Two of its arms were gripped in Jacob’s hands as he kept it tied down, the other two slamming into Jacob’s skull as it attempted to kill him while demon-kin fell by the dozen, concentrating through the elite doing everything it could to flay Jacob.
For his part, Jacob wasn’t laughing anymore, taking something of a strained look as he locked the Squinko down, though still unharmed.
Alone against Dei and Clever, it didn’t last very long, and Dei confirmed the strange time-alteration had ceased, leaving Dei to believe it was either the Skittergore or a third demon-kin that’d fled.
Jacob waved off Dei’s concern, saying “That demon smoke is definitely the only thing capable of doing anything to me. It can’t kill me, that’s for sure, but it irritates over time. Like a full-body sunburn. The moment it stopped hitting me though, I healed right back up.”
Despite Jacobs assurance, Dei decided to keep a close eye on him. If the smoke from these demons did anything at all, no matter how insignificant, who knew what a direct attack from the demon himself would do?
* * *
Deep within corrupted territory, the demon’s brow scrunched as it received an urgent report. One of the raid-party elites against the Gem-Dwellers encountered a supposed impossibility.
Something resisted the Phantom Plague affinity to an unnatural degree.
The Squinko sent images of the mana failing to penetrate past even the upper layer of the skin, with the resistance encountered from the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears implying the internal organs were equally as durable.
Its soul was unassessable, though it had to exist if it could resist this thoroughly.
He decided to mark it as something noteworthy, though not immediately attention grabbing. A new Lunar Apostle? But which Parasite? The man’s powerset revealed nothing.
He was situated in the center of a demon raid, more information would come in, but it was likely he’d simply be another bug to squash or mind to shatter, whichever proved easier.
* * *
With all the ensouled demon-kin slain, the remaining were lamb to the Slaughter…er. Jacob was placed within Fendrascora’s garden alongside Thadria until a time when more elite appeared, and Dei worked alongside Perumah to tear the rest apart.
The demons formed a river of bodies, all advancing in the general direction of the village while apparently not knowing its exact location. Despite the inefficiency of their search methods, quantity is a quality of its own.
Dei’s group started at the middle, but when he detected a cry for help from the end, he didn’t hesitate to jump into action, blurring through the tunnels and smashing down walls to find from where.
Through his soul pulse, he detected several human signatures fighting off the demons, including Iora. The demon-kin found the village, and every able-bodied person fought like hell.
He could practically feel his parents wanting to jump out and help, held back only at how they knew it would split Dei’s attention.
He located the despair in a weakening section of the battle line, arriving to see the split, bleeding body of a Gem-Dweller.
Dei immediately gave him [Divine Balance] using [How About a Demonstration?].
* * *
Larm didn’t bother trying to move, nor stop the bleeding wound. How could he? Half his body was gone, his entrails splayed across the ground where the demon-kin had thrown him so it could eat his legs.
He felt the demon affinity’s soul-devouring properties gnaw at the edge of his existence, sinking its teeth into his most precious sanctum. The moment he died, he’d be shredded in more than body.
Would he even meet Grim? Would there be anything left, or would this accursed thing absorb it all and go on to kill everyone he loved?
Will it know where his house was? Would it know about Adja?
The thought made him despair, but what could he do? The Gem-Dwellers were spread too thin, the loose forces not nearly enough to stem the tide; there were simply too many.
The darkness closed in at the corner of his vision. He fought, trying to stay awake, but willpower could only do so much, and his head slumped forward as his eyes closed one last time…
Searing flames ran through his blood, and he shot back to wakefulness, seeing his organs fly back into him, flesh and bone knitting back together at centimeters a second.
A powerful healing spell. More than that, the draw on his nutritional reserves was almost nonexistent. It created flesh from nine parts mana, one part matter. High quality, at least Historic grade.
His soul relaxed back into his body once more, the hooks grabbing at it disappearing as the demon-kin devouring his flesh exploded in a wave of gore.
Then the presence fell on him.
The tectonic grinding of an avalanche, brutality beyond measure, animalistic hunger. Bloodshed incarnate.
A Slaughterer. Undeniable. He would never forget the Presence of one for as long as he lived.
Yet… this one felt more domestic. Not tame by any measure, but sharpened. Intelligent and complex.
It felt fatherly and caring, caressing his soul in a way a doctor might gently assess their patient.
A soldier in a garden, with all his weapons ready and sharpened yet none directed towards Larm himself.
Distantly, he knew of fury directed at demon-kin, but the Slaughterer felt only compassion for his plight. A worldly love of life.
Finally, at the very core, Larm sensed a burden placed on the Slaughterer’s shoulders, a duty he could not escape, nor did he want to: a bulwark against death.
His body finally responded enough to look up, seeing the gore spread around him, walls removed as the tens of demon-kin he was fighting before served as less than fodder.
Left standing was a humanoid figure with a serpentine black and red creature wrapped around its neck, monstrous eyes bearing down on him, weighing his life.
Larm saw the terrifying depth-born visage of a World that Walks. Glowing webs of soulstuff crisscrossed his body, and even glancing at them drew whispers to Larm’s mind, speaking of the unknown mysteries deep within himself he’d never thought to consider. Beneath the purposeful pure soul, though, a strange pattern of cracked glass gave the impression that the Slaughterer had been shattered and pieced together, the imperfect space between revealing an endless dimension of rage and fury.
He was mana seared, Wrath visibly coursing through his flesh.
Despite Larm’s broken body, he pushed off the wall to stumble forward, throwing himself to his knees and slamming his forehead against the ground in his most respectful bow.
“Thank you, warrior, I owe you my life and allegiance.”
Larm felt the Presence stutter, confusion and gratitude staining it in an odd way that was normally impossible for the average mortal, indicative of an incredibly powerful soul. He was not surprised.
Not until something material reached through that presence, cupping his soul gently, filling it with a warmth.
[Achievement Gained: Meet the Gateway Calamity]
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
[Meet the Gateway Calamity:
You have met the Gateway Calamity, through which the powers of outer realms manifest, and pleased the infinite gazes within, attracting the approval of the one known as Justice.
- Justice is 30% easier to learn and advance
- Improved awareness of your Justice Sense
- Carry a fragment of the Gateway Calamity’s ??????
- Faint link to the Gateway Calamity]
He didn’t dare look up despite the caring Presence; not out of fear, but respect. This was someone granted a name by the affinities themselves, Larm was unworthy to even stand before him.
Larm felt a gentle pat on his head, as if he were a silly child, and he felt the Gateway Calamity move to another front, tears and screams of dying demon-kin filling the halls.
Larm finally relaxed, yet he felt… incomplete without the Presence, the colors he’d seen draining to the mundane hues he’d seen before. Life as it always was, made shallow from the glimpse he felt into the greater existence within the Gateway Calamity.
When he felt the comfortable warmth of being more real within him, he suddenly became very grateful of the fragment left by the Slaughterer himself, a potentially greater reward than Justice’s blessing.
* * *
Dei’s party ripped through the demon-kin. Clever told him where he needed to go to prevent the immediate deaths and Perumah expanded alongside him, now careless of whether the beast king opposed her expansion or not.
“If he loathes how widely I stretch my existence, he is welcome to exit the Convergence and enter the fray to stop me.”
She made a good point, as the thing hid even now. Dei understood, intellectually, that cautious animals were, to a degree, the ones more likely to survive, but it rubbed him wrong that such a powerful being wouldn’t even remotely intervene, especially when it would pose absolutely no risk to the beast king.
Was empathy that atrophied on Avium? Why was he even asking when he knew the answer was yes.
Perumah’s expansion forced her to continuously draw from Dei, and he felt through their bond that she didn’t mind. Though she felt an absolute dependence on him for her every day life made her little more than a pet, battling together was another thing completely, and she believed she should trust him in battle to be a dependable comrade, not risking efficiency to sate her pride.
Without limits, she took a lot of blood.
The demon-kin blood was infused with their affinity, making it worse than acid to drink, leading to the creation of odd “Tap-thorns,” she called them, that would stab a creature, then violently spray its blood into the air.
As they went though, even she was stretched thin, her mind and body struggling to maintain the coordination it held. Perumah got to the point where she was forced to dedicate herself to fully controlling the hive, leaving her main self vulnerable; when it became too much, she entwined herself in Dei’s back, latching her “Main” thorn on him and letting some roots pierce through the upper layer of his flesh to connect back with the rest of the world.
Without having to move around, she began enforcing alterations into herself, the previously hidden gray nub of her body growing into something of a wide, purple-and-red glowing discus that pulsed like a heart, carrying his blood to the furthest of her reaches,
Her body became an expanding wall, until Dei felt her abruptly assert some kind of control over the space, and things became partially weightless for him, while the demon-kin that encountered the spell struggled to breath or move, crushed under a weight.
He felt the moment she formed her domain ability, one based on her newest Gravity affinity.
Gravity felt somewhat confusing for Perumah’s powerset, but if there was any “Fundamental force” she resonated with most, he supposed Gravity did pose a threat to the circulatory system with how difficult it made for the heart to beat.
When she reached the limit of her expansion, she was barely enough to cover three-fourths of all the routes the demon-kin took to strike at the Gem-Dwellers, leaving Iora and the other human warriors to take care of the rest, now with significantly greater ease.
Dei watched Iora distantly using the soul-echoes she emitted, begrudgingly admitting that she rivaled his one-to-one strength to a degree.
Similar to him, she was not built to handle large swaths of monsters, but she never stopped despite that. She released worldshaking attacks that caused multiple cave-ins, doing everything she could to route the demon-kin towards Perumah’s domain and eviscerating those that didn’t. Without being specialized into wide-range attacks like Perumah, she still managed to keep the remaining demon-kin corralled; the other Gem-Dwellers served more as helpers than actual combatants now that there was so much less space to cover, the lethality of the demon-raid dropping to a ghost of its previous magnitude.
Putting his long-hated rival aside, Dei found himself experiencing combat as most of the universe did: burning up mana as quickly as he could earn it.
To most, fighting in-line with their affinities was a requirement, or else they would run dry almost instantly. When his father fought Iora, he fought in a Slothful manner: lazing for years before experiencing a massive burst of power.
His mother as well fought in line with Love, protecting him and being rewarded for it by Love compensating the cost.
Dei dubbed Gem-Dwellers his people. He was born to them, his parents had many friends in the village, and he would eventually find his home amongst them. They fell under his protection, and Wrath responded to his fury at them being threatened by giving him a limitless well of rage to draw from.
Dei normally had a functionally bottomless well of Wrath mana to draw from, but even Cycle of Sealing had its limits. Fights were not supposed to last hours, stretching to almost the next morning. The only other time Dei had experienced this phenomena was with Edward of Rage, a pure Endurance fighter.
When the last demon-kin fell seventeen hours after the start of the battle, Dei’s strained mind took a minute to catch up as he stood there, panting at the end of his road of carnage.
Slowly waking from his stupor, Aloran finally said “There are more fronts to face, if you are up to it. Things are… not turning out well. Twenty three of the hundred and twenty seven Gem-Dweller villages are going to fall, and that number will only go higher if the capital fails.”
“Send me where I’m needed,” he said. While he was slightly exhausted, the lack of Dream latching onto his mind left him more than awake, rearing to keep fighting.
Clever, on the other hand, fought to not shut his eyes.
Aloran presented him with the direction he needed to go and a brief description that it was one of the smaller villages, saying that the Capital would still hold out for a time longer.
“Go to sleep, buddy,” he said quietly to the Korgonda resting on his neck, “I’ll be okay for a bit, and I need you to be at your best when we finally go to the main battlefield. Something tells me it’s going to be gruesome.”
Clever huffed, but understood, and slithered into the bubble Fendrascora held out, quickly shrinking down and being moved into Dei’s bloodstream.
Dei wondered briefly if it was healthy to have so many different worlds inside him, but cast the thought aside. Every second he wasn’t fighting, others were dying.
Perumah withdrew herself, and Dei felt only the shattering of rock for the next half an hour or so as he broke through the walls.
He was leaving Iora behind for now, but they would find each other again
* * *
The next two villages presented familiar sights as Dei arrived while the demon-kin armies slamming against their gates. Each battle took a full day to complete, and Dei felt that his lack of a Dream had saved at least a few hundred people as his efficiency didn’t suffer any noticeable drain.
Just another tragedy The Mother forced on all life. To become exhausted in such life-threatening situations would spell death for many.
Clever appeared a few times, but Dei insisted he stay rejuvenated and ready, an ace for if Dei were ever cornered.
The third village presented a more gruesome sight, as he was just an hour too late, the demon-kin having already broken through the defenses and cornered the survivors.
He ripped the army apart, obviously, but the Shaman was already gone, their staff being held by a crying child that guarded it zealously, glaring at the demons and being helpless to do anything.
Wide swaths of the town were gone, turned to ash by something Dei struggled to visualize until he noted the lack of elderly, and Perumah used mind-reading to fill in the gaps.
“Those too old to fight quickly formed connections with Sacrifice and burned up their entire existences in suicide attacks. Gruesome, but it kept most alive. They only suffered a five percent casualty rate, and none of them were children.”
Dei wanted to push the army back, but Aloran was the first to ask him something new.
“I did not know some were getting this bad. Dei, link with the survivors and run. I’m warning Justin of the situation, teleport to him. You will be traveling to a few of the worst cities and evacuating the people, then I need you in that Capital. It isn’t turning out well, and if they don’t get reinforcement- namely, you, they will perish.”
Dei clicked his tongue but did as ordered, working with Perumah to get the approval of everyone to be dragged away as he told Aloran “I need you to contact The Champion if you can. I have his payment, and if he wants it, I need to be alive. The least he could do is give a little help.”
Aloran sighed, “I will try, but Dei, most of the demon’s forces are dedicated to raiding the sun. They fall upon it by the hundreds of thousands, and level five hundred is the minimum to demon-kin facing The Champion, and he still finds time to press the demonic forces on Avium. He’s stretched thin. I’ll look into it, but do not stall in the hopes that The Champion will step in to finish the war.”
“Thank you, Aloran. I will do everything I can.”
Drawing his connection to Justin, he could only pray that nothing interfered with his Roving Gate and teleported through space.
He was surprised to find his prayer answered, Aloran infusing the bond with Refuge as Dei served as a protector for these people, making it harder to interrupt him. In a blink, he stood on a cobbled stone street.
The distant roars and earthshaking thuds surrounded Dei on all sides, telling him the “Capital” of the Gem-Dweller civilization was completely surrounded.
Justin looked at him briefly, but Dei didn’t stop to talk. There were more villages to help evacuate, and more demon-kin to butcher.