With a sound plan.

Okay. Ishtar had comfortably settled in Reina’s body for the moment, pushed aside her grievances over using it, had a full belly and was sufficiently recharged after resting and a good drink of liquid lust.

She clapped her hands. “Alright, time to go out and find Will.”

“Not to rain on your parade, lass, but… What is your plan?” Belphegor asked before frowning and turning to look at Ruth. “That’s how the saying goes, doesn’t it?” he asked her.

Ruth chuckled. “Yes, it is. And I also want to know, Rei- Um… Ishtar. How do you plan to find him?”

“Even while I was a ghost roaming around, I could see and sense a bit of my essence left in all of you from all the times Will had sex with you using magic. Don’t worry, it’s nothing dangerous. Just… a bit of a mark. Protection in case something happened to you.”

Ruth nodded. “I remember the incubi didn’t touch us because they sensed your power in us.”

“Right. Now, the connection I had with Will was far deeper than that, and the way Helga broke it, while impressive that she could do it at all, wasn’t exactly clean. There’s still some of my essence on Will, I know it. I’ll be able to smell it, say, in a 300 meter radius? I’m guessing a number, but that’s how it feels like to me.”

“Uh-huh. And WHERE are you going to look?” Belphegor asked.

“Um… My idea was to try to follow a trail from the girl’s apartment, but…” Ishtar sighed. “It’s not the most reliable thing. I’m not exactly a dog and my essence isn’t a scent, either. It’s just a metaphor, and a bad one, apparently.”

“So you were going to run around randomly after that?”

“Uh…”

“I swear, the knack you have for magic has to be instinctual because you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed,” Belphegor said, looking at Ruth again. “Did I get that one right, too?”

Ruth grimaced and crossed her arms. “Yes, but… Rude.”

“Do you have a better idea, then?” Ishtar asked him, pouting. “You’re looking around through the eyes of birds and rats, and you still haven’t found anything. At least I don’t have to see him, just be relatively near!”

“Lass, this isn’t a village or a town, it’s a full blown city. Go around aimlessly and you’ll just waste time and energy.”

“Then what am I supposed to do!?”

“Um…” Anna raised her hand shyly.

Ishtar sighed. “You were one of the diligent girls at school, weren’t you?”

Anna chuckled. “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I was thinking about what to do, and… Can’t we use Helga’s nature against her?”

“Oh?” Cynthia and Amelia exclaimed, interested.

“Elaborate,” Belphegor said.

“Well, Mr. Belphegor just confirmed that she’s possessed by a Spirit of Greed, right? And what she wants right now is to get you, Ishtar.”

“You’re saying we should use her as bait?” Nanami asked, grimacing.

“Kind of, but… She’s a mercenary, right?” Anna continued. “She does work for people in the underworld, so there has to be a way to contact her. If so, we have a few options.”

Aoi smirked. “Okay, go on, girl…”

Feeling more confident, Anna smiled and nodded. “I had three ideas, exactly. One is a roundabout way of getting to her, another is more direct, and the last one… Kind of in between? I was thinking we could… hire her through proxies to, say, capture a Spirit of Lust that was recently found.”

“Ah!” Nanami’s eyes widened. “Of course. She knows for a fact Ishtar should be roaming around, so if she gets, well, greedy, then it’s possible she’d take the bait. But… I worry it would be too obvious that it’s a trap.”

Anna nodded. “That’s my worry, too. It’s a safer bet, since we would be the ones setting the trap and confronting her on our terms. The direct way, though…” Anna sighed and looked directly at Ishtar. “The more direct way I was thinking of is… You contact her directly. Give her details to prove it’s you, the same spirit that escaped. Something you saw, something she said. Then, demand for her to give you Will, then agree to some sort of trade.”

Aoi nodded. “Dangerous. We’d be the ones walking into a trap, and depending on her resources, she might not even show up.” She closed her eyes. “Then again, she’d want to claim Ishtar for herself, so she just might. Will’s safety wouldn’t be guaranteed, though.”

“And that’s the third option,” Anna said. “We pretend to have captured a woman with Ishtar inside her and try to get her to agree to an exchange. Will for the spirit. What to do during the exchange is what worries me about this plan.”

“Yeah,” Ruth agreed. “Obviously we don’t want to hand over Will nor Ishtar.”

“You know, might doesn’t ALWAYS solve everything,” Belphegor said, “But it does more times than I’d like. The princess, the sword lady and the amazon are all far stronger than most of what Helga could throw at you, even if she did get help. Didn’t the lad nearly beat her while completely drained of aether? Negotiate to the point of getting to see Will safe. Then just brute **** it.”

“Don’t think I don’t see you not mentioning yourself,” Cynthia said, glaring at the old man. “Didn’t you say you’d help?”

“...” Belphegor scowled and groaned. “I don’t have to go. You’re all enough to handle it. I’ll just… watch from a distance and step in if things get hairy.”

“What you’re saying is that you’re not actually all that strong, huh?” Amelia said, trying to goad the old man.

Belphegor shook his head. “Wrong sin, lass. You won’t get me to move by appealing to my pride.”

Amelia clicked her tongue.

Ishtar stepped up to the old man, glaring down at him while he sat on the couch.

“...”

Ishtar… understood, to an extent. Despite the sheer gap in age and experience, the old man was just like her. A being who indulged so much in their own desires that their very nature and magic twisted to conform to it.

Belphegor, the King of Sloth, wasn’t lazy because he was an asshole. It was his very nature. Maybe it was because Jack Evans didn’t understand this that he couldn’t harness even a fraction of the old man’s true power.

Ishtar sighed, resigned, and looked at the old man again. “One spell. Just a single spell. I won’t ask for more. You don’t even have to cast it yourself. Give it to me or someone else.”

The old man slowly looked up at her, and what the young succubus princess saw sent an awful chill down her entire body. Belphegor, living up to his name, gave Ishtar a devilish, almost evil grin.

“That, lass, is the correct request.”