Darius had no idea how long he had spent in that little sliver of the underworld, but by the time he was able to transmission back home, it was already night, the cool air hitting his bare chest.

"You'd think there'd be police or at the very least a few scavengers, but this place is emptier than hole I left in the butler's chest."

"That's wicked man."

Turning his head to the voice, he found that it belonged to what looked to be a young man. His blonde hair was short at the sides yet was long at the type, falling onto the left side of his face, covering one of his surprisingly violet eyes and reaching his nose. He was thin and wore a dress shirt that shared the same color as his eyes. The top few buttons were undone, and the rest was tucked into black slacks, though the pants were up higher than the waist, reaching towards the middle of his stomach. The legs of the pants ended slightly before the ankle, leading to a pair of black boots that were slightly heeled. It was a very effeminate image.

"Look, I get that you probably have a lot questions, but why don't we talk it out in the parlor, or what used to be the parlor anyway."

And he was British. Great.

"No thanks RuPaul, I make it a point to never walk with someone of questionable gender. Makes things awkward, you know?"

It seems the girly-boy has a sense of humor, as he snorted at that and put a hand on his hips. "So, you got a sense of humor too? The boss won't like that, but I do."

This was going somewhere very weird, very fast. "Listen here kiddo, if you're with the government or the church then get the hell off my property."

That seemed to do the job in killing the man's enthusiasm, as he sighed and sagged his shoulders. He held his hands out in a placating manner. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, I'm just a messenger. Besides, I think you'll like this actually. At the very least, you'll be interested. My name is Virin by the way."

That was an… interesting name. "Oh? Then by all means, start talking."

"I knew you'd come around! Now, much like you, I am a Soul Searcher! I'm here as a representative of Soul Searching, a union of Soul Searchers from all over the world, more specifically, the New York branch."

And here Darius thought they'd never show up. "That's nice and all, but what are you doing here? Why now?"

Virin threw his arms up in the air, as if he were excited that he had been asked those questions. "Well it can be quite hard to find new Soul Searchers, but you certainly made a loud enough ruckus to make tracking down easy. I mean, a lightning storm in the middle of the island on a beautiful sunny day? Not only that, but one that seemingly teleports from Montauk to this place? We had to investigate. And as for your first question, we were making sure the masquerade was kept in place. Can't have normal people finding the supernatural."

That was plausible enough, but that didn't explain why he was talking to him now. If this Virin was simply keeping the status quo, then there would be no reason to wait here for him.

"Okay, then what do you want from me? As you can see, I'm going to be a bit busy for a while."

"Obviously, I mean, look at this place! It's a bloody dump, that's what it is! No, I'm just here to inform you that my boss would like to meet you in let's say, three months? Yeah, three months. Ta-ta!"

That was when the girly boy turned to smoke and flew off towards what looked to be the direction of the city.

"He certainly was a… fabulous individual."

"Don't ruin that word for me CASI.

…

Apparently, word on the street was that his home was hit by a "terrorist attack" which was almost comedically close to what had happened.

The next few days that passed were full of needless questioning and hollow words of thoughts and prayers. The funeral was to take place in six months, the time being chosen as to allow him to "process' and heal". Darius almost laughed in the lawyer's face when she had said that. He didn't need to mourn them; they weren't anything to him. They meant nothing.

"User, you seem to have snapped your pen."

He blinked away his thoughts and focused on his immediate surroundings. The pen in his hand had burst, leaving black ink all over his hand and desk. He leaned back in his chair, taking in the sight of his sparse office. After the death of hi-Antitezo's family, it was up to him to take over the "family" company.

Antech. It wasn't the best of names, but it was better than anything else he could think of. The company itself wasn't doing too hot when he came to the helm, with almost blatant nepotism and embezzlement within the company. Not to mention the dozens of competitors vying for his position.

Normally that would take more than two months to fix, but when you have magic, making your problems disappear was easy. The dozen or so board directors screwing with his company's assets were swiftly disposed of (and then added to the meat pile) while the rest were… persuaded to hand the reins completely over to him. The restructuring of Antech was still in the works, but he was speeding it up as quickly as possible. In another month or two, everything should be done.

Darius moved over to the wall sized window behind his desk and stared down at the city. He had chosen this office specifically for the view, and the aesthetic of having to go all the way up to the top floor just to meet him. The receptionist's office was the room in front of his, it being the only normal entrance to his office.

He made his way to the office's bathroom to clean the mess on his hand. Walking to the sink, his eyes wandered to his reflection. His hair was combed back, with a few strands falling in his face. There was no need for product, as he could simply use magic to cheat. His eyes were no longer disguised, no longer seeing the need in it when he could simply "convince" people that it was normal. Gone was the unfashionable leather jacket and jeans, in its place was a navy button up with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and a black vest and tie. A black pair of slacks matched his vest, leading to a simple pair of leather dress shoes. His formal gloves sat in his vest pocket, ready for use.

Washing the last vestiges of ink away from his hands, he grabbed a hand towel and dried his hands. Once he was done, he left the bathroom and looked over the document he was writing.

It was a simple thing really, but if it worked than it would put Antech back as a household name. You see, there wasn't a unified phone system, instead there were a bunch of separate companies and systems in place, which made it hard for one to stand out amongst the crowd. This led to quite the problem, in that there were many phone brands that wouldn't be able to communicate with one another due to differences in design, operating system, or simply because of petty rivalry. That was why he was going to fix it. It was a simple app, only $5.99, but it would allow for messaging and calls to be compatible to any and all users, regardless of brand.

If Darius were to have tried this two months ago, he'd still be working out the "Hello World" program. But after "learning" from a few helpful volunteers it was borderline effortless. All he had to do was send the code and notes to the R&D department and it was out of his hands.

He grabbed the paper and looted his desk for anything else pertaining to the project, before organizing the papers and placing them in a manilla folder. Pushing in his chair, Darius strode out his office and looked around the receptionist's office for said receptionist/secretary.

The room also doubled as a waiting room, with chairs all over the area of the room. There were magazine racks and puzzle books next to every group of chairs, and an occasional coffee table as well. There was a windowed wall at the far end of the room, which revealed his secretary sitting there finishing up some paperwork.

"Annie! How are you?"

Annie jumped a bit, not expecting him to suddenly appear in front of her. She brushed one of her red locks away from her face and straightened her back, obviously trying her best to look professional. "I-I'm doing good sir! I just got the e-mail from HR and it looks like both them and Payroll finished all the termination paperwork."

Her nervousness was obvious, though for once it was mostly undeserved. "That's good news, but enough about them. How's the husband? Still sitting on my offer?"

That seemed to bring her nervousness back full swing, as she began to stutter. "Oh, u-uh, he was just filling out the uh, the paperwork! Sir!"

Her noticeable insecurity with her position was annoying, but he'd give her a few more months. "That's great. Anyway, my computer still isn't set up yet, so I'll need you to get this to R&D. After that you can take the day off, no need for a receptionist if I'm not even here. Tell Andy I said hi."

Handing her the folder, Darius left the office and headed to the elevator at the end of the hallway, passing by several smaller offices for employees. Waiting of the elevator, he crossed his fingers and hoped that no one else was going to need it anytime soon, he hated elevator talk.

Once he heard the ding of the elevator and saw it was empty, he let out a sigh of relief. At least until a nasally voice yelled "Wait for me!"

He began to push the close button as quickly as possible. 'Come on, come on! Close dammit!'

"Thanks for holding the door open for me Boss, I wasn't sure I was going to make it!"

"I was trying to close it in your face Tom."

"Oh, you're such a kidder."

Tom's hands were on his knees, showing off his pit stains as he caught his breath. "Anyway, Christmas is coming up and I was curious as to what you think of my present to Annie."

Before Darius could shut down that idea, Tom began to ramble his plans. "So I was thinking that she might appreciate some tickets to Hamilton, right? Now I also included a handwritten note wishing her a Merry Christmas and a picture of me wearing my most flattering speedo. Whatcha think?"

Dammit Tom. "Okay, one, Hamilton isn't on Broadway till March, so unless you got tickets for then you just got scammed. Two, the note sounds like a good enough idea but knowing you I may need to give HR a call. Three, No, just no. And finally, Annie is happily married Tom!"

"W-Well I-I mean, how can I not fall for her?! I mean, have you seen her!"

Ding!

"Yes, on account of her being my secretary. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go and forget this conversation ever happened."

Darius rushed out of the elevator and walked towards the lobby. If he walked fast enough maybe everyone would leave him alone.

"Antitezo, leaving early I see."

Audibly groaning and turning around to face the she-demon talking to him, he couldn't help but feel his annoyance spike.

Standing in front of him in a baby blue pantsuit was an older woman (Around forty or so) with curly brown hair and a terminal case of resting bitch face. She was tall, only standing an inch shorter than him (though that was probably because of the heels). Indeed, Sandra was definitely a no-nonsense kind of woman.

Since day one she's had it out for him. Apparently both her and Antitezo's father were vying for the chairman position after the previous chairman announced that he was going to retire. When Antitezo's father passed, she thought that the position was almost certainly hers. At least until Darius came into the picture. In his defense, it wasn't his fault that consuming those devils had the side benefit of making him so charming. So now it was a race between the two of them, even if he didn't even really want the position. No, it would be better to insert someone he trusted in the position so that way he could focus on more important things.

"Well I figured since I finished that multi-com project you were insisting was doomed to never work, that I'd go home to destress. After all, overworking yourself is never a good thing. I thought you would've figured that one out by now Sandra, I mean, look at you."

That was also another reason she hated him, he didn't bother with subtly antagonizing her, going straight for insults whenever he could. "It's behavior like that which ruins a company Antitezo."

He could see the barely hidden frustration on her face, and he loved it. "I dunno Sandra, if I've been reading those financial reports right, we've been doing significantly better than just a few months ago. Surely you would know that, it is kind of your job."

She clenched her jaw and stiffly walked away. Fabulous.

"Must you be so antagonistic User? She is just doing her job."

Darius left the lobby and breathed in the mostly polluted air of the city. 'Doesn't mean that she has to be so rude about it.'

Making his way to the company parking garage next door, he wandered around until he spotted his Camaro. The poor thing had taken quite the hit during the "terrorist" attack, and it took almost a month in the shop before it was fixed. Totally worth it in his opinion.

Sitting behind the wheel, he made his way out onto the open streets and drove down to his abandoned warehouse. Well, it wasn't all that abandoned anymore at least. Once he was properly situated, he made sure to buy up a few warehouses. His excuse being that it was for an R&D expansion project in order to put Antech back on the map, and while that was mostly true, there was one warehouse that he took for himself.

Parking in front of the building, the old necromancer hideout was still in a bit of disrepair, but that was being worked on by his "workers". They appeared to be perfectly human, and in some sense they were, but they were little more than flesh golems in the guise of humans. Still, it worked for the time being.

The inside remained unchanged, with the exception of a lack of a meat pile. That was fine though, this was going to be his personal workshop, at least part of it. A funny thing about his power that CASI had neglected to inform him, was that he could eat books to gain their knowledge. It didn't save those poor volunteers, but it would stop him from going on a knowledge binge across the city.

"I said I was sorry User! Besides, that power was never meant for human or human-like creatures! It obviously was forced to adapt to your spiritual and physiological features."

"I'm still blaming you."

"You're so unfair User!"

"I know."

There wasn't any equipment in here yet, as most of the focus was set to the actual R&D workspaces. It was fine though, as this was more than just a workshop. Well, it will be anyway, he hadn't begun integrating some of the more magic stuff in here yet, but it was on the list.

He exhaled quietly and felt for the crown within his soul. Once he grasped it, he tugged on it and felt himself warp out of the warehouse, and to the Demon Realm.

He was still working on the name.

…

I was really struggling with how I wanted this arc to go. I went through plan after plan of just sitting there thinking about how I wanted to write this and what I wanted to happen. At first, I wanted to pick up during the funeral referenced earlier in the chapter, then I wanted have representatives from the church come in and have them investigate Darius. And that's not even getting into character design changes. I went through like three accents for Virin until I found one I liked, and I had to try and come up with his name and appearance, because I wanted that to be important to who he was as a character. I found my lucky break when I was going through YouTube and found Hazbin Hotel, so if he seems familiar to anyone, that's why. I drew some inspiration from that, as well as Helluva Boss for a few character dynamics that I wasn't in the future. That's not to mention the research I did on upper management for companies. So that's why I'm a bit later than I wanted to be. I hope you've enjoyed this decent chapter, as it would not be worth the stress if you didn't. Hoonter, out.