The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 351: Blood and Snow - True Soulstone

Chapter 351: Blood and Snow - True Soulstone

"Nova blast!"

Casting the spell in a wide cone greatly diminished its power, but he wanted to guarantee an impact.

It was already orders of magnitude greater than what was needed to vaporize a person’s body.

And nothing was what he saw when the light finally faded. Just empty air and wisps of dark vapor that -

"Remarkable little spell..." The demon Duke began to pull together out of dark disparate drops. "So little mana, yet so powerful... Perhaps thou thinkest none can match ye, metatron."

How?!

Something crashed into Kir’s left arm, breaking through his magic shields and snapping bone as it sent him flying.

He caught a glimpse of Kainur’s mace, held in a disembodied hand, as he forced himself to reorient through the pain.

The droplets of night sky against the day pulled themselves together like a splash of oil in reverse, forming around a core that, for a moment, seemed to hold a jagged shape that was darker than black in his manasight.

"I acknowledge you, metatron. Perhaps the slayer of my son was the lesser opponent..." His form finished. "And yet... thou art so young and weak to have espied the natural laws... who gave such secrets to ye?" The space around the purple stars that were his eyes widened. "Ah, the resemblance... Thou art Maledict’s spawn, yes?" a dark hand brushed along his right temple.

Kir had a wing of white-rooted hairs there. But Maledict’s hair was black. He was initially confused but then he realized what the answer was.

Maledict dyes his hair.

It was so mundane, such a banal little detail for Kainur to focus on, that Kir found a laugh bursting out of his throat.

Kainur waited for it to end, his eyes narrowing. "Answer me, abomination."

Kir sneered. "My father gave me nothing. My mother abandoned me. The power I have is mine, Duke of Pride." His broken arm didn’t feel particularly painful, even though it dangled at his side and refused to respond when he tried to move his hand.

That was probably a bad sign, but he still felt he could fight.

"A perceptive then... all the more reason to destroy ye. Give me thine name, so that I may cast it before thine father for his folly."

Kir thought about attacking for a moment, but he was here to buy Amarena time. And if Kainur could survive Nova Blast, he needed something else... Talking, at least, would give him time to think.

"My name is Kir."

Kainur seemed to freeze.

"Of all the... heresies... that insolent ashworm names his son an insult to me."

"What?"

Kir knew only his name was the one his mother gave Brigit when she abandoned him. Knowing she could see through time, and thanks to Kiryu, he’d all but confirmed that his name was a reflection of the past life living in his head.

"Thou know’st not, Heresy-Son, the death your father has placed upon you." He angled his mace to the side, and it twisted into the form of a sword.

Kir pulled Kangetsu out with his good arm. A split-second later, instinct alone let him block Kainur as the Duke of Pride appeared suddenly before him.

He blocked the sword, but Kainur’s raised fist crashed down against his shields, and Kir was cast downward with enough force that the rest of his shield sections collapsed as he landed at the center of a massive warehouse.

Having landed facedown, he groaned as he pushed himself back up, bubbling himself in a triple-layer of shields before he saw where he was...

A warehouse full of corpses.

Myriadfolk and demons alike lay dead, collapsed on the ground as if they had all killed each other at the exact same moment... or had been killed.

Nearby, there was only a single source of living mana. A flow of white-weak that drew upward, pointing as Kir followed it toward the sky.

Toward Kainur, as he descended slowly.

This is how he’s been keeping his power up... he’s taking it from people.

It was blood magic. Thaneurgy.

One of Kir’s students had been a thaneurge. Bailey Black.

Nobody knew how, but some mages and mavens could draw power from death. And Kir’s research had decisively proven to him that it was the act of dying, every cell giving out more power than what it took to kill it, that made it so fiercely effective in combat.

And the most effective solutions for dealing with it was one of two options:

Kill everything a thaneurgist could draw power from before they could use it all.

Or get them as far away from the living as possible.

Kainur was here for revenge. Against the Valrians. Against Halie... He’d said it was what he was owed...

"Is this what you are owed?" Kir challenged. "Slaughtering your own people for your Pride?"

"I am Pride. These lesser demons should be proud to die for their past and future Demon Lord."

He alighted next to the mysterious mana source, and with a gesture a strange mana crystal hovered into his hand.

For a long moment, Kir couldn’t understand why seeing it disturbed him so. Until he realized that he wasn’t seeing it. Not with his eyes. The crystal existed only in manasight. A shimmering, faceted mirage of matter, with a constant output...

It’s like a gate, he realized. The source of a person’s mana came from their gate, or well. But this was a source without a person. Not something that stored mana. Something that produced it.

And the worst thing was, Kir wanted it. His body craved it more than the rich soulstones of monsters. His mouth watered for it, even at this distance...

"Thou sees this?" Kainur’s night-sky face split with a wicked grin. "But of course, you can... Doth it quake thine angel blood to see a true soulstone used thus? To know these wretches will never return to the cycle?" He clenched his fingers around the crystal, claws digging, shattering it. It exploded in a burst of mana that pushed the air away in a gust of wind, its individual shards twinkling out of existence. "Even thine father fears this art."

A soul... He’d hungered for a soul.

A shudder ran down his body all the way through his tail as he finally understood what Norneau’s spirit of the lake had told him.

"Kid, something’s happening!" Kiryu warned.

A body collided with Kir’s shields. The corpse of a man in full armor.

Then another and another.

A horrifying sphere of the dead began to form about and under him, his mind stunned by the macabre sights as the dead began lifting him by the shields into the air, while Kainur lifted his hand for the silent working of magic.

Kir reinforced his shields as the bodies pressed closer. Tighter.

Tight enough that wet, sickening pops began to assault his ears.

Blood welled between the corpses. Drowning the dead faces.

He felt the mana, compressing the blood. Spiking it into his shield until the first shattered. Then the second.

He poured mana into his third and final layer, tightening the hexes and angling them to resist.

He felt Kainur’s power burning through the dying cells around him.

Cells that had outlasted the minds that once commanded their bodies, dying by the trillions.

A tenuous equilibrium set itself, even as the air within Kir’s shield started to heat up.

All he had to do was last until there was no more living blood for Kainur to use in his thaneurgy -

A single hex shattered.

Pressurized blood broke against the plates of his war form body.

Another broke. Blood glanced off his left shoulder, some of it splashing on his face.

It got in his eye and filled it with a burning sensation.

That was when the pain in his broken arm decided to assert itself.

He flinched, lifting the hand that held Kangetsu as he concentrated on reinforcing his shields. Stopping the leaks. Holding the blood back.

A roar started in his throat, growing as he pushed out his mana, resisting the crushing pressure.

Used so crudely the blood died quickly... but not quickly enough.

"Kid, I don’t think we’re going to get out of this at this rate," Kiryu said as another hexagon of Kir’s shield broke, a jet of blood cutting him at the joint between two of his right arm’s bone plates.

"Help or shut up!" Kir shouted at his other self, casting his whole body sideways as he forced rotational movement into the shield.

It pushed back the blood long enough for him to take a breath and restore the broken hexes, stopping the spattering rain of blood from the holes in his defense.

He began to push his mana out, seizing control of the nearest mass as he spent mana encouraging its motion. Resisting the crushing force as he converted more and more blood, vortexing it outward until what had been a sphere began to distend into a disc.

The living blood still obeyed Kainur, but what was dead was his. And while he knew little of bodies, he knew enough about blood to know that inside every cell was iron and oxygen.

The red, spinning disc around him darkened and grew black as he split the bonds between the two. Keeping the oxygen close.

Iron sand and bones rained down as Kainur let his spell drop.

A twitch curled the Duke of Pride’s lip. "You survive beyond what thy power suggests."

Kir clicked Kangetsu into flamethrower mode.

"I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises."

Flaring his shield outward suddenly, he formed its hexes into a cone, centered around the single hex that let Kangetsu’s barrel through.

He pulled the trigger.

The world between them exploded.