Never easily talk to a demon.
If he were to write ten pieces of advice regarding demon life, Amelia would definitely place this piece of advice in the second position.
Second only to “bring backup rations when going out.”
He touched his rumbling stomach and poked the lower back of the tall, thin man in front of him.
“What are you doing?” A fierce look was cast from above, carrying impatient and gloomy emotions that filled the man’s entire body, making them even more conspicuous than the shabby clothes he wore.
Most people here harbored similar emotions.
Amelia was already nearly used to this situation, so he slowly spoke up, “Would you really not consider it? Actually…”
“I told you already!”
The man frowned, hurriedly interrupting him, instinctively scanning the surroundings before lowering his voice, “Wanting to do that kind of thing at your age… in this place, it is impossible! At least wait until you grow a few more years before talking about it, do you understand!”
That kind of thing… it was merely exchanging bodily fluids, which to a succubus was equivalent to eating a meal. He truly did not understand why not a single person agreed. Were humans a race that became exceptionally principled in such harsh environments?
Amelia locked eyes with the man for a second, lowered his gaze to glance at the light red color of desire on the other’s body, and sighed, “I understand.”
“Once you understand, just wait until you reach adulthood, you know? As long as you reach adulthood, everything will be easy to talk about…” The tall, thin man said meaningfully.
Listening on the surface, Amelia rolled his eyes slightly and caught a glimpse of his current appearance from the half-broken glass door beside him.
His posture was upright, his skin fair, and his shoulder-length hair draped down. The slightly messy bangs partially obscured his eyebrows and eyes, yet his fine eyebrows and attractive eyes were still visible.
Everything was completely normal… except for the traits of white hair and black eyes, along with the teenage appearance of only fourteen or fifteen years old.
As expected, the crux of the matter lay right here.
Amelia deeply reflected on his experiences over the past half month and concluded that all the problems stemmed from that unreliable archdemon.
The archdemon had made a contract with him and thrown him into this world, yet chose a place that could almost be described as ruins.
Building clusters that looked as though they had suffered artillery strikes and collapsed for the most part, city streets littered with rubble and shattered glass, rusty equipment fragments scattered everywhere, vines and moss crawling haphazardly on walls, steps, window sills, and door handles, along with the faint smell of damp mold and rust in the air… It made anyone understand at a glance that this was a desolate and ruined urban relic.
He still remembered his thoughts upon first seeing those broken walls and damp moss baroqueless and lifeless, he would surely starve to death.
Although he later found humans living among it, facts proved that first impressions were mostly right.
In this place called the “Abandoned District” by its residents, perhaps due to the autumn season, most of the time it remained gloomy.
Dark clouds piled up layer upon layer, unusually heavy, making it difficult for sunlight to pierce through, leaving only that gray, dreary mass to periodically bring bone-chilling cold winds and sparse rain.
However, Amelia had never seen the residents here drink that rain rainwater. No matter how disheveled a vagrant looked, when encountering rainy days, they would also find a roof that was still relatively intact to shelter from the rain.
He had asked why they did not touch the rain, and those residents only said that getting wet in the rain easily caused illness, seeming not entirely clear of the reason either.
Similarly, no one grew crops.
To obtain food, one option was to figure out a way to earn money to buy it, and the other was like Amelia right now, queuing to receive relief food meant solely for survival.
With a ruined and desolate environment, people who were poorly clothed and underfed, the moods of the people here were naturally not very pleasant.
They also did not appear to possess any special abilities, being ordinary people after all.
Over the past half month, he frequently doubted whether the archdemon had found the wrong place, but unfortunately he could not contact the archdemon and had to figure out a way to survive on his own first.
Ever since coming here, a little succubus like him who could only feed on positive emotions had not eaten a single full meal.
He relied on that meager relief food to collect information while barely scraping by.
He had no idea what tricks the archdemon played during the time travel, but after arriving here, his magic power shrank drastically, and even his original appearance could not be maintained, forcing him to remain in his current energy-saving mode, which was this fourteen- or fifteen-year-old youth appearance.
In addition, for some unknown reason, the humans here inexplicably had a strong sense of morality, with not a single person agreeing to his request to replenish magic, causing his magic power to have recovered very little to this day.
For a succubus in the growth stage, not feeding him the emotions he needed, not giving him enough food supplements, and even refusing body exchange for magic, what was the difference between this and abuse?
If he could not even eat his fill, this kind of world really ought to just be destroyed.
Thinking of this, Amelia turned around again to ask the person behind him, “Is there a Succubus Protection Association here?”
The short and sallow man behind him froze for a moment, then slowly repeated, “Succubus, Protection, Association?”
“That’s right,” Amelia explained a term he had heard from his hometown, “It is an organization specifically designed to protect specific creatures, generally protecting rare creatures.”
If there wasn’t one, he intended to establish one before destroying the world in the future, at the very least to spread the concept that succubi must not be allowed to go hungry.
The short man let out a scoff, “District C has no such organization. If you really want to say it, we have a brat protection association, more or less. Besides, what kind of rare creatures are succubi? Aren’t they everywhere over there?” He pursed his lips toward the distance.
Having been here for half a month, it was the first time Amelia heard that succubi were everywhere, so he turned to look.
In that direction stood a building more conspicuous than the surrounding ones, relatively intact as a whole, with a large pink neon sign hanging on the front. A pair of slender and seductive silhouettes of a man and a woman were engraved on the sign, flashing day and night to catch the eye.
It was impossible to tell its relation to a succubus.
In his perception, apart from him being a magical creature, this territory had no magical fluctuations at all. There was no change at this moment either.
“There are succubi there?”
“What else could there be, then?”
As if seeing Amelia’s disbelief, the short man pointed at a passerby, “See that guy who just came out from there? With a look like he just finished getting his kicks, he definitely found a succubus. Not to mention anything else, I know all the succubi here, and that taste, tsk tsk tsk…”
Amelia looked in the direction of the gaze: that was a man close to thirty years old, who, like most people here, was sallow and thin, hunched in figure, in tattered clothes, and unsteady on his feet.
This appearance did not quite look like someone who had found a succubus. Succubi-nurtured food was always full of spirit and vitality, able to offer them the fullest and most delicious emotions at any moment.
“He…”
Yet Amelia still felt his heart grow warm and his eyes light up.
When the short man saw him acting like this, he looked at him with disdain and pity, “Look at your horny look, you don’t really think you can go into the red-light district to enjoy yourself, do you? With you still needing milk at your age, absolutely no one will let you in…”
As if not listening at all, the white-haired youth lowered his head, slipped out from the relief food distribution line he had waited in for an hour, and headed straight for the red-light district.
Seeing him run off, the short man shook his head, muttered a few words, and stepped forward two steps to occupy the vacant spot, while others behind him immediately followed suit, leaving not a single gap to slip back in.
Amelia could not care about that and was running quickly.
He bypassed collapsed and ruined buildings, stepped over potholed road surfaces, and crossed damp and gloomy alleys.
The closer he got to the area where the pink neon sign hung, the more excited his mood became.
The previous scene replayed constantly in his eyes around the man who had been wrapped in deep purple melancholy qi, there were actually some fluttering pink colors.
Pink emotions represented joy, and also represented… Amelia swallowed hard… edible!
The pink color on that man had already gradually faded, so he might not be able to eat it, but as long as he found the source, he would not have to worry about lacking food, would not have to eat unpalatable relief food anymore, and could recover his strength!
Carrying an excited mood, Amelia stepped into the red-light district.
Thud—
He tumbled and landed on the ground.
The man who had thrown him out patted his hands and stood firmly at the entrance.
“Minors are prohibited from entering, this is the district chief’s rule.”
This person crossed his arms, and his exposed muscles were knotted and tattooed with abstract patterns.
At this moment, he eyed Amelia who had just climbed up, his tall and robust body firmly blocking the entrance like a towering and unclimbable mountain, striking a rigid stance of refusal.
“Actually, I am already an adult.” Amelia patted off the dust clinging to him, attempting to explain, “It is only because of some reasons that I became smaller, but inside I am actually an adult.”
“So you are also a detective?” The tattooed man looked him up and down, reaching out to gesture above his current height of only one meter six, “Where is your childhood sweetheart? Hurry up and call her to pick you up.”
Amelia could not understand this meme derived from a manga in this world, but he could feel the extremely strong mocking undertone in this action.
He compared his current small frame with the opponent’s burly and robust body of at least one meter eight, and chose to temporarily swallow this grievance.
“I just wanted to come find something to eat.” He reasoned with logic and emotion, “I have not eaten my fill for half a month.”
“Your age is still within the range of collecting relief food, and you do not look like you have starved for half a month either.” The tattooed man mocked his clean face.
“This is habit.” Maintaining a clean and tidy appearance was one of the reasons why a succubus’s magic power decreased rather than increased.
The tattooed man was unmoved and very impatient.
“Kid, you might be new here and not understand the rules here, and I will only tell you one thing, the district chief’s rule is absolute. A few years from now when you reach adulthood, whether you want to lie down and earn money or be earned money from, I couldn’t care less. As for today, no matter what you say, it is impossible for you to pass. Hurry up and get lost, don’t be an eyesore here.”
“But I…”
“There are no buts, get lost quickly.”
Amelia realized that this was a tricky opponent.
The daily amount of relief food was limited, and now he would most likely not get any.
Even if he could manage to get some, compared to unpalatable relief food, why not choose something better?
No matter what, I am still a member of the demon race.
“If I say…” Amelia narrowed his eyes slightly, a flash of red light passing through the depths of his pupils, “Let me pass.”
“Tsk, looks like you want me to do it myself!”
The tattooed man rolled up his sleeves and grabbed at Amelia with one hand.
His thick palm descended with oppressive force, heading straight for the top of his head.
Amelia frowned slightly, neither dodging nor evading, suddenly raising his eyes. Red light surged within his black pupils, and his tone was flat, “I said, let me pass.”
“I think you want to die…”
The tattooed man’s sneering expression froze on his face.
In a short half second, it was as if a tiny voice drilled into his eardrum, crept into his brain, controlled his mouth, and vibrated his vocal cords, causing him to mumble and blurt out the words that should not have appeared, “…Fine, go on in.”
The little succubus smiled, revealing two sharp canine teeth.
“Would it not have been fine if you said so earlier?”
Thus, the hypnosis magic was not needed.
He stepped past the dazed tattooed man and once again stepped into the red-light district.