.
The old man was on the ball. As Fire mana condensed in the asura’s spear, Durandal again raised the [Shield of Oranos]. But rather than the dragon’s breath of the previous attack, a [Fire Lance] of intensely dense mana launched at us. It struck Durandal’s shield and drilled its way through, slowed down for just long enough that I was able to rotate sideways and let it fly past me.
The asura no longer held his magic focus. Two of his hands appeared to be limp, so he was only holding the spear. Gambling that this meant he couldn’t cast the powerful Aether shield that had blunted my previous attack, I pointed Durandal and this time commanded, “[Holy Smite!]”
The magic circle formed and the fist flew, punching through the imps and their shields and slamming the asura backward, propelling him through two stalactites and all the way out into the main cavern.
I gaped for a moment, then quietly asked, as the remaining imps scrambled to escape the tunnel behind their departing leader, “Was that ‘smite’ extra-heavy-duty or something, old man?”
I can increase the power of [Holy Smite] when I have such thick Earth mana to draw from, he answered, And it requires half the effort.
I felt the mana within the gigatons of rock surrounding us and understood.
Chiara had stopped running my direction after the last attack. She was now simply standing and staring, holding the gnarled root in her hand. I walked back a few paces to gather up the purified scarab as I went.
“I thought I told you to go the other direction?” I asked her as I reached her.
She blinked, then looked bemused.
“I meant to,” she said. “But I forgot about it because I needed to help you.”
It was on her face. It hadn’t been a conscious decision. She knew it, too.
Turning and heading back toward the tunnel entrance, I said, “Let’s go make sure the corpses are corpses.”
…while that archfiend is elsewhere, I added in my mind. He and Diur had both left the range of my fairy sense long ago.
As I was stabbing demon bodies, the outrider arrived beside me and Diur’s voice asked, “Are you carrying a divine treasure?”
He could have been referring to Durandal, a holy sword, but the old man is my closely-guarded secret, after all, so I gave an evasive answer. “What is a divine treasure? I’m not familiar with that term.”
“You wielded [Purification],” he answered. “Only a divine treasure or an immortal technique like a seal can grant Holy magic to an Elder. Unless… perhaps one of your Servants has Holy magic?”
“One of my Servants is a skilled healer,” I nodded. “Her powers were strong even before we bonded.”
“You must infuse yourself with [Purification] whenever you go into melee combat with demons,” he declared. “They possess dangerous demonic magic against us. That demon knight attempted such an attack on you.”
“I had guessed it was something like that,” I nodded, as I finished stabbing the last demon.
“While you cast strong purification on yourself, as powerful as you can make it, you can also steal his blood trove,” the outrider advised. “It will disintegrate if he dies, so you should hurry.”
“I can what?” I retorted, confused.
“You can purge the demonic mana in his blood as you feed. While you suppress his will, you can take control of his blood core and drain it. The demon knight is still unconscious, but he will die soon”
Too many questions came to me at once and I couldn’t sort them out quickly enough to ask one.
I didn’t get the chance. A booming report out in the main cavern interrupted my thoughts.
“Are you okay?” I immediately demanded of the outrider. The way I had been conversing with it, I was certain it was relaying Diur’s words from his main body.
“That came from the place where your friends are battling,” he responded. “The demon general has chased me into the Central Cavern. Hurry down to the ground and eliminate the knight while I have him distracted!”
Becoming angry at myself– I should have gone to finish the asura the second I heard that he was down– I expanded my senses, located the prone demon, and ran for the tunnel entrance.
“My Lady!” I heard Lady Chiara shouting from behind me. I ignored her for the moment, launching myself off the edge of the tunnel and spreading my wings. I still had Durandal in my hand.
The outrider was flying in formation with me. As I landed, I prepared to dispatch the asura with my blade.
“Don’t!” Diur’s voice shouted. I ignored him as I struck the demon’s head off.
The blood core within his chest unwound and burst. Durandal must have known it would happen. The moment I swung, a [Shield of Oranos] formed between my target and me. It was like a bomb going off, blowing me backward and into the air. I tumbled through the air, desperately flapping to regain control, and actually struck the wall with my back. I had slowed myself, but the blast and collision jarred me enough to force me to land and take a knee in order to catch my breath. As my heart hammered, I stared at the five-pace-wide crater where the asura formerly lay.
I was lucky Durandal had been there to protect me. That could have been fatal.
“My Lady!” I heard again, and then I felt Wind mana drawing through my body. Chiara called out, “[Feather Light!]” as a spell form crystalized in my mind, becoming fixed there as the new spell embedded itself in my consciousness. A perfectly worthless one to a person with wings, of course, but that magic-obsessed part in the back of my mind sucked it up greedily, anyhow.
She gently landed nearby, then I felt Water mana drawing, as she chanted, “Grant me a sword of Eurybia’s steel / A might blade of the sea / To strike down mine enemies!/ [Water Blade!]”
The process of learning a spell repeated itself as a sword of water formed in her hand. A fiend who had survived the blast rose up to attack as she closed in and swung. He was already badly wounded, so she managed to dispatch him in three swings.
I had already known about him, but as long as he was playing dead and I needed to recover from the shock of getting blown into the air, I wasn’t in a hurry to deal with him. I kept that fact to myself and nodded my gratitude to her. She was scanning around, clearly looking for other enemies, so I expanded my fairy sense and carefully inspected all the other corpses in the area.
With a shake of my head, I told her, “The rest died in the blast.”
She nodded and dropped the water sword, then looked at the crater and commented, “I’ve heard of high demons exploding at death before, but I never thought it would be so extreme.”
The outrider, upon returning from wherever it had been blown, declared, “Foolishness! You could have benefitted so much! What a waste!”
With a cold stare for the half-visible thing, I retorted, “My mother does not wish me to feed on men, and my king has taken her advice and forbidden me from doing so! And never mind that, because I can’t grow my fangs and pounce on an unconscious person at will, anyway! I need to…”
I broke off as I grew a severe blush at what I had been about to admit that I do to grow my fangs, and looked away.
After a short pause, the outrider said, “At times like this, it really is clear you’ve lost most of your knowledge from the past.”
I could imagine Diur shaking his head as he spoke. My frown stayed firm as I racked my memories to understand.
“What do you mean?” I finally asked, still frowning at him.
“Our fangs also grow when we experience severe pain or trauma,” he replied, “so that we can feed in an emergency. The pain of [Purification] would cause you to grow them.”
As he spoke, I realized I had done it before. When I first woke up on Huade, suffering from mortal wounds, I fed on Melione without doing anything to prepare. My fangs must have grown due to the trauma. I had never noticed them growing while I used [Purification], but I would have been too focused on the burning pain.
I was about to pick Chiara up and fly back up to the tunnel when the outrider requested, “Commander, I beg you. Take your Servant and return to the small world.”
“I must hold…” I began, but the outrider vanished in the middle of my words. I blinked in shock at the powerful mana shock that I felt at the same moment. A few seconds later, another loud report echoed through the cavern.
The Dark mana in the twilight world was too thin for my senses to reach as far as the main cavern, but I had a fix on the location of that mana shock. I needed to fly back up into the darkness of the highway tunnel to check it with vampire sense. It’s where I was going anyhow, so I told Chiara, “We’re returning.”
She nodded wordlessly as I scooped her up. I sprang into the air, headed for the highway entrance, but Lucy appeared in the air beside Chiara’s head.
“Dee call! Dee call!”
We had a procedure pretty well worked out after the last few days. As I flew back into the darkness, I told her, “Put her though.”
“Your Highness!” Lady Dilorè’s voice came from the miniature pixie. “What happened to your ally?”
The obstructions made flying difficult in the highway tunnel. I landed and began walking.
“I don’t know! He just disappeared!” I declared, “But why do you know?”
“We have a serious situation here. There’s no point in guarding that tunnel anymore. You should escape.”
My alarm growing, I retorted, “You can’t just say ‘serious situation, run away’! Tell me what’s happening!”
“We don’t understand how, but that archdemon outflanked us. I felt a surge of Dark mana, then he appeared in the tunnels behind us. One of your ally’s proxies came to defend us, and we were able to hold them off, but I felt a big shock and he disappeared. The archdemon is pushing us into the cavern now.”
My alarm increased to near panic. My friends and my Servants were now trapped between two demonic forces, and the one inside the tunnel with them was extra powerful.
She was right that there was no point holding the highway, but I would not escape like she said. I had to protect my friends.
“Did you relay that message to my mother?” I asked as I walked. “The one with directions to reach Amelia?”
“What? Don’t worry about that now…”
“Did you send the message?” I demanded.
“Talene relayed everything to Matthias,” she answered, with a slightly huffy tone. “And to Miröen, so it will reach the Fairy King as well. It will reach your mother. Stop worrying about that and get going!”
I let Lucy end the call as my stress notched downward slightly. I could act freely, confident that Amelia would be rescued eventually.
“My Lady?” Chiara asked, sound confused. I realized that I was still holding her in a princess carry. I set her down, then closed my eyes, pulling in Darkness from the surroundings, and spread my vampire sense outward. A map of the tactical situation throughout the cavern came together in my mind’s eye.
I opened my eyes and told her, “Leave me and return to Amelia.”
As I turned and headed back to the cavern, Chiara asked with concern, “You aren’t coming with me, My Lady?”
