I immediately got a notification that Banksy had leveled to 48. He’d killed two of the most powerful demon lords in a single attack. He’d gained a ton of experience, but he was still in the very early stages of 48. With the demon lords off the table, the remaining demons would only give a tithe of the same amount of experience. I relaxed.
Duke: You’re looking good. Make your attacks.
A crater had formed around the 500-foot length of my familiar. It would take several minutes for the remaining ground-based demons to recover, but the fliers swarmed, flocking toward my pet in a black cloud of death. They were out of range of my Leaden.
But they weren’t out of range of Banksy’s version of the exact same spell. And his was a lot stronger than mine.
Banksy cast Descending Angel. The effect was immediate. Every flying creature as far as I could see slammed to the ground, pulled into the earth with a sudden and jarring force powerful enough to obliterate anything more than a dozen feet in the air. The ground rumbled. All around, demons turned into meteorites, killing and destroying indiscriminately.
“Those poor brownies,” Clara said. Only a few of the flying NPCs had remained, but those stupid enough to still be hovering had been eradicated along with every lingering blood wyvern and pazuzu. The battlefield looked like the surface of the moon.
A moment later, a dragonfly smashed into the ground twenty feet in front of me. It was Dickinson, who had somehow managed to stay alive the entire fight.
Until now.
“Oh, my poor baby,” Clara said.
Banksy: I don’t want to cast the next one. It’s really gross.
My familiar hated the acid-spewing Green Hell spell. At this point it wouldn’t be very effective anyway. Not with the remaining enemies spread out and unorganized.
Duke: You don’t have to, buddy. But there are still a lot of the hyena things with the guns and cyclods left on the field. They’re going to charge you, and the zippers might too. Do you want to try your fatal attack? This will be our last chance to find out what it does before we approach the rift.
Banksy: Oh, all right.
Duke: Wait. Before you do it, spit out those three demons. Spit them toward me.
I started to close the chat window, but then I added:
Duke: Uh, make sure they’re dead first, though. Maybe chew on them a little bit.
Banksy turned his colossal head toward us, and in quick succession, he spit five times.
He was a little too accurate. The black horse smashed directly into Nipper, knocking it over on its side. Clara had to buzz into the air to keep from being catapulted. If it wasn’t for a tree on the other side of the road, the tank would have flipped over onto its back. The pale horse overshot us, hitting and cracking another tree. The three demons came next, all of them slamming into the ground around us.
Banksy: I’m going to do it. I can choose an area of effect around me, but I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I’m making it toward the dog monsters. I’ll see you soon, father. When I regenerate, I will head back this way. You owe me for this.
Duke: Thank you, buddy. Be safe.
Banksy: I’m not going to be safe. I’m about to kill myself.
Guildmaster Fiona had said Banksy received his Ghoul Night Out special attack because of my resurrection spell ability. I was assuming it would be some sort of mass reanimation zombie attack. Like how Descending Angel was just my Leaden spell, but on steroids. This would be like my resurrection skill, but somehow more powerful.
I was wrong.
The spell didn’t reanimate the thousands of dead demons and NPCs littering the battlefield.
I felt the soul power leech out of Banksy. It was like an invisible tidal wave crashing toward the armored dogs. The hyenas had finally started to rally, and their back-mounted miniguns made zzzzt sounds as they fired into the tough hide of my familiar.
The soul power hit the dogs with the force of a sledgehammer. There were only about 50 of the monsters remaining, and they all bowled over.
The souls of the dogs ripped out of their physical bodies. That’s the only way I can describe it. Clara and anyone else who didn’t utilize resurrection magic would have no way of seeing or understanding what I now sensed. Their bodies became oversaturated with soul power, causing their souls to become too big for their bodies. Like balloons with their tethers cut, I could sense the lifeforce fleeing upward into the clouds.
But their physical shells didn’t die. They’d become undead, zombies. And they went berserk, killing themselves and turning on each other. They danced in a circle as they bit and tore flesh from their fellows and themselves. The scene resembled a chaotic mosh pit.
All the while their canine bodies turned a shade of purple and started to swell. Armor popped off the hyena’s heads. The mounted guns clattered to the ground. Combatants on both sides of the fight stopped dead to watch, open-mouthed as the soulless were forced to stop their feral dance as their bodies swelled even bigger, making them unable to move.
The directed soul power continued to sweep out of Banksy. It continued to sweep into the demons.
Bam!
The hyenas blew, all at once. Brown, red, and purple gore showered in every direction.
Their skeletons remained, standing still, frozen in their contortions. And after an indeterminable moment, the skeletons did not fall to the ground. They resumed their dance, a spinning mosh pit of hyena skeletons, clattering in an aimless circle.
While the skeletons started their dance, Banksy fell over, dead, completely drained of power. The zippers swarmed over my pet, not realizing he was dead. They cut and stabbed, burrowing into his body. Their efficiency was alarming, despite the fact my familiar was already gone.
And then he, too, exploded. The shockwave threw me backward. The closest section of the wall of Medina crumbled under the explosion. But it didn’t matter. Any demons who remained were in full flight mode by now, heading into the woods and directly into the path of Avvinik and Moritasgus.
All that remained on the battlefield was blood, gore, the cries of the dying, and a circle of hyena skeletons, rattling as they danced in a circle that would only fall at the end of time.
“Well that’s one way to do it,” Clara said.
***
We only had five minutes before the three demons would respawn. The closest was the rat lord. I quickly examined his properties.
Seal of Halphas added to library!
Count Halphas
Rank 38 in the demonic hierarchy. A vassal of King Beleth.
May be evoked to reload weaponry. May cast Upgrade Limits on any Steam-based mechanisms. His presence in battle gives all legions within 100 meters unlimited ammunition. Kill or bind to negate this buff. Requires Evocation level 2.
Has three forms: a singular Vile Rat, a Rat Brute, or a Marabou Stork.
This guy was only a few ranks above my caterpillar, Count Fronz. Since he could take the form of a vile rat, that meant I could probably use one of the lanterns to bind him. His ability to reload weaponry would be worthwhile if we ever decided to get something that required refills. But for now he was useless. He didn’t have anything I could cut out of him.
Clara rifled through the clothes of the three demons. She spent a moment attempting to pull the black helmet off King Vinea’s head. It wouldn’t come off. Instead she removed the chest plate and peeled it off, revealing gray skin similar to my own.
She picked up the massive mace that Halphas dropped. The round, spiked ball at the end was six feet across, bigger than her. Yet she lifted the weapon as if it weighed nothing. It looked ridiculously large in her grip.
“It’s a soul mace,” she said, swinging it back and forth. Black and purple streaks of light followed the trail of the weapon through the air. “It’s lighter than my rifle, and it adds five to my strength. I needed a decent melee weapon. If I put it in my inventory, I can summon it at will. Check it out.”
The mace disappeared in a puff of purple sm
oke. She buzzed a couple feet into the air, swung her empty hand, and the weapon appeared halfway through her swing.
“It’s way too big for you,” I said, laughing. “It’s bigger than you are.”
“It’ll work if I’m flying,” she said. She flew at a tree and smashed it with the mace. The tree cracked in half.
I shook my head and went back to work. The next demon was the cat-headed one. I examined him. “Oh shit,” I said a moment later. “This guy is one of the big ones.”
Seal of Beleth added to library!
King Beleth
Rank 3 in the demonic hierarchy. Answers directly to Emperor Baal.
May be evoked for binding purposes only. His presence in battle provides +15% strength, +15% deftness, and +30% charm to all legions within 250 meters. Kill or bind to negate this buff. Requires Evocation level 4.
Has three forms: a Cat, a Cat-Headed Human, or a Hell Guardian.
I didn’t want to know what a hell guardian was. Finally, I examined King Vinea.
Seal of Vinea added to library!
King Vinea
Rank 6 in the demonic hierarchy. Answers directly to Emperor Baal.
May be evoked for binding purposes only. His presence in battle provides +50% vehicle integrity and +15% durability to all legions within 250 meters. Kill or bind to negate this buff. Requires Evocation level 4.
Has three forms: an Armored Human, a Tortoise, or a Hell Guardian.
We only had a couple minutes left. I grasped the amplification knife. (I had offered to give the knife back to Clara, but she insisted I keep it since I used it more.) I cut out both of the kneecaps of King Beleth. King Vinea also had a glandular upgrade, but we didn’t have time to get it out of him.
I threw the wet kneecaps into my bag. I then proceeded to decapitate Beleth and Vinea. I then cut through the sternum of both demons, exposing their chest cavities. I didn’t bother with count Halphas.
I pulled the black sprout from my bag. The hairy tendrils stemming from the bottom of the dusky chrysanthemum reached toward the downed demons, moving like tiny, reaching hands. The revulsion I’d felt the first time I held the flower returned.
“I’m doing Vinea,” Clara announced, pushing me aside. She placed the flower into the fallen demon’s chest cavity.
The screen flickered. A cutscene.
“Whoa,” she said a moment later. “I just got a ton of experience for that.”
Up until late last night, the two black sprouts—one in my inventory and one in Clara’s—both appeared in our quest inventory. And as a quest item, we couldn’t use, drop, or sell them except for their intended purpose. They had been given to us by Stolas, and we were supposed to plant one of them into the dead body of the assassin Andras.
I didn’t have anything against Stolas the owl demon. But I needed that quest to go away so I could utilize the black sprout. Unlike most games, there was no button to just dismiss the quest.
We were afraid simply killing the potion dealer wouldn’t end the quest. So instead, we’d snitched.
Andras had taken care of it for us.
Late last night, after he was freed from his kidnapping obligation, a notification appeared that the “Kill Andras for Stolas” Hell Quest had failed. Stolas’s potion shop disappeared from my map, and the two black sprouts had moved from quest inventory to the regular inventory, giving us the ability to utilize the sprouts for our own purposes.
I don’t know what Andras had done to the potion dealer, but it was probably something very nasty.
The countdown timer over King Vinea disappeared as vines quickly spread over the demon’s body. He remained frozen in place, cut into pieces, his separated and helmeted head discarded nearby. The vines reached for his head, pulling it into place onto his body. His chest cavity healed as his body sunk into the ground. In a few moments, the body was gone, replaced with nothing but a single sprout sticking from the ground.
I planted my own sprout into the body of Beleth.
Experience earned!
You are now level 47!
You have successfully removed Beleth from the realm.
The planting process repeated for the third most powerful demon in the game.
I didn’t have time to watch. Nipper was on its side, pushed up against a tree. We had less than a minute left before Halphas the rat demon would respawn. I rushed to the other side. Clara and I heaved, attempting to right the pushed-over bus. It didn’t budge. I engaged my grappling hook, pushing out. My current strength was 36, so the strength of my claw was 72, or the strength of 7 regular men. Even with that added muscle, I might as well have been pushing against a mountain. I had no idea how much the tracked vehicle weighed, but it was too much for us. I’d have to get Banksy to swallow it up. Alternatively, we could go to the mechanics in Yelm and pay the nerve agents 100 teeth to “retrieve” it, which magically teleported it to the garage. I decided we should probably do that anyway since we needed to repair the damage from today’s battle.
The giant rat demon’s body glowed. I looked at Clara. “You want to fight him, or should we teleport home?” We had to decide quick. The game wouldn’t let us teleport away if we engaged the demon’s aggro, which was going to happen any second. But at our current levels, I knew it would be a good, bloody fight.
Clara grinned, summoning her new, oversized weapon. “I’m gonna kill this asshole with his own mace.”
Chapter 59
Feedings Left: 3
As we approached Neo-Austin, we had to leave the two guardians on the outskirts. Much like with Medina, the old magic still held here, and the only guardian who could enter was the Shrill. He remained by the rift.
Their time would be soon, but it would not be today.
Banksy tunneled underneath us. He warned the city descended deep underground. He could still get to us quickly in an emergency, but because of the tunnels and sunken buildings, the integrity of the surface anywhere near his arrival would be unreliable.
The front plow on our newly repaired Nipper made short work of the debris littering the streets of Neo-Austin. We were beset by glazers twice, and I finally got to use my chainsaw defense. The small demons who’d almost overwhelmed us the first time we traveled through these streets were now nothing but a nuisance.
With the loss of their lord, King Vinea, they had gone feral, unorganized. We watched as they fought amongst themselves just as much as they attacked us.
Queen Lamashtu’s pavilion was in an area several miles south of where we’d first met the donkey queen. She’d moved into what appeared to be a former roller rink. Maybe a roller derby arena. The place had an honest-to-goodness parking lot out front, and I pulled in, knocking over a light pole with the forward wedge. Iffy popped in panic as he slammed against the interior wall of the bus. We really needed to get that slug a seatbelt.
“Nice parking,” Clara said as we piled out of Nipper. Iffy remained inside. Clara examined the light pole. “You managed to hit the only thing in the parking lot.” Dickinson the dragonfly followed us from above. He’d gotten himself killed by a gargoyle on the way here, but he’d recently respawned. Winky fluttered around Clara’s head.
“It has a shitty turning radius,” I grumbled.
I flexed my knees. I was still getting used to my new upgrade. King Beleth’s kneecaps imparted me with the ability to jump great distances. They also added +5 to my deftness, bringing me to 23.
The ability to super jump was somewhat tempered by the fact I still had to land. I’d broken my ankle once already. I spent the night practicing leaping, grappling hook combos. I could now swing about like a true bionic commando. I also discovered how to use my grappling hook to cushion my descent. It wouldn’t help me if I was falling at terminal velocity, but it was a heck of a lot better than nothing. While I wasn’t quite Spiderman, I was now a nimble-ass bastard.
A pair of monsters guarded the entrance to the lair, but they appeared as NPCs on my map. These were a type of monster called a drivet acc
ording to Clara. They resembled man-sized, uprooted scallion bulbs with the green stalks still attached. Each bulb had six insect-like legs. The onion-shape of their bodies was only about two feet tall. The rest was their green stalks. Beady red eyes glared at us as we approached.
“What can those things do?” I whispered.
The onion monsters quivered as we grew closer.
“The top green part can helicopter out,” Clara said. “It’s strong enough to cut you in half. I fought a whole nest of these a few months back. A group of them cut Avvinik’s paw right off. When they get spinning, they can fly short distances. So be careful. If we have to fight, shoot them in the face.”
“They look like they need to be chopped up and thrown onto a baked potato,” I muttered.
We reached the door, and the drivets stepped aside, allowing us to pass.
“Hi, how are you doing?” I asked as we entered.
“I’m fine, thank you,” the lead onion said in a deep voice.
It startled me so much I burst out laughing. The little red eyes glared up at me angrily.
“You should only be polite if you’re going to be sincere about it,” the drivet said.
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” I said.
Entering Pavilion of Queen Lamashtu.
Of all the parts of our plan, this one made me the most uneasy. We had to open the rift, and this was our method of getting in. But I had a terrible, foreboding feeling that this was the wrong move. But what choice did we have? It seemed the moment we accepted the Lamashtu Hell Quest, it became the only way to obtain the key. Surely our earlier defeat of Beleth and Vinea should have garnered us something. But it hadn’t. Our path was set. This was the only way, and we were committed.
The musty stench assaulted me the moment we were inside. This was indeed a former roller derby arena. A round track was surrounded by collapsed metal bleachers. Cellar hags lounged in the shadows. Queen Lamashtu stood in the center of the track, chewing on something. She wore a dainty crown made of grass and flowers. Someone had tied a bow to her tail.
A cellar hag approached. She looked me up and down, her eyes focusing on my forehead. Shit. I was hoping they wouldn’t notice. My cloak skill was turned off, but it was clear she could still tell I was wearing the scalp of one of her sisters. She hissed at me.
Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon Page 47