Artwork source: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/6844147

Another artwork that I almost considered: gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=9917575

To celebrate Frieren season 2, a very rare 2nd person cap of the absolute cutest demon girl Linie! A good writer would probably have tried to expand the story and come up with a scenario where you meet Frieren's party and have to manipulate your way out of the situation – but I'm not that smart.

Usually I don't do 2nd POV because I imagine that 99% of tgtf cap readers would have very different thoughts and actions than my protagonists, but in this cap, I thought that people could interpret it as a mental change due to changing species into a demon girl.

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 what really, secretly made you happy was just the thought of your own existence. It turned out that a cute, thin girl with a huge axe actually could be a good warrior – all it required was a demonic body. It was only through your own discipline that she could be a force for good to those that she would encounter, and not a betrayal of the innocence that her cute face and dress suggested. You were strong, but still the same as everyone else when it came to social situations. Or maybe even weaker than most, as your ability to handle emotions and stand up for yourself never got better. Maybe it was impossible for a demon to improve their skills at such things… or maybe a self-conscious girl really was a good fit for your personality.

You eventually accepted more comforts of human life, allowing yourself to dress up in different outfits, attending parties, and even doing some more… shameless things. In the end, life as the world’s only self-hating demon wasn’t so bad.