We packed armor, replaced gear, and checked the way to the mining shaft. It was a race against time to snatch everything we could need for the final trek through the mine shaft. I saw movement while I checked my bag to ensure I had everything. A body shifted, and a hand reached out. The demon opened its eyes, and green flames appeared in its sockets.
I turned to see the sphinx's eyes glow, and the newly animated dead pulled its hand back. Was that a spell to control the dead?
"You didn't raise it, did you?" I asked.
That question determined whether I would kill the sphinx or not.
"I'm a sphinx; we don't disturb the dead but can give them direction once they move. This place is cursed never to allow the dead to rest. Once you blunted the thrust of the demon army, this battle became manageable."
She was ignorant. Invading this place was nothing more than an exploratory mission. A competent demon lord would siege this place and move on. How many did the demons lose, a hundred, maybe two hundred.
It was a numbers game, and the demons had more. A single woman could produce 5 to 12 imps. When an imp bathed in enough blood and let the madness of violence take hold, they could rank up into a hellspawn.
They could become fiends after defeating champions of other races or their peers.
I strapped demon plates to my thighs with scavenged leather straps. It wouldn't do much against a war mace, but a stray knife might be deflected, or an ax blade could turn instead of cutting my leg off.
My party was barely on their feet. Jean kept dozing off and catching herself, and Lirael stood stock still and stared into space for minutes at a time. Siegfried's armor was red with the blood of demons and his own. Small healing spells from Lirael used the rest of her mana to keep the party going.
My imp was jumping for joy and practically vibrating. "Boss, I'm ready to rank up into a hellspawn," Jinxara said.
"Hold off for now. We don't want you tired while we're trying to escape."
"How can I be tired of all the power you're flooding me with? I can spam soul fire buffing the knight and myself."
I nodded, "Get ready because the amount of power at your disposal is about to increase again." I raised my hand and pulled with my grace.
Embers of demonic power rose from the corpses around us and flowed into my halo, filling the second ring. In a single battle, the second ring went from low to mid hellspawn in demonic power. I had the equivalent of a hellspawn mage type. That was without corrupting my body and damaging my ability to use grace.
The sphinx looked at her mouth open wide enough to catch flies in. "What did you do?"
"I reverse-engineered their technology," I said.
"Liar, that would require degrees of separation, maybe with artificing. You just gathered demonic power in a ring, acting like it belongs to you. I'm not well-read about demons, but I know their influence should corrupt you. You're a knight with a demon hunter job, barely holding onto your mind, but you are wearing a hat of evil and think it won't corrupt your mind. Are you an idiot?"
I nodded, and the sphinx seemed to relax. "You're right; you're not well-read about demons. Even if you were, I doubt even warlocks with T8 jobs here could do what I am doing." I said.
I used grace to force the demonic power to act abnormally.
"But if it will give you peace of mind, I'm willing to make a pact. So long as you never side with the demons, I won't be corrupted by demonic power."
Oh yeah bitch I'm going to bind you to my side, and you're going to feel like the winner from our bargain.
"I can't promise that. What if we fall, and I'm forced to side with the demons or die?"
"Then you should die rather than turn against the world," I said.
"He's right, Sphinx, we all must do our part," Siegfried said.
"My gods fell long ago, and the empire ended the bloodlines of the pharaohs. There is nothing left of this world for my kind."
The dead continued to rise, and my poor elf looked like death warmed over. She was in danger, and this Sphinx was stubborn. Maybe it would be better to kill her off, but I suspected she was hardly the only one in the catacombs capable of raising the dead. Elsewhere, other bosses were fighting off demons, and they may lose. The sphinx had the makings of an army, and she could raise the other bosses in the catacombs. In the end, she was going to have a lot of power.
I needed to dig deep if I was going to defang this kitty before we left. It was time to say some emotional, inspiring crap to yank her claws out before the demons could turn them on him. The fact this situation was happening across the globe wasn't lost on him. There would be other necromancers who would side with the demon lord. This was one they might get on their side.
To be sure, I had no idea what I was talking about. "This is the land you were born in and the land your gods ruled. Even if they are gone, they live on in your memories. Will you disturb their rest by siding with an enemy that wants to ruin their lands and burn away what they protected? Do you know they are gone or waiting for one of their heirs to perform a deed worthy of them? I can't think of a greater feat than defending the world from this demon invasion. This is the fate anyone would be proud to take for themselves." She didn't seem convinced that honoring her gods, glory from great deeds, and fulfilling oaths and duties wasn't enough; what was I missing? "The demons won't let you rest after seeing what you're capable of, even if you side with them. They'll send you out on campaign after campaign and work you to the bone. Demon lords are all sadists, they'll wait until you finally get to sleep and are comfortable before disturbing you for more work. Do well, and there will be no end to the number of tasks you must do."
Her eyes widened at my last words. I refused to sigh in relief when she turned away from me and raised her human hand. My grace made the pact official, ripping out her claws and fangs against the world.
That was exhausting. Sphinxes were the dutiful guardians by rumor but were slothful, lazy cats.
She smirked at me like she had won our exchange. She planned to make me say that speech from the beginning. "You have quite a way with words. Come and revisit me, and I will tell you the locations of some good things I hid away long ago under my pharaoh's command."
Good things? A pharaoh would probably have her hide weapons or tools that could be dangerous. Anything to give an edge was welcome.
"I may take you up on that offer."
She smirked. "So long as you bring a gift and don't interrupt my nap, you can come anytime. You should go. I have a resistance to planning. If I want to rest anytime soon, I need to get all the work out of the way, " the sphinx said.
We left through the third door. An imp ran out of the darkness armed with a battle ax only to be speared through the back by a chain. Jinxara threw a soul fire-laced dagger and took out an imp who jumped out of the spring-loaded trap. It pierced the imp's eye and stabbed into the back of the wall.
"We need to rest, eat, and report," Siegfried said.
The princess spoke up in her accented voice. "The Silver Mine will put us out in the abandoned mining town of Carn. Since no one is living there, we won't have to worry about demons. Carn is too far from the empire's border to be a staging ground for the Jorgian kingdom."
It occurred then that the princess might not be useless after all. I pulled her to the left of an ejected spear that wasn't marked on the map. She sank into my arms, and Jinxara whistled.
"The fort was on the border, right?" I asked.
The mine was south, and we would be inside the empire's border. The map in my head was coming together slowly.
"Boss, the demon lord, sent raiding parties through the hamlets and small towns to increase our numbers and collect sacrifices. The parties' numbers range from 50 to 200, and they are all mounted."
"They may find Carn on a map and not know it was abandoned, or they'll check it just in case. Then there is the local wildlife. How long has this invasion gone on?" I asked.
"Six months by my reckoning," Siegfried said.
Jinxara shrugged. "I was summoned a month ago to infiltrate the fort. What skills I didn't have were given to me as jobs from this world's system."
"Was I the only being summoned?" I asked.
"No, we performed over 50 summonings across numerous forts close to the enemy line in case the summonings went wrong." Lirael stumbled, and Jean caught her, much to my envy. "We were team 50 and had the least resources," Lirael said.
So even if the summons went wrong, they were on the demon side and would at least do some damage to the enemy.
Out of the catacombs' tunnels emerged a large circular room with shelves filled with stacks of books and scrolls.
I heard Princess Charlotte's voice. "We should burn it all before we go so no aspiring necromancer comes across it later. All knowledge of death magic can only come from the great Khan."
"No, we're going to leave this room untouched so no one will follow us." Jean, do you have any spells that can reshape the wall?"
"I have one earth spell that can work, but it's from my T1 job and has triple cost in mana because I'm an Elementalist with a water and fire affinity. Reshaping stone I can't see will make it hard to blend it in." Jean said.
"New plan: I will move one of those bookcases with my chains in front of the hole after Jean replaces the wall. Hopefully, we'll be long gone before anyone notices."
We reached the wall connecting the catacombs to the mine. Siegfried slammed into it with his war mace, shattering the stone wall of the catacombs and spilling light from Lirael and Jean's spells into the old mine.
A presence entered the library radiating demonic power. "Where do you think you're going?"
Fiends, the kind demon lords paid in souls for, had a look at them. Its horns were long; banded on either side of its head with gold crudely melted and poured before being carved away by the hands of imps dedicated to crafting. The tips of those horns were black, as if dipped in ink to contrast the golden bands. Its chin jutted out with a single dark braid curled at its end to make his jaw appear more jagged. Parts of his ears had been shaved to give his face an even sharper edge. Over his brow was a tribal tattoo of inked edges surrounding his glowing yellow eyes. The area around his eyes was inked black to make his eyes appear even brighter. His lips had been surgically removed in places to expose his sharp demonic teeth, continuously dripping with flesh-necrotizing venom. His gums had long blackened due to constant exposure, and his teeth yellowed near the root. Soon, they would blacken until the fiend's mouth was filled with black needles. That was the kind of fiend demon lords paid the most for those who survived centuries on battlefields across worlds, surviving heroes and monsters alike, as planets entered their death throes and Archons became fully involved. White teeth meant the fiend was green as grass, but yellowed teeth meant they had seen combat on a world or two. He wielded two chipped and worn battle axes, both fit more for executions than combat, but he wielded them comfortably in either hand. Armor blackened from prolonged exposure to demonic power and silver from repairs covered the fiend's body, showing the fiend had a habit of relying on protection. A red aura surrounded the fiend, obviously his wrath skill, most likely something that significantly bolsters his physical power. Or, if I was unlucky, it extended his attack range or healed him based on the number of kills he had made within a certain amount of time.
I glanced at one of the axes that sparked orange. He had a great weapon. Those weapons collected things and didn't let them go. Unlike his chains of envy that wanted everything but had a limit on what properties they could keep and grab, the greedy weapons had no limit on what they could store. They were very picky about what they grabbed, and certain conditions were applied before they could snatch something.
All I needed to do was touch it, and I could add its properties to my chains. The other weapon was a tool of wrath consumed by the flames of rage. A single cut from either weapon would be deadly. This wasn't a newly summoned imp or a rage-addled hellspawn. Fiends, whether they be the traditional ones he was dealing with or variations in the same tier, all had to fight their way to their current realm of power.
I couldn't rely on my allies in this fight. Siegfried charged, and my eyes widened.
The next Seven chapters are on my patreon. Go ahead and check the collection out. Link
The next Seven chapters are on my patreon. Go ahead and check the collection out. Link
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