The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 105: Interlude - Battle of the Second Stratum - Part 2

Chapter 105: Interlude - Battle of the Second Stratum - Part 2

A moment later, Professor Fayren broke out in a burst of magic.

"Quit toying with them and finish this," Fayren snarled at the Knight Commander as soon as he took in the situation.

Rain turned to find Dun’s forehead colliding with his face despite their significant height differences, and he felt a crack in his nose as he was forced back.

"Did you honestly think your little parlor tricks would kill me?" Dun said as he stood, destroying all four of the blades inside him with a single swipe of his sword.

Rain wiped away the blood from under his nose. He almost disbelieved the degree of regeneration he could see through the holes in Dun’s armor. It should have been impossible... unless Commander Dun was a maven with a regeneration ability, but such abilities were typically weak, mana-intensive, and not very responsive to improvement since the most consistent way to do so was to inflict increasingly torturous amounts of pain and damage to the body.

"I’ll finish it with my next strike," Dun said, finally answering Fayren as he began to pour mana into his sword. The edge of it took on a white-red sheen, before transitioning through the spectrum to a blacklight hue, lightning crackling along it...

A sharpness so precise it could cut energy from the particles around it.

There was only one thing Rain could think of to meet such a blade and survive it...

He dropped his claymore, reaching upward, into the halo which had been gathering and mana ever since he’d put it on. It would be his first time truly attempting what he was about to do... The halo closed about his wrist...

As Fayren rejoined the fight, he opened up with a volley of orb-shaped lighting, tossing them out as fast as his arms could swing back and forth.

Kordia dodged as best she could. She had one flame left after drawing on the remains of the second to heal the knife wound.

Fayren’s rapid attacks gave her little time, and the injury in her shoulder remained painful enough that creating a full shield - even around herself - was impossible.

What she couldn’t dodge, she would block with rapidly formed shields precisely placed. A technique Kir had suggested for her, even if he hadn’t been able to demonstrate at the time. They had worked on it together though, with Kir throwing rocks because his seals wouldn’t let him cast. She never expected she’d need to use it so soon.

"Tenacious bitch," Fayren snarled. "See if you can block this!" He raised his hands together, gathering a mass of mana as he began to rapidly mutter a spell.

Kordia had an idea. She wouldn’t have time to fully encapsulate him. She would barely have time to form a single spell. She needed perfect timing to pull it off... but she knew the spell he was about to cast. She could visualize every moment of it because she’d seen it before, when Professor Fayren demonstrated it to his class, Counter-Mage Arts.

Synchronizing to her memory, she muttered the name of her own spell to keep herself on time, just as Rainier declared his.

"Shield Manifest..." "Divine Arms Manifest!"

"Hand-Bind!" "Soul Destroyer!"

As Fayren released his spell, Kordia placed her shield around both it and his hands. The explosion took off both his arms, and he fell, screaming, to the ground as the magic he used to keep himself aloft died with the tattooed circles those arms had hosted on each bicep. His body hit the ground with a sickening snap.

As Commander Dun slashed, Rainier brought down a black blade upon him.

The weapon was not something his family had ever been meant to own, but through the tangle of heritage and the mixing of house Eros with houses from the Choir Moralis, it had come to his father, then his brother, and then - when his brother had become a General and did not wish it to be discovered - to Rainier. And even then, only when he’d learned to lie so well about its origins that his father felt he could be trusted with it.

It was a sword meant to serve justice, demanding much mana to be created from the spell embedded in Rain’s halo. It had two aspects. The foremost was that where the blade cut, it destroyed the mana of its victim.

Dun staggered backward as the blade cut through both his sword and him.

"That’s... it?" he asked, with a derisive sneer. "The manifestation of a divine weapon... does nothing?!"

Knight Commander Dun was unharmed.

Rain had failed to manifest both aspects of the divine blade. The second, the ability to kill as any normal blade would, had not come forth. He didn’t understand. He had the mana...

Rain dropped the hilt of the blade and it disappeared into motes of light, returning to the form of a halo, which had been cut along a single point of its arc.

A moment later, his right arm fell in two pieces with it, severed through his wrist and at the bicep. Rain fell to one knee, gritting his teeth as his mind caught up to the pain.

"Pity, I was aiming for your head," Dun snarled, looking at his sword. The spell circles along its body had been ruined by Rain’s strike, which had passed right through despite Dun’s maneuver that had been meant to strike and block. "But I don’t need a sword to kill- grhrk!"

From behind him, Lugh appeared, driving his dagger up and into Dun’s heart from the back.

"I’m-" Dun coughed blood "-going to kill you... And when I’m done with that, your sister-"

Lugh withdrew the knife and stabbed again. "Looks like you’re the one who’s like my father," he hissed in Dun’s ear. He stabbed him again and again, then kicked him forward so that his face hit the ground.

"Why am I... dying..." Dun coughed more blood, unable to move with his body in shock. "I had... a deal..."

Lugh let the dagger drop, both hands coming up, fingers through his hair, as he realized what he had done. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen someone who had been subjected to a blade of the Choir Moralis... and it wasn’t the first time he’d killed such a man. A pillow was much more merciful than a blade...

"Rain!" Kordia shouted, running up to her fallen lover.

Her cry snapped Lugh out of his memories. He joined her. "We need to stop the bleeding... I’ll make- I’ll make a fire..." He started looking around.

"There’s no time," Rain said. "Use... your belt."

The instructions helped Lugh reign in his panic. He pulled off his belt quickly and tightened it around what remained of Rain’s arm.

"Kordia... now..." Rain said, steeling himself.

A moment later, Kordia cauterized the wound as Rain screamed and screamed. Screamed until he passed out and collapsed, blood leaking from his bitten tongue and out his mouth.

"Will he make it?" Lugh asked when it was done.

Kordia wiped away her tears. "I don’t know... I don’t know..."

Using some of her remaining magic, she pulled off his breastplate and rested her face against Rain’s chest, her foxlike ears searching for the beat of his heart.

Hoping that it would be steady.

Hoping that she hadn’t lost both of the men she loved.

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