novelraw Chapter 164: Correct
Chapter 164: Correct
***
A massive explosion shook yet another clearing.
Fire was the cause, splashing across a glossy white shield made of Divinity.
Indeed, actual, real, pure Divinity from a damned Demon.
How was that even possible?!
Merlin couldn’t stop herself:
"Okay—NO. That’s very unfair! Only we are supposed to have that!"
The Demon hunched in the center of the crater didn’t answer, unlike that of Nulity; it seemed not all that intelligent.
It simply floated there, the hood covering its vaguely humanoid body low. And yes, ’vaguely,’ as it was thin and stretched, its joints pulled far apart to a point that didn’t make sense.
A scary-looking Demon, yes, but the real problem was its shield.
Golden and multi-layered, shimmering around it like a dome.
And it kept making new ones once the old was destroyed.
Merlin stabbed her forth, the heat orbs around shooting out.
In her right hand was a... burnt twig.
A Divine Relic, no doubt, one from the Second Stratum where her House was based. It replaced the many staffs she had in stock, each once stored in preparation for the last to break, as she had the... habit of overusing them. In other words, breaking them.
"Keep moving! Don’t give it a break!"
"Yes..."
Aurelia darted sideways, her feet disappearing in a burst of compressed wind as she dashed across the battlefield.
"I’m already on—"
A spear of pure, blinding gold shot past her head.
"Ah."
It wasn’t thrown; it simply appeared.
"Fall back!"
The Demon’s finger twitched.
Three more spears formed instantly, launching a moment after.
Aurelia flipped backward, her whip cracking, followed by multiple wind slashes.
Each crescent of slicing air shot forward, only to shatter on the shield.
Every attack did, even Merlin’s volley of rapid-fire fireballs, splashing hard against the radiant barrier, coating it in molten orange before only to then be purified into steam.
Yes, it’s dome cracked all over, but the Divinity it absorbed from their attacks healed it.
"You’ve gotta be kidding me!"
Merlin groaned aloud.
"Aur! It HEALS from our attacks!"
The bird’s eye twitched.
"You don’t need to tell me that. I already know."
The Demon raised its hand again, and many more divine constructs began forming.
A volley of divine blades exploded forward, spears, swords, and radiant axes, light bending in a straight line toward them.
They tracked Aurelia, and though she dodged most of them, one managed to find her shoulder, tearing straight through it.
Merlin, surprisingly, didn’t react, as she knew the truth of what had just happened.
Aurelia’s body suddenly burst into nothing, and two beneath it rushed forward.
Indeed, she had clones as a result of her new Rune Zephyr Mirage, and one of those clones had replaced her while Merlin’s fireballs had taken its attention away.
She and her semi-physical clone got close before it popped into blasts of wind that knocked the divine weapons off course, making the air too turbulent for more to be conjured.
That was Merlin’s perfect opening.
Her Runes brightened, and a cone of intense heat poured from her wand.
The flames hit the shield directly, and now, as she wasn’t at risk of being interrupted, she concentrated all of her focus and power behind her attack, digging into the shield and cracking it.
Before three seconds could pass, the shield broke, only for her flames to hit another.
The Demon had responded to their bait by creating a SECOND shield behind the first.
Merlin’s flame penetrated that one as well, only for a third shield to shimmer into existence, a sight that made her eye twitch again.
"I’m going to commit a sin."
Aurelia didn’t hear her enraged mumbling, as she was too busy trying to delay its conjuring of divine weapons... a failed cause.
"KKKKKAAAAAAKK!"
The Demon’s poor attempt at a scream was followed by tens of constructs that formed high in the sky, far from Aurelia’s interference.
They launched down, and Aurelia shot upward to meet them with her two clones flanking both her left and right, barely dodging the golden constructs that hunted her—keeping them away from Merlin, or at least trying to.
A few had gotten past, forcing Merlin to stop her attack and blast away.
Yet she didn’t entirely stop attacking, throwing fireball after fireball while moving.
"How much Divinity does it have?!"
Merlin clenched her teeth.
"Dammit! Fine! Aurelia, I’ll begin using up my reserves!"
With that, the clearing became chaotic.
Wind trails streaked across the air.
Fire roared upward in burning waves.
Divine light carved through the ground.
And through that, Aurelia realized an undeniable fact.
The Demon before them had near infinite Divinity.
And now, not because its Corrupted self could hold Divinity, no.
It was because it could instantly siphon Divinity from its environment.
That meant that no matter how long they fought, it would never slow down.
But that realization didn’t bring only bad news... it brought an incredible realization.
If it had to siphon Divinity, it had to connect to it directly, and that connection couldn’t be true if a dome was surrounding it the whole time, a dome that didn’t let anything through.
There had to be tiny holes in each of its shields, ones they could use to finally reach it.
"Merlin, I need you to widen your attacks!"
Aurelia yelled while spinning above it in mid-air.
"Hit it from every angle!"
Merlin’s pink eyes widened.
’So it’s got holes in its shield, hm?’
So she changed tactics.
Instead of targeting the Demon, she all but targeted the whole field.
Fire tornado after fire tornado, never concentrated but spread, burning everything.
She melted the area around the shield, superheating both the ground and air.
Flames wrapped around the layers of Divinity, snaking through.
The layering became harder to maintain; they kept flickering... and Aurelia struck!
One wind slash after another, immediately breaking through its shields and finally reaching the Demon!
"KKKKKKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAKK!"
It was definitely in pain, its stretched body being shredded and cut.
But it didn’t just take her attacks and quickly struck back, sending a divine lance that split the ground and nearly bisected her. Its radiant edge brushed her hair as she barely corkscrewed out of the way in time.
"Aur! Move!"
Merlin cursed, flicking her wand.
Many more lances shot out, only to meet her fireballs.
A few, however, tanked the flames and reached Aurelia, grazing her leg, sending her spinning. She barely stabilized herself with her wings as her foot slammed into a compressed wind pocket mid-air and shot her away from the dying Demon.
"Merlin, end it now!"
The cat woman didn’t need to be told twice, sending one concentrated orb that pierced through its skull and blasted inside its body, burning it from the inside out.
Much of its body turned into mush as it fell for the first time, now barely alive.
Aurelia shot forth to deal the ending blow, her clones behind her once more.
"K...ak."
Yet just before she could, a wave of Divinity crashed outward like a shockwave.
Merlin barely conjured a wall of fire to hold it back while Aurelia was thrown into a boulder, her clones bursting at once.
"Ugh!"
Though in pain, she quickly stood back up and watched as Merlin blasted far up.
She flew high in the sky and pointed her wand down, the balls of fire surrounding her congregating into one single point. A final attack that would end this—
"Enough."
Her spell was canceled.
Both girls froze and looked to the side.
Coming toward them through the fire was a man with spade-shaped pupils.
A Demon, the same one that met the others, only this time...
It didn’t introduce itself or smirk as it did with them.
The demon attacked, its arm stretching like a rubber band, expanding into a massive, shadow-covered fist the size of a wagon.
"What—?!"
The fist reached them instantly.
Aurelia barely saw anything before—
BAM!
It punched her straight upward into the sky, through the clouds.
"Aur!"
Merlin screamed and turned toward the Demon—
"Sleep."
Its fist detached and swung at her.
A giant severed hand of writhing muscle was falling upon her.
"I WILL NOT FALL!"
Merlin reacted instantly, flames exploding from her wand.
A fire blast, fire tornadoes, rapid fireballs—everything she had at her disposal.
The attacks punched straight through the massive hand, but that still had her stutter.
There was no black blood, wound, or real substance splattering after her attack.
The hand simply dissipated, breaking apart like a cloud.
Grim realization hit her hard, and her eyes widened.
"You’re... you’re of Illusions!"
The Demon’s humanlike smile widened.
Its spade-shaped pupils stretched unnaturally.
A ripple of terrible pressure swept across the clearing.
Indeed, this was not a normal Lesser Demon like the others.
This was something above, a being closer to Greater Demons than not.
And it was the leader of whatever group that planned this attack.
"You are..."
Seeing Merlin’s reaction, the Demon bowed slightly.
"Correct."
That was the last thing she heard.