I do consciously. There might be more of me inside of me. Like my human side and vampire side, there might also be a side of me that's more of an adult and a side that's more like a child. These changes aren't really as noticeable as the human and vampire change, so it's more difficult to keep track."

That again took a while to absorb. "I see."

"Thank you for listening. Could you take me back to my room? My muscles are still rather sore."

"Sure thing. And, if you ever want to talk, I can lend an ear."

Meophist

Experimenting with writing here. Trying to get more emotions I guess? Anyways, introducing the other characters from the poll. I guess this will end up with some world building on the other side as well.

I feel like I'm going through a minefield with Yuri-Ann/Ann-Yuri and their pluralism-ish-ness, although much of it is coming from how I feel about myself, which in of itself is very vague and I don't really understand it very well. They're mostly making do with what they have.

Looking at the previous chapter's poll, I was a Superweapon in Another World is currently in the lead. Which is my least planned work that came out of a dream. Well, I have the first chapter written already at least. I just need to plan the rest. Then again, I've gotten this far with minimal planning for this story, so maybe things can work.

That's if that story ends up winning in the first place. There's still time left to vote. And thank you for reading.