Free Web NovelChapter 32: The Mind Maze
The battles until now weren’t easy.
Felix and I had prepared for this over the week and yet the moments when the demons almost succeeded in ambushing us felt more critical than anything we had expected.
’I have experienced war but fighting alongside my beast partner still is a new thing for me.’
Several times in the last few hours I thought we were going to die. Felix got hurt multiple times.
The dense Mana inside the demonic forest as well as the demonic energy that’s spread across this place makes things difficult for the beasts.
The more they stay in this environment, the sicker they get. On top of that, getting in direct contact with the demonic impurities would fatally harm them.
’And none of us ever want to see our partners turn into something completely unreasonable.’
So, we were extremely careful.
Choosing when to rest, when to move, how to move, when to fight, even how much we can fight before we need some rest.
’Fog Eyes are an unfathomable skill, but neither Felix nor I can maintain it for too long.’
The cost of using this skill is great as well. And we have been supplementing that cost with everyone in our party as well as the demonic beasts we have killed until now.
’We have done well until now.’
But our mission was never to eradicate the enemy hidden inside the forest.
It was to locate the one responsible for uniting these beasts and bringing them together.
’And we’ve finally achieved that.’
In a corner of the forest not too far from the city walls, sitting on a throne made of what seemed like human bones, was an ape.
It was a baby. Only as big as a 3-4 year old human child.
It’s entire body was black. Dark.
There was no flesh to its body. All that we could see was a translucent manifestation of dense, dark energy.
In our eyes, it seemed like a ghostly creature with demonic energy oozing out of it molded into the shape of a baby ape.
However, there was a crown on its head. A solid looking, almost metallic manifestation of its authority.
’Damned thing...’
I’ve seen all kinds of beasts in my past life.
I’ve seen true demons, I’ve seen creatures of legends, I’ve seen creatures of myth as well.
But, none of those things were the same as what I am seeing right now.
’It’s not a complete spiritual creature since it’s born in this world, it’s not a complete physical creature since it’s body is mostly energy. What it is... can only be called a manifestation of nature’s destructive will.’
It was a catastrophic being.
And its existence alone was a threat to all of us.
"We will move now."
My eyes were glowing blue like Felix for a moment before they returned to their normal state of red.
I had turned towards the captain and my company, looking at them with grim eyes.
They understood that I had finally found the target that we were looking for, so they knew we were close.
"Let’s move." The Green Falcon presented his command and the rest of us followed behind him.
The forest was dense, but it did not take us too long to reach our destination and surround the enemy.
I’ve already explained to them the tactics that we needed to follow.
The plan was already in place.
Now, we were only a moment away from the goal and the end of the war that was being fought all across the city walls...
{ "You certainly do have a fascinating ability." }
But, a voice suddenly rang inside my head.
And, even before I could blink... it found a dark, thin hand piercing right through my chest.
{ "Humans are dangerous, the others said." }
The same ape that had sat on the throne made of human bones was now holding my (still beating) heart in his hands.
{ "They were certainly right." }
The demon clenched my heart and, at the same time, I heard the screams of my dying comrades from around the field.
"Y-you..."
The demonic lord, ape by appearance, hollow were its eyes, and dark was the smile that went from its ear to another.
It glared at me. My heart in its hand.
My blood glistened down on its boney hands. Turning black and blue with each passing second.
{ "You certainly are... delicious." }
First he licked the blood off his hands. And then he squeezed the rest of the blood out of my bloody heart.
"Ahem!"
As I watched, my entire body ached. Blood gushed down my nose and my vision turned bloody as I coughed black blood already corrupted by the demonic essence.
{ "Oh if only all this was true." }
He glared right into my eyes, saw the blue glow deep inside them, and then... he looked away.
{ "It is fascinating." }
In a distance glaring at him was a gray kitten, purring at him with her angry eyes.
She did not like this creature. And more than that, she did not like how it glared back at her with its hollow, dark eyes.
-Oooooooooooooooong!
My body vanished into a gray fog.
The forest around us changed.
We arrived in a garden, with a clear blue sky above us, green walls of grass surrounding us on both sides.
"He’s strong." I checked on my comrades. Sir Green Falcon was alright as well.
We stood against the demon lord, the rest of the demonic beasts that had killed my party standing right behind it.
"It won’t be easy," without saying anything else to them, we scattered just like we had planned.
This garden was a maze. And our simple objective was to get the demonic beasts guarding the lord away from it.
{ "Aha. So that’s how it will be?" }
The demon lord commanded its followers as the beasts started chasing after us in a pack of half a dozen.
We knew this maze and yet, the demonic beasts somehow chased after us all the same.
"SKYWAAAAAAAAAS!!!"
They ripped apart anyone they got their hands on, tore through their flesh, drank their blood, and chewed through their very bones.
It did not take them long before they had caught up to the rest of us.
{ "It is futile." }
The lord once again had my heart in its hands.
Its hollow eyes were glaring deep inside my soul once again.
And once again, there was a blue glow inside my eyes, and my gray cat staring at him at a distance.
-Ooooooooooooooong!
The scene changed once again, however we did not have all of our men anymore.
Our numbers were fewer, and so were theirs.
"Move!"
We stood in an endless desert this time, the scorching sun burning above us.
The sand beneath our feet burnt the very footwear we had on us, and the heat was deadly.
{ "Kahahahaha! This is fun! So fun!" }
We scattered.
We ran.
We killed as many of them as we could.
But the end result was still the same as it had been.
{ "As I said..." }
The lord had my heart in its hands once again.
{ "It is futile." }
I almost died this time as well. However, Felix purred at him from the distance as the blue glow in her eyes, duller than before, stared back at the demon’s hollow eyes.
"Young Lord! We will fight with you!"
The gray fog covered us once again.
Fewer than before, we were standing in a lush meadow, the demon Lord’s lackey surrounding us this time.
’Something’s wrong here.’
This wasn’t the outcome we had expected.
The demon lord should not be aware of us or her. And yet it could see her every time...
He smirked at her every time before he tore my heart out of my chest.
He showed her what he was going to do when all of this was over.
Felix got more and more angry each time he did that. And if that wasn’t scary enough... he did that hundreds, almost a thousand times.
{ "Kahahahahaha!" }
He was delighted each time he saw her scared, angry look.
The way he would rip my heart out, the way he drank the darkened blood spilling out of it.
This entire thing was a game to him.
The lives of the dead demonic beasts meant nothing to this small... vicious beast.
{ "What do you call this, human?" }
On a beach by the sea, as the warm breezes flowed down the shore, holding me by my head, the demonic lord asked me a question for the first time.
"Ahem!"
The dark power had penetrated my body already.
Most of us that came here were dead.
Sir Green Falcon had lost his right hand while fighting a horde of the demonic beasts some dozen ’scenes’ ago, but he was still repelling as many of them as he could.
Our lives did not seem to mean anything to this damned beast.
"Puth!"
I had no reason to answer any of his questions either. So, I spat at it bloody.
At the end of the day, this demonic bastard was the very reason Lexie had died in my past life.
{ "Hmmm... kekekekekeke! Brave, aren’t we?!" }
He crushed my head with his bare hands this time.
-Thud!
My body fell to the ground.
{ "Ha!" }
The demon looked at me, smiling ear to another once again, its eyes now less darker, but still as hollow as it had been before.
"Meow!"
This time, the demon did not look away.
Instead, Felix came running towards us, crying.
"Hisssssssss!"
She screamed at the demon, cursed at him as he enjoyed the moment, delighted in her rage, and when she turned into her essence card and went inside my body, the look of delight on the demon’s face finally died down.
{ "Awww... is it over already?" }
The gray fog covered us once again. However, it did not disappear this time.
The ’scene’ broke like shattering glass, and we returned to the forest of the demons where we had started this whole facade.
"Ahem!" I coughed up blood, kneeling on the ground, surrounded by the dead bodies of my comrades and the demons they had killed.
"Arghhhhhh!" Sir Green Falcon screamed as he sat in the eye of a storm his now dead friend had summoned before the bird’s body turned into particles of light, her essence card now lying on the ground, shattered into pieces.
He certainly had lost an arm. But more than that, he had lost the partner he had probably spent his life with.
{ "So much for a fascinating human’s mind." }
At the end, it seems like the demon had figured out the truth of our ability.
It was a newborn, but still, this creature was a demon lord for a reason.
{ "Now than..." }
He was going to do the same thing he had done a thousand and one times.
His hand would pierce my chest, grab my heart, and once again... he would drink my darkened blood.
The fun he was having was over now.
"Your [Present] certainly was more powerful than what we had expected." Looking straight into those hollow, dark eyes, I spat on the ground with a smirk on my face.
"But we were never strong enough to defeat you in the first place." My eyes looked to the other side, at a small white bird that had been absent since we found the demon lord three hours ago.
There, standing atop the bone throne, was Nix, my first partner, a green flame burning all around him.
{ "...no." }
He had set the throne of the Demon Lord on fire, the flames not harming him one bit.
-Oooooooooooooooong!
"We were only here to stall for time."
The green flames gathered together as they freed the bones and turned them into ashes, materializing into a beautiful giant reptile that glared at the demon with its burning red eyes.
"We win, Demon."
The patriarch, the assimilator, my father and the lord protector of the east, emerged from the flames.
"Ghaaaaaaaaaa!"
And accompanying him was his partner, the legendary beast, the ruler of fire and the being that made my father a Lord of Flames.
"Exceptional execution, Prism."
He raised his flames and covered the entire area, lighting up each tree, each demonic body, each of our comrades with it.
"You can rest now."
He glared at the demon with his red eyes, the creature burning right beside him doing the same.
{ "Oh? Khahahahaha! I see!" }
The demon was thrilled.
-Oooooooooooooooooooooooong!
It had finally understood the plot of us ’dangerous’ humans.
