The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 415: On-The-Job Training

Chapter 415: On-The-Job Training

The giantess named Hartl stared out at the squat stone house that seemed utterly out of place existing on a mountaintop.

There was a mass of mana in there, something strong enough to produce a black aura that it had been hard to spot with the perpetual gloom of the sky. Her men hadn’t wanted to approach, but there was no place else the little wretches that got her eye could be.

At least, not if Plick, her scout, wasn’t lying his ass off about the tracks leading here. But she’d sent him and another around to look for other tracks, and both scouts agreed that there was no sign of the three.

A frustrated growl escaped her lips as she stuck a hand into the black mass of mana, only to shiver as it sent a wormy, tingling sensation into her arm.

The man she’d tried to send in was faring worse, having puked his guts out over the ridge.

All they had to do was get their hands on the angel, and then they could find a buyer in Aaru. But whatever their quarry had found was keeping her group of slavers at bay. Altogether they numbered thirty, having lost one man to the climb.

Her second, Telfair, a bullkin who had stalled halfway on his evolution into a full minotaur, huffed out a few words as he looked at her.

"No windows. Just a chimney. Think if we plug the holes we can smoke them out?"

"I want to confirm they’re in there first. Whatever this shit is, it’ll leave us vulnerable if we try to pass through. Maybe that’s why they haven’t come out either." Hartl picked up a rock and crushed it in one hand.

It wasn’t like they had any place to go. The "house" was set up near an escarpment on its east side, while the north side narrowed to a nigh-impassable rise. And of course, she’d sent a few men to the western slope, seeing if they could move underneath the flame-shaped envelope of perpetual mana.

"Looks like we might not have to," Telfair suddenly noted.

When Hartl looked, it was to find the mass of mana was suddenly gone.

No... not gone. It had moved to the top of the next rise, and at its core was a demon with flame-red hair and matching wings that looked strangely angelic.

The demon gave her a two-fingered salute before pointing the same fingers at the house, which exploded.

*

Anko was incredulous.

She’d barely gotten her suit on - which fit better than anything she’d ever worn and gods was it silky smooth - before Kiryu said they were getting "on-the-job training." Then he’d disappeared and now the house was exploding around them.

But it wasn’t a typical explosion. The massive stones all broke into rectangular sections that hovered at different random points above the ground, except for the half-dozen that wound up landing on the mountaintop.

Almost immediately someone - Anko was sure it was that giant bitch from the desert - shouted "Get them!"

"Ahh shit," Anko swore, leaping out of the way as someone sent a bolt of fire at her.

Ferro froze a patch of ground in front of a charging slaver, causing the man to slip and land on his back as the catkin ducked behind a piece of house.

"How do you fly?" Malz shouted at him as she fiddled with the thing on her wrist that Kiryu had said would make the suit do stuff, taking cover along with him.

Anko saw a slaver approaching and swore because neither of her companions was in a position to see the man.

Channeling mana into her body, she grabbed up a handful of pebbles, passing them from bottom hands to top as she threw several into his path.

One caught him in the head, but he recovered quickly, and as mana reached Anko’s eyes she saw that he was an enhancement magic user as well.

Deciding he was too close for comfort, Anko dashed from her hiding spot, flowing around crossbow bolts and spells alike as she made for the slaver.

He tried to swipe at her legs with a knife but she drop-kicked him before pushing off her arms and grabbing him up. Before he could recover, she had him in front of her as a human shield, fast enough that his buddies landed several spells. She then threw the stunned man back at them before jumping for one of the floating rocks, hearing as he landed on his neck with a sickening crunch.

As she clung there like a spider, she suddenly heard Kir’s - no, Kiryu’s voice right next to her ear.

"Interesting. You’re some kind of intuitive maven, aren’t you?"

She’d never had the chance to describe her talents, but then again the demon-who-looked-like-Kir-but-said-he-wasn’t hadn’t really asked. The Kir in her head was fundamentally kind, but if spending almost a day in the frustrating hell of the sigil core had taught her anything, it was that Kiryu was an asshole.

"Into-what?"

"It means you instinctively know how to enhance yourself. How to dodge, and supplement your muscles and response times. Things of that nature. It’s granting you a remarkable degree of efficiency despite the fact I doubt you know what you’re doing."

"Stop using big words and tell me how to fight!" Anko shrieked.

"I put the basic functions on your bottom arms," Kiryu replied. "Oh, and watch your right."

The moment he said that a crossbow bolt struck Anko just beneath her ribs, causing her to flinch with pain as she looked down to find the bolt falling away from her undamaged suit. Anko looked at her lower right arm in a panic as she tried to interpret the symbols on it. One was a shield, and she managed to press that as more bolts flew at her, only to feel her mana dip with every hit on her now-enlarged profile.

The shield, and Ferro casting a massive flamethrower spell at the flanking enemies, bought her enough time to examine the icons.

She pressed one that looked like a knife and a knife made of mana gathered into existence in front of her, only to fall away and disappear as it left her reach - draining even more mana than the total strikes against her shield, which was now down.

"Ugh..." she looked again, and that’s when she saw it. A bubble-looking thing with radial lines come off of it. It could only be...

Anko leaped off her rock to take on the flankers moving around Ferro’s flamethrower, shouting "Explosion!" as she tapped her button of interest, only to have a bright light shine in the face of the elvish ambusher.

He flinched and struck out with a spear, and in her haste to dodge, Anko pressed the button again, only for it to start strobing rapidly, eliciting a scream from the man as he shielded his eyes.

That bought her enough time to kick him downhill before a trio of bolts struck her hard enough to bruise. She jumped for another rock, swearing about the stupid buttons as she scrambled to hold onto it. For once, she looked at her left hand and finally found symbols for fire, lightning, frost, and something like a little arrow with rays just like the one that had only produced light - which she turned off now that she had a chance, noticing the mana drain had been insignificant.

She tried the symbol with the arrow and felt mana drain towards her upper left wrist with a whining hum. For a second she wondered if she’d hit another useless button, but then she noticed that the location of the mana was sending a "not-quite-full" feeling up her arm.

The moment she thought about it she accidentally sent some mana into the mass, and a bolt of pure force shot out of from her upper wrist and into the air.

Realizing she could actually use this, Anko giggled and pressed the button again before using her right hand to steady her upper left as she took aim at a flanker, covering his chest with the little ball of blue light she now noticed.

Her bolt caught him in the chest and sent him rolling down the mountain past the guy she’d kicked down earlier, his scream extending as he cleared the edge of the cliff.

"Which one was that?" Malz shouted at her, clearly having given up on flight.

"The arrow looking dealy," Anko shouted back.

Malz fiddled with her wrist interface before finding the right button. "How do I-" A bolt of force suddenly shot from Malz’s wrist and right into the rock Anko was hanging onto. The rock splintered as the momentum of the blast started to dissipate, but Anko found herself on the ground and dazed.

Through the ringing in her ears, she heard indistinct sounds as Ferro rushed from cover to grab her by the upper shoulders, dragging her as his suit’s shields took the brunt of a concentrated series of attacks, spiderweb cracks forming and shattering just as he shoved her into the place he’d held with Malz.

As her head spun, Anko looked over to find three burned corpses and a slaver whose head appeared to have been shattered into chunks of ice.

"Oh hey, you got’em," Anko giggled. "You’re a better shot than me Ferro."

"Fuck, I think she has a concussion," Malz said as Ferro did his best with only half of the cover he needed.

"Can you help her?" Ferro asked

"I-I can try." Malz stammered. "But I wasn’t particularly good at healing when I-"

"Just do it!" Ferro shouted as he jumped from cover, only to get lifted off the ground as a bullkin man rammed him horns first.