- Location
- Wishing I was somewhere much colder, I asssume.
I'm pretty sure every cool thing Playa and Monika says in this is them shamelessly referencing something.
In Another World with JUST MONIKA (Book 2 complete)
- Thread starter bluepencil
- Start date
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- Tags
- comedy (humour)
Well, this is why it's a good idea to get information from the last people who fought. That way you aren't completely surprised when they use whatever they did before again.
40.3 Into the Breach
-.
-.
/"Those certainly sounds like crystal cricket shenanigans,"/ Monika whispered.
I clapped my hands. "All right. Enough posturing. We're all friends here. As a duly deputized official of the Crown of Belfast, and an accredited Healer of the same," through royal patronage and much bribery of the Healer's Guild "why don't we take this inside where I can take a look at your friends?"
-.
Oh they did not look good. They did not look good at all.
The only parts of them spared were their face. Bruises were all over their bodies, not even their breasts were spared. There was no room for modesty when it was vital to heal in preparation for war. And in the exposed areas of flesh when wearing armor…
"Are these claw marks?" Skin had been gouged out, and on their arms and legs were broad puncture wounds that hinted of a careless grip pushing deep into flesh.
The worst was a puncture wound into Cynthia's side, going straight into her kidneys. Sarah Lanyard, and the other women didn't even bother to heal their superficial injuries, no matter how painful and swelling were their still torn muscles, just to save her magic power to keep Cynthia's wound from going septic. The debauched fencer was still unconscious and feverish.
Lying still on a cot on the floor like this, pale and delicate, only might even be fooled into thinking she was a proper young lady.
Mylah's body was in the morgue, under ice. At least they didn't have to spend magic power yet in maintaining refrigeration.
"If I could just cast [Great Heal] again…" Sarah mumbled. But doing so in her condition would kill her. Magic did not cast from willpower, but stamina. This was why Healers were so respected, because asking from them too much would also harm them. Magic Stones were amplifiers for [Light] magic, but magic has to come from somewhere.
From our research, it was perfectly valid to call [Magic] as a [Force]. Everything that lived possessed magic; it surrounds us, binds us, holds the universe together.
Elze was already running healing magic over Sarah, and slowly the signs of being beaten nearly to death faded. "Did you fight something that looked like a giant crystal cricket?" she asked.
"No… it was a demon. It was a demon that did this!"
What what. Is that a thing now?
"It had the face of a goat, the upper body of a man, and the hind legs of an ox." Lydia sighed softly. "It was no mere demon. It was a Demon Lord."
Demon Lo- what sort of dragon quest is this?!
Elze sucked in her breath. "Seriously? That's… that's not just a story, right?"
"There could be no mistaking that might. That terror… There was just nothing we could do." Lydia cradled her face in her palms, despondent. "That fearful aura… we were ready to give our lives, but it just didn't matter. That creature was just too strong. And its summoner, somehow… he too was immune to all magic. Neither blade nor wand had any efficacy… and then, all too quickly, we were brought down."
"That's bad! That's seriously bad!" Elze squeaked. "Is it a demon invasion like in the legends?!"
"No… it's unlikely. That Demon Lord was taking orders. Belfast is too far away from Demon country, regardless."
I looked up sharply. "Wait, hang on. I know there's undead. They just appear out of nowhere where there's strong lingering emotion. Now there are demons. But are there vampires also?"
"Um. Yes? Of course?" Linze answered. "There are monster beasts, and then there are monster beings."
THIS COMPLICATES THINGS MASSIVELY MONIKA.
Monika's bland expression through the augmented reality overlay to my vision was just /'Why?'/
/"Is it because you are Catholic?"/ She put her fingers together into a cross shape. /"Since when has that ever been a problem? The Roman Catholic Church has always been the go-to reference for anti-demon warfare. Legend has it that King Solomon could trap and control demons. Pope Honorius II was reputed to summon demons in the night and then beat them up as his stress relief.
/"And contrary to expectations, the Church's exorcism training tends to allay first mental and physical ailments before jumping to the conclusion it's demon possession, and their measures are much much gentler than the actions of civilians. Section XIII Iscariot is still the standard against which all vampire hunters are measured. What is the problem here?"/
Because I can't decide how to take this now. Id or Blizzard?
Monika sighed and palmed her face. /"Truly, you are a Dark Soul."/
Look at this, Monika. Look at their faces. They are beaten, not in body, but in the soul. They would throw their lives away just for the slightest chance of saving their lady, the person who gave their lives meaning. Without her… what is the point in living?
A hollow existence like that… I know it well.
It was like their fires were beaten right out of them. What would it take to ignite their confidence again?
I don't need some game overlay popup to know my quest here. A demon is an out-of-context problem that breaks the long balance between powers. Sometimes I felt like the reason I was here was to be another out-of-context problem to balance out everyone else's cheatery and general moral shittery.
Demons run when a good man goes to war.
/"But we are not good people, Player."/
So let's pretend.
Monika in her virtual world posed like she was a Sailor Senshi or something. /"Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice!"/
You are not docking any Monika points from me, I recognized that reference.
/"Aren't you being overconfident though? We simply might not be that strong compared to demons."/
If demons were capable of eating magic, then that's why we get to test the anti-antimagic methods we worked up in case we meet up with another ancient magic-eating crystal creature.
"Summoning, huh." We should really have looked more into that magic. It really just didn't interest me because I was not a Disney Princess.
I didn't need magic beasts to do my bidding, and summoning sapient creatures felt a little too much like slavery. Yes, a summoner and a summonee need to agree first, but if it were me I would be *absolutely pissed* if some random Dark Mage summoned me while I was relaxing at home with my family.
"So, you do you have any idea who was the master of this demon?"
Lydia sat with her fingers laced together in a Gendo pose. "It was General Bazoar of Regulus."
"Wah, so fast! Are you sure?"
"He was here." Lydia swept her arm around the room. The receiving room of Castle Zeno, with its throne-like high chair broken in two. The thick stone walls were pitted with cracks and scorch marks, but few were recent. Many a scion of House Zeno died fighting to the last in this room. "He made sure we knew who dared trespass. These halls… have been disrespected. No one just playing a part would have enjoyed it that much."
The two broken long tables that reminded me of Hogwarts dining tables, that was a recent damage. As if someone had picked them up and thrown them at a boastful invader.
"Is… is he some sort of moron? A master of [Earth] magic is all the more dangerous the more enclosed the space."
"If you mean that we should have attacked the summoner, of course we did. He too was completely invulnerable. Blades couldn't even cut his clothes." Lydia's hollow expression only deepened. "A demon is fearsome, even a dragon would think twice. But a human bound to a demon… there can be nothing so vile."
Sarah crossed her arms protectively over her bountiful chest and began sniffling. "We… we couldn't do anything. We were so weak. We need to get the Lady back… we need to get her back right now!"
I stared at Lydia's face, drawn and gaunt, but with her high cheekbones and full red lips she looked much closer to a classy lady than Zorah as a cakeface. Cynthia was arrestingly beautiful in that androgynous way that she could tempt married women into her bed. Sarah had that bouncy body with a deceptively young face, enough that a noble would murder her family just to possess her.
The mere fact that they were in a hurry, and could only carry one person, thus the reason that a general of Regulus could only indulge himself with sowing pain instead of other lusts.
I sighed. Why is this world so full of scumbags, really?
Every little bit of power you could use to lord over someone else, everything that allows you to get away with hurting others. It's like I was in a world full of spoiled manchildren who never had anyone to knock some sense into them.
Or basically exactly like 16th Century Europe but without the religious motivation for war I guess. Nobility's delusions of superiority have yet to be broken in the trenches and the mud and the machine guns.
Did that magic-eating crystal cricket that wiped out the former capital of Belfast a thousand years ago and the magic immunity of Demon Lords have something to do with each other?
/"Magic immunity in a civilization based entirely upon magic is quite the strong hindrance, Player. Maybe we have become too secure and egotistical in our advantage with our unlimited well of power. You shouldn't let your mouth write checks that your body can't cash."/ She outlined the girls in my HUD. /"You... are not the only one in danger here."/
I pulled up a chair and sat facing Lydia. I imitated her pose, resting my elbows over my knees and lacing my finger together. I leaned forward, darkly looming. "Tell me everything you know, so that we can soonest start to figure out how to fight this thing."
Lydia clenched her jaw in a half-snarl. "The demon is not the more dangerous - it is the man! You must kill that beast!"
-.
-.
-.
/"Those certainly sounds like crystal cricket shenanigans,"/ Monika whispered.
I clapped my hands. "All right. Enough posturing. We're all friends here. As a duly deputized official of the Crown of Belfast, and an accredited Healer of the same," through royal patronage and much bribery of the Healer's Guild "why don't we take this inside where I can take a look at your friends?"
-.
Oh they did not look good. They did not look good at all.
The only parts of them spared were their face. Bruises were all over their bodies, not even their breasts were spared. There was no room for modesty when it was vital to heal in preparation for war. And in the exposed areas of flesh when wearing armor…
"Are these claw marks?" Skin had been gouged out, and on their arms and legs were broad puncture wounds that hinted of a careless grip pushing deep into flesh.
The worst was a puncture wound into Cynthia's side, going straight into her kidneys. Sarah Lanyard, and the other women didn't even bother to heal their superficial injuries, no matter how painful and swelling were their still torn muscles, just to save her magic power to keep Cynthia's wound from going septic. The debauched fencer was still unconscious and feverish.
Lying still on a cot on the floor like this, pale and delicate, only might even be fooled into thinking she was a proper young lady.
Mylah's body was in the morgue, under ice. At least they didn't have to spend magic power yet in maintaining refrigeration.
"If I could just cast [Great Heal] again…" Sarah mumbled. But doing so in her condition would kill her. Magic did not cast from willpower, but stamina. This was why Healers were so respected, because asking from them too much would also harm them. Magic Stones were amplifiers for [Light] magic, but magic has to come from somewhere.
From our research, it was perfectly valid to call [Magic] as a [Force]. Everything that lived possessed magic; it surrounds us, binds us, holds the universe together.
Elze was already running healing magic over Sarah, and slowly the signs of being beaten nearly to death faded. "Did you fight something that looked like a giant crystal cricket?" she asked.
"No… it was a demon. It was a demon that did this!"
What what. Is that a thing now?
"It had the face of a goat, the upper body of a man, and the hind legs of an ox." Lydia sighed softly. "It was no mere demon. It was a Demon Lord."
Demon Lo- what sort of dragon quest is this?!
Elze sucked in her breath. "Seriously? That's… that's not just a story, right?"
"There could be no mistaking that might. That terror… There was just nothing we could do." Lydia cradled her face in her palms, despondent. "That fearful aura… we were ready to give our lives, but it just didn't matter. That creature was just too strong. And its summoner, somehow… he too was immune to all magic. Neither blade nor wand had any efficacy… and then, all too quickly, we were brought down."
"That's bad! That's seriously bad!" Elze squeaked. "Is it a demon invasion like in the legends?!"
"No… it's unlikely. That Demon Lord was taking orders. Belfast is too far away from Demon country, regardless."
I looked up sharply. "Wait, hang on. I know there's undead. They just appear out of nowhere where there's strong lingering emotion. Now there are demons. But are there vampires also?"
"Um. Yes? Of course?" Linze answered. "There are monster beasts, and then there are monster beings."
THIS COMPLICATES THINGS MASSIVELY MONIKA.
Monika's bland expression through the augmented reality overlay to my vision was just /'Why?'/
/"Is it because you are Catholic?"/ She put her fingers together into a cross shape. /"Since when has that ever been a problem? The Roman Catholic Church has always been the go-to reference for anti-demon warfare. Legend has it that King Solomon could trap and control demons. Pope Honorius II was reputed to summon demons in the night and then beat them up as his stress relief.
/"And contrary to expectations, the Church's exorcism training tends to allay first mental and physical ailments before jumping to the conclusion it's demon possession, and their measures are much much gentler than the actions of civilians. Section XIII Iscariot is still the standard against which all vampire hunters are measured. What is the problem here?"/
Because I can't decide how to take this now. Id or Blizzard?
Monika sighed and palmed her face. /"Truly, you are a Dark Soul."/
Look at this, Monika. Look at their faces. They are beaten, not in body, but in the soul. They would throw their lives away just for the slightest chance of saving their lady, the person who gave their lives meaning. Without her… what is the point in living?
A hollow existence like that… I know it well.
It was like their fires were beaten right out of them. What would it take to ignite their confidence again?
I don't need some game overlay popup to know my quest here. A demon is an out-of-context problem that breaks the long balance between powers. Sometimes I felt like the reason I was here was to be another out-of-context problem to balance out everyone else's cheatery and general moral shittery.
Demons run when a good man goes to war.
/"But we are not good people, Player."/
So let's pretend.
Monika in her virtual world posed like she was a Sailor Senshi or something. /"Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice!"/
You are not docking any Monika points from me, I recognized that reference.
/"Aren't you being overconfident though? We simply might not be that strong compared to demons."/
If demons were capable of eating magic, then that's why we get to test the anti-antimagic methods we worked up in case we meet up with another ancient magic-eating crystal creature.
"Summoning, huh." We should really have looked more into that magic. It really just didn't interest me because I was not a Disney Princess.
I didn't need magic beasts to do my bidding, and summoning sapient creatures felt a little too much like slavery. Yes, a summoner and a summonee need to agree first, but if it were me I would be *absolutely pissed* if some random Dark Mage summoned me while I was relaxing at home with my family.
"So, you do you have any idea who was the master of this demon?"
Lydia sat with her fingers laced together in a Gendo pose. "It was General Bazoar of Regulus."
"Wah, so fast! Are you sure?"
"He was here." Lydia swept her arm around the room. The receiving room of Castle Zeno, with its throne-like high chair broken in two. The thick stone walls were pitted with cracks and scorch marks, but few were recent. Many a scion of House Zeno died fighting to the last in this room. "He made sure we knew who dared trespass. These halls… have been disrespected. No one just playing a part would have enjoyed it that much."
The two broken long tables that reminded me of Hogwarts dining tables, that was a recent damage. As if someone had picked them up and thrown them at a boastful invader.
"Is… is he some sort of moron? A master of [Earth] magic is all the more dangerous the more enclosed the space."
"If you mean that we should have attacked the summoner, of course we did. He too was completely invulnerable. Blades couldn't even cut his clothes." Lydia's hollow expression only deepened. "A demon is fearsome, even a dragon would think twice. But a human bound to a demon… there can be nothing so vile."
Sarah crossed her arms protectively over her bountiful chest and began sniffling. "We… we couldn't do anything. We were so weak. We need to get the Lady back… we need to get her back right now!"
I stared at Lydia's face, drawn and gaunt, but with her high cheekbones and full red lips she looked much closer to a classy lady than Zorah as a cakeface. Cynthia was arrestingly beautiful in that androgynous way that she could tempt married women into her bed. Sarah had that bouncy body with a deceptively young face, enough that a noble would murder her family just to possess her.
The mere fact that they were in a hurry, and could only carry one person, thus the reason that a general of Regulus could only indulge himself with sowing pain instead of other lusts.
I sighed. Why is this world so full of scumbags, really?
Every little bit of power you could use to lord over someone else, everything that allows you to get away with hurting others. It's like I was in a world full of spoiled manchildren who never had anyone to knock some sense into them.
Or basically exactly like 16th Century Europe but without the religious motivation for war I guess. Nobility's delusions of superiority have yet to be broken in the trenches and the mud and the machine guns.
Did that magic-eating crystal cricket that wiped out the former capital of Belfast a thousand years ago and the magic immunity of Demon Lords have something to do with each other?
/"Magic immunity in a civilization based entirely upon magic is quite the strong hindrance, Player. Maybe we have become too secure and egotistical in our advantage with our unlimited well of power. You shouldn't let your mouth write checks that your body can't cash."/ She outlined the girls in my HUD. /"You... are not the only one in danger here."/
I pulled up a chair and sat facing Lydia. I imitated her pose, resting my elbows over my knees and lacing my finger together. I leaned forward, darkly looming. "Tell me everything you know, so that we can soonest start to figure out how to fight this thing."
Lydia clenched her jaw in a half-snarl. "The demon is not the more dangerous - it is the man! You must kill that beast!"
-.
-.
So even when he gets serious, he still can't help but to Gendo. Or perhaps that's just how he sees being serious with this character to be. Also hopefully Lydia will actually say some useful things beyond getting rid of the person and that he's most dangerous.
Well I'm sure they'll get everything they can out of her and then see what options still seem open. Seems kind of unlikely they can truly nullify any kind of attack... probably, hopefully.
Well I'm sure they'll get everything they can out of her and then see what options still seem open. Seems kind of unlikely they can truly nullify any kind of attack... probably, hopefully.
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- Location
- United States
Depends on how he was immune to blades. If he was solid, but impenetrable; it would be better to kill the demon, since its the real threat and it appears the summoner was merely commanding/controling it.
If it phased through, then its likely a projection. Thus it would be better to hunt for the main body while someone with high mobility plays keep away with the demon.
JoshuaSweetvale
Insectovore
- Location
- NL, 65 Million Years Ago
When you say "anti-anti-magic" I'm hearing "railguns." Demon-dude can sponge up magic thunderbolts or fire or telekinesis all day, but good ol' projectiles fired from sniping distance aren't magical at all, now are they? ^_^
Also, do demons have weaknesses? Cold iron, geometry, zealous faith, true names?
What worries me more is this 'General Bazoar' fellow. Absolute, lol-at-your-best-attacks invunerability reeks of Siberian-esque puzzle-boss bullshit. Whatever his trick, there is a trick.
EDIT: I just read the above post. We seem to be in agreement. There's shenanigans afoot with 'invulnerability'.
Also, do demons have weaknesses? Cold iron, geometry, zealous faith, true names?
What worries me more is this 'General Bazoar' fellow. Absolute, lol-at-your-best-attacks invunerability reeks of Siberian-esque puzzle-boss bullshit. Whatever his trick, there is a trick.
EDIT: I just read the above post. We seem to be in agreement. There's shenanigans afoot with 'invulnerability'.
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I'm reminded a bit of the Accelerator problem from A Certain Magical Index. Where it turned out, that even if you are invulnerable, you might still need things from outside to live. Like... oxygen might be needed to keep breathing. And the invulnerability itself might have a trick or various tricks to it, something which might be exploitable.
40.4 Into the Breach
-.
-.
Before raiding Regulus, it was important to note just how some total bugnut like Zorah could serve as a deterrent against a country almost four times as powerful as Belfast.
About three days ago, they caught some suspicious individuals trying to map out Castle's Zeno's defenses. The main road through the valley was very clearly marked, and the border between Regulus and Belfast was always patrolled. The people of the Zeno fief didn't have a reason to go into the forests behind the castle. Not even adventurers would go there, because unlike other domains the guard forces of Zeno kept their skills sharp by hunting monster beasts.
Most house troops did not do this because it was largely considered a waste of time. Other than some hunts now and then to build morale, any injuries against monster beasts meant troops made useless in case of an emergency.
The tactics used in combating monster beasts were also almost the exact opposite of what a soldier needed to train. An adventurer usually relied on mobility and special abilities to win, rarely in teams more than five. A soldier wore heavy armor and had to fight in organized formations. A sufficiently dangerous monster beast would just rip through any spear or halberd square. Artillery was utterly pointless. Monster beasts rarely obliged by going out into the open where soldiers could put combined arms into effect.
Most soldiers were soldiers because they lacked unique personal abilities. Adventurers and soldiers tended to despise each other. Adventurers think soldiers were individually weak and sellouts, soldiers were just itching for any reason to gang up and beat up adventurers that get uppity.
The Poison Snakes brought in were useful in that capacity. Why?
Because House Zeno DID NOT KEEP PRISONERS.
Zorah dragged the poor sods to the border gate on the Regulus side. Of course the captain on guard denied that the prisoners were Regulus saboteurs, and the prisoners claimed they were just innocent adventures under hire for a perfectly legitimate concern. If they were Regulus citizens, then Zorah ought to release them.
Which is what she did.
She grabbed each of those burly men by the ankles and threw them over the walls.
"Goddamit, Zorah." I groaned and slammed my face down into my palms. "Is this even reprisal?"
"No," Lydia replied evenly. "If Regulus went to war every time some unimportant fellows died, they would never have lasted so long as an empire. This is not so unusual, we have to do this a few times every year. If they really cared, then they should have mages to catch those men on the other side of the wall. If Lady Zorah wanted to murder them, she would throw them AT the wall – and they know this."
She said this was something of a centuries-old tradition now. It was one thing to be crazy, it was another to be *reliably* crazy. Everyone knew that the Zeno family didn't give a hoot about propriety, they long been warned in advance, anyone damn fool enough to pull shite in their territory deserved everything they got.
"Letting your ambushers live is no mercy. They fear Lady Zorah but you… you are worse. What you have done to them is worse than any slaver," Lydia told me.
I winced. Surgically implanted magic stones programmed with surveillance magic was of higher grade than mere shackles. Slavers had magic collars that could choke slaves to death if they escaped, or disobeyed orders, or if their masters were just feeling bored. My magic gems merely tapped into a separate magic tool, a holographic tactical map that I gave to Sacha of the Steel Fangs as part of my stick-and-carrot strategy.
Monitor gems were put into their bodies at just under the pancreas. Deep enough that no surgeon would dare to operate on them lightly from either side of the body at risk of the wound going septic, even if they had access to [Great Heal].
"I have the same gem in my body, I wouldn't ask of anyone anything I wouldn't dare to do myself," I replied.
I had the option to put in a self-destruct subroutine, but decided against it. Exploratory surgery/magic cybernetics was not something the girls would entertain just yet, but the same thing would also be helpful for us later if we ever needed a quick lock-on for emergency [Boom Tubing] teleport.
Like cloud storage, it also download audio logs of what happened in the day to the tool, which Monika could then retrieve whenever she's in range via Bluetooth connectivity. The 'holotank' basically looked like a wide metal clothes washing basin filled with cold blue mist. It displayed the local terrain with floating symbols marking the location of each.
I looked at the portrait of the recent Lord of Zenovivi, an old man with a long handlebar mustache and red cape. He strongly reminded me of some sort of cowboy Dracula.
It happened at night. At just after dinner time.
Castle Zeno was a compact, sturdy little fortress designed to bleed the enemy to death in its narrow corridors. Nevertheless it still required about a hundred of servants and resident soldiery.
If I were to do this, I would use some sort of colorless, odorless knockout gas. Or maybe starve the castle of oxygen. It doesn't explain how to knock out the guards outside or in their more open-air barracks as few levels down, but it was possible. Not something as flashy as magic.
Lydia was sure it wasn't [Dark] magic, those tended to leave distinctive dark fog. People just started falling over. There wasn't much more they could report tactically about their fight here.
General Bazoar just needed to wave his hand, and they felt drained and weak, almost falling unconscious. Zorah's punch could shatter castle walls, but she just bounced off an invisible wall that absorbed all the force of her punch.
"Wait. That sounds like my [Air Shield]. But… better." Some sort of anti-kinetic battlescreen?
He kicked Zorah in the chest and slammed her back across the room.
Magic hit his clothes and did nothing. Magic hit the demon and did nothing. Trying to melee fight the demon ran into the problem that its arms were longer than even a woman with long stabbing rapier, and Cynthia just barely avoided getting her head clawed off her neck.
Mynah attacked General Bazoar head-on, trying to get into grappling range and got closer until she just suddenly keeled over, unconscious. He showed he had physical strength enough to flip her over, and then stabbed her in the heart.
The great dining tables thrown at his face did nothing, slowing to a stop in the mid-air and then dropping. The other smashed against the stone wall behind him.
It probably is some sort of battlescreen, damn. A Bolo battlescreen deflects kinetic energy to the point it can defend against fusion plasma in the megaton range arriving at 70% of the speed of light. Now, it is unlikely that this sort of magic would be the same as that of fiction's most honorable supertank, but another property of the battlescreen was its ability to absorb the energy of weapons fire to feed its own capacitors. Many Bolos who would have otherwise been out of action because their reactors were shot were still able to fire back simply because the enemy still kept shooting at them.
"This implies it has a range," I murmured. "And that he would be otherwise squishy if someone could just get past that magic shield."
But then Bazoar did some sort of telekinetic pull thing to wrench Cythia from all the way across the room and then stabbed her in the gut, muttering how it was a shame to kill such a lovely woman. If only they had more time to enjoy themselves. But greater glories await.
"Giving our lives to give Milady what she needed to win would have been our honor!" Lydia hissed bitterly.
In the end what convinced Zorah to come quietly was not just trading for the lives of her retainers, but for everyone now asleep and helpless in the castle. If there was going to be war with Regulus, they could still be useful.
"One unicorn in the garden, Monika?" I whispered through my palms.
/"I don't think you. Just because your enemies might be assholes is still no reason to believe they can't be competent. His spells sound like better versions of your spells likely for the same reason you chose to develop those spells in the first place."/
I suppose. It wasn't just starships that had shields. Dungeons and Dragons has the [Shield] and [Otiluke's Resilient Sphere]. Harry Potter Wizards had [Protego]. Nanoha mages had [Barrier] clothing. Any magic system that allowed flight also tended to allow for spherical shields.
We stared at the holographic map. Finding Zorah was easy.
On the opposite side of the Gap was Fortress Alpas, a larger structure that was less designed for defense than as a supply point. It was a squat round building within a box of low thick walls designed to withstand spellfire rather than infantry assault, like the beginnings of Trace Italliene, or eerily similar to the Castel Sant'Angelo in the Vatican.
It was the nearest place to imprison Zorah within reasonable time. More accurately, the map had Zorah's locator beacon over it.
So, you know that collar I gave Zorah as a gag? Of course I put locator spells in it.
But that was not the point. The point is that later to balm her rage at the insult, Zanac also gifted her with a much more slim and delicate choker. Zorah would be much more willing to accept and wear it all the time. Of course I put locator spells on that too. Less to find Zorah than to ping when she was around so we could avoid her. But that served this situation just fine.
"Wait. You are a healer, are you not? Heal me up and let me fight with you!"
Once again I had to deny Lydia. "It's not that I don't trust you to yeet our assault, but someone so emotionally compromised should not be on the line."
She looked to the side, where the girls were standing in a row, trying not to get in the way of our planning. "Surely you can't believe that bringing a bunch of children to fight a Demon Lord would end well. Do not be overconfident, boy!"
"In a smash and grab it's better to work with the people whom I know how fast they can move," I shot back. "Overconfidence is only a thing if you expect to fight and show off instead of just yoink and run."
Lydia blinked. "That… that's good. If that is the plan, then that sounds much more feasible. I will trust you on this."
"That's the plan."
-.
-.
Boom.
Within the hour we had completely bypassed all of Regulus defensive cordons and were dropping in from right overhead the fortress. It was day, but we had [Wind] and [Light]-based [Invisibility] magic. High enough that the sound was muffled, and light just a flicker in the sky. We floated gently down to the flat round roof of the fortress, which we could see also seemed to served like some sort of public arena.
"Berge Palace used to have the same thing, until it was domed over and turned into more rooms for the Royal family," Leene remarked. Now that she said that, we could certainly now see just how similar this fortress looked to the somewhat defensively impractical Royal Palace of Mismede.
As much as Leene was annoying, we were not foolish enough to discard a trump card. She was an expert opinion on what Demon Lords might be capable of. She would stay behind and outside, well out of range whatever possible antimagic there might be, just in case we needed someone to blow off the roof and exfiltrate in an emergency.
Fortress Alpas was quiet. And empty. And yet Zorah's tracking signal was clear and distinct. The inlaid tracking spells even reported that she was alive and well.
The plan…
Didn't survive.
-.
Before raiding Regulus, it was important to note just how some total bugnut like Zorah could serve as a deterrent against a country almost four times as powerful as Belfast.
About three days ago, they caught some suspicious individuals trying to map out Castle's Zeno's defenses. The main road through the valley was very clearly marked, and the border between Regulus and Belfast was always patrolled. The people of the Zeno fief didn't have a reason to go into the forests behind the castle. Not even adventurers would go there, because unlike other domains the guard forces of Zeno kept their skills sharp by hunting monster beasts.
Most house troops did not do this because it was largely considered a waste of time. Other than some hunts now and then to build morale, any injuries against monster beasts meant troops made useless in case of an emergency.
The tactics used in combating monster beasts were also almost the exact opposite of what a soldier needed to train. An adventurer usually relied on mobility and special abilities to win, rarely in teams more than five. A soldier wore heavy armor and had to fight in organized formations. A sufficiently dangerous monster beast would just rip through any spear or halberd square. Artillery was utterly pointless. Monster beasts rarely obliged by going out into the open where soldiers could put combined arms into effect.
Most soldiers were soldiers because they lacked unique personal abilities. Adventurers and soldiers tended to despise each other. Adventurers think soldiers were individually weak and sellouts, soldiers were just itching for any reason to gang up and beat up adventurers that get uppity.
The Poison Snakes brought in were useful in that capacity. Why?
Because House Zeno DID NOT KEEP PRISONERS.
Zorah dragged the poor sods to the border gate on the Regulus side. Of course the captain on guard denied that the prisoners were Regulus saboteurs, and the prisoners claimed they were just innocent adventures under hire for a perfectly legitimate concern. If they were Regulus citizens, then Zorah ought to release them.
Which is what she did.
She grabbed each of those burly men by the ankles and threw them over the walls.
"Goddamit, Zorah." I groaned and slammed my face down into my palms. "Is this even reprisal?"
"No," Lydia replied evenly. "If Regulus went to war every time some unimportant fellows died, they would never have lasted so long as an empire. This is not so unusual, we have to do this a few times every year. If they really cared, then they should have mages to catch those men on the other side of the wall. If Lady Zorah wanted to murder them, she would throw them AT the wall – and they know this."
She said this was something of a centuries-old tradition now. It was one thing to be crazy, it was another to be *reliably* crazy. Everyone knew that the Zeno family didn't give a hoot about propriety, they long been warned in advance, anyone damn fool enough to pull shite in their territory deserved everything they got.
"Letting your ambushers live is no mercy. They fear Lady Zorah but you… you are worse. What you have done to them is worse than any slaver," Lydia told me.
I winced. Surgically implanted magic stones programmed with surveillance magic was of higher grade than mere shackles. Slavers had magic collars that could choke slaves to death if they escaped, or disobeyed orders, or if their masters were just feeling bored. My magic gems merely tapped into a separate magic tool, a holographic tactical map that I gave to Sacha of the Steel Fangs as part of my stick-and-carrot strategy.
Monitor gems were put into their bodies at just under the pancreas. Deep enough that no surgeon would dare to operate on them lightly from either side of the body at risk of the wound going septic, even if they had access to [Great Heal].
"I have the same gem in my body, I wouldn't ask of anyone anything I wouldn't dare to do myself," I replied.
I had the option to put in a self-destruct subroutine, but decided against it. Exploratory surgery/magic cybernetics was not something the girls would entertain just yet, but the same thing would also be helpful for us later if we ever needed a quick lock-on for emergency [Boom Tubing] teleport.
Like cloud storage, it also download audio logs of what happened in the day to the tool, which Monika could then retrieve whenever she's in range via Bluetooth connectivity. The 'holotank' basically looked like a wide metal clothes washing basin filled with cold blue mist. It displayed the local terrain with floating symbols marking the location of each.
I looked at the portrait of the recent Lord of Zenovivi, an old man with a long handlebar mustache and red cape. He strongly reminded me of some sort of cowboy Dracula.
It happened at night. At just after dinner time.
Castle Zeno was a compact, sturdy little fortress designed to bleed the enemy to death in its narrow corridors. Nevertheless it still required about a hundred of servants and resident soldiery.
If I were to do this, I would use some sort of colorless, odorless knockout gas. Or maybe starve the castle of oxygen. It doesn't explain how to knock out the guards outside or in their more open-air barracks as few levels down, but it was possible. Not something as flashy as magic.
Lydia was sure it wasn't [Dark] magic, those tended to leave distinctive dark fog. People just started falling over. There wasn't much more they could report tactically about their fight here.
General Bazoar just needed to wave his hand, and they felt drained and weak, almost falling unconscious. Zorah's punch could shatter castle walls, but she just bounced off an invisible wall that absorbed all the force of her punch.
"Wait. That sounds like my [Air Shield]. But… better." Some sort of anti-kinetic battlescreen?
He kicked Zorah in the chest and slammed her back across the room.
Magic hit his clothes and did nothing. Magic hit the demon and did nothing. Trying to melee fight the demon ran into the problem that its arms were longer than even a woman with long stabbing rapier, and Cynthia just barely avoided getting her head clawed off her neck.
Mynah attacked General Bazoar head-on, trying to get into grappling range and got closer until she just suddenly keeled over, unconscious. He showed he had physical strength enough to flip her over, and then stabbed her in the heart.
The great dining tables thrown at his face did nothing, slowing to a stop in the mid-air and then dropping. The other smashed against the stone wall behind him.
It probably is some sort of battlescreen, damn. A Bolo battlescreen deflects kinetic energy to the point it can defend against fusion plasma in the megaton range arriving at 70% of the speed of light. Now, it is unlikely that this sort of magic would be the same as that of fiction's most honorable supertank, but another property of the battlescreen was its ability to absorb the energy of weapons fire to feed its own capacitors. Many Bolos who would have otherwise been out of action because their reactors were shot were still able to fire back simply because the enemy still kept shooting at them.
"This implies it has a range," I murmured. "And that he would be otherwise squishy if someone could just get past that magic shield."
But then Bazoar did some sort of telekinetic pull thing to wrench Cythia from all the way across the room and then stabbed her in the gut, muttering how it was a shame to kill such a lovely woman. If only they had more time to enjoy themselves. But greater glories await.
"Giving our lives to give Milady what she needed to win would have been our honor!" Lydia hissed bitterly.
In the end what convinced Zorah to come quietly was not just trading for the lives of her retainers, but for everyone now asleep and helpless in the castle. If there was going to be war with Regulus, they could still be useful.
"One unicorn in the garden, Monika?" I whispered through my palms.
/"I don't think you. Just because your enemies might be assholes is still no reason to believe they can't be competent. His spells sound like better versions of your spells likely for the same reason you chose to develop those spells in the first place."/
I suppose. It wasn't just starships that had shields. Dungeons and Dragons has the [Shield] and [Otiluke's Resilient Sphere]. Harry Potter Wizards had [Protego]. Nanoha mages had [Barrier] clothing. Any magic system that allowed flight also tended to allow for spherical shields.
We stared at the holographic map. Finding Zorah was easy.
On the opposite side of the Gap was Fortress Alpas, a larger structure that was less designed for defense than as a supply point. It was a squat round building within a box of low thick walls designed to withstand spellfire rather than infantry assault, like the beginnings of Trace Italliene, or eerily similar to the Castel Sant'Angelo in the Vatican.
It was the nearest place to imprison Zorah within reasonable time. More accurately, the map had Zorah's locator beacon over it.
So, you know that collar I gave Zorah as a gag? Of course I put locator spells in it.
But that was not the point. The point is that later to balm her rage at the insult, Zanac also gifted her with a much more slim and delicate choker. Zorah would be much more willing to accept and wear it all the time. Of course I put locator spells on that too. Less to find Zorah than to ping when she was around so we could avoid her. But that served this situation just fine.
"Wait. You are a healer, are you not? Heal me up and let me fight with you!"
Once again I had to deny Lydia. "It's not that I don't trust you to yeet our assault, but someone so emotionally compromised should not be on the line."
She looked to the side, where the girls were standing in a row, trying not to get in the way of our planning. "Surely you can't believe that bringing a bunch of children to fight a Demon Lord would end well. Do not be overconfident, boy!"
"In a smash and grab it's better to work with the people whom I know how fast they can move," I shot back. "Overconfidence is only a thing if you expect to fight and show off instead of just yoink and run."
Lydia blinked. "That… that's good. If that is the plan, then that sounds much more feasible. I will trust you on this."
"That's the plan."
-.
-.
Boom.
Within the hour we had completely bypassed all of Regulus defensive cordons and were dropping in from right overhead the fortress. It was day, but we had [Wind] and [Light]-based [Invisibility] magic. High enough that the sound was muffled, and light just a flicker in the sky. We floated gently down to the flat round roof of the fortress, which we could see also seemed to served like some sort of public arena.
"Berge Palace used to have the same thing, until it was domed over and turned into more rooms for the Royal family," Leene remarked. Now that she said that, we could certainly now see just how similar this fortress looked to the somewhat defensively impractical Royal Palace of Mismede.
As much as Leene was annoying, we were not foolish enough to discard a trump card. She was an expert opinion on what Demon Lords might be capable of. She would stay behind and outside, well out of range whatever possible antimagic there might be, just in case we needed someone to blow off the roof and exfiltrate in an emergency.
Fortress Alpas was quiet. And empty. And yet Zorah's tracking signal was clear and distinct. The inlaid tracking spells even reported that she was alive and well.
The plan…
Didn't survive.
Last edited:
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
This was pretty great, as bringing a bunch of kids to fight a powerful foe would be pretty foolish. Bringing them to grab Zorah and flee, however? That'd be fine.
Noo! Why don't plans ever survive contact with the enemy! So unfair. 
Hopefully for Playa this will resolve boringly, rather then the more usual very exciting way.
Hopefully for Playa this will resolve boringly, rather then the more usual very exciting way.
Interlude – The Demon General
Interlude – The Demon General
--
--
"General Bazoar!" Margrave Alpas shrieked. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
"… Gahahahahah! I've done a lot of things. You're going to have to be more exact than that."
General Bazoar was a tall, noble-looking man with dark curly hair and a tall aquiline nose. One could even liken him to a certain Julius Caesar – if Caesar had a broad, thug-like chin and eyes that showed the low cunning of wild animal.
Margrave Alpas was a pudgy man with a long handlebar mustache. Though technically his was a noble military rank as well, he wore a fine soft leather vest with ruffled sleeves in contrast to the burnished steel of the General. He pointed with a shaking finger behind the General.
"Is it my summoned partner? Do you also think that the summon reflects the true nature of a person?" he said through wide white teeth. "Are you a believer of that hideously greedy God of Justice that treats all born with [Dark] affinities as cursed beings who need to always pay for their sins, Margrave Alpas?"
"N-no. Of course not. I mean – is that… is that Zorah?!"
The general looked behind him, and indeed hanging upside down on one red fist trussed up like a caterpillar in its cocoon, was Zorah Zorea Zenovivi. The creature that held her was tall, needing to bend down to enter the door.
It had the furred legs and cloven hooves of a cow, the upper body and muscular physique of a man with ochre red skin, the wings of a bat, and the face and horns of a goat.
"Yes it is I, Zorah," Zorah spoke dully. "And you are as corpulent and useless as ever, Apolyon Alpas."
"Throw it baaack…!" the Margrave moaned.
General Bazoar scowled down at his captive. "What *is* it with you Zenovis that people despise the sight of you more than being afraid of seeing a Demon Lord?"
Then he turned towards the nobleman and ordered "Gather the men! I will speak to them about our prize and our glory!"
==
==
In this world, the word 'regular' and 'Regulus' probably shared the same root. Back when the Great Regulan Legions were still stomping about up and down the continent, if there was one thing you could rely upon, it was Regulus being so predictable and regular imposing the same set of codes wherever they go no matter how stupid infeasible it may be for the climate or the terrain.
Every castra looked the same as any other castra, and for all that Regulus was brutal at the smallest hint of rebellion at least as long as you regularly paid their tithe in material and manpower, they would largely leave you and your local customs alone.
Regulus were perpetually determined to be foreigners in every land they occupied, it was always the locals that had to adapt to them instead of vice versa. And so it was that Regulus language, Regulus measurements, and Regulus systems of commerce that became the default through the continent. It was all Regular.
Alpas Castra, formerly Zenovis Castra, was built in the lowlands because unlike the Western castles built on high places for defense, castras were aggressively located to be staging points for military expeditions. It consisted of a round central citadel with a square fort around it.
Much of the first floor was open space. There was room for the entire augmented cohort of about 280 men to stand at attention, with a stage near the center. Of these, 160 were infantry, 60 were archers and skirmishers, 40 were light cavalry, and 20 were battlefield and support mages.
General Guron Bazoar stepped up to the podium, and following to stand behind him again was his terrifying familiar, the Demon Lord. Following closely behind was the Margrave in charge and his aide-de-camp/butler.
"Officers! Up front!" Bazoar shouted.
Immediately, the officers separated from their squads and stood in line in front of the stage.
"Present yourselves!" he ordered.
They stamped their feet and saluted and began reporting one by one from starting from the far left.
"Sir! Knight-Commandant Heath Reedy, Alpas First Foot Heavy Guards Company sir!"
"Sir! Lieutenant Asic Holmise, Alpas First Foot, Second Company sir!"
"Sir! Lieutenant Kelton Bayern, Alpas First Foot, Third Company sir!"
"Sir! Captain, Ossie Crawford, Alpas Second Foot, Archer Section sir!"
"Sir! Captain Gage Beverly, Support Company, Artillery Section sir!"
"Sir! Mage-Captain Janna Eastone, Alpas Magician Company sir!"
"Sir! Knight-Captain Carmyn Audlye, Alpas First Light Lance Squadron sir!"
"Sir! Knight-Lieutenant Wist Glassy, Alpas First Dragoons Squadron sir!"
General Bazoar saluted back and nodded. "Good. Men of Regulus! You know me. I am Guron Bazoar, General of the Sixth Army, Mad Wolf of Regulus! I have come here to the border, alone without my Army, to bring you the good news!"
He swept his arm beside him. "Do you know what this is?"
-- "A demon!" someone gasped.
-- "Something that big - so much weight, that magic presence! A Demon Lord!"
-- "General Bazoar commands a being like that? How powerful!"
-- "Impossible, how is he even providing the magic to keep it existing this long on this plane?"
The general beamed. Yes. That was more like it.
The whispered comments continued:
-- "Wait, that person there… that lady tied up upside down… is that Zorah?"
-- "Oh fucking hell, it _is_ Zorah."
-- "Throw it baaaackk…!"
Bazoar scowled and dropped his hand. "Yes. I have brought you your great enemy. I know a lot of you haven't been born yet in the great war twenty years ago, but for so long the boast of this family is that they *alone* stand between Belfast and the Empire. Twenty years ago - our glorious Emperor broke them! We punched through the Zeno Gap and were rushing all the way towards their capital.
"It cost us the Third Army and half of the Fourth, but we did it! If we didn't meet a bunch of beasts and stabbed in the back by traitor pacifists we would have won! It was a GOOD war.
"But this Zorah creature is acting like that never happened. Like they fucking won that war instead of us pulling out from the waste of time because we had more serious things to do against Rodmere!
"Are you not annoyed? Are you not insulted?!"
He glared at all of them, and then to the Margrave who stood beside him. Short and fat with ruffled sleeves compared to his height and muscle. The margrave shrugged. "We're kind of used to it. They're mostly harmless as long as you stay out of their way."
"As long as you stay out their- WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT. How can men of my glorious Army allow themselves to be pushed around by some piffling fucking aristocrat in some piffling fucking backwater!"
"... I'm a backwater…!" Margrave Alpas mumbled and turned aside, tears in his little eyes.
General Bazoar turned back to the men standing in line. "The world has forgotten the might and power of the Empire! We used to be better than this! Our Emperor used to be young, afraid of nothing, a god of war! Now he is old, and they think the Empire is weak.
"Maybe we need to remind them all again why the whole continent shakes when we bother to make a move."
The officers tried hard to keep confusion from their faces. What? Isn't that tantamount to declaring war? General! What have you done?!
"I know that most of you were barely even in your mother's stomachs during that time. And now none of you are blooded. You play at guards in a contested frontier. You're more skilled at trading insults than trading blows! I am giving you this - this opportunity of your lives! Prove yourselves better. Prove that you have the blood of warriors in you!
"I alone," as long as one counted a familiar as an accessory and not another individual "braved the Zeno gap, blasted through the Castle Zenovi, and brought to you the thing that makes you bunch of milksops quiver in fear! Now what shall we do with her?"
Only stunned silence was the response to his words.
"Well? Speak up!" he roared.
"They are weak little nancy boys," said Zorah. "And girls, I suppose. You can't just give me to them like a cat presenting a mouse that they caught. They have no idea what to do with such a treat."
-- "Zorah is not a treat, she is a /threat/…" someone had to blurt out.
-- "Throw it baaack…" another moaned again.
"Uh… with all due respect, Lord General, kidnapping Zorah is bad enough, doing *anything* to her may be war-worthy offense."
"That IS the point, you weak-kneed monkeys. Lord Marquis Zenovivi is already dead by my hand, you are looking at Heir Marquis Zenovivi right now, and if we kill her, then that whole stupid lineage will end, and Zeno Gap is defenseless!"
"But that's war!"
"Are you not soldiers?! War is your reason for existence, fear not war, but run to it happily! Like a child to its mother!"
"War is something… only the Emperor can decide that! We can't do anything like that without the Emperor's permission..!"
"The Emperor can't actually give permission for this, idiot."
"Is this about the Emperor's rumored ill health and we have to stabilize the succession by proving the strength and stability of the Empire…?" Margrave Alpas muttered. "I guess I can see why that might be a good thing to some... as long as it seems like Belfast struck first."
"You can think that, yes," the general replied.
He turned towards the assembled men-at-arms. "You never experienced it - you only lived a life of peace. But Regulus… Regulus is BEST at war. No bandits on the road - they never dared any road that needed soldiers able to cross at best speed. No one went hungry - all storehouses were open, and price gouging had the death penalty. Nobles didn't dare to throw around their degenerate weight and slake their lusts anymore - they knew we would all hang them under military law!
"No-name nobodies can become Generals! You just have to earn your rights by killing the Empire's enemies! Only in chaos like that can you separate the useless from the strong! The unworthy of their title from the ones who earn it by merit! This is the time nobles are forged and heroes are made! Those who would fucking stop Regulus from improving in the best way are the real traitors! The evil they do to its people is to kill their soul!
"War… war is good for Regulus. It is too late for you to stop it. You have no right to stop it! Now, here! Here is your enemy! Do as you want. That is the province of the strong!"
-- "... well I have been curious about why she wears so much powder cake on her face," someone mentioned offhand. "But it could be worse. What if she's not hiding some great deformity or something?"
-- "What, like she's somehow really pretty or something and only someone who can tolerate her entire… Zorah-ness… ever gets to see it or something?"
-- "No, I mean, what if she's just really plain. That would be so underwhelming. I don't want to waste those minutes of my time."
-- "We could just throw her into a well or something?"
-- "We have military laws against polluting the drinking water."
The General was left nonplussed for a moment. He stared down at Zorah and asked with an odd timbre "Is… is this a curse? What is it with you Zenovis? Everybody hates you but no one actually gives a damn enough about you to kill you directly. I just met you, but already I hate you. I want you to die."
"YOUR FACE is a curse!" Zorah shot back.
The Demon Lord tilted its goat face and flames erupted from its eyes. It spoke in eerie cracking noises that only General Bazoar could understand.
And the soldiers were continuing like gossipy hens:
-- "So, what, until now she doesn't get married because of stupid unrealistic expectations?"
-- "Well we know Zorah has some form of common strength boosting personal magic. What if she just applies it everywhere? This is a woman that head-butted the steel gate to the Regulus side of the Zeno Gap and left a dent.
-- "If she doesn't like you and you were stupid enough to think she's yielding and defenseless - squish. Goodbye, my son!" A loud clap. "Sausage pancake."
-- "A life of much suffering and tragedy, most of it self-inflicted."
"Is there really no one in this Army with the intestines to take a swing?" Bazoar sighed. He had enough and pointed. "You there. Take your sword and just stick it into this witch."
The officer blinked and pointed at his own face. Then on confirming that it was him, he reluctantly went up to the stage, drew his sword, and faced Zorah's completely unimpressed expression.
"Doesn't feel right to kill a defenseless prisoner, sir."
-- People down below comment "Yeah but if you think about it, if we allow Zorah to put her feet down, she would wreck stone and then soon wreck face."
-- "I don't wanna get my face wrecked today."
The soldier up on stage looked down at Zorah, at the General, then down past the line of officers standing on attention to his own troops. The general infantry didn't know what to expect from this. "Sir… Lord General, sir… this is dishonorable. I refuse this order and accept the consequences, please only spare my men who have nothing to do with this decision."
General Bazoar palmed his face and sighed. "I don't even know what I was expecting. There is no hope here anymore. My Third Army has grown useless from the fat of peace, and here in the border we have weak yapping dogs. Oh, my poor Regulus. What happened to you?"
"Sorry, Lord General, but we are loyal to the military chain of command, and we can't do anything without official orders from the capital."
General Bazoar slumped over the podium. "An Emperor that once set soldier's heart's aflame is now just weak and useless old man. Heirs that are cowards and in bed with the enemy. An Army once famous for never hesitating, now formed of weak-hearted fools. We don't need these things."
"Sir! What you say may amount to treason and rebellion! I respectfully ask that you recant those words and this will never have happened."
General Bazoar rested on one elbow with his grizzled cheek on his palm. "You know what else is good about making a contract with a Demon Lord?" the general whispered. "A Demon Lord is a commander of Hell's Armies. And in exchange for a sacrifice, a summoner gets access to all his army too."
He waved nonchalantly. "Feed."
--
And the shadows erupted.
Bony hands came out of the shadows beneath soldiers and dragged them down, hands holding knives sank into them, and they were devoured into negative space.
From flames, imps and other small demons leaped out. Their screeches mixed in with the screaming.
Wooden floors broke apart, and from the darkness underneath legless flesh beasts with worms for bottom bodies and torsos of men with faces of slugs punched out.
Skeletal soldiers stepped out of corners.
"Demons!" cried out soldiers as they fought for their lives.
"He's gone mad! Stop him!" The mage officer raised her wand and quickly chanted "[Water], shatter my foe! Icicle Lance!"
A spear of ice quickly shot forth, with the speed and force of crossbow. It stopped in mid-air before reaching the general, and melted back into water, and then into nothing. He grinned.
She got speared from the back by a lance of solidified shadow. She gurgled out blood in disbelief, and tried to grab the tip of the lance before being pulled under and absorbed by that sinister and impossibly dark pool.
"Lord General Bazoar, why…?!" someone whimpered.
"Traitor!"
"Help!"
"Mages! Send wo-ghurk!"
Margrave Alpas tried to run away, but was captured by a monstrous spider with a human's face. The aide-de-camp tried to slash at the creature, only to be run through by a leg that ended in a wicked spike.
The fires spread, and the shadows deepened. The general simply continued to stand there, casually leaning on the podium, as around him loyal soldiers of Regulus were butchered and turned into more unholy creatures under the Demon Lords' command.
He looked at his own gauntleted hands, and the pair of silver bracers around his forearms. He had always been contracted to a Demon Lord, and the sacrifice of bandits had bought him strength and power, to be spent in untraceable killing ambushes for his enemies, but it was not enough against the might of organized Regulus. He was an unequal partner to that contract, he knew.
Enough generals supported his plans for revolt against the weak dying Emperor and his even more useless children, but others balked at the notion of using demons to supplement the army.
Everything changed once he got his hands on these two Ancient Civilization artifacts. Given how astoundingly powerful they were, and the ease by which he acquired them, it was almost like they practically dropped out of the sky to land on his feet. The heavens themselves wanted him to succeed!
"I am invincible. I am the man chosen by the gods," General Bazoar spoke with a wide bloody grin. "And nothing I do is wrong."
==
==
--
--
"General Bazoar!" Margrave Alpas shrieked. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
"… Gahahahahah! I've done a lot of things. You're going to have to be more exact than that."
General Bazoar was a tall, noble-looking man with dark curly hair and a tall aquiline nose. One could even liken him to a certain Julius Caesar – if Caesar had a broad, thug-like chin and eyes that showed the low cunning of wild animal.
Margrave Alpas was a pudgy man with a long handlebar mustache. Though technically his was a noble military rank as well, he wore a fine soft leather vest with ruffled sleeves in contrast to the burnished steel of the General. He pointed with a shaking finger behind the General.
"Is it my summoned partner? Do you also think that the summon reflects the true nature of a person?" he said through wide white teeth. "Are you a believer of that hideously greedy God of Justice that treats all born with [Dark] affinities as cursed beings who need to always pay for their sins, Margrave Alpas?"
"N-no. Of course not. I mean – is that… is that Zorah?!"
The general looked behind him, and indeed hanging upside down on one red fist trussed up like a caterpillar in its cocoon, was Zorah Zorea Zenovivi. The creature that held her was tall, needing to bend down to enter the door.
It had the furred legs and cloven hooves of a cow, the upper body and muscular physique of a man with ochre red skin, the wings of a bat, and the face and horns of a goat.
"Yes it is I, Zorah," Zorah spoke dully. "And you are as corpulent and useless as ever, Apolyon Alpas."
"Throw it baaack…!" the Margrave moaned.
General Bazoar scowled down at his captive. "What *is* it with you Zenovis that people despise the sight of you more than being afraid of seeing a Demon Lord?"
Then he turned towards the nobleman and ordered "Gather the men! I will speak to them about our prize and our glory!"
==
==
In this world, the word 'regular' and 'Regulus' probably shared the same root. Back when the Great Regulan Legions were still stomping about up and down the continent, if there was one thing you could rely upon, it was Regulus being so predictable and regular imposing the same set of codes wherever they go no matter how stupid infeasible it may be for the climate or the terrain.
Every castra looked the same as any other castra, and for all that Regulus was brutal at the smallest hint of rebellion at least as long as you regularly paid their tithe in material and manpower, they would largely leave you and your local customs alone.
Regulus were perpetually determined to be foreigners in every land they occupied, it was always the locals that had to adapt to them instead of vice versa. And so it was that Regulus language, Regulus measurements, and Regulus systems of commerce that became the default through the continent. It was all Regular.
Alpas Castra, formerly Zenovis Castra, was built in the lowlands because unlike the Western castles built on high places for defense, castras were aggressively located to be staging points for military expeditions. It consisted of a round central citadel with a square fort around it.
Much of the first floor was open space. There was room for the entire augmented cohort of about 280 men to stand at attention, with a stage near the center. Of these, 160 were infantry, 60 were archers and skirmishers, 40 were light cavalry, and 20 were battlefield and support mages.
General Guron Bazoar stepped up to the podium, and following to stand behind him again was his terrifying familiar, the Demon Lord. Following closely behind was the Margrave in charge and his aide-de-camp/butler.
"Officers! Up front!" Bazoar shouted.
Immediately, the officers separated from their squads and stood in line in front of the stage.
"Present yourselves!" he ordered.
They stamped their feet and saluted and began reporting one by one from starting from the far left.
"Sir! Knight-Commandant Heath Reedy, Alpas First Foot Heavy Guards Company sir!"
"Sir! Lieutenant Asic Holmise, Alpas First Foot, Second Company sir!"
"Sir! Lieutenant Kelton Bayern, Alpas First Foot, Third Company sir!"
"Sir! Captain, Ossie Crawford, Alpas Second Foot, Archer Section sir!"
"Sir! Captain Gage Beverly, Support Company, Artillery Section sir!"
"Sir! Mage-Captain Janna Eastone, Alpas Magician Company sir!"
"Sir! Knight-Captain Carmyn Audlye, Alpas First Light Lance Squadron sir!"
"Sir! Knight-Lieutenant Wist Glassy, Alpas First Dragoons Squadron sir!"
General Bazoar saluted back and nodded. "Good. Men of Regulus! You know me. I am Guron Bazoar, General of the Sixth Army, Mad Wolf of Regulus! I have come here to the border, alone without my Army, to bring you the good news!"
He swept his arm beside him. "Do you know what this is?"
-- "A demon!" someone gasped.
-- "Something that big - so much weight, that magic presence! A Demon Lord!"
-- "General Bazoar commands a being like that? How powerful!"
-- "Impossible, how is he even providing the magic to keep it existing this long on this plane?"
The general beamed. Yes. That was more like it.
The whispered comments continued:
-- "Wait, that person there… that lady tied up upside down… is that Zorah?"
-- "Oh fucking hell, it _is_ Zorah."
-- "Throw it baaaackk…!"
Bazoar scowled and dropped his hand. "Yes. I have brought you your great enemy. I know a lot of you haven't been born yet in the great war twenty years ago, but for so long the boast of this family is that they *alone* stand between Belfast and the Empire. Twenty years ago - our glorious Emperor broke them! We punched through the Zeno Gap and were rushing all the way towards their capital.
"It cost us the Third Army and half of the Fourth, but we did it! If we didn't meet a bunch of beasts and stabbed in the back by traitor pacifists we would have won! It was a GOOD war.
"But this Zorah creature is acting like that never happened. Like they fucking won that war instead of us pulling out from the waste of time because we had more serious things to do against Rodmere!
"Are you not annoyed? Are you not insulted?!"
He glared at all of them, and then to the Margrave who stood beside him. Short and fat with ruffled sleeves compared to his height and muscle. The margrave shrugged. "We're kind of used to it. They're mostly harmless as long as you stay out of their way."
"As long as you stay out their- WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT. How can men of my glorious Army allow themselves to be pushed around by some piffling fucking aristocrat in some piffling fucking backwater!"
"... I'm a backwater…!" Margrave Alpas mumbled and turned aside, tears in his little eyes.
General Bazoar turned back to the men standing in line. "The world has forgotten the might and power of the Empire! We used to be better than this! Our Emperor used to be young, afraid of nothing, a god of war! Now he is old, and they think the Empire is weak.
"Maybe we need to remind them all again why the whole continent shakes when we bother to make a move."
The officers tried hard to keep confusion from their faces. What? Isn't that tantamount to declaring war? General! What have you done?!
"I know that most of you were barely even in your mother's stomachs during that time. And now none of you are blooded. You play at guards in a contested frontier. You're more skilled at trading insults than trading blows! I am giving you this - this opportunity of your lives! Prove yourselves better. Prove that you have the blood of warriors in you!
"I alone," as long as one counted a familiar as an accessory and not another individual "braved the Zeno gap, blasted through the Castle Zenovi, and brought to you the thing that makes you bunch of milksops quiver in fear! Now what shall we do with her?"
Only stunned silence was the response to his words.
"Well? Speak up!" he roared.
"They are weak little nancy boys," said Zorah. "And girls, I suppose. You can't just give me to them like a cat presenting a mouse that they caught. They have no idea what to do with such a treat."
-- "Zorah is not a treat, she is a /threat/…" someone had to blurt out.
-- "Throw it baaack…" another moaned again.
"Uh… with all due respect, Lord General, kidnapping Zorah is bad enough, doing *anything* to her may be war-worthy offense."
"That IS the point, you weak-kneed monkeys. Lord Marquis Zenovivi is already dead by my hand, you are looking at Heir Marquis Zenovivi right now, and if we kill her, then that whole stupid lineage will end, and Zeno Gap is defenseless!"
"But that's war!"
"Are you not soldiers?! War is your reason for existence, fear not war, but run to it happily! Like a child to its mother!"
"War is something… only the Emperor can decide that! We can't do anything like that without the Emperor's permission..!"
"The Emperor can't actually give permission for this, idiot."
"Is this about the Emperor's rumored ill health and we have to stabilize the succession by proving the strength and stability of the Empire…?" Margrave Alpas muttered. "I guess I can see why that might be a good thing to some... as long as it seems like Belfast struck first."
"You can think that, yes," the general replied.
He turned towards the assembled men-at-arms. "You never experienced it - you only lived a life of peace. But Regulus… Regulus is BEST at war. No bandits on the road - they never dared any road that needed soldiers able to cross at best speed. No one went hungry - all storehouses were open, and price gouging had the death penalty. Nobles didn't dare to throw around their degenerate weight and slake their lusts anymore - they knew we would all hang them under military law!
"No-name nobodies can become Generals! You just have to earn your rights by killing the Empire's enemies! Only in chaos like that can you separate the useless from the strong! The unworthy of their title from the ones who earn it by merit! This is the time nobles are forged and heroes are made! Those who would fucking stop Regulus from improving in the best way are the real traitors! The evil they do to its people is to kill their soul!
"War… war is good for Regulus. It is too late for you to stop it. You have no right to stop it! Now, here! Here is your enemy! Do as you want. That is the province of the strong!"
-- "... well I have been curious about why she wears so much powder cake on her face," someone mentioned offhand. "But it could be worse. What if she's not hiding some great deformity or something?"
-- "What, like she's somehow really pretty or something and only someone who can tolerate her entire… Zorah-ness… ever gets to see it or something?"
-- "No, I mean, what if she's just really plain. That would be so underwhelming. I don't want to waste those minutes of my time."
-- "We could just throw her into a well or something?"
-- "We have military laws against polluting the drinking water."
The General was left nonplussed for a moment. He stared down at Zorah and asked with an odd timbre "Is… is this a curse? What is it with you Zenovis? Everybody hates you but no one actually gives a damn enough about you to kill you directly. I just met you, but already I hate you. I want you to die."
"YOUR FACE is a curse!" Zorah shot back.
The Demon Lord tilted its goat face and flames erupted from its eyes. It spoke in eerie cracking noises that only General Bazoar could understand.
And the soldiers were continuing like gossipy hens:
-- "So, what, until now she doesn't get married because of stupid unrealistic expectations?"
-- "Well we know Zorah has some form of common strength boosting personal magic. What if she just applies it everywhere? This is a woman that head-butted the steel gate to the Regulus side of the Zeno Gap and left a dent.
-- "If she doesn't like you and you were stupid enough to think she's yielding and defenseless - squish. Goodbye, my son!" A loud clap. "Sausage pancake."
-- "A life of much suffering and tragedy, most of it self-inflicted."
"Is there really no one in this Army with the intestines to take a swing?" Bazoar sighed. He had enough and pointed. "You there. Take your sword and just stick it into this witch."
The officer blinked and pointed at his own face. Then on confirming that it was him, he reluctantly went up to the stage, drew his sword, and faced Zorah's completely unimpressed expression.
"Doesn't feel right to kill a defenseless prisoner, sir."
-- People down below comment "Yeah but if you think about it, if we allow Zorah to put her feet down, she would wreck stone and then soon wreck face."
-- "I don't wanna get my face wrecked today."
The soldier up on stage looked down at Zorah, at the General, then down past the line of officers standing on attention to his own troops. The general infantry didn't know what to expect from this. "Sir… Lord General, sir… this is dishonorable. I refuse this order and accept the consequences, please only spare my men who have nothing to do with this decision."
General Bazoar palmed his face and sighed. "I don't even know what I was expecting. There is no hope here anymore. My Third Army has grown useless from the fat of peace, and here in the border we have weak yapping dogs. Oh, my poor Regulus. What happened to you?"
"Sorry, Lord General, but we are loyal to the military chain of command, and we can't do anything without official orders from the capital."
General Bazoar slumped over the podium. "An Emperor that once set soldier's heart's aflame is now just weak and useless old man. Heirs that are cowards and in bed with the enemy. An Army once famous for never hesitating, now formed of weak-hearted fools. We don't need these things."
"Sir! What you say may amount to treason and rebellion! I respectfully ask that you recant those words and this will never have happened."
General Bazoar rested on one elbow with his grizzled cheek on his palm. "You know what else is good about making a contract with a Demon Lord?" the general whispered. "A Demon Lord is a commander of Hell's Armies. And in exchange for a sacrifice, a summoner gets access to all his army too."
He waved nonchalantly. "Feed."
--
And the shadows erupted.
Bony hands came out of the shadows beneath soldiers and dragged them down, hands holding knives sank into them, and they were devoured into negative space.
From flames, imps and other small demons leaped out. Their screeches mixed in with the screaming.
Wooden floors broke apart, and from the darkness underneath legless flesh beasts with worms for bottom bodies and torsos of men with faces of slugs punched out.
Skeletal soldiers stepped out of corners.
"Demons!" cried out soldiers as they fought for their lives.
"He's gone mad! Stop him!" The mage officer raised her wand and quickly chanted "[Water], shatter my foe! Icicle Lance!"
A spear of ice quickly shot forth, with the speed and force of crossbow. It stopped in mid-air before reaching the general, and melted back into water, and then into nothing. He grinned.
She got speared from the back by a lance of solidified shadow. She gurgled out blood in disbelief, and tried to grab the tip of the lance before being pulled under and absorbed by that sinister and impossibly dark pool.
"Lord General Bazoar, why…?!" someone whimpered.
"Traitor!"
"Help!"
"Mages! Send wo-ghurk!"
Margrave Alpas tried to run away, but was captured by a monstrous spider with a human's face. The aide-de-camp tried to slash at the creature, only to be run through by a leg that ended in a wicked spike.
The fires spread, and the shadows deepened. The general simply continued to stand there, casually leaning on the podium, as around him loyal soldiers of Regulus were butchered and turned into more unholy creatures under the Demon Lords' command.
He looked at his own gauntleted hands, and the pair of silver bracers around his forearms. He had always been contracted to a Demon Lord, and the sacrifice of bandits had bought him strength and power, to be spent in untraceable killing ambushes for his enemies, but it was not enough against the might of organized Regulus. He was an unequal partner to that contract, he knew.
Enough generals supported his plans for revolt against the weak dying Emperor and his even more useless children, but others balked at the notion of using demons to supplement the army.
Everything changed once he got his hands on these two Ancient Civilization artifacts. Given how astoundingly powerful they were, and the ease by which he acquired them, it was almost like they practically dropped out of the sky to land on his feet. The heavens themselves wanted him to succeed!
"I am invincible. I am the man chosen by the gods," General Bazoar spoke with a wide bloody grin. "And nothing I do is wrong."
==
==
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- Location
- Somewhere
It lives!
more seriously, nice to see this back.
more seriously, nice to see this back.
- Location
- Earth
Hey, it's back!
Demons, bleah. Always more terrible than they're worth.
Also, I'm pretty sure this gives the magic-eating-spider-bot a reason for existence. That thing would go through magic based demons with ease, which would be needed for hope demons can convert people like in this chapter.
Demons, bleah. Always more terrible than they're worth.
Also, I'm pretty sure this gives the magic-eating-spider-bot a reason for existence. That thing would go through magic based demons with ease, which would be needed for hope demons can convert people like in this chapter.
JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
There's not much in the world that's more dangerous than a man who believes that nothing he does is wrong...
Edison_Trent
Freelancer
Oh boy, that was both really funny and really scary, one right after the other.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
language twice?
Oh dear, seems Regulus is undergoing a civil war - involving demons massacring their own soldiers, to boot. Was nice to see the soldiers balk at harming a captured prisoner, though, despite being the 'bad guys' nation.
earthboy
(verified ape)
- Location
- NYC
- Pronouns
- He/Him
But what about the Regulus language? EDIT: Ninja'd
Beer is a pro-generate lust.
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Thanks!
errata:
Regulus language, Regulus measurements, and Regulus systems of commerce
Nobles didn't dare to throw around their degenerate weight anymore - they knew we would all hang them under military law!
errata:
Regulus language, Regulus measurements, and Regulus systems of commerce
Nobles didn't dare to throw around their degenerate weight anymore - they knew we would all hang them under military law!
Last edited:
- Location
- Wishing I was somewhere much colder, I asssume.
WOO nice to see more of this.
41.1 Blood of Kings
AN: Again, corrections and comments please.
------------
Blood of Kings
==
==
Nothing. No one.
The place was completely empty. Monika's [Danger Sense] read only three lifesigns deep in the fortress.
/"This… is what we call: a trap."/
But we had no choice but to spring it.
I blew open the door to the fortress' throne room and shouted "OI, ZORAH YA CRAZY BINT, DID YA BITE OFF ANYBODY'S DANGLIES YET!"
"You sure took your time getting here, fool."
/"Wow. You completely didn't worry about Zorah being r*ped at all, did you? As a woman this should be offensive to me, but you two hate each other and yet somehow you have such complete trust in each other's ability.
Monika chewed on her thumbnails. /"Somehow it pisses me off."/
Inside, we found a large man with a broad grizzled chin and a faintly wolf-like demeanor lounging on the throne. He was wearing brass-colored plate armor and grinned rakishly as we rushed in.
Zorah was tied up like a caterpillar, with only her head exposed, hanging upside down from the ceiling. That was sensible. It robbed her of all leverage, and she could not pull bullshit with momentum to give herself super strength. Wiggling around would just send her swinging around in circles until dizzy.
She stared back with a dull, completely unimpressed stare.
"Are you from Belfast?!" screamed a pudgy man in ornate robes inside a cage hanging on the opposite side of the room to Zorah. "Save me! The General's gone mad! Treason! Murder! Heresy! HEEEEELP!"
The General in question said "What's this? Is this all that Belfast can send to me? Children? Adventurers still with milk on their lips instead of their proper soldiers?" He tilted his neck at a jaunty angle, and we could almost feel a physical sensation of his lusty leer. "Well the girls don't have as much meat on them yet, but I guess they'll do fine as tribu-."
"DOUBLE LIGHTNING BOLT!"
KRAK-THOOM.
"What the shit!" Elze screeched as she shielded her face. Linze eeked and shut her eyes. Yae… sprang into acton.
We were told about his antimagic field. But because we could see my spell travel across the room, we knew that it had a range. And of course, no magic shield ever stops ambient light.
While everyone was blinking light spots from their vision, she had already moved towards the other side of the room well within the antimagic zone, cut down the metal chains that bound Zorah, slung the noblewoman over her shoulders like a bag of rice, and ran all the way back to her starting position.
In less than three seconds.
But those were still three seconds of a continuous lightning barrage. A heat haze obscured the other end of the room for a few moments until it cleared.
And sitting there, still lounging carelessly on the throne, with a wolf-like smirk on his face, the General Bazoar was as expected completely unscathed.
The wall behind him was blackened by carbon scoring, the drapes were on fire.
"Huh," the General grunted. "You kids aren't as bad as I thought. All right then. I won't kill you. I'm still keeping the girls, but I'll only break your legs and then give you a fair chance of taking them back."
I bristled. What mercy from a rapist! No one sane would believe that. He was just toying with us.
He really didn't see us as any threat, huh. I did expect to be constantly underestimated, not the least because of my apparent youth. Someone dressed in such bright primary colors like I did wearing a mask was either a useless fop or like Landschecks or Rondeleros were not afraid of anything, least of all charging into a wall of pikes.
"… Could we just leave Zorah here instead?" I had to say it.
"Gyahahaha. No. You were dumb enough to want to take her back. Keep her."
I regret this already.
Okay then. Well our job was done, immediately I started walking backwards because exposing your back to the enemy was just dumb.
I heard a frightened squeak from Linze behind me.
"... The Demon Lord's behind us, isn't it?"
/"It's outside the door, yup."/
"Oh my lord, you could grate cheese on those things," Elze mumured about the Demon Lord's impressively well-defined ten-pack abs, which were the only things visible past the door.
The creature had to bend down to enter the hall. It had the face of a goat, the horns of a ram, the furred neck and shoulders of a lion, the arms and muscular chest of a man, the furry legs of a bear, the wings of a bat, and were those eagle talons for feet?
Shite, this thing looks like the Icon of Sin. Do I have enough rocket launchers for this?
Monika helpfully reminded us of Leene's information from earlier:
/"A Demon Lord is a creature of magic. I'm not sure if it's related to that Crystal Cricket, but probably not. That thing got stronger the more magic it was exposed to, but a Demon actively needs magic to live. To think. To grow.
/"Magic is useless against a Demon Lord because it absorbs it completely. Only physical attacks would work, but the problem is that it is also a supernaturally powerful creature with its own ability to cast magic.
/"What a cheatery existence."/
So Elze's [ONE-PUNCH] wouldn't work.
/"No. It would absorb her magic and nullify her inherent self-protections against her own magic's side effects. Magical weapons would be ineffective for the same reason."/
The General still wasn't getting up. He sat there, slowly becoming bored with our inaction.
Yae and I shared a look. We looked down at Zorah on the ground like a worm, and then together at the nearby open window.
"Tell me you are not going to just toss me out that window," Zorah hissed dangerously.
I gestured, and Yae with nary a shred of hesitation chucked her out the window.
"OH YOU ABSOLUTE CUN-…!"
Leene would catch her. Probably.
"HAH!" the General laughed and slapped his palms down on the armrests of the throne. "Good enough. I will allow that." Then his eyes narrowed. "But if you think you're going to escape that easy, better think twice, children."
I clenched my fists, and lightning crackled up and down my arms. "... Why don't you just tell us all about your nefarious plot already."
"Whut," said Elze.
Without looking back I answered "Man like that, not leaving the scene of the crime? He wants to monologue. To brag about his great work to people that don't matter. It's no fun if no one understands the horror of not being able to stop it from happening."
He raised one shaggy eyebrow. "Huh. Weak. But smarter than you look."
"Who even are you, if you don't mind my asking. We're not really all up and up on important figures on the continent."
"Hmmf. As ignorant adventurers, I will forgive that. I am Guron Bazoar, Wolf of Regulus! Know my name and despair!"
"What do you get from trying to incite war between Belfast and Mismede?"
"Heeh? What do I get?" He spread his beefy arms wide. "Is it not obvious? WAR! WAR ITSELF IS THE ANSWER! A GLORIOUS WAR! _MY_ WAR! BEAUTIFUL WAR!
He threw his head back and quivered as if in orgiastic bliss. "THE WAR TO REPLACE THE OLD AND ROTTING REGULUS EMPIRE WITH THE NEW AND VIGOROUS BAZOAR EMPIRE!"
The fat noble trapped inside a hanging gibbet began openly sobbing.
"That is bugnuts insane, how are you even planning on accomplishing that? Even if you do manage to win the inevitable Regulan Civil War, there's still the rest of the continent ready to dogpile the weakened empire. Is what I should be saying right now, right?"
My fingers twitched. Light. Fire. Light. Fire. Wind. "You wouldn't be so confident of saying that even to no-name adventurers like that if you didn't have a way to fix the drastic difference in manpower."
"Heheheh. You know how a nation can't have all its people under arms, right? But what if you could exchange useless civilians for soldiers instead? You kill a demon, and it only goes back to its plane, harmed none! Eaten happily from the life power and magics of this plane! They don't fear death at all!
"I will take your Belfast, and offer it to a glorious sacrifice! Let Rodmere send its army, it will be eaten! All your men will be an offering, every one of them in exchange for a demon! Your children! Boys and girls, we don't need them! Throw them to the offering pile too! Ugly women, old women! More fodder for the army!
"We will have only a new beautiful generation of the BAZOARIAN PEOPLE. GWAHAHAHA!"
… This guy is total fruit loops. What the hell.
/"Player, an extraplanar summon can only exist in this plane as long as magic power is supplied to it from its summoner. If the Demon Lord is gone, so will the Army that is bound to it. Sacrifices can only allow them to remain for so long./"
The General grinned fiercely. "Tell this to your pathetic King. Declare war. Fight for his life. Struggle mightily, entertain me! If he is too much of a coward to battle Regulus with men, I will drown his pitiful kingdom with under a tide of demons and hang him by his own intestines."
Then he relaxed back on his chair. "Women, surrender. Kneel down. And I won't have my demons breed you. At least you will be only broken by my soldiers. You - boy - beg for your life and you will be able to flee back to your pitiful king to deliver this message unharmed. If not… well, you only need your mouth to say the message, legs to get there.
"Arms, nose, your manhood… you won't need them."
"You… you're evil!" Elze hissed. "You won't get away with this!"
I grinned back. "Then aren't you, oh future Emperor, the weak point of this whole scheme?"
Then I switched my stance to point both palms out front and back, and Monika and I shouted at the same time "[Fire] [Light] [Boom Tube] - Oh Light from the Heavens, in infinite power, shine! [SOLAR LASER!]"
The girls dived to a crouch and closed their eyes with their arms over their faces in a defensive fetal position.
Portals opened in front of my palms. They connected to a pair of smaller Boom Tubes in the upper atmosphere that accumulated photons continually moving between two points, and exited into searing heat of the purest heat of the sun's anti-vampiric holy symbolic potency.
The noble up on the hanging cage squealed like a pig as the ambient heat and light surged to flesh-roasting levels. It didn't take extra effort to mentally project an [Air Shield] around him.
The Demon Lord's chest was struck by the 20cm laser and roared in pain. The fur on its forearms as it instinctively tried to protect itself was set aflame. Then, strangely enough, the blindingly white disk on its body was being... pushed away?
General Bazoar was nowhere to be seen, the shield that suddenly sprang up in front of him coruscated with light as if staring directly at the sun.
Stones crackled and fizzled. The air hissed with steam. I had to pump new summoned [Wind] to keep everyone around me from suffocating or being cooked.
The girls slowly got back up to their feet and prepared to fight.
"So you have chosen death…" General Bazoar's deep and scratchy voice said through the fog of superheated air. He stood up to his full height. The silhouette of his brass armor and long red cloak flapped in an unseen wind. Shite, I thought there might be a loophole with photons being allowed through because of course how else are you going to see, but apparently even natural light counted as a magic attack.
He roared: "Pathetic. Ignorant fools, you don't know your place! If you don't want to accept my mercy to leave, then why not just stay forever!"
He waved forward and an unseen force rammed into us.
Elze and Linze let out a gasp, and fell down instantly unconscious.
Yae grunted, but after a small puzzled shiver, remained standing.
I felt myself suddenly blank out, cold and drained, as all my magic power was instantly drained out of me - and then almost immediately refilled.
Antimagic wave? Wait, what? He can do that?!
Monika's face abruptly appeared over my vision /"Player I need to shut down don't freak ou-"/
There was a cracking sound.
And then I knew only darkness.
--
--
------------
Blood of Kings
==
==
Nothing. No one.
The place was completely empty. Monika's [Danger Sense] read only three lifesigns deep in the fortress.
/"This… is what we call: a trap."/
But we had no choice but to spring it.
I blew open the door to the fortress' throne room and shouted "OI, ZORAH YA CRAZY BINT, DID YA BITE OFF ANYBODY'S DANGLIES YET!"
"You sure took your time getting here, fool."
/"Wow. You completely didn't worry about Zorah being r*ped at all, did you? As a woman this should be offensive to me, but you two hate each other and yet somehow you have such complete trust in each other's ability.
Monika chewed on her thumbnails. /"Somehow it pisses me off."/
Inside, we found a large man with a broad grizzled chin and a faintly wolf-like demeanor lounging on the throne. He was wearing brass-colored plate armor and grinned rakishly as we rushed in.
Zorah was tied up like a caterpillar, with only her head exposed, hanging upside down from the ceiling. That was sensible. It robbed her of all leverage, and she could not pull bullshit with momentum to give herself super strength. Wiggling around would just send her swinging around in circles until dizzy.
She stared back with a dull, completely unimpressed stare.
"Are you from Belfast?!" screamed a pudgy man in ornate robes inside a cage hanging on the opposite side of the room to Zorah. "Save me! The General's gone mad! Treason! Murder! Heresy! HEEEEELP!"
The General in question said "What's this? Is this all that Belfast can send to me? Children? Adventurers still with milk on their lips instead of their proper soldiers?" He tilted his neck at a jaunty angle, and we could almost feel a physical sensation of his lusty leer. "Well the girls don't have as much meat on them yet, but I guess they'll do fine as tribu-."
"DOUBLE LIGHTNING BOLT!"
KRAK-THOOM.
"What the shit!" Elze screeched as she shielded her face. Linze eeked and shut her eyes. Yae… sprang into acton.
We were told about his antimagic field. But because we could see my spell travel across the room, we knew that it had a range. And of course, no magic shield ever stops ambient light.
While everyone was blinking light spots from their vision, she had already moved towards the other side of the room well within the antimagic zone, cut down the metal chains that bound Zorah, slung the noblewoman over her shoulders like a bag of rice, and ran all the way back to her starting position.
In less than three seconds.
But those were still three seconds of a continuous lightning barrage. A heat haze obscured the other end of the room for a few moments until it cleared.
And sitting there, still lounging carelessly on the throne, with a wolf-like smirk on his face, the General Bazoar was as expected completely unscathed.
The wall behind him was blackened by carbon scoring, the drapes were on fire.
"Huh," the General grunted. "You kids aren't as bad as I thought. All right then. I won't kill you. I'm still keeping the girls, but I'll only break your legs and then give you a fair chance of taking them back."
I bristled. What mercy from a rapist! No one sane would believe that. He was just toying with us.
He really didn't see us as any threat, huh. I did expect to be constantly underestimated, not the least because of my apparent youth. Someone dressed in such bright primary colors like I did wearing a mask was either a useless fop or like Landschecks or Rondeleros were not afraid of anything, least of all charging into a wall of pikes.
"… Could we just leave Zorah here instead?" I had to say it.
"Gyahahaha. No. You were dumb enough to want to take her back. Keep her."
I regret this already.
Okay then. Well our job was done, immediately I started walking backwards because exposing your back to the enemy was just dumb.
I heard a frightened squeak from Linze behind me.
"... The Demon Lord's behind us, isn't it?"
/"It's outside the door, yup."/
"Oh my lord, you could grate cheese on those things," Elze mumured about the Demon Lord's impressively well-defined ten-pack abs, which were the only things visible past the door.
The creature had to bend down to enter the hall. It had the face of a goat, the horns of a ram, the furred neck and shoulders of a lion, the arms and muscular chest of a man, the furry legs of a bear, the wings of a bat, and were those eagle talons for feet?
Shite, this thing looks like the Icon of Sin. Do I have enough rocket launchers for this?
Monika helpfully reminded us of Leene's information from earlier:
/"A Demon Lord is a creature of magic. I'm not sure if it's related to that Crystal Cricket, but probably not. That thing got stronger the more magic it was exposed to, but a Demon actively needs magic to live. To think. To grow.
/"Magic is useless against a Demon Lord because it absorbs it completely. Only physical attacks would work, but the problem is that it is also a supernaturally powerful creature with its own ability to cast magic.
/"What a cheatery existence."/
So Elze's [ONE-PUNCH] wouldn't work.
/"No. It would absorb her magic and nullify her inherent self-protections against her own magic's side effects. Magical weapons would be ineffective for the same reason."/
The General still wasn't getting up. He sat there, slowly becoming bored with our inaction.
Yae and I shared a look. We looked down at Zorah on the ground like a worm, and then together at the nearby open window.
"Tell me you are not going to just toss me out that window," Zorah hissed dangerously.
I gestured, and Yae with nary a shred of hesitation chucked her out the window.
"OH YOU ABSOLUTE CUN-…!"
Leene would catch her. Probably.
"HAH!" the General laughed and slapped his palms down on the armrests of the throne. "Good enough. I will allow that." Then his eyes narrowed. "But if you think you're going to escape that easy, better think twice, children."
I clenched my fists, and lightning crackled up and down my arms. "... Why don't you just tell us all about your nefarious plot already."
"Whut," said Elze.
Without looking back I answered "Man like that, not leaving the scene of the crime? He wants to monologue. To brag about his great work to people that don't matter. It's no fun if no one understands the horror of not being able to stop it from happening."
He raised one shaggy eyebrow. "Huh. Weak. But smarter than you look."
"Who even are you, if you don't mind my asking. We're not really all up and up on important figures on the continent."
"Hmmf. As ignorant adventurers, I will forgive that. I am Guron Bazoar, Wolf of Regulus! Know my name and despair!"
"What do you get from trying to incite war between Belfast and Mismede?"
"Heeh? What do I get?" He spread his beefy arms wide. "Is it not obvious? WAR! WAR ITSELF IS THE ANSWER! A GLORIOUS WAR! _MY_ WAR! BEAUTIFUL WAR!
He threw his head back and quivered as if in orgiastic bliss. "THE WAR TO REPLACE THE OLD AND ROTTING REGULUS EMPIRE WITH THE NEW AND VIGOROUS BAZOAR EMPIRE!"
The fat noble trapped inside a hanging gibbet began openly sobbing.
"That is bugnuts insane, how are you even planning on accomplishing that? Even if you do manage to win the inevitable Regulan Civil War, there's still the rest of the continent ready to dogpile the weakened empire. Is what I should be saying right now, right?"
My fingers twitched. Light. Fire. Light. Fire. Wind. "You wouldn't be so confident of saying that even to no-name adventurers like that if you didn't have a way to fix the drastic difference in manpower."
"Heheheh. You know how a nation can't have all its people under arms, right? But what if you could exchange useless civilians for soldiers instead? You kill a demon, and it only goes back to its plane, harmed none! Eaten happily from the life power and magics of this plane! They don't fear death at all!
"I will take your Belfast, and offer it to a glorious sacrifice! Let Rodmere send its army, it will be eaten! All your men will be an offering, every one of them in exchange for a demon! Your children! Boys and girls, we don't need them! Throw them to the offering pile too! Ugly women, old women! More fodder for the army!
"We will have only a new beautiful generation of the BAZOARIAN PEOPLE. GWAHAHAHA!"
… This guy is total fruit loops. What the hell.
/"Player, an extraplanar summon can only exist in this plane as long as magic power is supplied to it from its summoner. If the Demon Lord is gone, so will the Army that is bound to it. Sacrifices can only allow them to remain for so long./"
The General grinned fiercely. "Tell this to your pathetic King. Declare war. Fight for his life. Struggle mightily, entertain me! If he is too much of a coward to battle Regulus with men, I will drown his pitiful kingdom with under a tide of demons and hang him by his own intestines."
Then he relaxed back on his chair. "Women, surrender. Kneel down. And I won't have my demons breed you. At least you will be only broken by my soldiers. You - boy - beg for your life and you will be able to flee back to your pitiful king to deliver this message unharmed. If not… well, you only need your mouth to say the message, legs to get there.
"Arms, nose, your manhood… you won't need them."
"You… you're evil!" Elze hissed. "You won't get away with this!"
I grinned back. "Then aren't you, oh future Emperor, the weak point of this whole scheme?"
Then I switched my stance to point both palms out front and back, and Monika and I shouted at the same time "[Fire] [Light] [Boom Tube] - Oh Light from the Heavens, in infinite power, shine! [SOLAR LASER!]"
The girls dived to a crouch and closed their eyes with their arms over their faces in a defensive fetal position.
Portals opened in front of my palms. They connected to a pair of smaller Boom Tubes in the upper atmosphere that accumulated photons continually moving between two points, and exited into searing heat of the purest heat of the sun's anti-vampiric holy symbolic potency.
The noble up on the hanging cage squealed like a pig as the ambient heat and light surged to flesh-roasting levels. It didn't take extra effort to mentally project an [Air Shield] around him.
The Demon Lord's chest was struck by the 20cm laser and roared in pain. The fur on its forearms as it instinctively tried to protect itself was set aflame. Then, strangely enough, the blindingly white disk on its body was being... pushed away?
General Bazoar was nowhere to be seen, the shield that suddenly sprang up in front of him coruscated with light as if staring directly at the sun.
Stones crackled and fizzled. The air hissed with steam. I had to pump new summoned [Wind] to keep everyone around me from suffocating or being cooked.
The girls slowly got back up to their feet and prepared to fight.
"So you have chosen death…" General Bazoar's deep and scratchy voice said through the fog of superheated air. He stood up to his full height. The silhouette of his brass armor and long red cloak flapped in an unseen wind. Shite, I thought there might be a loophole with photons being allowed through because of course how else are you going to see, but apparently even natural light counted as a magic attack.
He roared: "Pathetic. Ignorant fools, you don't know your place! If you don't want to accept my mercy to leave, then why not just stay forever!"
He waved forward and an unseen force rammed into us.
Elze and Linze let out a gasp, and fell down instantly unconscious.
Yae grunted, but after a small puzzled shiver, remained standing.
I felt myself suddenly blank out, cold and drained, as all my magic power was instantly drained out of me - and then almost immediately refilled.
Antimagic wave? Wait, what? He can do that?!
Monika's face abruptly appeared over my vision /"Player I need to shut down don't freak ou-"/
There was a cracking sound.
And then I knew only darkness.
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JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
Oh, no.
Without Monika, who will be there to hold back Playa?
Remember, Playa, you have in front of you a shining example of what not to be...
Without Monika, who will be there to hold back Playa?
Remember, Playa, you have in front of you a shining example of what not to be...