The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 250: Skyshot

Chapter 250: Skyshot

By the time he happened upon the camp, Kir realized he’d neglected to acquire some rather essential details from the houndkin woman.

Chief amongst them was the identity of her husband.

At that point, dawn had already crept over the horizon, and thus he landed at the remains of a camp that was already abandoned. He knew it was the right one, however, because of the deep tracks that had been left in the mud by the carriage.

Judging by the prints on the ground, they were relying entirely on raptors with the exceptions of horses to draw the carriage.

More concerning, however, was the massive green and white form of a monster. By all appearances, it had been a bear that was overtaken by some sort of mutated foliage. One that used its bones like a skeleton. It lay carved open near the side of the road, its stalks carved up and the body of its massive flower carved open, likely to extract whatever ingredients or mana stones existed in it.

Something beyond his normal senses compelled Kir to dig a bit into the corpse, and his hand came away with a nectar-covered mana crystal, suffused with a slight white glow. Its physical color was hard to distinguish given how thickly the nectar covered it, but given how far he’d traveled, Kir decided that a small snack was in order.

The crystal broke apart like chalk and had about the same amount of flavor, at least from what Kir could guess around the heady, sugary taste of the monster’s nectar.

"Somehow that still weirds me out," Kiryu commented.

"Don’t knock it ’til you try it."

"I am trying it. Through you. You’re like the kid who puts marbles in his mouth, only you actually chew them."

No arguing with him there...

"Damn right, there isn’t."

"Do you always have to spy on my thoughts?" Kir said out loud.

"Not like there’s much else going on up here."

"You could help with the Programmable Magic," Kir proposed.

"You still haven’t done what I want."

"I will, as soon as stores are open. We haven’t exactly been operating during normal business hours."

"True. And you aren’t lying... So fine. I’ll get started, but you better get the good stuff."

Kir shook his head and continued to search the camp in blessed silence, but found no additional insights.

Taking off, he decided to go for a much higher altitude, both to save time on searching and to give himself more time to think of how he was going to approach things.

Just killing everyone wasn’t quite out of the picture, but if he could get away with sparing the houndkin woman’s husband alone, he wouldn’t shed a tear for anyone who tried to kill him, much less his target.

Deciding to maximize speed over safety, Kir shifted out of his war form before taking off. His identity might be at risk to someone keen-eyed enough to spot details, but he’d be much faster and more agile. For a long couple of hours, the world passed beneath him, now visibly into autumn to an unseasonable degree, as the other day’s snow had demonstrated.

Most of the trees were yellow and orange, the ones that still had leaves at any rate, and it was only further south near the horizon that hints of dark green could be spotted.

It was cool enough that fog didn’t start to form from the lake and dew until mid-morning. With how obscuring it was, Kir was just beginning to lose hope of success when he finally spotted a dark spot, moving at a brisk pace.

At that point he was actually grateful for the fog, since it made him harder to spot.

He trailed the carriage, spotting it between clouds and confirming that it was indeed the sort of heavy transport one might associate with security. And it was heading for a stone bridge.

"Bonuspoints." Kiryu chuckled.

"I thought you were working on our new type of magic."

"Doesn’t mean I can’t take a break. You seemed so excited, I had to peek."

The bridge would be a perfect ambush point. There was no way such a large carriage could turn about while on it. Kir drew forth Kangetsu, forming him into Bri, the rifle form, and waited.

As soon as the cart was on the first quarter of the structure, Kir fired out a pulse of magic that blasted away the opposite end.

The carriage was halfway across by the time they were able to stop, and that was when Kir blasted out the first portion of the bridge behind them.

Cries of alarm went up, audible to Kir as he drew closer for the more delicate shots, letting his blue inner glow shine as he drew their eyes toward him.

More than once he heard the name "Ghostheart" as well as "I thought we were safe!" This, coupled with their opening fire on him, all but confirmed that this was the group he was looking for.

Since he didn’t want to risk accidentally killing the houndkin woman’s husband - that would do a lot of damage to Ghostheart’s reputation and persona - he switched amongst the seven bullets of Bri-Kangetsu until he found the lightning round.

Unlike conventional bullets - for which there was only a single chamber in the rifle - Kir’s specially created caster bullets could be fired as many times as he wanted, as long as he didn’t fire using the maximum settings.

He’d had a bit of practice with the lightning setting, but for the greatest accuracy with it, he needed to be right above his targets and within about a hundred meters.

Their spells would be more accurate because of it, but Kir knew he could count on his shields and the power dropoff of spells moving through the atmosphere. A few moments later, and he was in position, raining lightning out of an otherwise clear sky into the fighters and their mounts, all while weathering both spells and projectiles with his shield.

A lot of people knew a little magic on Ayther, but the sorts of mages who became mercenaries tended not to have much in the way of versatility, power, or both; especially not when there were alternatives like adventuring or creative crafts. Kir attributed this to a lack of universal education; one of many things he intended to have Chancellor Lumin fix about "her" city.

"Tyrants who educate their people don’t tend to leave dynasties," Kiryu noted in response to Kir’s thoughts.

Kir ignored him, refocusing on taking out the guards until they were all either down or in the water. Over the last month, Kir had carefully calibrated his caster rounds so that the minimum setting on those that weren’t instantly fatal or specifically nonfatal would be equivalent to a "stun". That was part of the reason his range was so inhibited, but he’d rather have quick, easy options than have to adjust his magic output on the fly, which could be especially distracting when trying to simultaneously maintain his shielding.

Once the guards were on the ground moaning, Kir dropped out of the sky in his warform, ripping the door off the carriage.

A flurry of magical bolts shattered against his shields as soon as the door opened, and Kir reached in to grab the offending mage before slamming him into the stone of the bridge, knocking the wind out of him. One quick zap from Bri-Kangetsu and he was left convulsing.

"Stay down," Kir growled, before looking back up.

Inside, five people cowered.

Four of them were dressed in common clothes but the last was a human dressed in a fine suit of grey cloth... He wasn’t Kir’s target.

"Where’s Goldman?" Kir demanded.

Almost as one, three of the commoners pointed at the grey-suited man. He shot them a hateful glare before Kir’s looming presence demanded his attention.

"Where is he?!" Kir reiterated.

"My father left with another group," The young man’s voice cracked, "I was just supposed to go with half the gold!"

Kir reached in and dragged the boy out of the carriage by the throat. The human looked to be about his age, now that he saw him in the sun. "Tell your father his days are numbered... And if you wish to live, you will undo everything your family has gained from the blood and sweat of slaves. Are we clear?"

The boy mumbled an affirmative sound, but Kir wasn’t going to leave it at that. He was trying something more nuanced than outright killing. An experiment to see just how resilient the Syndicate was, and potentially expose cracks he could use to break the whole thing much faster.

"Are we clear?!"

"Yes..." the boy wheezed.

"Good. One day, we will meet again." Kir let him go, letting him fall legs-first onto the bridge.

Looking back into the carriage, Kir assessed the remaining passengers.

Manasight confirmed that three of them had their mana abridged, a lot of it drawn into the spell tattoos on their wrists.

"You three. You’re coming with me."

Hours later, at a familiar tower, Kir alighted to cries of alarm from the guards. This time, he wasn’t fired upon, and Rert managed to hold his bladder. Once they were landed, Kir used a claw to cut the tattoos on each of the courier’s wrists.

The amount of gold that spilled out on top of the tower was quite substantial, most of it in the form of "trade bars," large ingots that weren’t technically currency but a form meant to ease storage and transportation.

"See that it gets back to the city, or I will pay you all another visit," Kir ordered in his most threatening voice before turning and planting a foot on the crenelation of the tower. "That said... If a few bars were to disappear, I could overlook it. Do not deal with the Syndicate again. Are we clear?"

The five men atop the tower, and the one who’d climbed the ladder to see what the ruckus was about, all nodded.

"Good. Because I don’t like working in daylight."

Raising a hand, Kir launched a huge version of the signaling magic each watchtower was responsible for. This close to the city, they would have perhaps half an hour before a dispatch arrived. Then Kir took off, flying low and above the lake toward Norneau.

He had to hurry if he was going to make it to his own class on time.

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