Demonic Devourer ch. 100 + announcement of a brief break

Angelic Tower — Root

Kirin arrives as Adrian is grinding his way through a nest of spiders. It’s an irritating region, and he needs to use all his focus to ensure that their nearly-invisible webs don’t trap him. On one occasion, he does actually get stuck, and he’s forced to use Blade of the Eternal Sea to get out, manifesting it from his back to slice through webbing that is significantly stronger than steel.

At no point does he actually feel like his life is in danger, and so he wonders if he’s doing it wrong. He remembers that the most major advancement he made—fast Category 2—occurred when he had literally no choice except to figure out how to do it. Then, his soul was degrading, and he was stuck inside a proto-Titan’s greatest ability.

There’s not much Adrian can do to challenge himself other than climb, though, so that’s what he does.

He enters a rare clearing, illuminated by the light of a false sun above, and with his Hydrokinesis, he determines where the web is. It covers nearly the entire grove, with gaps barely large enough to step in interspersed here and there.

In the center of it all is a single half-spider, smaller than the rest. Its upper half is that of a human, though its back is facing him. Adrian knows that it knows he’s there. It’s up to him to make the first move, now.

Adrian considers what he needs to do in order to kill it. He’s been collecting souls for the rifle this entire time, and he knows one high-power charge shot could likely do it—but then again, Swordfighting is on the verge of breaking through to Diamond tier. It’s level 49, and the Gold level cap is 50.

His decision made, he draws the Channeling Blade in one hand and a seeking dagger that Sierra lent him in the other, takes a step forward—

And the half-spider explodes in a shower of gore.

“Shit,” Adrian mutters. Someone’s gotten there before him. He draws his Hydrokinesis back, forming a quick shield for himself so the blood can’t hit him. Once the half-spider’s innards are done painting the trees around it, he lowers the water.

Standing in the center of the clearing, entirely untouched by the now-visible bloodied web, is Kirin Uten.

“Broken gods,” Adrian yells, “That was my kill! And how in the godsdamned hells are you here?”

He has a few more choice phrases to yell, but he decides to let Kirin explain himself. Adrian replaces the seeking dagger with the Soulshard Rifle—immediate firepower is more important than leveling up right now. Getting caught off guard with a dagger that’s barely even enchanted would not be ideal.

“Actually, I think it’s mine,” Kirin says, fiddling with an item in his hands.

Adrian squints at it. Unlike Sierra, he doesn’t have a general-purpose Appraise. In fact, that’s part of the reason why he decided to spec into Warrior—the class inherently allows him to get a sense of the details of any weapon he can see.

Unfortunately, the blue steel disk in Kirin’s hands is not a weapon.

The long, brilliant blade that he draws from behind his back, however, is.

Angel’s Vengeance

Category: 3

Tier: Tourmaline

A fragment of a wing from a long-dead Angel 99. This item always imparts the Eradicate effect onto targets it hits. Angelic energy increases the power of every blow made with this weapon to the fourth power.

Adrian catches the barest glimpse of the description with Identify Weapon before Kirin lightly touches it to the ground and the world goes white.

He has the presence of mind to close his eyes, at least, but Adrian’s not sure if that actually helps. The intensity of the light is so great that he knows he’s going to see spots for hours.

It almost seems wrong, then, when he opens his eyes again and the landscape is still mostly intact.

Well, the grass has been scoured for a few dozen feet, and so have the webs, which Adrian supposes was the point, but still.

“I’d say it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, but it isn’t,” Kirin says, placing both items behind his back. They disappear without a trace. Same kind of skill Sierra has, I guess.

“The same,” Adrian replies, still cautiously gripping both weapons. He has nothing on the order of a Category 3 weapon. If he shoots now, he might be able to get a hit off before Kirin can react… maybe. “Last I saw you, you were possessed. You should be dead.”

“I agree,” Kirin agrees. In response to Adrian’s apparently obvious surprise, he says, “I’m not an idiot. You don’t live a century and a half with the Coalition if you’re an idiot.”

“Could’ve surprised me. You don’t look a day over twenty-five.”

Kirin shrugs. “Good genetics and massive doses of healing and time magic will do that to you.”

“Huh.” Adrian considers asking the other operator what his sources are, then reconsiders when he remembers that his survival through the next month is probably more important. “Anyway. You were saying.”

“I was saying,” Kirin agrees sagely. “I returned to my proper mind in an abandoned fragment, having been brought there by an item I no longer have on my person. A Category 4 item, no less, one that resisted all manner of inspection.”

“I think I saw that,” Adrian says. “And you were just… there? Alone?”

Kirin looks disturbed. “There was a woman. I cannot remember her face, nor her power. Only a name.”

“Sapphire.”

“Yes.” Kirin looks even less happy now. “She is more powerful than you, more powerful than your companions, and more powerful than me. And she allowed me to escape under the pretense that she had more important things to do.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Adrian says. His experience with Clearwater is limited, but Evelyn and Sierra have both bitched enough about the half-elf for him to have an understanding. “There’s no way.”

“Exactly,” Kirin says. “She never lets a mark go. There is always a plan.”

"And so you decided to come to me, looking for Evelyn, who Sapphire has also hunted.” Adrian wonders if he’s being paranoid, but he’s fairly sure this is reasonable. “With information that pertains to Evelyn and Sierra. And somehow, you think that’s not what she wants you to do?”

“Well, I had assumed the two of them would actually be here. They’re not. It’s not worth second-guessing our every move. We are two pieces trying to play a game when we can’t even see the rest of the board.” Kirin sounds oddly defensive, which makes more sense when Adrian realizes he’s basically accused him of working for their… mutual enemy?

“Sure, sure,” Adrian says. “I doubt anything you tell me can materially harm them down there, given that, well, they’re in the hells.”

“We should get to a safe zone first,” Kirin suggests. “I would rather we not be interrupted—“

Midway through his sentence, he turns, reaches behinds his back, and draws an arrow.

A single arrow. Without a bow.

Adrian’s eyesight is perfect, but he finds himself wondering if he should get it checked anyway when Kirin throws the arrow.

It flies straight and true into the woods. As if fired from an actual bow, not Kirin’s slender fingers.

In the distance, something screeches.

Kirin grins. “Been a while. Let’s move.”

Each floor has safe zones interspersed through them, though they’re increasingly rare now. One of them is always occupied by a Climbing Hub checkpoint—at least for the first twenty-five floors.

The safe zone they are at is not guarded. It might’ve been, once upon a time, but now it’s just a sad, empty patch of grass with a rusting bench on it.

Kirin sits down. Adrian does not.

“Alright,” Kirin says, reaching into that odd space of his. He retrieves a thermos and takes a long sip from it before speaking again. “Do you have a way to contact the rest of your party?”

“N—“

“I thought not. The hard way it is, then. Here’s the brief: the Coalition has deployed angel and Titan response units into the hells. That means people specifically aimed at countering anything they have to offer.”

“Okaaaaayy,” Adrian says, drawing out the word. “I knew that already. I bet they knew they were going to get chased. They’re going to kill them all.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Kirin says. “Sierra and Evelyn are going to kill everyone that gets sent at them, sure. I can buy that. Two proto-Titans are a hell of a lot to deal with, if you’ll excuse my pun.

“The issue is what comes after. Direct fighting isn’t the only way the UCC does this. I used to be a diver, and we had contingencies for world-ending threats making it down there.

“Sierra and Evelyn will stand victorious atop a mountain of corpses, and the Coalition is going to collapse a hell on them.”

The Ninth Circle

412 hits us first.

As it turns out, even a Category 3 angel’s Scour isn’t enough to defend themselves against an amplified demonic nullspace. It survives for longer than the first angel that encountered our nullspace, cleansing itself using its actualized concept, but even the radiance of the sun wouldn’t be able to escape this. 412 is injured enough by its mishap with my Soulpyre that it is unable to maintain its Scour for long enough to escape our twinned domains.

Angels killed: [2/6]

When it dies, the names of the other angels change. 677 becomes 676, 591 becomes 590, 468 becomes 467, and 910 becomes 909.

I suppose the system did describe each of them as having the same rank as their name.

Sierra notices the same.

“If we need to fight up to Angel 1, we might have a problem,” she comments.

I don’t disagree.

The remaining four angels seem more hesitant to attack us, for some reason. They hang back, maintaining their position several hundred feet from us. All four of them have some skill or domain or concept active now, and the glow that they emit is bright enough for us to see them through the sands of the areas we have yet to claim.

“We’re at a bit of an impasse,” I mutter. “This is annoying.”

“So we are,” Sierra says. She winces. “I don’t know if I can maintain this nullspace indefinitely.”

It’s curious. Her magic reserves are deeper than mine, as far as I know, and via our bond, we can share.

Yet for some reason, Manifesting the nullspace is harder on her than on me. Is it because she copied the skill initially? Is it because I was designed for this?

That second thought makes my skin crawl. Nothing is more disgusting than the thought that I’m still operating according to the standards that Sapphire wants for me.

But there’s nothing else I can do, is there? If, in the process of becoming something that can break her, I have to be what she wants, I can accept that so long as it ends with Sapphire dead.

I shake my head, freeing myself of the thoughts. This is the wrong track to go down. There are still four angels that want us dead here.

“I’ll lend you my magic,” I say, feeding our soul bond. “We can lower the nullspace, too. Bait them in.”

“I have a different idea,” Sierra says. “Don’t fight back, alright?”

“That’s a promising start to a battle plan,” I say. “Alright, hit me.”

Immediately, her nullspace starts changing.

Neither of the most powerful weapon we wield have settled into their ultimate Path, but I think Sierra’s has gained definition quite quickly. Hers is one of balance, which can mean a lot. Sierra’s class is one of the most abstract I’ve seen—though the Blue Mage has definite rules, her Red Mage class seems to be able to do nigh anything if she has the magic capacity and the will.

In this case, the concept of balance takes the death of a powerful angel and produces a healing miracle.

Not a resurrection, of course, but I sense the disassembled body of 412 start to piece itself back together. I’m not entirely sure what Sierra wants, but I can feel her burning intent through the bond between us, so I withdraw my nullspace bit by bit, granting her the control she needs to turn loose divine molecules back into a damaged angel corpse.

“You made me a demon back on the surface,” Sierra says. “Can you do the same with this one?”

That sets gears turning in my head.

“Angels and demons aren’t compatible,” I say. “But you want me to Corrupt the strongest one here?”

“Yes,” Sierra replies. “I have a skill that’ll let me amplify anything I have in exchange for not being able to use it for a few days. You’re going to have to carry me for a while.”

Oh. Oh. I get it now.

I Phantom Shape more limbs, prepared to catch Sierra when she falls.

Ready, we think together.

Go.

Sierra activates Advance Amplification, focusing it entirely on her Personal Telekinesis.

At the same time, I reach out to Corrupt 412’s corpse.

You have defiled a protector. This will not come without consequences.

I brush aside the odd system message away as it appears, focusing the entirety of my energy into the angel. Sierra’s nullspace takes over mine as she falls. Corrupt shoots up half a dozen levels in a single second.

Midnight-black flecks of corruption begin to form on the corpse, and the already-unstable building-sized being starts to shake under its own power.

The soul bond tells me everything I need to know about Sierra’s actions.

Sierra sacrifices twenty days of usage of her Personal Telekinesis to amplify the skill to expand far beyond her person for just a few instants.

She hits 412’s destabilizing corpse with the force of a Titan, and it flies outward towards the boundary of the Varnian Keep.

Towards the remaining angels.

Angels and demons are fundamentally incompatible. Even a special skill I earned while Category 0 is enough to severely damage an angel that collides into it with divine magic.

With the amount of energy 412 still possessed when I killed it, Corrupt isn’t a true attempt to turn it into a demon.

It’s the lighting of a fuse.

I pull Sierra close, embracing her with my human arms as our makeshift bomb arcs towards our enemies. They don’t seem to realize 412 is dead yet—either that, or they know, but they think they can save it. Instead of running away like they should, the three remaining angels come together, preparing to catch their fallen ally. Sierra shields us both, and I watch as the corpse starts to fall, corruption overcoming it.

Five hundred feet to the angels.

Two hundred feet.

Fifty feet.

The detonation is a second sun.

Objective: Angelicide

Miracle destroyer. Miracle maker. How interesting

Angels killed: [6/6]

Reward: Adversity sculpts excellence.

Reward:

Your Proto-Titan class has advanced to level 38!

New skill unlocked: Annihilate (Irrelevant)

Mmm… not quite yet, I think.

Evelyn. Sierra. PT-32 and -33. Let’s chat about what’s next, shall we?

Us Titans should know each other.

____

Author's note: I am physically, emotionally, and creatively exhausted. I hope you enjoyed this chapter; if not, please let me know. Thanks for sticking with the story to triple digit chapters--here's to more!

I think I'm going to take a break for a bit. One week, maybe two. School is about to start for me again, and I want to recover before I post another chapter. If I force myself to write, I'll just write garbage, and I want all of you to have the best reading experience possible.

Will update later. Thank you for reading.