Chapter 450: I Don’t Take Sides

Adrian thought about it. "Well, I guess you are right, but I don’t think I am quite ready for that conversation yet."

Aria nodded softly. "I am not ready either. Maybe some other day."

"Yeah. In the future."

Aria turned toward the wooden door. "I will go out, and you can talk to that Demon."

She stood up and looked back at Adrian, who sat down on the mat.

"You didn’t have to hold back on looking at my blessings, you know. The painful truth is... even I do not know what my blessings are. When I was taken to the Royal Church in my past life to officially check my blessings and curses, the Head Priest simply screamed and called me a Demon Spawn, and nothing after that went well."

Adrian nodded slowly. "Okay then. Are you sure you want me to check them?"

Aria nodded. "Yeah. Isn’t it a massive disadvantage for us if the Demon knows about our capabilities, but we do not?"

"That is true."

Adrian looked at Aria curiously. "Do you know what my specific blessing and my curse is?"

Aria nodded. "I know about your curse. It is pretty much public knowledge back home. You cannot directly use weapons of war, but you use certain loopholes to bypass the curse. You cannot hold most weapons, but you can use certain items as weapons, such as sticks."

She furrowed her small brows. "As for your blessing... you have never really specified or talked about your actual blessing other than the fact that you keep telling people that you are the ’Blessed of the Goddess of Prosperity’. But the Goddess of Prosperity does not have any power over Dungeons. Until now, even in my past life, I have never ever seen a God being able to magically control or manipulate a Dungeon."

Hearing this, Adrian raised an eyebrow. This was something that he did not know. It was something that was completely absent from the original novel. He pushed this information to the back of his mind so that he could question the Demon about it later.

"You have great deduction skills," Adrian praised. "The Goddess of Prosperity thing... well, I basically just used her name at the start to make the common people blindly believe that a benevolent Goddess was actively helping us. Using a Goddess’s name has much more power compared to telling people that I am the sole owner of that freakish power. This way, even my enemies would have to think twice before trying to assassinate me because they think there is a literal Goddess backing me. If I went and arrogantly told people that the Dungeon power belongs entirely to me, it would be incredibly easy to consider assassinating me. People would have no reason to hold back."

He smirked. "I can do a lot of impossible things with my Dungeon. In fact, the entire reason why Oresfall is this prosperous, rich, and powerful is directly thanks to the Dungeon. And also... well, you can say thanks to my specific knowledge from Earth."

Aria nodded. "I didn’t know that you were from a different world at all, but at least I guessed something right?"

Adrian chuckled. "I guess so."

He stood up. "We can fight together from now on, but you are not allowed to blindly throw yourself into danger. I will be the tank. I will take the heavy punches, I will take the physical attacks, the spells, everything. You are not allowed to use your body to shield me."

Aria frowned deeply. "You don’t get to make that decision!"

"You are my daughter," Adrian said sternly. "It is my responsibility to keep you safe."

Aria just glared at him, clicking her tongue loudly.

"I regret telling you that I still want to be a child."

"I’ll keep treating you like a child then," Adrian smirked. "And you will keep enjoying your childhood. Because childhood..." He paused, his gaze softening completely. "...childhood is something that you might never ever experience again."

Aria nodded and she beamed up at him. "And you will never get a better daughter than me!"

She quickly ran out of the hut while Adrian just chuckled in response as he sat back down on the mat and a few seconds later, the Demon entered the hut again.

Adrian looked at him flatly. "What is your real name? You conveniently forgot to introduce yourself."

The Demon sat back down. "Well, the people here just call me Chief. But do you really want my True Name?"

Adrian raised his eyebrows. "Isn’t the whole ’True Name’ thing a trope where if I know your True Name, I can magically order you around like a slave?"

The Demon laughed. "That is some random fictional thing from your previous world, Adrian. That is not the case here."

He crossed his legs.

"You know, the Angels and the Demons... we are basically the exact same biological race. We all originally come from a completely different planet that has long been destroyed. We have taken over multiple worlds and planets exactly similar to this one, and we have successfully created our own massive Cosmic Empires."

He gestured around the mud hut.

"This specific planet is the one that we are currently fighting for. But of course, having you on our side will be incredibly beneficial."

Adrian looked at him coldly. "First, tell me everything that you know. If you don’t, I cannot make a decision."

The Demon smiled lazily. "What are your current calculated chances of taking sides?"

"Well, eighty percent your side. Twenty percent Angels."

The Demon raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. "Twenty percent? Even though they literally tried to assassinate you?"

Adrian smirked. "Well, that’s the whole point, right? That just fundamentally means that they fear me because they wrongly assume that I am fully committed to your side. If I tell them that I will go to their side instead, they will welcome me with open arms desperately."

The Demon chuckled. "You are very daring."