The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 302: Prince Eros - Part One

Chapter 302: Prince Eros - Part One

Kir had grown too used to not being hit in any significant capacity.

For one thing, he had the instincts to dodge thoroughly drilled into him by his mom’s training. But even Darlae couldn’t have anticipated that Kir would wind up battling a tree the size of a half-dozen skyscrapers put together.

After the first strike broke through his neglected defenses, those instincts saved him from the second and the third as he put distance between himself and the trunk.

Branch after branch had been growing in his direction, but they stopped as he got further away from the trunk, firing off magic-induced particle beams to sever the long growths that had tried to snare him.

Unfortunately, that meant he also lost sight of the suitcase.

Swearing, he dove faster, and had just managed to reacquire a visual on the suitcase when he saw a kilometer-long branch growing right out of the tree’s root coming up to meet him.

Cutting it with lances of magic did not stop new branches from twisting their way out from under the wound, and he realized that the new growths were twisting themselves into a massive hand as they tried to grab him.

Switching tactics, Kir readied Kangetsu, drawing heat away from the blade to harden it as he cut off the forefinger of the hand with a spell before severing the thumb on his way past.

With a footclaw he barely managed to catch the suitcase, but wound up tossing it into the air above himself as he was tugged back by the wing, a thin branch managing to loop snag him right at the primary joint.

This forced him to prioritize storing his wings to escape, which meant the suitcase went plummeting the final distance below as Kir battled branch after branch on his way down, flaring out his wings and his magic only at the last possible moment so that he could pull away from the grasping wood.

Okay Kir... think. The tree knows you’re the one that burned it... but at least it can’t reach you very well...

He dodged as the branch took one final lash in his direction, reforming into a hand as he put his back to the sky. He was about a hundred meters above the ground, and the tree was-

"Dodge!" Kiryu cried out as a massive, newly grown pinecone the size of a person flew at Kir. It had been hard to see against the dark backdrop of the tree’s trunk.

It clipped Kir’s anti-kinetic shield, deflecting aside as he moved, but more were already growing in and a moment later the hand arced backward before flinging a massive cluster of cones his way.

Kir shed altitude, dodging down and away from the majority of the cones as he tilted and tucked his wings to thread the gap between two.

The next volley he deflected with magically controlled wind, spinning a small cyclone around himself with the momentum of the spell as he borrowed Brigit’s favorite form of magic, flinging the hostile projectiles in every direction.

Against his better judgment, he started to find it rather fun.

"Don’t get distracted, kid. I’m in here too."

"I’m not getting distracted!" He was starting to find a pattern to the tree’s attacks.

"Where there’s a pattern there’s a purpose. Watch your-"

Something grabbed Kir by the ankle, whipping him toward the ground. Barely managing to store his wings in time, he landed amidst the smouldering wreckage of the former bank, the bulk of his war form and the burst of mana he put into his shields absorbing the shock, with the latter breaking on impact like the airbag of a car.

Still, he landed on his back, and when he pushed himself up to stand it was to find that the floor was a slippery mess of cooling metal slag and rubble.

He looked around quickly, expecting another attack, but nothing else moved.

Did the tree give up?

"I doubt it was just the tree," Kiryu chimed in.

"Why?"

"Trees don’t need hands."

It suddenly clicked that a hand was an artifact of people, and if a person was controlling an entity as large as a world tree, it was probably a druid of extraordinary skill and power...

Druids are scary, Kir concluded, right as he finally spotted the fallen suitcase. Its lid was closed, but it seemed otherwise intact and stable in its enchantments.

But as he started to cautiously walk toward it, someone landed in front of him.

A blue-haired man with wings of light, soft purple eyes and a morning-stubbled face that promised smiles. Just like...

"Rain..."

Surprise registered on the man’s face for a moment as the man lifted his sword. "That’s my brother’s name... Who are you?"

Even though his sword would have been a zweihander on Earth, he held it in one hand, braced against his forearm, with no difficulty.

"Nobody important," Kir replied, realizing he shouldn’t have said Rain’s name at all. He readied Kangetsu, one hand at foregrip and the other at the pommel of the long handle. "If you’re willing to step aside, I’ll just take what I came for and leave."

A thin branch snaked its way up to the man’s side, and he reached with his free hand to touch it.

"I see, Tulia..." He said to the branch before he looked at Kir. "You’re after that," he turned slightly, gesturing at the suitcase being pulled away by yet more branches, toward the tree’s root.

"Hey!"

CLANG!

The moment Kir called out, Rainier’s brother closed with him, and instinct pulled Kir’s blade into a blocking position as the man swept for his leg. A series of exchanges quickly followed, with Kir focused entirely on blocks and parries, his only strikes were feints to gain some distance. He did not want to hurt the brother of the man he loved.

"You are familiar with the Sunward School," the angelkin man noted as a brief lift with his artificial wings almost gave him an open strike on Kir’s head.

Is that what Rainier’s sword style is called?

"I’ve fought real angels before," Kir shot back, only to receive a sudden knee to the shields as a feint turned into a body strike. He was barely able to block the followup before managing to lash out with his tail as he turned, pushing the man away.

"I am no angel. You haven’t fought me."

It was like fighting Rain but harder. In short order, Kir was locked in a contest of strength as the angelkin man closed once more, pushing more mana into his body as he ramped up the speed and strength of his strikes.

Kir sensed what the man was doing, he was trying not to give Kir a chance to regenerate his mana, which would leave him in a poor position if backup was on the way.

But Kir was far more in tune with his body, mind, and soul than he was being given credit for.

As soon as he realized what the game was, he started to grow even more conservative with his energies. He spotted the suitcase for a brief moment. It was basketed by a thick growth of wood atop the nearby root. But that moment almost cost Kir the tip of his tail as Rain’s brother briefly switched to a reverse grip swipe with his sword, leaving himself completely open as he made Kir choose between a punch to the face and a cut to the tail.

Kir took the punch to the face, but even though he had a chance to slash with Kangetsu, he couldn’t bring himself to take it.

"I left myself open. You aren’t taking this seriously," Rain’s brother frowned.

"Trust me, I am. I’m just not in the habit of killing without a reason." Kir recalled a few good things Rain had said about his older brother.

"I’ll ask again. Who are you?"

"I am called Ghostheart. And you?"

"The Prince of this kingdom, once my brother was no longer available for the role. I would call you a thief and a murderer. What is your real name?"

"That’s not something I can give you." For the sake of the prince’s safety, Rain’s, and his own, Kir Gale needed to be dead. "But to those whose lives, livelihoods, and families were taken by the Syndicate, I am justice against true thieves and murderers."

The Prince snorted. "Justice? That won’t bring my brother back from Heaven." He stabbed his sword into the ground between his feet, and Kir felt it as the man drew on his own mana and that in the air around him, condensing it and giving it physical form. "I am the arbiter of power, not justice. And while I would love to solve the mystery of your identity, it has been decided that you will die."

But what formed was not the familiar blades of Rainier’s favorite spell, but a half dozen weapons of all shapes, sizes, and lengths, but all bladed. An entire armory of weapons in perfect detail, which descended in color to deep black as their edges began to glow with anti-magic. At the same time, the sword in the Prince’s hands opened up, revealing itself to be an artifact of heaven as it too began to glow black around the edges.

"Manifest Arms... Black Arsenal."

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