Wood Demon - Chapter 12
Chapter 12: A Dangerous Affection
The following two weeks on Mount Natagumo passed in a blur of carefully maintained deception and secret, fervent growth. Jack’s days were a solitary ritual. While the sun blazed high above, rendering the light-fearing Spider ‘Family’ dormant within the oppressive gloom of their web-choked house, Jack would be miles away, nestled in his cramped burrow beneath Woody Jr.’s ancient roots. There, he’d press his palm against the life-giving wood, drawing in the clean, green energy, the EXP flowing into him like a silent, steady stream.
`Level Up! You are now Level 31!`
`Blood Demon Art: Plant – [Barkskin (Minor)] passive ability gained. (Slightly increased natural resistance to physical damage).`
“Barkskin, huh?” Jack had mused, examining his arm, which looked no different but felt infinitesimally tougher. “So now I’m literally getting thick-skinned. Both metaphorically and physically. Useful for dealing with my current… roommates.”
`Level Up! You are now Level 32!`
`Siphoning Tendrils range and efficiency slightly increased.`
“Good, good,” he’d approved. “My demonic, splintery juice-box straws are getting an upgrade. Maybe I can use them to subtly water Saya’s side of the house. God knows the actual plumbing in that horror show is probably just more spider webs.”
His nights were a performance. He played the part of Rui’s ‘Older Brother’ with a veneer of stoic obedience, offering clipped responses when spoken to, and generally trying to fade into the cobweb-laden background. After their emotional conversation on the mountaintop, Rui’s demeanor towards Jack had subtly shifted. The Lower Moon was still undeniably dangerous, his cruelty a constant, simmering threat to the others. But with Jack, there were moments, fleeting and strange, where Rui seemed less like a demonic tyrant and more like the lost, lonely child whose story Jack now knew. He might seek Jack’s silent company, or ask an unexpectedly naive question about the outside world (to which Jack would provide carefully vague, non-committal answers). This slight leniency, however, was reserved solely for Jack. The Father, Mother, and even Saya remained trapped in a perpetual state of quivering terror whenever Rui was near.
It was this shared, oppressive fear that continued to forge a deeper, albeit perilous, bond between Jack and Saya. Their stolen conversations became more frequent, more daring, conducted in hushed whispers in forgotten corridors or shadowed alcoves, always with one ear straining for the tell-tale click of Rui’s footsteps or the rustle of his threads.
“So, what exactly was your human life like, Jack?” Saya had asked one night, her true, dark-haired form a soft shadow beside him in the dim recess behind a tattered, web-draped tapestry. She rarely risked deactivating her Rui-imposed disguise, but in these fleeting moments of shared solitude, she sometimes let her true self surface, a quiet act of rebellion that made Jack’s heart ache.
Jack, leaning back against the rough, damp stone, had manufactured a suitably melancholic, vague history. “Quiet,” he’d said, gazing at the sliver of moon visible through a crack in the wall. “Lots of books. Not many people. Felt like I was watching the world from behind glass, mostly. Always felt a bit… out of sync, you know?” He wasn’t entirely lying; his old life on Earth had often felt isolated, though for entirely different, less demonic reasons.
“I think… I understand that feeling,” Saya had whispered, and he knew she did, more profoundly than he could ever articulate.
His own brand of flirting, always tinged with a dark humor that mirrored their grim reality, became more genuine when directed at her. It was his way of acknowledging her strength, her beauty, her endurance, in a world designed to crush all three.
“You know, Saya,” he’d said, after she’d masterfully avoided one of Rui’s simmering rages with a display of perfect, fearful subservience, “for someone who’s lived through what I can only imagine is three-and-a-half centuries of non-stop demonic drama and spider-themed psychological torture, you’ve got a remarkably resilient spirit. And still manage to look like a goddess when you ditch the ‘Rui’s favorite ghost’ cosplay. It’s deeply unfair to us mere mortal-looking demons.”
A faint blush, a startlingly human reaction, would touch her cheeks, and sometimes, just sometimes, he’d be rewarded with one of her rare, breathtaking smiles.
The day Jack hit Level 32 was a quiet, internal triumph.
`Level Up! You are now Level 32!`
`All stats significantly enhanced. New passive ability detected in Blood Demon Art: Plant – [Photosynthetic Regeneration (Minor)]. (Sunlight exposure now provides extremely slow regeneration instead of instant death, though direct exposure remains agonizingly painful and debilitating. Full sunlight is still lethal within minutes. Current Resistance: 0.5%).`
Jack had stared at that last part, dumbfounded. 0.5% Sunlight Resistance? It was practically nothing, a rounding error, but it wasn’t zero anymore. It meant his core demonic nature was, ever so slightly, adapting to his unique energy source. It was a terrifying, exhilarating thought.
“Well, Woody Jr.,” he’d whispered to the ancient tree, “looks like our little arrangement is literally changing me from the inside out. Half a percent. Won’t be sunbathing anytime soon, but it’s… something. Maybe by Level 100, I can upgrade to ‘mildly irritated by direct sunlight’ instead of ‘instant ash-heap’.”
He knew he was getting dangerously close to Rui’s Level 38. The thought was both thrilling and terrifying. He made a conscious effort to conceal his true strength when back at the house, to act weaker, more subservient, than his rapidly growing power level might suggest. He’d learned that Rui appreciated his ‘older brothers’ being capable, but not too capable, and certainly not capable enough to challenge his absolute authority.
The constant fear, the shared trauma, the stolen moments of connection, their youth – Jack’s mental age and Saya’s eternally youthful demonic form – all combined to create an intense, volatile emotional atmosphere between them. It was a pressure cooker of suppressed desires, of desperate loneliness, of a shared yearning for warmth in their cold, terrifying existence.
One night, the inevitable happened. Rui was in one of his rare, prolonged states of focused quietude, meticulously repairing a vast, intricate web in the main hall that had been damaged during one of Father’s clumsy rampages. The rest of the house was hushed, holding its breath. Jack found Saya in his tattered room, ostensibly to deliver a sliver of dried meat – her ‘share’ from a recent hunt, which she knew Jack wouldn’t eat but offered anyway, a small, silent gesture of their strange understanding.
The air in the small, web-draped room crackled with unspoken things. She looked particularly fragile that night, the fear in her eyes more pronounced, her true, dark-haired form a stark silhouette against the grime-streaked window. Perhaps Rui had been cruel earlier, or perhaps it was just the cumulative weight of centuries of despair.
“Rough day in paradise?” Jack asked softly, his voice a low rumble.
Saya just shook her head, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. She looked utterly, heartbreakingly alone.
Without thinking, driven by an instinct far older and more profound than his demonic nature, Jack reached out, his hand gently cupping her cheek, his thumb brushing away the tear. “Hey,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Or, well, it’s not okay, this whole situation is a goddamn nightmare, but… you’re not alone in it. Not completely.”
Her dark eyes, luminous in the faint moonlight, searched his. What she saw there – a reflection of her own loneliness, a spark of genuine warmth, a reckless disregard for the rules of their prison – he didn’t know. But she leaned into his touch, a small, almost imperceptible movement, yet it felt like the world tilting on its axis.
The space between them vanished. It wasn’t a conscious decision, more like two drowning souls clinging to the only available wreckage. Their first kiss was desperate, tasting of shared sorrow and a fierce, rebellious hunger for something more than the fear and brutality that defined their unlives. It was a raw, clumsy affirmation of existence in a world that sought to erase them.
Their demonic bodies, untiring and resilient, fueled by energies both dark and strangely vital, allowed the desperate embrace to stretch for what felt like an eternity, a stolen lifetime compressed into a few precious, rebellious hours. Each touch was a defiance of Rui’s cold control, each shared breath a secret victory against the oppressive darkness of their unlives. There was a sadness to it, a profound melancholy born of their hopeless situation, yet beneath it lay a spark of pure, defiant warmth, a fragile assertion of life and connection in the very heart of their shared hell. It was a desperate, beautiful, and terrifying thing.
In the quiet, pre-dawn hours, as they lay entangled in the shadows of Jack’s tattered room, a fragile peace settled over them. The bond, already deep, had been irrevocably transformed, sealed by an intimacy that was both a comfort and a terrifying liability.
The Spider Mother, from the depths of her own sorrow, often watched them in the days that followed. Jack would catch her gaze lingering on him and Saya when they exchanged a quiet word, or when a fleeting, unconscious touch passed between them as they performed their dreary household duties. Her eyes, usually wide with a constant, numbing terror, would sometimes fix on them with an unnerving intensity. Jack had initially misinterpreted that look, his System noting her own demonic needs. But as he observed her more closely, he saw it wasn’t simple predation.
In those dark, hauntingly beautiful eyes, he began to discern a complex, almost agonizing tapestry of emotions: a wistful, sorrowful longing, perhaps for a connection she herself had been denied or had tragically lost centuries ago; a vicarious, almost painful flicker of warmth as she witnessed their fragile, stolen moments of affection; and always, underpinning it all, a profound, chilling fear for them, for what Rui, in his possessive, paranoid cruelty, would do if he ever suspected the true depth of their secret, rebellious bond. She, more than anyone, understood the price of Rui’s ‘love.’
The air in the Spider House grew heavier still, charged with unspoken secrets and the ever-present threat of discovery. Jack’s affection for Saya was a dangerous, warming fire in the cold, dark prison of their unlives, but he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that if they weren’t careful, its flames would not only illuminate their darkness but also attract the lethal attention of the one who considered them all his puppets on a string.