The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 241: Interlude - Anko - Part 2

Chapter 241: Interlude - Anko - Part 2

On the edge between one abyss and another, Anko sat and caught her breath.

She’d climbed for hours and hours, it felt like. Until even her mana-enhanced body had started to strain. And just when she’d wondered if she should have explored down instead of up, she saw it: a little slice of light that marked a place where the tower had broken.

Upon reaching it, she’d discovered the "slice" looked to be about ten measures high, a break in the tree where the tower was also broken between two parts that had been bolted to the interior.

The break in the tree was wide enough to let her rest, and it was enough for her to see that she’d entered an area that was very low on mana. An area where, above her, something was filtering down a weak amount of light and spreading a strange, mucky haze that smelled rotten.

Rather than continue up into that fog, she made the decision to leap for the next section of the tower as soon as she felt able. The climb brought her across more breaks in both tower and tree, as if some cataclysm had tried to but largely failed to dislodge the entire structure, until at last she found a break that was different from the rest.

For one thing, it led out onto a massive section of what seemed like more wood, but upon stepping onto it she discovered it to be a giant mushroom attached to the side of the tree.

The sights that met her from that platform were strange indeed. A forest not of trees but of mushrooms, linked together loosely by ropey strands of white that threaded about the trees like the universe’s largest basketweave.

Some glowed, others seemed to sway unnaturally, and more than a few had gloopy, unidentifiable pools of substance on their surfaces.

And then there were the bugs.

Giant insects whose forms blurred the lined between all manner of species moved about, gathering and glomping and nibbling. They seemed unhurried, and after a few minutes of staring with her mouth open, Anko realized that none of them were attacking each other. Just taking in bits of the fungi and moving about in some unseen order.

All of them were dense with mana, but aside from a few rare exceptions, the air around them was clear. Almost as if they only drew mana without emitting it, the same as the mushrooms.

A formation of dragonfly-like insects with wooly underbodies passed overhead, spores dripping from them, and Anko giggled in wonder at this place she had found.

She had to see more of it.

This time, instead of taking to the tower, she decided to try climbing the outside of the tree. She dug in with her claws and started to rise, wondering what else awaited her above.

There were a lot more of the shelf-like fungi that she could rest on, but in her excitement she went around the tree faster and faster until she found something that definitely seemed out of place amidst the growths.

A bridge, stretching between trees for what looked to be more than a great measure.

"Whoa," she said as she made her way to it, discovering that her side of it met the tower-tree in the middle of a different, bulbous mushroom that was so hard it took extra time for her to climb across, using her claws to dig out each hold in the opaque resin that covered it - the better for future explorations, she figured.

Once on the surface of the bridge, she could see clearly that it had been made with a different design altogether than the metal depths and had a seldom-used seeming to it.

Probably because this side is all covered in mushrooms. She squinted, noticing the same seemed to hold true for the other side. But the only way to be sure would be to walk over and find out.

Anko grinned. This was an adventure after all.

After another glance around, she started to walk. Near the middle of the bridge, she spotted a giant, pill-bug like creature with orange, liquid-filled sacs on the insides of its two front legs.

In a fascinating display, it approached a shelf mushroom on one of the distant trees and started to pick at its inner edge. A few moments later, the entire shelf was sent collapsing to the "floor" below as orange-red goop was spread onto it, eating away at the mushroom and exposing a bit of the tree under the bark.

Huh. Wonder why there are so many shelves on the tree with the tower...

She was still ruminating on this mystery when a shadow passed overhead.

"Landing!" a figure called out as what she glimpsed to be a person with angelic wings came down onto the bridge.

No... not a person with angels wings. An actual angel.

He landed with his back to her, his wings disappearing into nothingness as he sighed out; a trick Anko had already seen amongst demons who used the same sorts of tattoos, even though there were not obvious tattoos on this one’s back.

"Phew. Didn’t think anyone else from the network was here," he pulled out a halo and it settled in over his head. It wasn’t all shiny like she thought haloes were supposed to be. Well, it was metal-shiny, not ’staring into a tiny sun’ shiny. Weirdly there was a big jewel in the middle that turned as if it was looking right at her. "Looking forward to the race or just-"

He jumped in shock as he saw Anko for what she was.

"Oh my fuck! A demon... Oh fuck oh fuck-" He started fumbling with the pack at his hip, producing something that looked like a thick wand bent in the middle at an angle. There was a weird bit sticking out that vaguely resembled the trigger of a crossbow.

Anko scowled. "Yeah, so what? What race? What is this-"

"Die, demon!"

Byzzyt-

Pain unlike anything Anko had ever felt flared into her entire being as a beam of light lashed out from the bent wand, burning across her ribs and nearly searing through her upper left arm.

Only the instinct to dodge saved her, born from the relentless combat philosophy Svarzgard had drilled into her: If someone treats something like a weapon, it’s a weapon.

The "wand" was the first weapon of its kind that Anko had seen, and the man was clearly an amateur. But Anko had been well-treated as weapons went.

It was over in a blur.

The angel tried to resummon his wings and lift off, but Anko leveraged every bit of magic she had to pounce on him, dodging shot after shot before flattening him into the bridge and sending the strange wand skittering away.

She then started shredding into his body with her three good arms as she pinned him to the bridge, breaking one of his wings with a stomp from her foot.

The sound of him crying out gave Anko an angry joy. No longer was she just some helpless waif. No longer did she just have to stand around and take it when people grabbed her, or told her what to do, or tried to kill her.

No longer was she Nona.

As a finisher, she stepped off the crippled angel as he lay moaning on the ground.

She stepped away, reached for the wand, and picked it up.

Returning, she reached down and forced the angel onto his back.

"You fucking tried to kill me! What the fuck I ever do to you?"

The angel spat blood. "Demon... You kill me and they’ll hunt you down."

"The fuck? How the fuck is that fair?" Anko snarled as she aimed the wand carefully at his moaning, bleeding head. "Any last fucking words?"

He started to sob she found the trigger with her finger, raising his one good arm as if to block her, that is until she grabbed it and pulled it away.

If she was going to kill someone, she promised herself to be like Kir and do it face-to-face, without mercy and without unnecessary grandstanding. Just like when he killed Corlwin...

"W-wait! Please, just let me live. You can go back to Hell where you come from and-"

Anko smacked him across the face. "I’m from Norneau, asshole." She steadied her aim-

Beep-beep-beep.

It didn’t fire. With a frustrated growl, Anko stabbed the angel in the throat with her claws and stood off of him, but then movement caught her eyes.

Shadows approached, flying right at the bridge.

Three angels, flying in a line. They passed under the bridge, but looking past she could see that more were on their way.

Anko panicked. Standing off the angel, she delivered a kick that sent all the way to the edge as she bolted away, the strange wand her only prize.

With one arm down, she couldn’t keep up a fight, especially if they had more of the wand things. She pocketed her prize and dashed for the tower tree, jumping as fast as she could from terrace to terrace as she looked for a crack in the tree, any crack that would allow her inside and back to the tower that was her way down.

The first one she found was too far from the tower. It lay virtually opposite her position, with nothing but void before her and tree to the sides. And she did not feel confident free-climbing with only two hands, since her third would have to hold her only light source.

The second crack she found was more viable, but the tower was still distant.

Perhaps it was one of the large insects coming, or maybe more angels, but Anko’s panic only increased as she heard more sounds on the wind. She knew that if she was caught, all of Darkness would be at risk. Maledict and everyone she’d come to care about, no matter the fact that they were demons, would face death or worse...

Steeling herself, she poured as much mana as she dared into her legs, pulled out her magic torch, and stabbed her claws into the wood, climbing just close enough for her to leap for the tower, and hoping by all that she had become that she would not fall into the darkness.