The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 238: Love Race - Starting Line

Chapter 238: Love Race - Starting Line

The day of the race was here.

Team Roc stood on a massive platform with the entirety of the Choir of Love’s crop of Executioner trainees. More specifically on the clear portion made of pure magic that allowed a view of the long drop to the bottommost layer of the mid-canopy.

There were dozens of squads, and that was with each house deciding on sending only their top five candidate squads.

Everywhere, angels and Elevated checked their weapons, assessed each other, and kept watch on the crowds that had gathered on platforms that floated around the starting zone.

Malz’s team - who had decided on the team name of "Tenebris" - were at the complete other end of the waiting area, each team having been assigned based a location at random from which to start.

"Alright," Cassie said, patting her fist into her hand, "Everyone, remember the plan?"

"Stick together. Defense only. Stick to the high-mana zone." Rainier and Ozzy said at the same time.

"Remember Malz’s intel," Cassie said. "Our biggest worry will be if they put us through the dragon training grounds and the flight obstacles course. Remember, we’re going to try for quick and easy, so don’t show off new tricks unless it’s necessary."

Ozzy and Rain shared a confident smile with each other. For the last grueling week they’d been working hard to get used to their new forms and new capabilities in as much secrecy as possible.

Rain still wasn’t sure of his control when it came to both his new sword and his body, but he’d get plenty of opportunities for both once the race was done.

A few moments later, Cassie’s little reminders were justified as the announcer called for everyone’s attention.

An illusory map was rendered of the route they were to take, one which led through the trees like a winding funnel, even narrowing and sometimes splitting around major branches before rejoining.

The way the course was set up was designed to test their speed in that high-mana zones offered quick passage if one could endure staying within them long enough to burn off the excess by going faster. Most of the course had sections that lead close enough to the trees to guarantee some degree of high-mana coverage. But with the speed lanes visible to everyone, it meant that anyone operating in those places would make for predictable targets. It would test their tactics by guaranteeing choke points and places where slowdowns were unavoidable and conflicts highly likely.

Each and every participant was equipped with bracelets that would track their progress and impose penalties if they left the tunnel. As a demonstration, the announcer’s assistant showed how if one left the course, a smoky red ring would appear. One would have to re-enter at the same point in order to resume, with the minimum penalty set to one minute for leaving the course.

Much to Cassie’s complaints, the course included both the obstacle course and the dragon training grounds. Three military flights had volunteered to patrol the latter, with dragons specially trained to non-fatally "play" with racers.

There were, however, stranger things to worry about. One of them was the "Null Dive" section where they dipped into the zones that contained little to no mana, where illusions of some of the inhabitants heavily featured gossamer webs and poisonous clouds emitted by the mushrooms that dominated the layer.

At the very middle of the low passage was a roughly hemispheric section that was filled with spiderwebs.

It was followed by the longest straight-line ascent which rose to where they were standing at this very moment.

Cassie kept everyone reviewing the route right up until the final moments of the speech, when everyone, oddly, started to put themselves into handstand positions.

"Ten... nine..."

"Rain, what are you doing? Get in a handstand!" Cassie ordered, even though her position was more of a crouched pre-handstand. It made her breasts press against the inside of her bodysuit, which was "aerodynamic" enough to render Rain rather distracted by knowing exactly how much of her soft, supple body was hidden by- "Are you listening?"

"Six... five..."

"I’m not very good at these," Rain mumbled. "I thought we were diving off the edge."

"We are on the edge! Get down here!"

"Three... Two..."

Rain was just starting to crouch down when a chiming sound went off.

The first thing that happened was that the solid, disconcertingly clear floor they had been standing on stopped existing.

The second thing that happened was that Rain pitched forward, and wound up grabbing Cassie by the foot as he subconsciously realized something was barreling towards her at speed-

"Hey, what the-!" Cassie cried out right before a searing bolt of force passed where she would have been had she been allowed to unfurl. Then a second bolt flew into the same spot and Rain no longer doubted what was happening.

The teams to both sides of them had started their plunges by attacking.

Ozzy made it out unscathed because the bolts had all been targeted for Cassie.

In the moment where he also realized that they’d aimed to push her out of the course simultaneously, Rain started to shove forward, propelling Cassie as she opened her wings.

Their sudden shifts in movement allowed both of them to dodge the follow-on attacks that came rapidly as the other two teams started to close in their drops.

Similar events were happening all around the starting drop, and only a few teams had managed to race ahead, avoiding the chaos.

Rain untucked into flight, immediately rolling to spoil shots before noticing that, at the very front of their team formation, Ozzy’s hands were flashing with on-off warnings.

He raised his arm to block his sight just a split moment after seeing Cassie start to do the same, and was glad he did when suddenly everything that wasn’t his forearm disappeared in burst of white light.

Having practiced with the exact duration of Ozzy’s blinding slight spells, Rain soon lowered his arm and poured magic into strength, giving him more than enough power to flap his way faster toward his teammates.

"Ozzy!" Cassie yelled as Rain drew close.

"Angel, I know you said to hide things but-"

"No helping it now, just keep up the fire until we’ve got some distance!" Cassie interrupted.

With Ozzy covering their retreat, they evaded the two teams that had aimed at them from the start, but were now firmly between the leading and fighting formations.

They caught their first break at the course’s side turn, which held the first series of crossings with the high-mana zones closest to tree trunks.

She called our her orders a moment after Rain realized their current situation.

"Rain, go wide with a shield. As soon as Ozzy stops firing, we dive."

"Yes angel!" they shouted at the same time.

Ozzy threw two more light bursts at opposing squads - even managing to blind one elevated into leaving the course - before abruptly bringing his arms and wings in as he rotated into a dive for the approaching zone.

Cassie followed a moment later, and Rain was right behind her. He got his shield in time to block a single shot before their dive pulled them forward and out of range of those behind them.

But as they started to close with the first of the squads ahead of them-

"Ozzy switch me!"

Cassie and Ozzy switched places just in time for her to throw up a shield as a set of dark objects came into Rainier’s view.

"Are those..."

A trio of explosions cut off Rainier’s thoughts as the grenades exploded in white-blue coronas of concussive magic.

The way they pulled air in around themselves before exploding told Rainier that they were perfect for disrupting this sort of environment, and the force he felt passing above him gave him no doubt that had they been on the ground, anyone within a dozen measures might have been knocked flat.

As soon as Cassie started pouring on the speed, Ozzy and Rainier followed suit, and soon were passing the squad that had just tried to blast them out of the sky.

As they took the lead the squad switched to attacking with standard spells, but Rain was able to hold back their relatively weak shots.

"Fucking grenades," Ozzy laughed as they finally got far enough away that Rain could safely enter the standard triangle formation that was most efficient for their squad.

"Feels like they’re cooperating against us," Rain said.

"Probably are," Cassie answered his concern. "Might be too much to hope that those three were all Jasiel could afford."

"Aren’t there rules against that?" Rain asked.

""Didn’t you read the rules?"" Ozzy and Cassie asked at the same time.

"I skimmed them," Rain answered sheepishly.

"It clearly said ’House Voice tactics allowed’," Cassie coughed once.

"That doesn’t mean I know what that means!"

"It means that anything goes as long as nobody dies!" Cassie clarified.

"So wait, you mean-"

"I mean that those teams on our asses have been bribed to keep us back! And I spent all our bribe money on that mana sauna!"

Rain grimaced. He had tried to reconcile his understanding that within the Houses there was a lot more skulduggery than the glowing histories of the angels held on Ayther had ever indicated, but he continued to have blind spots because he just wanted to think the best about people, but here where people had everything, that was harder to keep up than back home...

"First chokepoint coming up!" Cassie called out.

Rain shook his head, bringing himself back into the moment.