Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

A sharp turn on her way to Darius's shop ended up in a run-in with Rowen. Hitting his head against Erika as he charged as far away from his house as possible, he crashed on the ground right beside her. Feeling the same pain as the charging man as she'd fallen on the ground as well, Erika gritted her teeth from the hurt before caressing her head and healing herself.

"Look where you're going!" She yelled while getting up.

Noticing the dishevelled look on Rowen's face, Erika instantly knew that he was drunk. Though scowling in anger, being a priestess, she offered him a hand, and although reluctant at first, Rowen took it so he could get up more easily. However, that turned out to be his mistake. The moment his hand touched Erika's hand the memories of his past moments flooded into the priestess' mind.

It was Athenia pulling the strings, even controlling fate somewhat, but when the priestess saw Tanya bleeding and the baby crying in the background, none of it mattered.

"You monster…" Pulling her hand off Rowen, she stared at him with a look of utter disgust. Grabbing him by the collar next, she began dragging him back towards his house. He tries to resist, even fight the priestess, but a pair of phantom hands tied his limbs together and made him float behind Erika.

"Let me go! J-JU-JUST LET ME GOOO! I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! I DIDN'T!"

"Oh shut up you bastard," not buying his excuses, Erika dragged him all the way to his house.

Upon getting there, the first thing she did was lock the door with a runic seal so Rowen wouldn't be able to leave while she checked up on Tanya. Following the scent of blood down the hallway, she passed through the bedroom where the baby was howling with cries. Pointing her finger inside, Erika directed Asmodia who'd just gotten back into her body from handing the letter to Athenia.

The devil still had no idea about Athenia's appearance, which needed to be depicted for the idol, but that didn't matter at the moment, as she had something else to focus on. And while the devil took care of the child, Erika lifted Tanya's body off the ground and set her on the dining table. Checking for a pulse she was relieved that she wasn't too far gone.

Glancing over to the coward quivering at the door at the sight of the devil and the stress from the situation that he was in, Erika wanted to spit on his face for running away from his responsibility as a father.

"Sure your wife may have deserved desertion, but to leave your child and planning never return to?

You're worse than the parents who left us on the church's doorsteps, at least they had the decency to leave us in somewhat capable hands!" Abandonment has been a thorn that pricked Erika as much as it did the rest of her party, coincidently her goddess felt much the same, having been abandoned herself as well.

"I'll deal with you later," focusing her attention back on the ailing woman, Erika began casting healing magic over her cracked skull. Slowly as the wound began to close, she drifted her hands apart. One continuously healed her head injury and the other focused on the rest of her body parts.

As busy as the priestess inside the bedroom, Asmodia had cobbled up the baby in her arms and was feeding it through her fingers–a nectar it hadn't tasted yet. The milk of a mother straight from the body.

Tanya hadn't fed the child at the tit, not simply because she didn't want another man's child feeding on her breast, but also due to the fact that she didn't want another man experiencing her breasts. In her mind, they belonged to Raven, and the children she would bore from him–and to Rowen's son, she used pumps to squeeze out milk and then feed it to the baby through a bottle.

'A human child, frail, isn't he?' Playing around with the child, rubbing his nose, squeezing his cheeks, Asmodia couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have children of her own. 'Most devils from my time seem to have an army of children already. Even the imps are more populous, it meant that she was the only one who's one of a kind at this point.'

The irony of her being the devil of seduction with no children, made her eyes squint tightly. Succubuses were her domain–at least they used to be, now overtaken by opportunistic bastards who've had a lot more to offer those devils than she could while slumbering through the curse.

"How's the healing going?" Walking out of the room with the baby, Asmodia looked at Erika who was still helping Tanya's body heal better. Getting responded to with a tired sigh, the devil turned her gaze to Rowen.

Petrified on the ground, he was staring between her and the baby in her hand. Moving closer to him, she made him skirt away like a cockroach, but with the locked door behind him, there was nowhere left for him to go.

"W-what are you…" Rowen stuttered, unable to speak his mind.

Asmodia continued glaring him down for a moment but then called out to Erika.

"Say priestess, we're gonna need someone to clean the church and take care of it while we're gone won't we?" She said, smiling with her head tilted to the side.

Although a bit puzzled at first, not seeing much of a problem with what Asmodia was insinuating, Erika hummed in agreement. Chuckling at the approval, Asmodia's body parted in two, one of whom held the child and the other moved even closer to Rowen. He quickly scrambled and got up, even tried to open the door–but locked with runes, it wouldn't even budge.

So turning around with his body pinned to the wall, he stared panting at the devil slowly approaching him from the front.

"WH-WHAT ARE YOU T-TRYING TO DO?!" He yelled, terrified of what's to come.

But his terror didn't last long as the moment Asmodia touched his forehead, every memory, every experience, and even his sense of self was stripped away from the coward. Left as nothing but a husk–a puppet for the devil to control, the man called Rowen ceased to exist from that moment onwards.