Barry's pupils abruptly contracted as he instinctively took half a step back, the soles of his boots scraping a white streak across the ground.
He clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white from the force, his palms drenched in sweat.
The burning rush of adrenaline from saving people moments ago had yet to fade, but now a chill crawled up his spine.
"A price?" he repeated, his voice tightening slightly with wariness as his gaze swiftly swept across the other man's face.
It reminded him of the stories priests had told in church when he was a child—ancient legends of trading one's soul for a wish.
"Who... are you?" Barry's speech quickened unconsciously, as though trying to drive away the unease in his heart. "Deals like this only happen in comics, right? Paying a price for power, it sounds like..."
He paused, unable to say the word "demon," afraid it might provoke the other man and cause some unforeseen change he could not handle.
Yet he could not help looking the man over from head to toe, as if trying to find horns or a tail beneath those stylistically indecipherable clothes.
Harry found Barry Allen's question rather helplessly amusing. Why did everyone think of demons the first time they heard the word lending?
Harry shook his head. "No, I'm not some mongrel like a demon. Rather than calling me a demon, you'd be better off calling me a demon slayer. The number of demons I've killed ranks among the highest in the entire multiverse."
That was right. Harry had destroyed three-tenths of the Hell Dimensions, along with a small fragment of a Hell Dimension. The demons he had killed had to be counted in the hundreds of millions.
"I don't need this kind of power." After hesitating for a while,