"What the hell's going on NOW!?" Helena yelled as she ran away from the exploding and expanding wave of literal flesh.
"I've seen this happen." Corissa gasped as she followed closely behind Helena, already short of breath, "When Aida...tried to destroy the grimoire..."
"Right. So...someone tried to destroy the grimoire? Jacob, what the hell?!"
"It wasn't on purpose!" Jacob cried as he flew over the escaping humans, "...It wasn't on purpose, right Brian?"
"...Right." Brian nodded.
"I'm not sure I believe that, personally." Kaguya sighed.
"Oh shut it." Brian scowled.
"Well, on purpose or not, we have to deal with it." Momo said as she ran away with the rest of them, "Thankfully we have an easy solution. Corissa?"
"While I could probably just touch it...and use holy..." Corissa gulped, "I don't think...it's a good idea."
"Why not?"
"Olivia's in there."
"And if Olivia's in there, she'll get eliminated along with the monsters." Kaguya nodded along, catching onto Corissa's point, "And if Olivia dies, who knows what will happen to Roko?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna ask you to not kill Olivia." Brian scowled, "If that's even possible at this point."
"It's totally possible." Helena smirked, "Corissa here could kill all of you will a single spell I'll have you know!"
"So can Olivia." Jacob scoffed, "The only thing stopping her is Roko."
"What a coincidence, the only thing stopping Corissa is also Roko."
"What? Man, that human is stronger than I thought."
"He is!" Momo grinned, "I became so much more powerful because of him!"
"What a coincidence. So did we." Jacob sneered.
"Wait, Roko helped you become stronger?" Helena blinked.
"Yeah! You see that cursed fire I was spitting out back there?! That was thanks to Roko powering me up!" Dietrich grinned.
"...And you still underestimate Roko?" Momo blinked.
"Uhhh..."
"Sorry." Helena sneered, "Did you mistake the power that Roko gave you for your own?"
"..."
"Don't be silly, Helena." Momo smirked, "Not even Olivia made that mistake. Surely, these gentledemons wouldn't think that the minor power boost they got from Roko's help was all their own work and effort and not only willfully forgot their own benefactor but went on to denounce him while taking his credit for themselves."
"..."
"But then again, what would you expect from the followers of the Demon King themselves?"
"Shut up!" Jacob cried, stomping on the roof they all had jumped to and turning around, "Look, that thing's stopped expanding! We can fight back now!"
"Oh yeah." Momo said as they also all stopped and turned around, "So...how do we handle this?"
"Well...we can rip and tear until it's done!"
"Brilliant." Helena rolled her eyes.
"Aight then, we'll leave it up to you." Momo said as she sat down on the roof.
"I'm...so tired..." Corissa gasped.
"Hey, what happened to working together?!" Jacob scowled.
"What happened to 'Demons are better than humans and don't need our help'?" Momo retorted.
"...Well...what happened to 'humans are so great and demons just steal all our credit?'" Jacob sneered as he pointed at said humans triumphantly, "Yeah! What about that!"
"We didn't say you were stealing our credit. We just said you were stealing Roko's credit." Momo replied simply.
"Which is just factually true." Helena nodded.
"..."
"You know, for a race that makes a lot of contracts, you suck at litigation."
"Hey guys..." Corissa spoke up as she looked around, "Where's Roland?"
…
"I'm coming buddy!" Helena cried as she got up and began running at the mass of flesh, firing off shots at the eldritch horror.
"Whoa, Helena, wait up!" Momo yelped, quickly catching up with her to support her.
The demons stared in befuddlement as the humans went to work on the mound of flesh.
"What happened to 'we'll leave it up to you'?" Jacob muttered.
"What happened to 'rip and tear til it's done'?" Kaguya retorted.
"Guys, can we please get along?" Corissa sighed.
"Roko? You in there?"
"I'm nowhere else." Roko replied, floating in the dark void of nothingness when Olivia appeared, "What's up?"
"What do I do?"
"You're asking me?"
"Well yeah."
"This is your friend trying to confront you. What am I supposed to do?"
"I...Yeah but...well you're my contracted partner! You're contractually obligated to help me!"
"Where on the contract does it say that?"
"...Nowhere..."
"...What do you need?" Roko sighed.
"What do I do?"
"Do you want me to give you an order?" Roko scoffed, "Me? A human?"
"I'm serious!" Olivia cried, "I don't know what to do!"
"Did you forget that I'm not going to be here all the time?" Roko snapped, "Our contract ends after all of this is dealt with. If you need to rely on me THIS badly to decide whenever or not you should heed your best friend's own warnings about your own side, something I have no experience with, then not only would there be no point but I'd be spitting in the face of Morgan's efforts as well!"
"Then what do you want me to do?!" Olivia shouted, "Just kill all humans like I'm supposed to?! You know you're a human too!"
"And that's exactly why I can't answer that question!"
"Huh?!"
"You're asking me, a human, if you should stick with the party of 'human genocide'? What the hell do you think I'd say?! I would tell you to NOT do that. I would tell you to come join our side. I would tell you whatever I would need to in order to not literally kill my entire race! Is that what you need right now?"
"...Then why don't you say it?" Olivia bit her lip, turning her head away in hurt scorn, "Why don't you beg for your life like you humans should?"
"Because." Roko replied simply, "That's not what Morgan would want."
"Again with Morga-"
"And that's not what you would be comfortable with." Roko interrupted rudely with a comment that stunned Olivia, "If my begging was all you'd need to change sides then you'd know I'd never do that and change sides anyway. No, the only reason why you're not doing that...well, I can imagine but I'll leave that to you."
"..."
"You have something precious on your side." Roko continued, "It would be impudent of me to ask you to abandon that for me."
"...Does your life mean that little to you?"
"My life is worth less than...most life that I come across." Roko nodded, "But enough about me. This is your problem. What do you want to know?"
"..."
It was a long time. A long time that Olivia spent in thought. A long time doing something that Olivia hadn't had much practice doing before. And at the end of it, Olivia looked up with the question she had chosen to ask.
"What...is the ideal relationship between humans and demons?"
"..." Roko sighed, "Olivia..."
"I know! I know you don't know a lot about demons!" Olivia immediately began defending her question, "But this is what I need! I need you to answer me! Even if it's an incomplete answer, I...I'm sure you're smart enough to theorize or someth-"
"I'm smart enough to theorize, sure." Roko scowled, "But I'm also smart enough to know NOT to give mere theory as a conclusion."
"Then what SHOULD I ask then?!"
"...Fine." Roko sighed, "Let me answer your question then."
"Huh?"
Olivia looked up as Roko waved his hand and summoned two scrolls. One was the contract that she had made with him. The other, an exploitative contract that they had 'borrowed'.
"Here. You're well aware what these are right?" Roko said, holding these two contracts up in one hand.
"Y-Yeah."
"They're contracts." Roko began explaining anyway, "One of these is ours. And if I may be honest. It's very well made."
"I...thank you?" Olivia asked confused.
"I honestly didn't know how good your work was until I inspected the exploitative contracts your peers used."
"Well...they're not exactly the type to bother making meaningful contracts anyway."
"Oh yeah? Then how did you do it? How'd you make such a good contract?"
"Well, contracts have rules." Olivia smirked, "Traditions that our own race have implemented as guidelines as to how to best write contracts. For example; you remember how you wanted to give up 50% of your mana? And how I told you that was stupid? That's because research has been done on what the optimal amount of mana to take is. 50% is way too much. Even if we never use it, the amount of mana missing would leave a contractee with barely enough mana to stay alive. The optimal amount has been agreed to be around 20-30% at max. More than that would start having a detrimental effect on your contractee's health! Which is bad if you want a long term contract."
"I see. So you have research and traditions on this."
"Yep!"
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"Why do you have traditions to make a better contract?" Roko frowned, "Yes, it's logical to want a better contract but if all demons ever wanted to do is abuse humans, what's the point of guidelines that make it fairer for humans? That consider our health?"
"I...huh..." Olivia blinked, having never considered that.
"If I may speculate, since that's apparently what you want, I'll go ahead and do so." Roko continued, "But I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that demons do want some form of fair interaction with humans. Am I wrong?"
"Yeah..."
"But it's also clear that these guidelines were never absolutes. The exploitative one here is proof of that."
"...I see." Olivia said, "I see what you're getting at, Roko." Standing up straight and flipping her hair back behind her, Olivia seemed to have a renewed sense of purpose as she continued, "You're right. If it's between these two contracts and the ideas behind them, then the choice is obvious. I'd choose-"
"WRONG." Roko said, forcefully stopping Olivia in the middle of her realization, "That's not what I'm saying."
"Wh-...buh…" Olivia stammered, caught completely off guard, "What do you..."
"I told you. I'm not here to tell you which side you should be on. Morgan never cared which side you took and never wanted you to pick any particular side over the other. She just wanted you to pick and commit. And in respects to that, I am trying to not convince you to pick my side the best I can."
"Th-Then what's the point?!" Olivia yelped, her mind long since short circuited trying to comprehend the situation.
"I'm not asking you to pick a side, I'm asking you to observe a fact!" Roko stated, pushing both contracts forward, "Think, Olivia! What do BOTH of these contracts have in common?!"
"In...common?" Olivia blinked.
"Humanity!" Roko answered, "Neither of these contracts could exist if humanity didn't exist!"
"...And if I kill all humans like the Demon King wants...neither of these contracts would exist." Olivia said, Roko's idea finally clicking in her head, "Is that it?"
"Exactly." Roko sighed, finally getting through to the young demon, "So the question you should be asking is not what side you should pick or what the ideal relationship is. It's 'What does humanity mean to you?'"
"..."
Olivia took a deep breath, "Okay. I think...I'm ready..."
"Then let's go finally see Morgan." Roko nodded, "She's waiting for you."
"Roko! Roko you in there?!" Helena called as she fired shot after shots that ripped the sea of flesh apart.
"I thought you were looking for Roland?" Momo frowned.
"I figured I'd ragebait Roland into revealing himself while looking for Roko."
"Oh. Well, I mean, Roland did get beat pretty badly. I wouldn't be surprised if he was out for a while."
…
"Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Roko killed him either."
…
"Damn, he's really out." Helena mused, "He would've popped his head up by now shouting about how he ain't dead."
…
"Sometimes I still hear his voice." Helena nodded.
"He still hasn't shown up though?"
"Sigh. Being a boke isn't as fun without a tsukomi." Helena sighed, "I'm going to have to slash Roland's pay after this for this."
…
"You know, maybe the carrot would work better than the stick?" Momo suggested with a laugh.
"I mean, I guess it did work for a little bit back when he was fighting Roko." Helena nodded, "I guess it's worth a shot. Ahem. OH NO! CORISSA GOT ATTACKED BY THE FLESH MONSTER AND IT RIPPED ALL HER CLOTHES OFF SO SHE'S RUNNING AROUND NAKED!"
Helena's lie was met with a burst of searing fire that blasted out from the mound and the figure of a flying demon exploded out from within.
"Aha!" Helena proclaimed, "I KNEW Roko was lowkey downbad for Corissa like everyone else!"
"That's the demon though?"
"Yeah but we all knew the demon was gay anyway."
"Says you."
"Whoa!" Helena jumped as a ghostly eye with horns poked up from below the roof looking very cross, "Is...is that a Drone?!" Helena cried, her usage of her spell's name causing her to cast one of her ghostly eyes as an example.
"Yeah. How's it feel knowing that I can do everything you all can do but better?" Olivia's drone sneered.
"How come your Drone's not tethered to you?" Helena frowned, her second miscast summoning another ghostly eye, "How'd you do that?!"
"What, did you really think Nasturtium's drone was connected to her because that was how the spell worked?" Olivia's drone smirked, "Making untethered drones is easy for magical beings like us. Well, when you know the infrastructure anyway. Do you not know why they were tethered?"
"Why?" Helena frowned.
"Because Nasturtium could cast spells from her drone." Olivia said, "That connection wasn't to stabilize the spell, it was to allow her to cast spells from them. You saw her cast spells from her drones didn't you?"
"I...I guess I did." Helena scratched her head.
"Did you mistake a function for tradition?" Olivia sneered, "That's so funny."
"We all know that's Roko's doing anyway." Momo replied.
"Yeah, Roko makes up like 90% of your new power, you can't fool me." Helena stuck her tongue out at Olivia.
"How? How could you possibly know that?! You don't know me! You don't know how powerful I am!"
"We know you're gay." Helena smirked.
"You've got no proof of that!"
"Smash or pass Corissa?"
"Smash, but that's not proof of anything."
"She do got a point." Momo nodded.
"Oh alright." Helena rolled her eyes, "What do you want anyway, Lydia?"
"Keep the other demons away from the mound of flesh please. I'm going to handle it."
"Why are you asking us?" Momo frowned, "Why don't you go to your demon friends?"
"If I thought they'd listen, I would."
"You can't do some magic to make them listen?"
"What do you think magic is?"
"I dunno, what do YOU think magic is?"
"A phenomenon triggered by a strong will that we shortcut using words or phrases."
"You can't pull one over me! I've read Roko's dissertation too you know!"
"Why?"
"Cause it's interesting."
"Not even Roko agrees with that."
"Says the one who brainwashed him."
"Hmph. You know what? You can have him back."
"Are you sure? He's known among us humans as the Male Corissa."
"...You know, you almost had me. I almost believed you if it wasn't for the fact that I know that Roko is more useful for how smart he is and not how hot he is."
"Hey, it could be both."
"Uh huh. Go deal with the demons already."
"You make it sound so easy."