Worlds First Demon Lord - Chapter 120 The Best Way To Defeat A Troll Is To Realize That Their Win Condition Means Nothing To You And Also Get Under Their Skin

Gadiel

May 23, 11:42 am, Canberra, Australia

Gadiel was dreaming.

Or at least, he hoped he was.

In his dream, his parents had left him alone in a hospital, telling him that they wanted the nice doctors to change who he was fundamentally.

“We love you,” they said. “But only the version we think you are.”

“But I’m not that person,” Gadiel had cried. His tears were filling up the room, drowning everyone in the ward.

“Yes you are,” they told him. Gadiel was finding it hard to tell the difference if his parents were one person, or two. He thought they were different, but their voices seemed to be coming from the same place.

“You are exactly who we say you are,” they said in unison. “And if you aren’t, you should be.”

“I can’t change that much without dying,” Gadiel pleaded.

“A little dying is good for you,” said his father, sitting down beside him. “I died a little when I realized that I couldn’t have any more children after you.”

“And I died a little when I gave up my dreams of becoming a lawyer when I had you,” chimed in his mother, sitting down on the other side of the bed.

They both smiled lovingly at him as they cuffed him to the bed. Gadiel was certain that they believed they were doing the right thing.

“I won’t be me anymore,” he insisted, pulling against his bindings. “I’ll be someone else.”

“You’ll be who we want you to be,” said his parents, somehow one being again. “Don’t you want to make us proud?”

Gadiel couldn’t breathe. He was underwater, after all. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t wake up.

He needed to wake up.

That’s when the laughter started.

“Oh you think you’re getting out that easily?” the voice giggled. “How about you drown for the rest of your short life?”

Gadiel couldn’t even reach for his own throat. Veins bulged from his face and neck; he needed air, oxygen, he needed to breathe!

But the worst part was knowing that she was watching. Knowing that she could see him. He could feel her watching, just in the periphery of his senses, always there, tormenting him with her proximity.

He needed to breathe!

Instinctively, he reached out with his mind, searching for that connection he had gotten so used to and-

“Nope!”

-and felt it get cut before it could even reach where it was supposed to go.

She had cut it off.

He could hold it. He breathed in the salty water, lungs filling with liquid. Pain exploded in his chest, his brain screaming for oxygen as his chest got heavier, weighing him down. He tried to reach up, towards the light, but his arms were still cuffed down.

He was dead. He knew he was.

And then he wasn’t.

Gadiel blinked, looking around. He was in a dingy, dark room, with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. He found himself sitting on an old, wooden chair, across a metal table from a black-haired girl in a one-piece dress.

Ai.

He immediately leaped forward to grab her, but was stopped by some invisible force once he got up. He struggled against it, eyes burning with hatred as he watched Ai lean back against her chair. She put her legs up on the table, pointing a TV remote and switching channels on something behind Gadiel.

“Ah, here we are!” she said, putting the remote down. “Just what I wanted to show you!”

Gadiel ignored her, still trying to fight against the invisible pressure. He didn’t even really know what he wanted to do once he broke through her.

All he knew was that he wanted to hurt her. Hurt her the same way she hurt him.

It was all her fault. Everything was her fault.

Ai rolled her eyes.

“You know, maybe if you’d get your head out of your ass, you’d realize that you’re actually in a whole lot of trouble,” she said condescendingly. “And your petty little grudge against me isn’t gonna really help with anything.”

“It’ll make me feel better,” Gadiel growled.

“And when have your feelings ever let you act in your own best interests?” Ai snapped. “Honestly, you’d be better off cutting out that part of your brain.”

Gadiel scoffed. Finally, he stopped straining against the invisible force, and sat back on his seat.

“As expected of a sociopath,” he snorted, crossing his arms. “Like you could understand the point of emotions.”

“Emotions have a point now?” said Ai, raising an eyebrow. “They’re not just there to play around with?”

“Are you purposefully trying to sound like a corny villain?” Gadiel asked. “Like are all your lines intentionally like that? Or are you just that enamored with your own big brain?”

“Why wouldn’t I be enamored with my brain?” said Ai, amused. “It’s not like anything else matters.”

Gadiel rolled his eyes.

“And you call me insufferable,” he muttered.

Ai grinned. Gadiel could tell that she was feeling annoyingly superior to him. He felt it on a deep, instinctual level, almost as if he was feeling it too.

It was one of the downsides of having a homicidal sociopath living in your mind.

That, and the fact that he couldn’t control his own body anymore.

In a fit of depression, Gadiel had let Ai take over most of his bodily functions. She probably would’ve been able to completely possess him too, if things had kept going on that way.

But before she could completely take control, Gadiel had felt a tug on his soul.

Someone was trying to find him, pulling at their connection.

As soon as Ai found out about it, she had immediately cut it off. But it was too late.

Gadiel knew that Tarik was looking for him.

And that was enough for Gadiel to start fighting again.

Of course, Ai didn’t make it easy. She tortured him pretty much 24/7 now, messing with his dreams, trying to break him down once again.

But Gadiel knew it was working. At the very least, Ai was spending too much time on him to be able to control the body. As such, to the outside world, it looked like Gadiel had fallen into a sort of coma.

Which didn’t really help with the whole “tumor” lie that Ai had set up.

“You’re still mad about that?” Ai sighed. “You really need to stop living in the past.”

“You outed me!”

“No one cares.”

Gadiel fought the urge to slam his fist on the table. This b**** had the audacity to out him to his parents, who she knew were homophobic, then turned around and said that no one cared that he was gay?

Ai grinned widely, which pissed Gadiel off even more.

It wasn’t really the smile that got to him. It was the thought behind it.

‘You had an emotional reaction, which means you lose.’

‘You care about things, which is lame and make you a loser.’

‘I don’t even care that I’m being contradictory, I just find it funny to make people mad.’

It was impossible to argue against people like this, and Gadiel knew that.

The problem was that she was inside his mind. Literally.

“Now how about we get back on track,” said Ai, gesturing towards the wall behind Gadiel once more. “After all, your body is about to be moved to surgery.”

Wait, what?

Gadiel turned to find that the entire wall behind him was a screen, showing the view from his body’s eyes as he was being wheeled away by a bunch of people in surgical masks.

He stood up, eyes widening as he watched someone stick a syringe in his arm.

“Did you think I was just twiddling my thumbs for this entire week?” Ai complained, spinning around in her chair.

“You know, it turns out it’s really hard to get people to approve a surgery that doesn’t exist. I had to puppet basically the entire staff of this stupid hospital.”

Gadiel didn’t say anything. He was too busy watching himself being wheeled through the halls of the hospital.

“Well, I managed to convince them in the end,” she said, grinning as she turned to face the back of Gadiel’s head.

“We’re gonna cut up your brain,” she said matter of factly. “I think I’m gonna start by just kind of splitting it down in half. I wanna see what that does to your body.”

She waited for Gadiel to say something, grinning. When he didn’t she scoffed and went on:

“Maybe I’ll even find that emotion part of the brain, and cut it out too. Then maybe you’ll understand why I’m always right.”

Gadiel still didn’t say anything.

“Oh come on, say something,” Ai gloated. “It’s no fun if you don’t…if you don’t…react…”

She frowned.

Wait a second. Why wasn’t he reacting?

Or more accurately; why couldn’t she feel his reaction?

She was inside his mind. Their psyches were meshed up all together, impossible to separate unless Ai willed it so. As such, some of their thoughts and emotions bled into each other. It was why Gadiel could sometimes feel what she was feeling, and know what she was thinking; and unfortunate side-effect to her power.

So why couldn’t she feel anything from Gadiel right now?

She noticed that his entire body was shaking. He turned around, nose bleeding, face white.

“Got you,” Gadiel grinned.

Ai’s eyes widened, as suddenly she felt Gadiel…inside her mind. He could see everything, touch everything, know every-

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”

Ai’s scream turned into a high-pitch squeal, one high enough to shatter glass. Immediately, Gadiel felt her leave his mind, running away.

Gadiel blinked, suddenly back in his own body. He felt…heavy. Tired. His muscles felt stiff and sore, as if they had been locked in place for a long time and were only just remembering how to move. His arm was full on needles, his head weirdly spacey and clear, while doctors in masks wheeled him into a dark room. He felt something wet running down his nose.

But he was himself again. He didn’t have any other annoying voice in his head.

Thank god his theory paid off. He’d suspected that Ai hadn’t really invaded his mind; that she’d just latched onto it like some kind of parasite and was trying to bleed into it. Gadiel had spent the week trying to gather himself, to pick up all the pieces of who he was in order to free himself from Ai’s control.

He didn’t like a lot of what he found, but he also found a lot that surprised him.

But that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that once he knew himself, he was able to use the door that Ai used to get into his mind the other way.

In the brief moment he’d been able to get through, he’d found that Ai was actually connected to two other people. Instinctively, he reached out to the one person he knew would help.

Medina.

Which was when Ai realized what he was doing, and immediately left his mind, screaming.

Now, all he needed to do was wait for Medina to contact Tarik, and come to save him.

But he needed to be alive in order to be saved.

With a groan, Gadiel grabbed the nearest doctor. The doctor looked at him in surprise, then tried to shake Gadiel’s weak grip off.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”

The doctor screamed, backing away as he felt burning cold against his skin. The other doctors all rushed around him to find that his arm had been frozen solid where Gadiel had touched him.

“Get him to emergency before hypothermia sets in!” one of the doctors yelled.

In the confusion, Gadiel rolled over in his stretcher, and fell to the floor. All his IVs were yanked out of him, making him yell in pain as he started to bleed. Slowly, he got up, and started limping away.

“Wait, the patient!”

Gadiel didn’t even look behind him. He simply willed a wall of ice to rise, sending the power through his feet behind him, and heard the ice wall rise.

He looked ahead determined to find a place to hide. He tried to reach out to Tarik with his connection, but for some reason, it wasn’t working.

That was okay.

Gadiel knew that Tarik was coming.

That was enough.

He just needed to hang on until Tarik got here.

Once Tarik got here, he would be safe.

Once Tarik got here, he could be free.