[I will!]
A few minutes later.
[I see them! Seven demons! Some of them are quite strong…] Crinis says.
[Alright, we should be able to handle that many. Invidia and Al, help me suppress our mana signatures. We should be able to sneak up on them, at least a little closer.]
Dampening mana and preventing it from being seen at a distance is a highly technical and difficult process. My own Skills in this department aren’t great, and Invidia’s are only a little better despite his greater brain power. Al, on the other hand, is a freaking expert. The guy spends most of his life floating about completely undetectable to everyone around him. If I hadn’t repeatedly stressed how unnerving and creepy it is having him pop out of thin air all the time, he’d probably be invisible right now.
With the three of us working together, we manage to dim the glow of our combined cores to a significant degree, allowing us to sneak even closer to the group of Orpule demons. After we poke our noses around a tight bend, we manage to lay eyes on them for the first time.
[Al!] I mentally hiss. [Take a peak and tell me what sort of demons you see. I want to know if there are any exceptionally dangerous types.]
The floating eyeball flickers and vanishes before, I assume, he wanders to the edge of the tunnel and has a look around the corner.
[There is a pride demon who I assume is the leader of this group…]
[Why always pride demons?]
They seem utterly incompetent to me. Overconfidence and arrogance are quite literally their defining features!
[They are one of the few types of demon who cares about leadership. Most others cannot be bothered with it.]
[That… makes a lot of sense.]
[There are two slaughter demons in the group, along with a blood demon. There is also an envy demon and a grudge demon.]
[A grudge demon? I don’t think I’ve seen one of those before.]
[They are not very common, but are immensely difficult to kill. I do not believe we will be able to manage it.]
[Are you kidding?! Aren’t you tier seven?]
[In this instance, I must draw the line between defeating a demon and killing it. The grudge demon will not be hard to defeat, but we will not kill it. It will escape and grow stronger as we feed its nature.]
[You mean, it’ll have a grudge against us?]
[Yes.]
[Well, that’s just great. And wait, did you say an envy demon?]
I turn to Invidia.
[Looks like we found one of your people! How do you feel about that?]
[I will takesssss everything from them!]
[Yeah… Yeah, I suppose that sounds about right.]
It’s wrong to think that demons of the same variety feel any kind of kinship with each other. They aren’t ‘clans’ or ‘siblings’ in any way. To be honest, having multiple entities who are chasing the same obsession is probably an inconvenience to a demon. If you’ve got two slaughter demons working together, that’s literally halving the amount of slaughter they get to enjoy!
Maybe enjoy is not the right word…
[There’s one more, right? What else we got.]
[The last is a greed demon.]
[Isn’t that what Grokus evolved from?]
[Correct.]
21. Sarah Meets her Demons
With a mighty bellow, Sarah bursts around the corner with myself and Tiny right on her four heels. The demons respond quickly, the two closest, both of the slaughter demons, turning toward us in a flash, transforming into a spinning whirlwind of death before I can blink. I should clarify that I mean very fast there, some human idioms will take longer than others to go away.
Behind them, the more spell-oriented of their group don’t miss a beat, the grudge and envy demon putting their minds to work with a level of force I can feel even from here. Not that Sarah minds. Armour or not, she barrels in with the unstoppable momentum of a freight train, her paws thudding into the ground so hard it shakes. A product of the first stratum she might be, she is still an absolute unit, and I think the demons are just as susceptible to being flattened by a ten-ton bear as anything else I’ve ever fought. It’s clear from the outset that our opponents have been warned about us. Sarah might come as a surprise, but a giant ant, a couple of demons, and a big ol’ monkey aren’t exactly difficult to spot.
With how close we managed to get to our targets, the mad charge is over in seconds, and Sarah crashes into the demon’s ranks like a tsunami of furry muscle. The slaughter demons are nimble and lithe, nothing like the chubby or bulky sort of demon I’ve seen a lot of. One could be forgiven for making an assumption that ninety percent of their bodies is some sort of blade, but that would be nonsense. The true percentage comes closer to sixty percent, or so I’m told.
They slide around Sarah’s charge, attempting to dig into her flank as she barrels past them, but Tiny and I don’t let them, rushing to meet them head-on. Agile as a fish, they change tack halfway through their strikes and divert them to us. I rely on my foresight and heightened reflexes to catch the blade on the perfect angle of my carapace, deflecting much of the force of the blow before I bring my mandibles to bear, already having infused them with Force Magic.
Despite my flawless defence, the red-stained blades of the slaughter demon are unbelievably sharp and still manage to remove a small chunk of my diamond carapace. These guys are proper deadly. My force-empowered mandibles snap forward with devastating power, crunching together with a piercing sound that rings through the tunnel. Unfortunately, they close on empty air, the demon having danced backward out of my reach.
Tiny’s approach is a little different than mine, and I can’t really say if he does better or worse. Carrying all his momentum forward, he leaps, unfurling his wings and beating them down in one great thrust to give himself as much speed as possible and hurls through the air like a furry bullet. Rather than fend off the demon’s strike, he simply sticks an arm out and allows his opponent to cut halfway through it, the slaughter demon displaying consummate skill by avoiding the forearm guards and penetrating deep into the flesh.
Except Tiny cares little for the wound. A wild grin spreads on his face as the blade of his foe becomes stuck on his impossibly tough bones. Light flashes across my eyes as Tiny unleashes his coiled right arm, delivering a devastating punch straight to the chops of the demon, sending the creature flying.
Did he manage to land a punch? Yes. Is his left arm totally useless? Also, yes.
Sarah continues her forward press, jaws snapping and front claws slashing at anything that gets close enough. Already, I can feel the rage building in her as a number of minor wounds are inflicted; her anger is like a physical presence with its own rhythmic heartbeat, one that can be heard thundering through the air as she fights. Behind us, Al and Invidia put their minds to the test, pitting their force of will against our opponents who are trying to force the mana around us to yield only to them. Invidia is also kind enough to fling some Healing Magic at Tiny, hopefully enough to close over the wounds.
The front of the fight devolves into the traditional monster versus monster gnashing and slashing, but the demons are craftier than most opponents. Sarah’s offensive finally runs into a wall in the form of the blood demon, a horrific entity who appears to be half red liquid and half roiling demon flesh. The creature burbles and hisses as its body literally boils, slamming itself into the bear and sizzling her skin and muscle, further enraging the savage bear who begins to slash and tear blindly, hoping to rend the fluidic monster in front of her.