The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 165: Looking For Trouble

Chapter 165: Looking For Trouble

Midway across the next room, the entire Academy began to rock from side to side.

Everyone was forced to brace against either the floor or the walls.

"What was that?" Caneban shouted above the rumble.

"I think we’re moving," Noir replied.

"We’re definitely moving!" Stella announced, having flapped off the ground as soon as the rumbling started.

At first Kir thought she was landing, but then he realized the floor was moving up to meet her.

"This can’t be good... They’ve got to be at the Academy’s core," Kordia said as she forced herself to stand.

Out of a nearby window Kir spotted a cloud, and it was slowly lowering as the entire Academy was moving slowly upward.

As the rumbling began to smooth out, everyone stood shakily. The cadets and students alike all evidenced deep concern, and many of them looked back to the doors they’d come through, or the windows.

"Stella, can you check outside?" Kir asked.

"On it!" she shapeshifted into a raptor, like Cheshire, and fluttered out a window. A moment later she was back. "Fucking Heaven, Maledict’s moving the whole place into a portal! He’s stealing the whole fucking dragon!"

"Why would he want to steal the Academy?" Lugh asked.

Kordia frowned at him. "Are you serious? The Academy is practically a flying fortress. There are vaults here full of magic artifacts. Books of forbidden knowledge. Hell, there are things even archmages and archons don’t understand!"

"Are there any of those things that can help us?" Noir asked. The muttered in a lower voice, "What’s an archon?"

Kordia flinched, a grimace crossing her face, but it was Caneban who responded.

He looked around, as if confirming where they were before saying, "Somewhere near the forty-fifth floor, there should be the storage room for dangerous weapons. We’re, what? Forty floors away? But if Kordia’s right, we need to get to the core, and students don’t get access to that."

Kir’s eyes widened at the same time as Kordia’s.

"The core... it uses a lot of mana, right?" Kir asked.

"It regulates the whole school, how could it not?" Caneban asked.

"If students don’t get access to it... that would be the perfect place to put all the missing students!" Kordia said. "The professors never would have looked there because most students don’t even find out about it... The mana would hide them... And the access is on the twenty-eighth floor."

"Is there something wrong with the twenty-eighth floor?" Kir asked.

"It’s bigger on the inside. And there are traps," Caneban said.

"What kind of idiots put traps in their own magic school?" Stella grumbled loudly.

"Obviously the kind that don’t want bigger idiots wandering where they don’t belong!" Caneban sniped back at Kir’s familiar.

"Do we really have time to walk twenty-three more floors?" Noir groaned.

"Maybe you don’t, munchkin, but I could make that in a minute," Amarena growled and drew her sword with a loud hiss. "Assuming they let us." Almost as one everyone looked to find a pair of large demons entering the room.

Behind them, a small host of two dozen smaller demons filed into the room. Weapons were drawn on both sides.

To Kir, every one of them seemed to be variations on the same theme, barrel-chested individuals with thick arms and as many varieties of horns as there were people to wear them. Their legs were digitigrade, like his own, but lacked prehensile toes and claws, instead having hooves that made them resemble very buff satyrs.

Instead of long tails, each had short, very fleshy ones with varying degrees of bony armor on them, and they gave off a sense of sturdiness and mass, instead of magical strength or even speed, especially given their lack of wings.

In other words, they were the opposite of a gnossinian.

"Hmm. Taz hu mihz malbeda," one chuckled heavily to the other.

"He says ’Look who’s come looking for trouble,’" Kordia translated.

"You speak demonic now?" Stella asked.

"I began studying it as soon as Kir and I started dating... I thought it would come in handy," she answered back, then translated. "The other one- Wait, Kir!"

Kir had started walking up to them, interrupting the other demon’s reply to his comrade.

"Let us through," he ordered. Though he was taller than both the demons by a head, they had significant mass compared to him.

Both were barrel-chested, gargoyle-like demons without wings. And both glowed a sickly orange to his manasight. One wore gauntlets of black-forged steel. The other had a wicked-looking axe on his belt.

"Who are you to order us, half-blood?" the demon on the left asked, a fist suddenly flashing forward to punch Kir.

A moment later, the Forbidding stopped the fist mere centimeters from Kir’s head, forcing back the hand of the demon and punishing him with magic that left him back against the wall, howling in pain.

Kir saw that the physical attack hadn’t made the Forbidding hurt the rest of the demons. While it was a curiosity, he decided to set it aside as he pulled himself into his most confident and in-control demeanor. The same one he’d used with General Sreev.

"I am Maledict’s son, and the one protected by his Forbidding. Move."

The second demon stepped aside, and the rest followed suit. "Be warned. The spell has begun. In half an hour, this entire tower will be Maledict’s."

Kir stepped past, gesturing for everyone to follow, but as soon as Kordia took a step, the demon stepped in the way.

"He may pass, but you stay," he glowered over the group as his fellow demon stood to block the way again.

Kir drew Kangetsu, sliding it from its sheath with a loud hiss. "They’re coming with me."

"Even the Forbidding would permit us to defend ourselves," the second demon said, angling his body as he readied his gauntleted hands.

"Kir, go!" Kordia suddenly shouted. "We’ll catch up."

"But-"

"There isn’t any time!" Kordia said.

Kir ground his teeth. "I’ll come back for you."