The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 100: Speed Run, Real Time Attack - Run 2

Chapter 100: Speed Run, Real Time Attack - Run 2

The multi-ton grotesque that snapped the trees like they were dowels moved with a speed that shocked the unprepared adventurers.

It had formed itself into a vaguely humanoid shape, beaked heads distributed randomly as they chattered and screamed and keened with madness. But now there were new heads. A dragon’s head, eyes rolling freely, comprised one hand, the tongue split like fingers being puppetted from within. The wide head of a frog-like herbivore gnashed its dull teeth into the air. The chitinous mandibles of a dozen large insectoids nibbled into nothing along the creature’s right leg. A tattered fan of flesh material spread out on its back, wing-like, but utterly useless, and on the slumped mound of what should have been a head, a horn and a stinger were held in place.

Ledot was the first to go down.

Like a horrifying reversal of a sea anemone, the grotesque was spreading out just as much as it was moving forward, and the human simply hadn’t noticed as he’d stared in horror. The orcish woman had leaped away, a volley of arrows doing exactly nothing after sticking into the flesh of the seething creature whose flesh bubbled.

He had been about to call out a command when a tendril wrapped around his leg and pulled him to the ground, striking his head heavily against a tree as mouths on the tendril began to chew into him.

"Get back!" Kir called out as he stepped forward, pushing speed into his limbs as he cut Ledot free and tossed the man toward the rest of his party. "Take him and run!"

He dodged as the creature rounded on him, ignoring the arrows peppering its back and the single exploding knife Grey threw.

The explosion was more effective than Kir thought it would be, and a portion of the creature’s left shoulder sloughed off to reveal the lacerated flesh of the pale creature that had chased Kir and Stella through its cave.

As Archer and Grey dragged Ledot away, however, Caroon came to stand next to Kir, his broken sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

"I’ve killed these before, you’re going to get in my way," Kir said as the monster slammed a massive arm forward, crashing the dragon’s head into the ground between him and Caroon.

"I don’t take orders from you, demon," Caroon said as he hacked the stub edge of his blade into the arm. It left a deep gash, but didn’t seem to slow the creature at all as it pulled itself closer to Kir with the same arm.

As Kir dodged, the goatkin man continued to slash and bash, cracking bones and spilling its ichor all over the ground. The grotesque was dead-focused on Kir, and Caroon’s strikes weren’t doing anything to slow it down.

With as many tentacles as it sent at Kir, the only strategy he had was to keep cutting, but even the pieces on the ground were still dangerous if they were large enough. Anything larger than an arm kept trying to approach, to slither and worm their way closer, forming crude mouths as they tried to latch onto him.

Worse yet, Kir had to stay focused on the dragon’s head, because its fangs were covered with venom and one scratch could mean the end if the venom was paralytic. He needed space if he was going to gather up a spell to destroy this thing, and endure the backlash from his seals, but Caroon was just too big and in the way.

With growing frustration, Kir started to work his way toward the beastkin, until at last he was able to dodge a titanic blow to grab him by the back of the armor and pull him back with all his might.

"I said stay back!" Kir shouted as his pull sent Caroon backward and away from the creature. He didn’t wait to see the man land as he started to ready a spell, turning back to the grotesque, Halie’s seals flaring pain into him-

Suddenly Kir felt something cold on his shoulder.

The dragon’s head had bitten him deep, its sightless eyes drawing Kir’s gaze. With his right, he sliced through the grotesque arm with Kangetsu, but it continued to try to bite him until he wrenched it loose between snaps of its jaw. Dozens of bite marks were left in Kir’s shoulder, and he felt the cold seeping down his nerves as he lost control of the spell he’d intended to cast.

He tried to draw on his mana for another spell but this time the pain from his seals was too much to resist.

He fell to one knee, slashing at every tendril that came his way as the main body of the grotesque began to rear up toward him.

Suddenly he felt his mind slowing. He felt the world slowing.

Was this it? Was this as far as he got?

Was he really going to die?

A bright light appeared, centered on the grotesque’s body.

From seemingly nowhere, an explosion suddenly rocked the creature, staggering it back.

Kir sensed the source of the explosion was from behind him, and he half-turned as he fell on his side.

On the ground, a few meters away, Grey and Archer were sitting amidst a pile of what looked like an entire video game potion shop.

Bottles and vials and bombs lay scattered in no particular order, and Kir saw that the center of the pile was the corpse of Ledot, his leg so mangled that it wasn’t hard to guess what had happened.

The piece of tentacle Kir had cut had eaten through the man, the party unable - or perhaps unwilling - to save the slaver. What was left of the fragment now lay inert, half-bursted from Ledot’s chest with a wet cross-section visible at the plane through which it had been cut in half.

If Kir had to guess, anything less than half a meter somehow lacked the ability to actively seek and kill prey. The bit inside Ledot was inert, but still spasming, and Kir recalled the crab-creatures and how the dungeon still treated their dismembered flesh as if it were alive. Whatever made up the grotesques of this dungeon, it wasn’t simply confined to the meat and bones of its victims.

As Kir took in the corpse, Grey stood up with a fresh batch of bottles and one bomb. He joined Archer in throwing them at the grotesque, shattering most against it but sometimes only serving to bounce them off before they shattered on the ground. Occasionally, a bottle would explode in a burst of mana, just like the one that had saved Kir.

"Which bottles are the godsdamn gel?!" Archer shouted as she finished her armful. "We need the blasting flame stuff!"

"Dunno. Keep throwing," Grey said flatly, before lighting the bomb with a snap of her fingers and hurling it baseball-style into one of the gasping mouths of the grotesque.

The bomb sent the grotesque reeling as it was forced back a step, almost splitting it down the torso like a tree struck by lightning. Yet even with that damage, the crater in its flesh left by the bomb rapidly started to congeal, shattered heads still drooling out madness.

"Need fire," Grey ended up agreeing with Archer.

Caroon stomped quickly to his companions, looking around, "It’s in a godsdamn box!" he shouted. As the archer started flinging a fresh armful of bottles, Caroon picked up a small crate sized about half a meter on each side, marked with flaming skulls and capitalized letters spelling FLAMMABLE.

He flung it like a shotput toward the grotesque, so hard the box shattered from the acceleration, scattering thin bottles of nearly liquid greenish substance onto the grotesque.

It didn’t matter that most of them shattered on the ground; in the next moment, a shattered sword laced with purple lightning followed, striking the grotesque and discharging its energies into the flammable liquid.

As the green flames rose, the grotesque began to writhe and shake angrily, tentacles flailing everywhere. Its cries grew louder and louder, the shrieks of a hundred mouths splitting the air with their noise.

It moved away from them as it started to flee, trying to escape the flames clinging to its body and proceeding only to smash more trees and spread the flame around.

Suddenly Kir was grabbed by the arm and pulled to his feet.

"Can you run, demon?" Caroon asked as he sheathed his knife.

"Left side won’t move," Kir gasped. "I need help." He stowed Kangetsu dimensionally while he still had the ability to.

"Bloody day helping a fucking demon..." Caroon started to grumble as he moved to switch sides, supporting Kir on his left as they began to flee. Caroon paused at the pile of treasure leaking from the dead slaver’s inert dimensional storage circles to awkwardly pick up a long, thick braid of chain. "Better than nothing," he grumbled as he rotated his massive hand with one end to wrap it securely around.

Kir guessed he was going to use it as a whip or a bludgeon if necessary.

As they left, Kir saw that Archer had grabbed a small chest, and Grey was loaded up with a backpack they hadn’t had before.

Kir lost all sensation in his left side by the time they reached the adventurer’s camp.