Chapter 29
Iducked its swing and brought my blade along its side; it scraped like it was metal on metal as my Bloodiron Blade met its hardened carapace.
As I hit, its arm swung around and caught my shoulder in a glancing blow that sent me flying backward, cracking a tree clean in half. The demon let out a hollow laugh, stepping up and gloating as if it had already won.
The thing was a walking mountain of strength, but that wasn’t going to be enough to finish this.
"Ah, Bran Heros. You have been recognized. Many have treated you as if you're their savior, able to defeat the Demon Lord." Its guttural laugh was answer enough about what it thought of my chances. "I'm happy to see humanity's best is but dust in the wind before its betters."
I shook my head clear and got to my feet. "Well, I'm honored that you recognize me. For a second there, I was worried the demons had forgotten about me."
"Nonsense. It's just a matter of importance, of which yours was low," the demon rumbled. "The Demon Lord welcomes some competition. However, I'm afraid he's going to be sorely disappointed."
I leveled my blade back, pushing past the mocking voice. Even demons stalled for time, and I wondered why this one was stalling as I gathered my strength back into my feet.
While I'd been down, the others had joined the battle, their spells flying out to meet the demon. It batted several aside. Its body was tough, but its arms were extraordinarily so, by the way it favored using them over taking hits to its body.
I activated Soul Gaze to get a read on what I was dealing with and nearly let out a whistle of appreciation. This demon was strong. Though it leaned toward defensive skills, which made that defense a little less impressive if I worked against its specialty.
I squinted because even as I stared at it, the stats were shifting upward, and a new ability appeared on its list: Demon Lord’s Gift.
This would be tough, but not impossible. I just needed to overwhelm it with enough strength to get past those defenses.
The stalling had me a little more hesitant, only because I wasn't sure what else lay inside the hive.
There were certainly queen-type variants of the insectoids somewhere in there, and if this one had come out as a guard, there were likely others.
Though where he fell on their total scale of power was a toss-up.
I couldn't risk going all out just yet, so I met it halfway, drawing on Blood Hex as I clashed into the demon, again and again, letting my blood spill and saturate the ground, cursing those who walked upon it.
Gravity warbled up and down, making it difficult to predict how strength played out. Even my own was affected to some degree, though I'd fought through it enough times to have a decent sense of the tempo, riding the heavier gravity as I swung down and the lighter gravity as I punched up.
One such punch caught the demon and sent it ten feet into the air as the lighter gravity unrooted its stance, and it came crashing down twice as hard as it went up, my blade following a second later and sparking off its carapace.
The demon gritted its teeth and came at me even harder. Merlin and the others had become unable to help. Demons were still pouring out of the hive fast enough that their attention had to stay elsewhere. The women had to keep picking them off to ensure we never got swarmed.
"Almeria," I called out. "Flood the hive. I'm almost certain those queens can't swim." I chuckled at the thought of the bulbous demons flailing in water like insects drowning in a pool. They had no business being in there in the first place.
While the others continued firing spells and arrows, Almeria's rapier pumped out water like a fire hose, pouring down the tunnel and filling the demons' world with a never-ending torrent of water.
Those clawing their way up began to scramble and struggle as the water ripped them from the walls and pulled them deeper into the packed earth of the hive, with nowhere else for it to go but down, dragging an increasing number of demons along with the current.
Almeria had a moment to focus entirely on her task, the amount of water redoubling.
"Cease your foolishness," the demon I was fighting snarled, turning away from me to rush her, just as gravity shifted, and it became as light as a feather.
I activated Charge, slamming into it and driving it far away from her. "You're going to run from me?" I said, aghast, shouldering it aside even as it swatted at me, and I was forced to duck under its hand.
It pivoted and tried to hit me again.
This time, I braced myself and pulled out my Drop Sword as the collision hit, testing the system ability against its simple swing. I dropped right to the ground without issue while its attack was met with equal rebounding force, throwing it even farther from Almeria.
Halfway through its flight, gravity shifted again, and it dropped like a rock, keeping its sideways momentum until its feet dug deep furrows into the ground.
"Cease this trickery!" it roared in frustration. "Aid me!"
The ground rumbled at its call, and several insectoid demons with horns like large beetles broke free from the earth. They were big, though far from the main demon’s size, and clearly of the same species. They gathered together as it gestured toward Almeria.
"Stop her, and be careful. This one fluctuates gravity and can make movement harder than necessary."
Several of the new demons barked with laughter as they moved to encircle our group.
"Merlin!" I called out.
Shadows ripped me from where I stood, depositing me in front of Almeria. My blade clashed heavily with the first demon, a Sanguine Slash rippling off the tip and cutting clean through it with a satisfying crunch as its carapace wasn’t nearly as strong as the others.
"Fight me, you coward!" the large demon roared, and I was satisfied to hear it as I ducked around the side, ignoring its cries of frustration.
Merlin's shadows picked me up and deposited me on the other side of the fighting, where another of the recently unburied demons turned at my presence, only to find my blade going for its ankles.
It twisted and snapped at me to stop me, but it did little good as I wove around the attack and sliced hard into a joint on its ankle before stepping back.
The demon blew out a heavy breath. "You fight like you are not my match."
"Maybe." I didn't back down, dodging a heavy blow it expected me to meet head-on and instead hacking at its ankles. The chitin there was clearly weak, cracking, nearly giving me the chance to cleave the ankle off entirely.
Another demon swept in, charging with its head down, trying to catch me on its obnoxiously large horns.
I clicked my tongue and threw myself out of the way as a Crimson Barrier sprang up in my place.
While I was distracted by the charging demon, the one whose ankle I'd injured rushed for Almeria to stop the flood pouring into the hive.
She twisted at the last second, driving her rapier between the plates of its ankle and taking the demon's foot clean off.
Unfortunately, the move also gravely exposed her as it bore down on top of her.
My heart clenched, and I forgot the demon attacking me right up until shadows swallowed Almeria whole. Everything happened in the blink of an eye; she'd gone for the strike knowing Merlin was ready to pull her out at the last second. She hadn't risked herself at all.
Still, my heart hammered, and I lost my own focus as the larger demon slammed into me, carrying me a dozen yards before driving me into the dirt hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
I had a good idea where all the strength in the region had been going with the way these guys fought.
The leader had strength comparable to mine, and even if the others were only sixty percent of the way there, they could give me trouble if I wasn’t paying attention.
I heard Nyx shout my name in the distance, but my ears rang as the demon took advantage of my moment of distraction with a clean hit to the side of my head.
Working to save myself, I managed to twist my blade inward at the last second, pressing the hilt of my blood blade to the ground with me and driving it up, cracking its chest and creating a small gap between us. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me from being flattened entirely.
Only with its weight pressed fully atop me did it realize what had happened, its eyes narrowing into a deep scowl before the shadows grabbed me and pulled me out from under it, back over to Almeria.
I quickly took hold of the other demons trying to press her into ceasing her flooding of the hive.
The lead demon was clearly unimpressed as it paused to scowl at me. "Cease your worthless flailing. I would like to finish this before the Demon Lord arrives. He is not the kind to like arriving to a problem. He'd much rather arrive to a solution."
"Oh, in that case, come right over and slit my throat.
Really, all you had to do was ask nicely," I mocked him before batting aside another demon. The hive was a cacophony of screeches that were occasionally drowned out by the roar of water. It was like the tip of Almeria’s blade had become the mouth of a river.
The demon barked a laugh. "Humor is my favorite tool of the weak and soon-to-be-dead." It swung for me, and I dodged out of the way again.
"I'm going to do my absolute best to stay alive as long as possible, just to prove you wrong."
It watched me with wary eyes as I danced around it, and I wondered just how much trouble it would be in if the Demon Lord really did arrive. Part of me wanted to test that theory, but I also knew I shouldn't give him the benefit of the upper hand.
This fight had shown me I might still be out of my depth when it came to the Demon Lord's various soul fragments, especially if he could boss around a demon like this one.
But I had to believe there was still plenty of opportunity to defeat him.
If I gave up before the fight was even joined, there was no point putting up a fight at all.
Besides, this demon wasn't too tough compared to what I'd face going all-out against the Demon Lord, and I wouldn't hold anything back when that day came, leaving my fate in the aftermath in the hands of my lovely and capable harem.
"Having second thoughts?" the demon bellowed, apparently given far too much confidence by our exchange.
I knocked him back and charged into the remaining demons. Several of the large beetle-types were still pursuing Almeria, and they weren't nearly as resilient as the single largest specimen. Where it was durable all over, they had plenty of weak points.
A single application of Sanguine Locking caught the first by surprise long enough for me to swing back and drive my blade into a gap behind its knee, twisting as black demon blood squirted and severed the leg.
The demon bellowed and tried to throw itself backwards, only to manage to fall flat on its back with the bloody vines of Sanguine Locking holding it in place.
Nyx's arrows found the gaps in their armor even better than my blade, each one causing legs to stiffen and lock, disrupting their movements.
The largest of the demons seethed as our teamwork slowly dismantled its backup.
Even with one leg gone, they defended themselves fairly well, curling and twisting to hide the gaps in their armor.
But whatever was happening deeper in the hive, the swarm coming out slowed to a trickle and then stopped completely.
Almeria's flood continued, and our group was now alone with the massive beetle demon, its carapace puffing with strained breaths.
"Cowards!" it roared and charged.
I matched it with a roar of my own, shifting and coming to a near stop right before a head-on collision, pulling as much force as I could to the side with my sword stabbing into the dirt and completely missing the demon by a mile.
It swung past, a brief flicker of bewilderment on its face, before a wall of earthen and shadow spikes rose from a pit in the ground behind me. Its momentum was already too high to stop, and it crashed into them full force.
Having swung to the side, I was now right behind it, and as gravity shifted downward, I plowed into it, using each spike as my weapon to drive it deeper. It thrashed and cried out.
The carapace shell, already cracked from slamming into me earlier, creaked audibly as the armor over its chest threatened to give way.
“Again!” Once more I called out to the group, and we stepped back together before I threw myself forward as tendrils of shadow met me midair, adding Merlin's force to my own. I fell back atop the demon, my weight multiplied by the gravity and made stronger by Merlin and Nyx's combined efforts.
The result was a loud crack and a guttural moan as its chest caved in, and it collapsed onto the pit of spikes. The system reclaimed its body within seconds.
I heard the tinkle of a spatial ring landing, and then the familiar flop of a skill book hitting the ground.
"How long do I need to keep this up?" Almeria asked, standing at the mouth of the hive, continuing to flush it with enough water to fill a lake.
"Until the water comes all the way up?" I offered, unsure myself. No one else had a better answer, so I let mine stand. Even with all of the system enhancements, demons needed to breathe.
"All right," Almeria said, sounding bored as she stood at the entrance and held her rapier like the end of a fire hose. She tilted her head toward me. "Do demons really not know how to swim?"
I pointed down at the hive. "Even if they could swim, unless they can breathe water, it’s pretty hard to survive in a bunch of flooded, twisting tunnels underground?"
Almeria opened her mouth, paused, then closed it with a click and shook her head. "I suppose so. I'm just wondering, since that's why my people grew up in the sea, and there are certainly demons capable of fighting us there."
"You haven't seen any insects under the sea, though, have you?" I asked, and predictably, she shook her head.
"No, I have not." She hummed and kept the water flowing. "I find it particularly satisfying to kill demons this way." She beamed like a merciless, bloodthirsty demon hunter.
The water sloshed up from the deepest reaches of the hive, carrying with it floating loot that wasn't worth our time. I nodded to Merlin, who teleported us all back to the First Garden before Eve could even return.