The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 320: Felling Titans

Chapter 320: Felling Titans

Rain scratched his beard, then laughed to himself.

Of all the things he was worried over, a beard should have been the least of his concerns. But it had started growing and he lacked the skills and equipment to get rid of it. It had been months since the teams had been allowed a break to visit Farway, the only bastion of civilization allowed on Diurnus, but their latest hunt was far to the east from the city, north of the burning sub-continent of Vulcayiin. They had only one teleportation beacon - for the end of their hunt - and he hoped he’d be able to stop in at a barber after...

"Eyes up, titan-dragon incoming!" Cassiel warned over the comms.

"Yes Prime!" the team of nine, including Rainier, answered.

Hunting the titans of the continent was a familiar routine by now, but one fraught with danger. Of the original twenty-one angels and Elevated selected for the five-year mission, eighteen remained... and those un-replaced spots were a bitter reminder that the price of failing in any sense against any titan was high.

But where once there had been cliques of three for each of the seven teams, now there were two groups of well-coordinated Executioners, nine to each, who could tackle the largest beasts on Ayther. They still held to their teams by Choir, but the distinction meant less in the face of survival, and likewise with the distinction between angel and Elevated.

"Variel, make sure to keep up your attacks on the eyes. We don’t want them regenerating like last time," Rainier reminded the orange-haired and winged angel he was hovering next to.

"I didn’t forget, that was Bariel."

"Liar!" the angel’s twin declared.

"Heads up!"

The bulk of the dragon came into view, drawn by the beacon that was Cassiel, flaring her mana.

How it floated with such a serpentine body and no wings, Rainier had no clue, but it was still clearly a dragon, even if it had more fur than scales. The dragon had blue-shimmering-green scales and a mane of white that extended from its head down to the middle of its spine, ceasing until a tuft of fur came out at the tip of its tail. Its total length could compete with Rain’s idea of city walls.

Long whiskers trailed behind a more blocky face than Rain expected for dragons, crowned with a pair of deer-like antlers. Its large, intelligent eyes matched the color of its mana aura, a deep green-blue.

It began to circle Cassiel, trying to take control of the mana she was already seizing from the environment - and Diurnus had enough mana to feel almost like a deep dungeon. Normal animal life only survived by being small and unobtrusive here, because anything larger seemed to inevitably become a monster.

This dragon was beyond that. Titans were unto monsters like monsters were unto animals, but something in their evolutionary path through mana corruption did not impart connectivity to the land surrounding them, and their intelligence was more a factor of time and experience than intellect. Rather, they became like massive, moving reservoirs of mana, battling each other for territory in an animalistic fashion.

This particular dragon had haunted their hunts for the last few weeks, venturing close enough to seize some of the mana from their kills but staying to the edges of its territory in the mountains.

Today, that would end.

"Sparks on the horns," Rain reported. "Twins, go for the eyes, I’ll cut those of."

""On it!"" they said at the same time.

As the other teams moved to attack the dragon’s flanks, Rain tucked his wings and dove for the head. The closer he got, the more he saw that those horns were too thick to hope he could take them both out in one hit. But as lightning gathered between them, he calculated that Cassie’s shields could weather at least one blow before he struck.

Everyone about to attack the dragon was suppressing their mana as much as possible, each risking a mana overdose to gain the element of surprise.

The first one to break stealth was Auric Victoriam, leader of the Prime team and the first squadron.

He struck with anti-magic blackened chains, binding the dragon along its rear legs as he rapidly began to shift to warform, growing in size in direct proportion to the mana he was draining from the dragon.

The twins closed a moment later, before the dragon could react, they shot crossbow bolts into the dragon’s eyes, lacing them with enough mana to hopefully penetrate its defenses.

The bolts failed, glancing off the dragon’s eyes as mana surged throughout the titan.

All over the dragon, attacks glanced off of its scales, except for the handful of Executioners who were specialized for binding or draining mana...

But they might as well have been trying to drink a lake dry in one gulp.

With barely a downsurge in its aura’s color, the dragon sent out a massive cascade of lightning, repulsing half the team and shattering Cassiel’s shield in the same blow.

Rain, however, was able to push through. Thanks to his lightning aspect from the tempest roc heartstone he’d integrated into his body and his exosuit-

Exosuit? Where did that come from?

The sudden distraction almost cost him his chance.

"Go Rainstorm!" one of the twins shouted.

Drawing Torrent out of his storage, he landed heavily between the dragon’s antlers and started chopping, his first blow breaking through a patina of murky brown-white bone before revealing sparking green crystal beneath.

That’s not even its heart stone and it’s huge!

Once he hit the crystal layer, the antlers were too protected to break, but a quick press of the round device attached to the guard of Torrent sent a thin, concentrated line of anti-magic coursing along its edge.

At the first new strike, a satisfying crack started to sound in the crystal.

That was when the dragon realized what was happening and rolled, dropping Rainier off its bulk as it broke all the chains binding it, its tail whipping Auric so hard his war form collapsed to half its size as it dissipated the force at the cost of mana.

"Aigaion!" Cassiel’s shout was accompanied by the dull thud of a giant, manifested fist punching straight into the dragon’s face.

As Rain struggled to right himself without colliding with the dragon, a sudden crackling in the air announced the titan’s next strike. The mana gathering in its horns surged even stronger, its aura finally dipping into green as it aimed its face toward-

"Cassie!"

Rain screamed, drawing on everything he had as he surged mana into the godflesh that had taken over his body from the neck down.

As he did, a mask began to form, and Rain knew instinctively what the little lines and indicators all meant as he focused all of his attention on reaching the dragon’s horn.

The sparks between the horns became a flash, and as everything went white, the space Rain could see suddenly darkened as the mask adjusted, just in time for him to see the horn that was his target finally snap from the damage both he and Cassie had inflicted.

The lightning bolt that was breaking against her shields suddenly veered aside before looping back on itself, striking the dragon, which roared in pain and rage as its mana fell to lighter shades of green.

Hope welled in Rain as the horn fell towards the marsh below. They could do it. Their quarry was too massive to escape. They’d finally have the last heartstone they needed to-

A sudden vacuum pulled on Rain as the dragon simply disappeared, the air filling the void sharply wooshing past Rain’s ears before he heard a crack like a very quiet whip. For a while he was disoriented as he tumbled, finally catching enough air to right himself, and by the looks of it, many of the Executioners were having the same difficulty.

"I see it!" Ozzy, the third in Rain and Cassie’s team when they were together, pointed.

The dragon was snaking through the air, trailing lightning from its head as it fled back to its territory.

"Did anyone know it could teleport?" Auric asked as he took center position to rally everyone.

"It hasn’t until now," Cassiel said, hovering next to him.

Auric reached up and brushed her blonde hair clear of her face. "You did well, Cassie."

Rain finished pulling enough mana out of his godflesh to make the mask disappear. He didn’t like how featureless it made him, especially when there were no eyeholes...

Exosuit...

The word wasn’t one he knew... but he knew it. Shards of memory... emotions... anger... from the ancient source of his godflesh somehow lived inside of him... Like the anger he felt towards Auric’s familiarity with Cassie.

As an Elevated, Rain could never publically be anything more than someone who pleased her "on the side" to a real angel. Auric was not only the Prime of the Titan Expedition, he was the nephew of the Son of Heaven, Vinam Victoriam, High Seraphim and leader of the Executioners as a whole.

Auric’s uncle seemed to Rain to be shouting his way to power with a clenched fist, at least from all the vids Cassie showed him. She’d started spending less time with him, and the more she spent with Auric, the more she seemed to go back on things Rain had internalized as universal...

Like demons being people.

"Elevated," Auric said, turning. "Grab the horn, we’ll take it back to Farway. Maybe it’ll make up for the bad hunt... I’ll have to rethink our whole approach for next time."

""We’ll help!"" the orange-haired angel twins announced simultaneously, before flapping down next to Rain.

Rain turned towards the ground, not wanting to see Cassiel talking with Auric.

"Don’t worry Rainstorm," Variel said.

"You’ve still got us," Bariel added.

Both of them were aware of Rain’s increasingly unrequited feelings over Cassiel.

As the last two years had worn on, Cassiel’s increasing appreciation for keeping up appearances had grown in almost direct opposition to the twins using the Expedition as an excuse for dropping Heaven’s pretenses... Which was how Rain wound up in the position of dating both of them.

"And check it out, I managed to snag a scale when it fell off. Think you could make a breastplate out of it?" Bariel showed off the heart-shaped scale, his face beaming.

A bit of inspiration struck Rain in that moment. "Bariel, you’re a genius. If we make arrows out of that, it’ll at least knock off more of that dragon’s armor! And it might get through the mana that protected its eyes!"

""Do we get a reward?"" the twins asked at the same time.

"You sure do," Rain said, smiling as he landed.

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