Memers say that Frieren (the show) (especially Fern) is too unemotional, but for me that makes it more immersive.

Artwork sauce: gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=10371815

A good demon is a dead demon – they do not feel real emotions, having evolved human forms only to trick and fool humans and prey on them. But there was one who captured your imagination through the TV screen – Linie, the quiet, axe-wielding girl with cute pink hair in short twintails. At the instructions of Aura the Guillotine, she was part of a small group who had infiltrated a fortified town, under the guise of being a peace envoy. If you had lived in their world, you definitely would have fallen for her stoic appeal. At least that was something that you didn’t have to worry about in your current, magic-less world. Fearing for your life all the time would have sucked, anyways. But she was so cute… You kind of wished that she didn’t need to be defeated…

When you awoke, the entire essence of the world simultaneously felt more dull, but also more vibrant, in a way that was impossible to explain. Your senses felt sharper, putting you on edge. Bangs of pink hair came down in front of you and on the sides of your face, and when you looked down, you could see the brown fabric of a dress as it wrapped around your breasts. You looked around the unfamiliar room, which had walls of stone brick, until you found a glass container. In it you saw a tiny warped reflection of Linie. You reached your small hands up to your head and felt her horns, which were firmly attached to your skull, and you could feel the presence of her twintails on either side of your head. With every movement you could feel the tightness of the dress around your waist and chest, but your legs were free underneath the flowing skirt, and they felt strong and energetic. You really were a cute girl now – and a demon. You weren’t sure whether this should count as a dream, or a nightmare – or whether it was reality, and you really had lost everything that you had known.

You worried whether you were condemned to a life of evil, with no humanity. But you simply used your human-like free will to ignore the influence of the more powerful demons, and you fled the region by yourself. Other demons were nothing more than animals, you thought, and your sense of superiority over them made you feel a little better. You met people while traveling, and even though they were suspicious of you, there were many who were willing to talk to you, and while you had even more trouble than usual with showing your emotions, just the thought of getting along with them made you feel happy and loved inside. But all throughout your new adventure, you felt an ever-present instinct – no, a demonic desire – to prey on humans. Every day, with every encounter you felt the temptation, but you resisted. You were not going to let anything threaten your new chance to be a free girl in this fantasy world.

You found a new place far away, and you lived as a mercenary, hunting magical beasts and doing odd jobs that required basic mage abilities, and once your reputation had gotten good enough, you would join with whatever local heroes’ parties were desperate enough to let you work with them as a frontliner. Using Linie’s mana-conjured axe felt natural to you, so you were at the front of every fight, working the scariest job in the land. But you hated demons more than anything else, and killing them made you feel like you had found something that you liked doing. Often times you could see the helplessness of the people, and the courage of those who had stepped up to fight, and it would make you feel guilty about the situation you were in. So you fought fearlessly and with absolute discipline, and as a result, you were good at it. But it was still terrifying.

You always told everyone you met to never trust a demon. You told yourself that you were going to use your power for good, but you always worried about how your selfish actions would cause people to get tricked in the future, so you had a few rules that you made for yourself. You never stayed inside an inn or city overnight, and you didn’t do favors for free, except in secret. And you were absolutely never going to attack a human, even if asked. You spent all of your money on collecting spells and sparring with any corrupt human who was willing to teach you, so you could copy their fighting moves. You also bought delicious human cuisine, which helped you resist your desires. It reminded you of home.

But the hunger was still there. A foolish hero traveled towards your new homeland, on a quest to slay the axe demon before she could put herself in a position to betray even more people… He came to your “home” – it was just a little place to keep things that some nice people had built for you – and all of a sudden you didn’t feel safe anymore. You got on your knees and bowed your head down and pleaded with him to leave you alone, trying to explain how you wouldn’t put yourself in a position to abuse the humans’ trust.

But he knew better than to leave you be. In a second of pure instinct, your axe had sliced straight through his sword, cutting his hand clean off. Without wasting a move, you lunged and swung again and finished him off. Just like that, Linie had beaten another foe. You thought that he had attacked you first… but the only thing that mattered was your growing horror at what you had done. Blood was everywhere… forbidden, delicious blood. Within minutes, you ate him.

You got away with it all – it turned out that the hero was just on a self-righteous solo quest, and you blamed his disappearance on another demon and denied that anything had happened. And so you maintained the innocent cute girl persona that had become your identity, now satisfying your insatiable, ravenous bloodlust by – with massive shame and disassociation – hunting the occasional human. The only thing you hated more than demons was yourself. But what kept you going was both the absolute anticipation of your next delicious meal, as well as the desire to experience more of your long, healthy life among the humans who had accepted you.