Sound after sound, the red thing made the Imp repeat after it.
More and more boxes seemed to appear while they were doing so, and more and more, the Imp began to understand what exactly it was doing. It was becoming easier and easier to learn the new sounds, and it actually somewhat knew what was happening. Until now, it was just repeating the sounds without exactly knowing what they meant, but now, it understood its meaning.
The sound 'Fire' referred to the flames that the red thing put out before. 'Avalin' was the way the red thing wanted to be spoken to, and for some reason, the 'Red thing' in his mind had changed to 'Avalin' after finding this out. He didn't want that to happen, but it became simply inevitable!
Overall, the whole process of learning those sounds was pretty interesting to the Imp, but for some reason, so many many more boxes popped up all of a sudden, and they were all the same one. The Imp was pretty scared, but in the end, he managed to get used to them being around somehow, even if just barely.
And before the Imp knew it, the sun came up again, and Avalin turned around toward the sunrise surprised. "Eh? Already..?" She muttered out quietly before standing up with a sigh and stepped up toward the thing that the other two things were sleeping in, which the Imp found out to be called a 'Tent'.
Just a few kicks against the side of that tent later, the blue and black things came out of it tiredly and looked around, mainly at Avalin.
"You're up already..?" The black thing asked with a wry smile, and Avalin nodded her head smugly and pointed at the Imp. "Mhm! The Imp and I were working together on something last night! Go on, buddy, show them what you can do!" Avalin exclaimed and looked at him full of hope, but the Imp just stared back at one thing. The piece of dried meat that the blue thing was currently holding.
"Eh? You showed it how to be even more of an idiot? To be fair, if anyone could do that, it would be you..." The black thing muttered as it held its hand to its chin, but was surprised when it noticed the Imp open his mouth.
"Food..!" He exclaimed and tried to point at the jerky, trying to step forward, although he was unable to do so due to the rope around its neck, which he was forced to stand in place through. Confused, the black thing now looked back at Avalin, who was crossing her arms smugly.
"Who's the idiot now?" She asked with a grin, and the blue thing ripped a piece off the jerky with its mouth and then threw the rest toward the Imp, who tried to catch it but didn't manage to, instead tripping on his own feet which ended up making him fall down and nearly choke himself to death.
"Yeah, I'd say it's still that thing." The Blue thing pointed out, but Avalin just replied with an angry expression and rushed over toward the Imp to remove the rope.
And immediately when she did so, the Imp rushed over toward the jerky that the blue thing threw over to him before for two reasons. The first being that the hunger he felt was so much more intense ever since he was given this collar, and he hadn't eaten anything ever since he devoured his brothers.
The second reason was that he started to smell Avalin's scent when she approached him just now. The Imp was able to get used to seeing her, but any other sense just overwhelmed him with anger and hatred anew.
While the Imp just started to rip at the small piece of jerky, the others slowly got ready to leave again after having a bit of breakfast themselves, and the Black thing climbed up on the tree to release the other end of the rope still attached to the branch.
"Alright, let's get going. It's still a few days until we reach town... again... Erm, Avalin, did you take the tome last night?" The Blue thing asked confused, and before it knew it, Avalin already started moving to try and ignore the question, but both the black and blue things swiftly looked at each other and then at the Imp, who was still savoring the flavor of the jerky, before sprinting after Avalin.
"Wait, don't tell me you..." Immediately, the blue thing started flipping through the square, which the Imp found out to be called a 'Book' until it stopped and turned its head over to the side to where Avalin was walking, "If you just used a fucking Skill-Boost on an Imp, I'll rip your head off..."
"Wait, wait, she did what?!" With confusion and anger on its face, the black thing jumped in front of Avalin and spread its arms out to make her stop walking, "Why would you waste a Skill-Boost on an Imp?! Do you know how expensive that tome was?!" It yelled out, and Avalin twirled her long red hair around her finger.
"Of course, I know... But I paid a third of it, so I can use a third of the spells how I want... And I wanted to use a Skill-Boost on the Imp's Common Language Comprehension to make it sell for more when we get to town..." Avalin explained, and was for some reason twisting her body in weird ways toward the black thing, which was slowly looking away in response.
"Tsk... Fine, but if that didn't pay off, I swear I'll share that story about the one time you-" It started saying, and Avalin immediately grabbed the small blade by her side and held it to the black thing's throat faster than the Imp could react.
"If you even think about it, James, I swear to the gods that I will tell Jennifer all the things you said about her." Avalin replied immediately, and all of a sudden, the Imp felt an uncomfortable sting in the center of its body, considering that he seemed to have learned the name of another one of the three things.
He, under no circumstances, wanted that to happen, but it seemed like the Imp couldn't just rip his ears off. Or... could he?
"Hey, stop that!" James yelled out angrily, and Avalin crossed her arms with a huff and twisted her face away. "You started it!" She replied, but James pushed her to the side as he moved closer to the Imp, who was currently trying to quite literally rip his ears off to stop hearing more about the things that took him captive.
"Not you, bird-brain, the Imp. If you ended up using a Skill-Boost on it, then I don't want it to be damaged at all. We need it to be in peak condition!" The Black-clothed young man yelled out as he forced the Imp to keep his arms away from his head, and then James turned back around and looked into the distance with a sigh.
"By Gordon- Now there are monsters here, great... Thomas?" James muttered with a sigh, and now the Imp once more felt the same sting in its body as it even learned the name of the blue thing.
"I got it..." Thomas replied and unsheathed the sword from his side and held his shield in front of himself, before slamming the former against the latter a few times to attract the attention of the monsters.
The Imp recognized them, actually. Not these particular ones, but he saw some that looked like these before. They were very nasty monsters that smelled horribly, even to an Imp, but right now, they for some reason smelled... pretty good. Although, that was probably just because of the Imp's incredible hunger.
These monsters were pig-faced, rat-bodied Peasant monsters, which some strong commoner monsters chose to ride on sometimes, and they had a very nasty bite to them, stemming from their giant, razor-sharp incisors.
But the Imp was confused at what was happening right now, because Thomas simply ended up cutting the three peasant monsters apart instantly like they were nothing, before taking a step back while pressing his nose closed with his fingers.
"Fuck, they smell horrible... Let's get out of here; we can't use them for anything..." Thomas muttered and jerked his head down the path the four of them were standing on, but the Imp wanted to do something else. He, for some reason, felt terrified at the thought of doing so, but his hunger managed to overcome his fear for just a moment, so the Imp sat down in front of the peasant monsters and simply burrowed his teeth inside of their dirty, stinking, delicious meat.
While twisting their faces in disgust, the three things that captured the Imp looked at each other and slightly shuddered after seeing this. "How can it eat that..? Urgh, makes me sick just thinking about it..." James said and turned around, trying not to look at what was going on, and even Avalin nodded her head slowly.
"True that... But let's let it eat, for now, we can't have it starve before we get to town. And we should probably let it drink something by the river here as well, we're going inland now, and I don't want to let it drink from my pouch..." Avalin said with a wry smile, and Thomas shrugged his shoulders and leaned against a tree.
"Fine, but let's leave immediately afterward." He replied, so the others nodded and joined Thomas by the tree, while the Imp continued on with his feast.
The taste on his tongue was utterly disgusting, and the smell coming from the blood around his mouth made him want to run off and hide, but the Imp knew that he had to deal with this for now. He didn't directly understand what the three things were saying just now, but he knew that this was one of the few chances that he was given to eat. And that meant that he had to eat as much as he possibly could.
Then, halfway through the lats monster, he nearly wanted to throw up. And not because he was disgusted, which he was, but because he was full. He couldn't eat another bite, but then he did and was severely punished with a box.
[Beginner Overeating Skill Learned]
And it seemed like even the Imp's stomach was distracted by the notification because it forgot that he wasn't hungry anymore! So, the Imp continued forcing the monster's meat and blood down his throat until there was nothing left and then looked up toward the three things, before the Blue thing pointed at the river just about ten meters away from them.
"Go and clean yourself. And drink something as well." Thomas said with a frown, and just out of spite, the Imp thought he shouldn't do what he wanted, even if he didn't really understand what Thomas wanted, but before the Imp could actually start that thought, his body was overwhelmed by fear that he wasn't able to overthrow with hunger again.
Immediately, the Imp felt inclined to sprint toward the water flowing next to them, which he then did nearly immediately, before simply jumping inside of it at a shallow place where he could stand.
The water colored itself red for a few moments after the Imp entered it, but that soon disappeared, although the same thing happened a few times when he put his hands or face into the water.
And a little while later, when the Imp filled his body with as much water as he could, the three things now continued to move, so the Imp rushed out of the water and followed them, as despite feeling pure hatred toward them, he had no choice.
