The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 209: Ice Cream Anti-Social

Chapter 209: Ice Cream Anti-Social

A few minutes later - with some awkward sorting and stacking for all the bags - Rain, Ozzy, and Cassie sat around a multi-colored mountain of ice cream, topped with fruits, biscuit sticks, dollops of whipped cream, and long spoons.

"Dig in, boys! My treat!" Cassie didn’t wait to grab a spoon and start sampling the differently colored orbs.

"What’s this brown stuff?" Rain asked as he drew a spoon from the mountain.

"That’s called ’chocolate’," Ozzy said. "Try it, it’s good."

Rain poked his tongue into the syrupy substance. His eyes widened, and soon he was eating with just as much gusto and with far more abandon than Cassiel.

Suddenly a sharp pain started in his forehead. "Gah!" Rain held his head with his free hand.

"Hehe, brain freeze," Cassie said before swallowing her current bite. "You should slow down a bit."

"It’s just so good," Rain had loved the stuff he’d gotten in the Hospital, but this mountain of flavor was a different beast entirely from the vanilla-flavored white cream he’d been served.

As the mountain was chipped away, the three of them wound up smiling and talking over the plan to make a mana sauna.

"First I’m going to check the Akashic network for mana sauna designs. We might not get the most current versions, but if we can figure it out we might get close," Cassie was already poking around on her tablet.

As she searched, the three of them amicably pondered how they would source the metal, mana crystals, and other components. Cassie was in such a good mood that it seemed nothing would bring her down.

Nothing, that is, until a trio of Executioner candidates approached. Rain recognized Jasiel, and two other squad leaders he couldn’t name, one with sandy hair and wings, and one with wings of pastel blue-grey. The latter made Rain wonder if his wings would have matched his sky-blue hair had he been born an angel.

"Cassie," Rain warned her as Jasiel cast his shadow over her.

Lifting her head from her tablet, she turned around.

"Cassiel! So good to see our House’s Prime so busy," Jasiel smiled without it coming even close to his eyes. "Taking your pets out for a walk?"

"They aren’t pets Jasiel, though I see you brought yours," she flipped her tablet over for privacy as she completed her turn. "What do you want?" she asked.

As the new Prime of the Executioner candidates, Cassiel could afford to be less formal with Jasiel than she had been.

"Well, seeing as we’re practically mandated to use them, I thought I’d buy my Elevated some enhancements. Isn’t that why you’re here with them? Or are they just here to carry your bags?" He chuckled at his own cleverness.

"They’re not pets," Cassie growled. "They’re people."

"They’re the help," Jasiel countered. "The only thing they have on angels is disposability."

"Your squad must love you," Cassie fired back, her wings twitching with anger.

"They know their place, unlike yours. You’re only Prime because you got lucky. Aunt Iriel-"

"Aunt Iriel has given you plenty of chances to take back the title, Jasi. It may have been luck that put me here, but it’s been fucking work that’s kept us at the top," she raised her voice, and Rain noticed they were starting to draw stares.

"Oh I believe the fucking part. I wonder who it was you mixed feathers with to keep getting all the good assignments... Not that you’ll be Prime for much longer."

"And what’s that supposed to mean?" Cassiel challenged.

"Oh Heaven, did you not hear? While you were out here wasting time, the whole Choir decided on how the Choir Prime for the Inter-Choir Tournament will be picked. I must say I’m looking forward to showing you how much of a difference there is between us, cousin. And don’t think I’ll hold back just because you’re a girl."

"I was just going to say the same thing about you," Cassie returned Jasiel’s sneer in equal measure.

Jasiel’s face was practically apoplectic for a long moment, and Rain was subtly reaching under the table, ready to draw his new blade from storage just in case.

Thankfully, Jasiel reigned himself in. "See you in the arena, Cousin. If you’re brave enough."

With a wave of his hand, Jasiel caused the half-eaten mountain of ice cream to melt into a colorful sludge along with the clear bowl it was contained in.

Rain knew that kind of chantless casting was supposed to be rare, but he’d already seen plenty of angels using magic as casually as they breathed. It was with some relief that Rain watched Jasiel turn and fly away with his cronies, sloshing the melt with the gust from his wings.

That was when Cassiel noticed Rain’s hilt sticking out in midair.

"Put that away, you’re going to get us in trouble," she ordered, and Rain slid it back into storage. She stood up a moment later. "Come on, let’s get back to the dorms and do some research. I want to see the look on his face when we wipe the floor with him."

"Do you know what he meant by how the Choir was going to pick its Prime?" Rain asked.

"No, but I reckon everyone back at the dorm will. And once we’re on the House network I can look it up." Cassiel started walking away from the table, leaving Rain and Ozzy scrambling to grab up all the bags.

"Is it alright to just leave the table like that?" Rain asked.

"That’s what cleaning constructs are for," Cassie replied snippily, then changed the subject. "You like going to the library, right? Can you look up stuff on mana immersion therapy and mana saunas while you’re there? There might be some stuff that isn’t online in those books."

"Yeah," Rain said as Cassie quickly pulled up her tablet, summoning an air carriage large enough for them to fit along with all her purchases.

After Cassie paid the driver, they departed back to House Eros in relative silence as she chewed her thumbnail.