"Gulp, gulp... ah!"
Cid drained the beer in his glass in huge swallows, then let out a long breath.
"Uncle Rizevim, talking with you is seriously fun!"
Feeling the act of drinking give his body a psychological cue that tricked his brain into producing a sense of drunkenness, Cid could not help but sigh in admiration.
"No, no, little brother Cid. Talking with you is super, super, super fun too."
Sitting beside Cid, a silver-haired middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties responded with a grin, then raised another glass and drank again.
Seeing the man next to him drink, Cid also lifted his glass and clinked it against his.
Originally, he had only come here to practice his office-worker-style background character acting, so that if someone ever tried to force drinks on him in the future, he would know how to act drunk. Instead, he discovered that alcohol could not actually make him drunk, but his brain seemed to be fooled by the process and automatically simulated intoxication anyway.
In the end, he somehow wound up hitting it off with the uncle next to him.
To be honest, the guy really was a great drinking buddy.
Though next time, he definitely would not come looking for him again.
After all, this was supposed to be background character training.
"Uncle, what were we talking about just now?"
"I think... you said you ran into some Devils."
The uncle scratched his head and answered uncertainly.
Cid, meanwhile, reacted like he had just been triggered. He slammed both hands hard onto the table.
"Right, Uncle, let me tell you. None of the Devils I ran into were proper Devils. Every last one of them was the kind that, in myths and legends, should have been tossed into Heaven and dried out under the sun."
"Exactly. Devils these days are nothing like Devils at all. They even start talking about justice. It is seriously disgusting."
At the mention of Devils, Rizevim's eyes lit up with interest. He set down his glass and immediately started complaining too.
"Uh... Uncle, are you one of the victims whose image of Devils got shattered by these new-generation Devils too?"
Noticing the change in Rizevim's expression, Cid suspected that the uncle in front of him was one of the victims of modern Devils, just like him.
"Probably. Little brother Cid, you seem to have some rather unique views on Devils."
Rizevim gave a vague answer, then threw the question back at Cid.
"I would not call it a view. I'm just disappointed that the actual product does not match the advertising. They do not feel like Devils at all."
Cid let out a sigh.
He had encountered two kinds of Devils, and both had dealt heavy blows to his heart.
The first kind was before the worlds merged.
That was Alpha and the others in their Demon Possession state.
The second kind was Rias and the others he met today, the true Devil race.
Alpha and the others had only been smeared by rumors. They were not real Devils.
Rias and the others were genuine Devils, but they were not the kind of Devils he had imagined.
The Devils in his imagination should have had a pair of pitch-black bat wings on their backs. Their whole bodies should have radiated malicious intent. They should have spent all day either trying to make contracts with humans for their souls or plotting to destroy the world like proper villains.
Not acting like protagonists instead, all united and friendly, doing odd-job agency work, and trying to break free from their fate.
"So then, little brother Cid, what kind of Devil did you imagine?"
Rizevim grew curious about the kind of Devil Cid thought a Devil ought to be.
"The Devil I imagined would of course be evil, vicious, beastly..."
"Corrupt, crooked, heretical..."
Rizevim cut Cid off.
Rather than getting annoyed, Cid's eyes lit up. He looked at Rizevim with delight and continued at once.
"Demonic!"
"Brutal!"
"Ruthless!"
"You really get it, little brother Cid."
"You're not bad yourself, Uncle."
The two of them took turns throwing out one clearly negative adjective after another. When they finished, they both shouted excitedly and clinked their glasses together once more.
"Uncle, enough about me. Tell me about yourself too. When I first saw you, you were drinking alone and looking all troubled. If something's bothering you, say it. I'll give you some advice."
After downing his beer in one go, Cid remembered how Rizevim had looked when they first met, clearly preoccupied with something, so he casually brought it up.
"Ah... sure."
After thinking for a few seconds, Rizevim decided it was not a big deal and casually answered.
"Little brother Cid, more than a year ago, I was a very boring person. Back then, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just repeated the same day over and over again."
"I had already started to think I would go on living like that forever, like a walking corpse waiting for the day I died, when something huge happened and ignited my dream."
At this point, Uncle Rizevim started gesturing wildly with his hands.
"Before I found this dream, which may be childish but is absolutely wonderful, I was living a dull and meaningless life. So once I found this dream, I immediately started acting on it. But..."
Rizevim stopped waving his arms around. A frustrated expression appeared on his face.
"But after preparing for a whole year, just when everything was ready, I suddenly remembered something extremely annoying."
His previously carefree tone now carried hints of anger and disgust.
"The dream I want to achieve actually requires me to work together with people I hate in order to succeed. And even worse, I have to use methods I hate to accomplish it. That seriously pisses me off.
I'm not afraid that the dream is difficult. But the moment I think about how I have to achieve it using the method I hate the most, I get super, super angry."
He slammed his glass hard onto the table with a loud thud.
"But if I give up on the plan and go back to those days of doing nothing, just sitting there day after day without knowing what to do, I'd rather die."
He let out a sigh, his whole body radiating a defeated atmosphere.
"So now I don't know what to do. If I go through with the dream, the thought of working with people I hate makes me want to die. If I give up and go back to how things used to be, I still want to die."
Seeing the dejected look on the uncle he had just met, the confusion filling his eyes, Cid felt that the expression looked strangely familiar.
It felt like he had seen it somewhere before.
Where had he seen it?
As he frowned and thought about it, his gaze casually drifted to the reflection of himself in the beer glass.
Suddenly a thought flashed through his mind.
He remembered.
Wasn't that exactly how he looked in his previous life, when no matter how hard he tried he could never reach magic?
Thinking back to his previous life and putting himself in the other man's shoes, Cid suddenly sprang into action.
He grabbed Rizevim by the shoulder and pulled him up so they were face to face, shouting passionately.
"Uncle, is your dream really that cheap?"
"Huh?"
Cid's sudden movement left Rizevim stunned.
"Think about it, Uncle. Are you afraid of dying?"
"How could I possibly be afraid of dying!"
Although still confused, Rizevim instinctively denied it when provoked.
"Then that settles it. If you're not afraid of dying, what else could you possibly be afraid of?
You have your own dream, and you're willing to take action to achieve it. So stop worrying about all that nonsense and just charge forward.
If you encounter difficulties, then find ways to solve them. There are so many ways to solve problems in this world. How could a single obstacle really trap you?
And even if there really is only one method, then create a new one yourself.
Show me all your determination and crush everything standing in your way. Don't say it can't be done.
Only when the nails are hammered into your coffin will you have the right to say you truly tried."
After shouting those words with excitement, Cid pushed open the window and pointed outside at the peaceful scenery.
"Come on, Uncle. I can tell you're a fan of the classic chuunibyou-style demons, so let me use Devils as an example."
"Uh..."
Ignoring Rizevim's strange expression, Cid was completely fired up. Preaching to someone else gave him a thrilling rush that made his whole body tingle.
"If a real Devil saw a scene like this, what do you think that Devil would think? Answer me, Uncle."
"Of course they'd want to destroy it. A real Devil can't stand seeing other people happy."
"Wrong answer, Uncle. A real Devil would first wonder if they haven't been cruel enough, since people are still able to laugh like this. Then they'd start thinking about how to destroy the whole world. That's what a Devil should be. Get it, Uncle?"
"Oh, oh... well, that's impossible. The other pantheons would stop it."
Rizevim felt like something was wrong with him. He actually thought this idea made a lot of sense. He really should be thinking that way.
But he still forced himself to cling to his last bit of reason and argue back.
With his power, destroying the world would not take that long. The real problem was that the other pantheons would never sit by and let him do it.
"Then destroy those pantheons too."
"But..."
"Bang!"
"Uncle!"
Rizevim's rebuttal was cut off when Cid slammed his hand onto the table.
"Thinking about what might happen and what price you'll have to pay is something smart people worry about.
But for true chuunibyou like us, we just step over all of that. After all, if you're not afraid of dying, then stop worrying about every little thing."
"Oh, oh! Uncle is getting fired up!"
He was not joking. After hearing Cid's speech, Rizevim felt his blood boiling and his entire body burning with excitement.
"That's the spirit, Uncle. Remember this.
As long as you keep chasing your dreams, new dreams will keep appearing. Because human ambition has no limits."
"That's so right! Exactly!"
He clapped enthusiastically as the last trace of rational thought evaporated.
Rizevim now wanted nothing more than to go back and revise his plan. After Cid's encouragement, he had already thrown his previous idea of bringing an army to join the World Battlefield and counterattacking another world far out of his mind.
"Brother Cid, come work with me. If you join me, you'll be my strategist. I'll give you my Queen position... ah, wait, I forgot. I don't even have Evil Pieces."
Rizevim suddenly had the urge to poach him. A friend who understood him so well felt like a gift from heaven. His strength might be lacking, but that was not a big issue. Rizevim had plenty of ways to improve someone's power.
Just as he was about to offer the Queen position of his Evil Pieces to Cid, he remembered that he had never used the Evil Pieces system. He had always despised the behavior of the new generation Devils.
"Uncle, I already have a piece. It's from the House of Gremory, so I'm technically part of the Gremory family now. You can forget about it."
At least, that would only last three more days.
Cid kept that thought to himself. Even though they had only just met, he skillfully pushed the blame onto Rias.
He was not worried that this uncle would actually try to poach Rias. Without Evil Pieces, his strength would at most be that of a mid-class Devil, around B rank.
The man looked to be over forty already, yet he was still only around that level. The chances of him going to Rias to negotiate for a piece were basically zero.
"The little princess of the House of Gremory, huh? Hmph."
Rizevim muttered the words as his eyes narrowed and he let out a cold laugh.
Cid blinked at the reaction from his newly made drinking buddy. Just as he was about to ask what was going on, a familiar voice suddenly rang out.
"I told you not to drink so much. Look at you, you're drunk again."
"I'm not drunk. I was already helping that old geezer Odin drink before I even became a teacher. Wait, I just remembered something..."
Hearing the familiar voice, Cid instinctively turned his head to look. At the same moment, the person on the other side happened to look over as well.
"Gulp!"