The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 383: The Three Day War - Night One

Chapter 383: The Three Day War - Night One

As Kir descended on the campsites, the fighting began to quiet down.

The very aura of his mana was visible even to mundane eyes - if only as a white flame surrounding his flaming, angelic wings. The authority that power gave him announced to all that he had been the arbiter of death this day, so when he called for leaders, they came. When he commanded the former slaves to bring any prisoners before him, they did.

His attack had been thorough against the Elevated. There was only one Elevated prisoner remaining. One who had been pummeled unconscious despite regenerating even the wing that Kir had severed.

The rest of the prisoners were slavers - and not many of them - and a larger body of people who wore white or grey robes. The former came in chains or tied with rope, but the latter were merely shepherded, their hands unbound.

Though he wanted to study the Elevated more, the man spat at the offer Kir made to spare his life provided he became a hostage to the demons.

The prisoners in white and grey, he learned, were called the Faithfuls. Most worshipped Eyko the Preserver, and were willing collaborators with those who had enslaved and oppressed the vast majority of people working the mines. Though they provided services such as food and medical attention, it had been ever at the whims of the Angels, the Elevated, and the slavers in that order of importance.

Kir did not even spare more than a glance at the slavers. After explaining that everyone should move away from the mines while he fought the armies of Montmorency and Heaven, he left the prisoners to the people to decide what to do with them.

And the entire time, he kept up the act that he was Ghostheart, even though he could sense that the day was coming when he could no longer hide.

With those things done, he returned to the top of Mt. Morens, sitting in the middle as Rena stood guard and Zazel pondered the events for many minutes before he decided to approach.

"Master Kir-"

"Don’t call me Master," Kir shot back.

"Apologies. I merely wished it as an expression of respect for the mysteries you have mastered from the depths of magic... The precision of those spells, the fact that once cast they could not be detected without proper sight..." he tapped the side of his head, indicating that he likely had the capability to have seen Kir’s lasers at work. "I see more clearly why you defeated Kainur, despite not having completed what I assume is your evolutionary apotheosis."

"My what?" Kir asked before he could help himself.

The way Zazel explained it made Kir understand that what he was describing was reification. Kir had managed it with his war form and having bonded Kangetsu, but he was at a wall with magiform.

"Now that you’ve seen what I can do, what is your plan?" Kir asked.

"I plan to do what you would have of me," Zazel replied.

"Return to camp then. Show the other generals that I am capable of doing this alone." That I don’t want the people following me to commit another slaughter like Nyandor...

Before he left, Zazel turned to Kir. "A word of advice, young Duke, your state now that you have opened your mana is in a constant state of flux. Be careful with it, or you may unwittingly baptize the unprepared in mana." He cast his gaze around the others.

"What does that even mean?" Kir asked.

"If you mix mana with others in this state, it will be quite easy to bond to them. Sharing thoughts and always having a sense of others. It is a more primal thing than bonding a familiar, and dangerous. Your predecessor’s obsession with the death of his son was born from the bond broken by the hands of the Demon Breaker and her allies..." Zazel’s eyes flicked over to Rena before Kir dismissed him and lay down, uncaring of the stone beneath his back as he got comfortable and spread his wings a little.

"Got room for a second in there?" Rena asked.

The moment he said "Yes," she was at his side, and he curled an arm and a wing around her, just enjoying the feeling of her weight against him. Kordia joined a moment later, a look of worry on her face.

"You could have called on me, you know," she touched him through his shirt.

"Dispensing justice is what I’m trained for," Rena added.

"There is no justice in war, only after," Kiryu said grimly. Kir decided to echo him.

"Perhaps," Rena said, her hand growing tense. Shifting, she temporarily pinned his wing as she moved to straddle his waist. "What’s next in your plan?"

Kir told them all.

And after that, all there was to do was wait, while Kir warred with his unleashed mana to try to get it under better control. Despite this, he was too unbalanced, and was forced to keep it as a constant beacon.

It was a decision he would regret as soon as the moon of Heaven slid out from behind Hell...

"What’s that?" Kir’s eyes widened as he felt a sudden front of concentrated mana approaching.

"Shields up, kid!" Kiryu shouted.

Kir’s response was instantaneous. He domed the area around the five of them as a massive pillar of mana descended on the mountain, cracking the stone around them and melting it as he held the core of it at bay.

A moment later he realized what was happening. Heaven was firing its weapon upon him. A weapon that had killed a greater demon like Amarena’s mother...

He’d made himself a target, and had given his foes hours to decide on their response.

"Fuck," Kiryu swore as Kir put all his concentration into holding his shield. Into enhancing his perceptions to see exactly what was happening around him in a desperate quest to figure out the exact nature of the weapon so he could counter it.

The mana surrounding him wasn’t a solid mass. Rather it was a tube, containing light but also something else. Something that burst against the layers of Kir’s shields at close intervals.

"It’s a macron-cannon!" Kiryu shouted, feeding the knowledge into Kir’s head as fast as their connection would allow. The information flowed like repeated lightning strikes. Small particles. High surface-area to mass ratio when accelerated. Electrostatic limits. Carbon."They actually built the fucking thing..."

Kir knew what he had to do. He had to create a new kind of shield, one that would overload the electrostatic limits of carbon and burst the deadliest particles of the beam apart on impact. But mere seconds into his defense he was already running low on mana-

"Kir!" Amarena shouted, matching his acceleration. "What can I do?"

"I need mana," Kir ground out. "Everything we can spare..."

In a blur, Amarena grabbed Kordia and Kassin, placing their hands on him before she followed suit, decelerating to shout what was needed before returning to Kir’s speed. "I’ve told them. Gods I hope they know what they’re doing."

It was painfully slow, but Kir felt it. Kordia’s reserves, larger than Amarena’s and Kassin’s combined, made up the majority of the flow. Amarena’s mana followed, Kassin’s shortly behind and held back by fear.

The mana surrounding the beam of light and death was not the danger, but there was danger in forcing magic to behave in a way he hadn’t before, even if he understood the phenomenon he was trying to create.

A highly magnetic electrostatic cloud with a high negative charge, dark enough to keep them all from simply burning like ants beneath a magnifying glass.

The silvery shield began to spool outward from the center behind Kir’s normal shields, the mana drain was immense, as it required he also siphon iron from the crumbling mountaintop. Overcoming iron’s resistance to magic was the most draining aspect of the spell, but the more the mountain crumbled away, the more exposed the source of mana he’d felt before became. He needed every drop to keep the cloud of iron above him forming and deflecting and reforming...

He reached out to it, passing his will to keep the shield going through Amarena, Kordia, and Kassin as he delved below, pulling on the untouched magic of the mountain. Willing the mana he needed forth as he forced it through his friends along with his own and-

"HOW DARE YOU!"

A familiar voice echoed in the mana.

Rising up from where the vast soulstone - the remains of a once mighty being - touched deep into the waters of the lake.

The Spirit of the Lake’s wrath reached out, the waters all along the eastern shore of the Grand Lake began to swell as the glowing mink-spirit approached.

All Kir could do was reach out, feeding her the desperation of the situation. The attack from above.

From underneath and around the crumbling stone protected by Kir, water surged, and suddenly the mink herself was before the four of them. She stared into each of their eyes.

In that moment, something was taken. The power of the soulstone resting in the mountain.

Clouds gathered, a massive thunderhead that forced its way around and into the path of the ray. Striking into it with lightning. Rain pouring in an unnatural funnel towards the center of Heaven’s strike.

The water did what Kir’s shield alone could not. It absorbed the Lance of Heaven and diffused it into a rising gout of steam that broke mana and matter alike.

Kir restored his normal shields as he panted, collapsing to his hands and knees.

"Kir!" "Kir!" He heard Rena’s voice double on itself as she spoke what she thought.

Kordia declared joyfully, her relief ringing in his thoughts, "It’s the lake spirit! She’s come to save us!"

"What have we done?" He heard Kassin.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit..." Kiryu swore.

Just before he collapsed into unconsciousness, Kir heard everyone’s voice in his head. Everyone except for Kiryu asking,

"Who are you?"

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