The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 137: Scouting

Chapter 137: Scouting

"Hey Kiii~r, look what I can do!"

Stella’s voice was not a welcome intrusion into Kir’s daily meditation.

He’d been trying to do what Amarena instructed, creating a form for his wrath by incorporating it into what they’d both discovered to be normal mana compression. Yet somehow it was much harder than he’d expected. Like trying to fill a mold from the bottom up with water, and expecting it to stick, only to lose it all to gravity.

Gravity - in this case, the natural attraction of his mana to itself - kept pulling his efforts out of the mental construct he’d come up with, and it required constant attention for him to shift his mana into the ’mold’ in the first place. As soon as he thought of this, it occurred to him that magnetism was a better concept. Mana was like working with magnetic fluid... or something.

His self-delving had grown more precise in an attempt to cope with the disparity between his body and mana, some things became obvious to him.

One was that there was something... different... inside him. A formation that implied great depth, and only after careful analysis did he determine that it was a sense of his own reserves, which came with a corresponding feeling somewhere in the middle of his chest. It also came with a sense that part of him was displaced. Submerged in the reservoir while the rest of him was outside it.

The other was a sense of flow, one that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. It was constant and unending, and when he tried to affect it with his mind he got only the sense that he could pull it slightly faster or push it away.

And then there were his arcane tattoos. If the bigger formation was a reservoir, then they were small pools with channels carved to each of them, radiating out from that reserve. In his mind, he’d tried blocking one only to immediately eject one of his featherbone knives from his wrist storage.

Testing proved that the rate of ejection was rather constant, so once he figured out the trick he would eject both knives and catch them in the air, saving some mana as he cut off the channels.

But those discoveries still didn’t help him, at least not yet, when it came to what he was supposed to do.

Amarena’s preferred metaphor didn’t help either.

"Treat it like a muscle. Relax to move it where it needs to go, and then tense to keep it there," she had said the last time Kir asked how she managed to hold her mana into her own schema.

Remembering this, he tried to tense his mana as he forced it into the mold once more-

Zap!

Kir jumped from a light shock of pain as he looked over to find Stella hovering at his ear. In her hand danced sparks of electricity that she was toying with as she waggled her fingers.

"What was that for?" Kir complained, before he noticed that Stella was, in fact, producing the lightning with very little mana. Meaning it was true lightning. "You finally did it," he smiled.

"Yep! All that stuff about electrons was just spinning around in my head until I realized that electrons are like people who drift around in an orgy..."

What followed was the lewdest rendering of atomic physics that Kir had ever heard. It was totally inaccurate, and it left Kir wondering "How did you get that to work? What about all the constants-"

"Big dicks in the middle, like I said," Stella licked her lips. "I can’t wait to try this out in bed."

Kir rubbed his eyes. "So wait... you wanted me to teach you magic so you could use it during sex?"

"It’s a very under-studied field. But don’t worry, I’ll put you in the citations... pictures too if you want..." she fluttered her eyebrows suggestively.

"No," Kir said flatly.

"Were you expecting me to just throw magic around in fights? I’m no good for that. I’ve almost hit you, like, a dozen times since you taught me about fire."

Kir hadn’t noticed.

"Lightning’s a bit more dangerous, Stella, so let me figure out a test to teach you about the different properties before you fuck someone up."

"Wanna try it out now?" she reached, rubbing her hands along Kir’s chest as she sent some sparks through, dancing them across his nipple which she knew was one of his weak spots-

Kir grabbed her arm when he smelled burning. "Stella! This isn’t a magical shirt."

"Ugh, fine, I’ll wait," she pouted. "Go back to figuring out your war form thingy... though if I get a say, I think you look great in the one you’ve got. Just like your dad."

Kir flinched. He did not want to resemble his dad, and when he thought back to when he’d first met the man, he realized that what she’d said was largely true. If anything, Maledict had held back when taking on his war form for the aborted fight with his moms.

As soon as she’d left, Kir re-attacked the problem. Maybe he was thinking about it the wrong way. Instead of pushing himself into the form that he’d taken naturally, he should look into creating a new one.

He had a better self-image of his normal form than his war form, so as he returned to his meditation he decided to start there.

Time slipped away as he bent himself to his new task until suddenly someone was shaking his shoulder.

"Kir. Kir get up," it was Noir, concern in his voice.

Kir opened his eyes to find that it was close to, if not past, noon. "What’s going on?"

"Rena’s back from scouting ahead. We’re having a meeting to discuss what we should do."

"Do about what?" Kir asked, right as Amarena strode into the little clearing with the rest of the party.

"About the army outside the city you lead us to," she said.

Behind her, Noir looked a bit sheepish and Sam looked furious. The latter had put their mask back on, but their anger was clear by the way they glared at him.

"What kind of army is it?" Kir asked.

"The demonic kind," Amarena said. "Couldn’t see up close, but if we continue to the city we’ll run into scouts or a picket eventually."

"What were they doing?" Noir asked.

"Laying siege, obviously," Amarena crossed her arms. "Do I have to tell everyone here how armies work?"

"I think we get the idea," Kir said, pushing off the ground to stand. "How were they arrayed? Was there any way into or out of the city?"

After roughly half an hour going over the details of the siege, the situation became clear.

A demonic army was camped roughly one great measure away from Norneau - about a kilometer, to Kir’s mind. So far the siege seemed recent, according to Amarena, because all that was happening was the casting of long-range spells and wards to disrupt teleportation and communication magic.

At the end of her briefing, Kir assessed, "Whoever they are, they’re taking their time... if they aren’t at the lake yet, maybe we can get around them if we find a boat."

"One thing is certain, they are not Leviathan’s forces," Amarena rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Weapons are often allowed to the least of her troops, but not armor. Not if they haven’t developed it naturally."

"Why would that matter?" Stella asked.

"Because if it were my mother’s forces, I would be able to wield some influence. Not knowing who is out there concerns me. Leviathan should be sieging heaven, so it was expected that the other Dukes would take the chance to raid her lands..."

"Why would she allow that?" Kir asked.

"Hmph. You know little of Hell. When the Eye of Hell opens, the first lands to die are ours. Ash clouds the sun, and what grows retreats to await the end of the cycle. Yet another reason demons flee to Ayther when they can."

"I thought demons didn’t need food," Noir said.

"Once one starts eating, it quickly becomes a habit... especially to grow," Amarena said. "Using food allows us to resist the times when mana grows scarce, and when the plants and animals retreat to sleep, the mana goes with them. Those in Hell become weaker, which is why the battle inevitably comes to Ayther, which has always prospered for mana."

Kir nodded at her explanation. It was well-known that mana was somehow linked to the presence of life. He’d once tried to quantify it, using grass as a baseline, but measuring devices were so imprecise that he’d given up on those childhood experiments. What he’d lacked back then were consistent measuring mediums, but maybe he could revise his experiment with-

Something began to stir the bushes nearby.

Suddenly, from behind Noir, a demon burst into the clearing.

Kir’s body reacted almost on its own. As the demon charged, stabbing for the sheepkin, Kir loped the distance and leaped, landing on the other side of Noir as he began to draw Kangetsu.

He swore inside as his mind began to race, Kangetsu only half drawn as the demon’s blade stabbed for his guts.

He’d mistimed his landing.

If he put up a shield now, it would incapacitate him.

His final seal might have only a quarter of what he’d once faced, but it was a quarter of a lot of pain.

If he didn’t...

No one could get to him in time.

He was as good as dead.