The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 187: Glammed Ring

Chapter 187: Glammed Ring

Kir’s leg bounced as he waited on his bed, laying with his back against it and his clawed, sandaled, digitigrade feet touching the floor, his claws clicking slightly with every bounce.

Today was the first day he would actually be able to leave the manor that had been his home for the last two months.

Those months had been very productive for him, but he was getting sick of hiding during the day and staying on the grounds at night... but such was the life of someone who was supposed to be dead.

Kordia was still with him, but she’d started volunteering to help with the construction of the new Academy. Given the number of mages in Norneau, it was going up pretty quickly, but it grossly lacked the grandeur of the flying tower it was replacing.

The bottom third of the four sub-towers had each been moved to the underside of the promontory, now turned into support pillars. Meanwhile, the Arcane Knights school had been taken over, and a new, much larger facility was going up for them using half the burnt-out area from the lowest tier.

The middle district had gone largely unscathed, but it had been determined that student housing for the Academy and Arcane Knights School was more important than having hotels there, especially given the worsening climes and the increased difficulty of travel from roaming monsters and bands of demons.

And speaking of demons, he hoped Stella was alright... most likely she was probably "playing" out in the city instead of doing the task he’d sent her to do in the middle ring; delivering an anonymous commission to Enumasam, the city’s best forgemaster, who had finally reopened his shop after months of doing nothing but commissions to help rebuild the city. Given how easily Stella could slip about the city despite the presence of angels, it was no wonder the cubi - succubi and incubi - were feared as infiltrators, despite their rarity amongst demons.

Outside of the first wall, a new wall was going up to protect the new residential district, which had been built first, but beyond that, an army of beastkin and dwellers of the western forests was presently camped, on guard against another demonic incursion.

If not for the druids they brought with them, the force of fifty-thousand would have eaten the city clean. And above them floated...

"Look right! There’s another airship!" the voice in his head said. Kiryu Narumi - Triple PhD in Quantum Physics, Applied Physics, and Theoretical Physics, Masters in Archaomanufacturing, BA in Additive Manufacturing, and Computer Programming, and Pottery - had an oddly giddy appreciation of the craft, which looked like actual ships with flattened bottoms, suspended by massive mana crystals. Kir turned his head and watched the vessel towing boxes to the top of the promontory.

In two months, Kir had discovered surprisingly little about the man, though the scientist had filled in some of the gaps in Kir’s knowledge. Especially with regards to quantum physics.

"Man, if I had control, I’d be flying up there right now. It’s just like Unending Fantasy Online," Kiryu let out the impression of a sigh as Kir assumed he was referencing some video game. He was a being of pure thought, and he held all the knowledge about Kir’s past life because he was Kir’s past life.

So much of Kir’s personality had come from knowing what the man had known, but he’d gotten none of the actual memories of living Kiryu Narumi’s life, which often included such things as the titles of his era, though Kir could clearly remember classics. As far as Kir was concerned, they were two different people, but Kiryu seemed to only half-acknowledge that truth.

"Not until our glamour ring is finished," Kir said. He’d certainly spent a lot of time working on that particular piece of magic tech with Chancellor Lumin, who had a largely conventional approach to enchanting that had slowed down his ability to convey all the features he needed to pass as a different race.

"Well when you put it like that, how could I not wait?" Kiryu said sarcastically.

Kir ignored the snark and fed Mimzy its daily dose of mana, which made his clothes rustle a bit despite there being no wind.

Mimzy was a mimic, one of two, that Kir had received in compensation for Stella getting their much larger parent scared off. It had gotten free when its container shattered and attached itself to Kir’s pants, where it went unnoticed until Terry - Chancellor Lumin’s butler - had taken the pants to have their enchantments renewed elsewhere in the manor.

Since then, Kir had tamed the mimic, keeping it to a reasonable size by occasionally draining it of mana. In fact, a majority of its mass was presently stored in his dimensional storage, directly through the tattoo on his back.

Thus far he’d discovered he could "teach" the mimic by having it consume clothes, and thus they’d come to a sort of symbiosis. Sure, the mimic was no longer willing to leave his body, but when he needed to be naked he just had it slip into the collar that was made of it while keeping the rest of its mass in storage via a very thin line of itself. If he could teach it to copy armor, he’d be golden in any form, but that was a problem for another day when he had his war form to rely on.

"You keep feeding that thing, one day it’s going to eat you in your sleep," Kiryu said. He liked Mimzy but was suspicious of it all the same.

"Mimzy would never do that," Kir said. "Would you?"

His clothes did not respond.

"Just saying, you should look into some of that binding shit that Lumin suggested. Get it tattooed or dyed or whatever."

"I’ll get it done," Kir said. "Get off my ass."

There was a knock at the door, and Terry entered, bearing a small box. Wordlessly, the birdkin man set the box on the table and removed the tray that had borne Kir’s lunch. "Thank you Terry," Kir said as the door shut. "Good talk."

"There’s something up with that guy."

"You just dislike him because he’s half-shoebill," Kir shot back as he opened the box.

"Have you ever been stared at by a shoebill? There was one outside my house because the damn aviary four klicks up the road couldn’t keep their netting straight every time a typhoon came along. I swear the fucker never moved. Barely blinked. Just staring and staring..."

As Kiryu ranted, Kir slipped on the ring, slapping his sleeve as Mimzy tried to investigate. "Not for you," he told the mimic as he started to feed mana into the ring. After a brief glowing moment, he felt the glamour slip around him.

Looking down, he saw the outline of large, padded feed covering his own. His arms had a ghostly covering of fur and padded hands whose fingers precisely matched his own down to the claws.

"The better to tear you apart with, my dear," Kiryu joked.

The man’s sense of humor, which half-consisted of responding to Kir’s thoughts when Kir could not do so back, was starting to grate on him.

"Now I just need a-"

There was a knock on the door. As soon as Kir opened it, Terry started shoving a standing mirror into the room, displaying no visible strain up until the point Kir simply gripped it and pulled it from the floor, planting it near the wall.

Terry’s beak wasn’t quite motile, but his eyes suggested appreciation before he bowed and waited.

Kir took a look at himself in the mirror, as much as he could, given it was made to reflect someone smaller than three meters and change in height. He had to step back to get a full view.

In his glamoured form, he resembled a red wolf with a somewhat unusually long tail. His true face was well behind his muzzle, but the eyes were perfectly situated and his horns had been replaced by a pair of wolf’s ears that reacted naturally when he tried to pass a hand along his horns, bending the fake ears. Getting the illusion to be self-interacting had been the difficult part. As was keeping the cost in mana low.

Assuming he couldn’t regenerate his mana, Kir thought he could power the ring for two, maybe three days tops. But doing so on top of his dimensional storage, his always-active manasight, and feeding Mimzy and Kangetsu... He suspected he could wear it for a day and a half at the current rate it was draining him.

After a few more tests, including swishing his fake wolf tail about, Kir turned to Terry, pulling his mana from the ring to switch it off. Best of all, it helped mask his mana signature, allowing only the same low-level that Lumin projected to leak out. He’d still have to suppress his mana leakage, but unless the tool ran out it would make his mana levels look perfectly average. "It’s perfect."

Terry bowed and left, no doubt to inform Chancellor Lumin of Kir’s approval. Before Kir could close the door, however, Stella stuck her foot in before sliding into the room as soon as he opened it for her.

"Phew it’s getting cold outside," she said. "The wind’s the worst part."

With the skies perpetually grey thanks to the ash from the Eye of Hell, a lunar volcano, such a statement did not surprise him. A demon’s natural body temperature was high, so for Stella to say so meant it was indeed quite cold.

"Oh no! The succubus has to wear clothes! Whatever will she do with those pert little nipples?"

Kir ignored Kiryu. He had yet to admit to anyone else that he had the ghost of his past life living in his head and browbeating him every chance he got.

"I don’t browbeat. I encourage you not to be an idiot," Kiryu said.

"Thanks," Kir said.

""Appreciated,"" both Stella and Kiryu spoke at the same time, which caused Kir a moment of confusion.

"So what was that thing? I’m no blueprinty reader but it looked like a bunch of tubes. And why give me both your spell focuses?" Stella asked.

"You’ll see," Kir winked. "It’s a surprise, and I think you’ll like the other surprise I have for you."

"I filled up on the gate guard on my way back, but I think I have a surprise for you," she licked her lips and stepped into Kir’s personal space. "So how about you put Mimzy away and I’ll show you what I taught my panties to do..."

Stella was presently wearing the smaller of the two mimics, and she intended only to keep hers for underwear since she "liked the smooth but suckling feel."

Kiryu, as respectfully as possible, made his exit. "Well kid, I’m out! Have fun riding the village bicycle."

Kir ignored him and bent to give Stella a welcoming kiss.