The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 80: Dungeon Crawl

Chapter 80: Dungeon Crawl

What Kir had expected when entering the dungeon was something dank and gloomy. Even though he’d read otherwise, a part of him still expected grey stone walls and walking skeletons.

Instead, what he got on the first floor was-

"A field..." Someone behind Kir exclaimed.

Kir took his first breath. Something about the dungeon felt... invigorating. It was mana, he realized, suffusing the air in quantities that made the surface world feel like high altitude. Looking around, he saw they were on a generally flat plain. The sky was sunless and orange-red, as if it were late morning or early evening, but weirdly in every direction.

"Weapons out!" Lugh shouted, from the center of the formation. Kir complied along with everyone. There was still just a little rime on the blade from when Rain handled it. Its presence was comforting to him.

The professor walked almost casually out to the squad’s left. "Today, if you don’t already know it, you will know fear. Your gate is in that direction," he gestured vaguely into the tall rolling grasses, interspersed with oddly grassless hills. "Try not to get killed. This floor has the easiest monsters."

With that, he began a spell that set him hovering above the group.

"First unit, forward. Archers at the ready," Lugh said.

Kir flexed his grip around Kangetsu and began to walk, slowing his stride so that he proceeded at the same pace as the cadets flanking him.

He had some idea of what to expect, and yet, everything on the plain was peaceful...

Until Professor Faymar hurled a mass of ice into one of the hills as the group neared it.

"Close formation!" Lugh shouted.

Kir backpedaled, closing ranks with the other leading warriors, right as a bug the size of a small dog appeared atop the nearest mound. It looked like an overgrown firefly, but with a glowing, ball-like belly and no rear-end to speak of. The tiny, bat-like wings were certainly ineffective for anything but short flights, if that. Unless it was somehow magical...

"Just one?" the minotaur next to Kir chuckled. Bending, he picked up a rock and - "Wait don’t!" Kir shouted - hurled it into the chittering, chirping bug.

As soon as it was struck, the bug let out a series of piercing shreaks, four of them, before exploding into yellow-brown mist and bits of thorax.

The ground around them suddenly started to rumble.

"Lesson One," Faymar said in a flat, unimpressed tone. "Don’t pick fights you don’t have to."

From out of the mound burst bugs that were far bigger than the one slain. Each was the size of a Saint Bernard, with serrated edges to their chitin and pincer-like mandibles.

Behind them followed smaller bugs, bearing rocks and dirt in their mandibles. Workers, Kir realized.

They boiled out of the mound, heading straight for the squad in a tidal wave of shrieks.

Kir was definitely not in a good position to block. He only had Kangetsu and no shield, but as the wave closed and he opened up with a horizontal slash, he realized something.

These things weigh next to nothing!

Kangetsu cut through the insects with ease, but the bugs simply crawled over their own dead, aggressively slashing and biting. One bug leaped off a corpse, biting for Kir’s shoulder-

Thwack!

An arrow took the bug in the thorax, sending it writhing into the pile where it was quickly buried.

"Slow back! Let’s get some distance!" Lugh shouted.

As Kir joined the fighting retreat, keeping Kangetsu swinging, he finally recalled the worker bugs.

"What about the workers?" Kir shouted as he cut another bug in half.

"Focus forward, demk!" Lugh shouted in response before he could help himself.

Kir cut down a back and looked back with a growl, only to find Lugh dashing from side to side, making wide swipes at the bugs and bashing them away with his shield before dashing to the other side.

As much as it irked Kir to let Lugh get away with insulting him, he kept up the fight. Then, from out of the sky, a bug with large wings came gliding in. Kir barely saw it in time to ready a vertical slash. Though he bisected it, another six leapt off the earthen ramps that had been built by the worker ants.

The damn things are coordinated...

Kir cut down one of the incoming bugs and the minotaur on his right smashed through one on his right before impaling an incoming bug on his horns and tossing it away with a shake of his head and a roar.

"Shit! Kir, behind you!" Stella suddenly squeaked in his ear. From off to the left of the squad a glider had landed in the middle of the formation.

Kir slashed down, cutting its head in half right as Lugh slashed it through the neck.

"Get forward!" he shouted at Kir.

Kir growled but then noticed something in the grass behind them.

"They’re behind us!" he shouted at Lugh before augmenting himself for a leap.

His jump took him over the archers and right into the formation of bugs that had started building a wall behind the group.

Kir slashed to the left and right, and the workers shrieked at him, advancing far more slowly than the warrior bugs as they tried to bite him. Kir cut them down before turning back to the group.

Lugh had taken Kir’s place at the front and was doing a far better job at taking some of the load off the other cadets with his sword and shield, showing their experience in operating as a team.

Kir finished off the workers as the group reached the under-constructed barrier. At first, the rearguard stumbled a bit to climb over, but as soon as they cleared the knee-high barrier they helped over the archers, who accelerated their fire to let the vanguard climb to them.

The gliders kept coming, but were falling short of their position, and they were less effective in fighting amongst the soldiers than ambushing them from the air.

Using their own wall against them, the group finally had enough of an advantage to stand their ground while Kir took over Lugh’s old job and dashed where he was needed.

Things fell into a rhythm for who knew how long, until at last the waves thinned until another set of trilling cries emitted from the nest and the creatures started to withdraw.

Everyone was panting. Covered in sweat and ichor, but thankfully free of all but minor injuries.

Kir returned to the formation, only to have his collar grabbed by Lugh.

"When I give an order, you follow it!" He growled. "You are lucky I am sworn not to, or I’d gut you right here for insubordination."

"You seemed to be doing just fine without me," Kir replied, his tone aggressive. "And if I must remind you, you’re here because I gave you that mercy. So shove off. Putting me at the front was a bad idea."

Lugh tightened his grip for a moment before finally letting Kir go. He glared, still angry, but his eyes had lacked intensity ever since losing their duel.

"You duel better than you take orders. Do what you want. As long as you don’t stab us in the back, I won’t betray my oath." He turned and went back to the team, checking up on them and receiving a pat on the shoulder from the girl who had been on Kir’s left.

Kir had a moment to scowl before-

"What’s that?" Ata asked.

A slow, rumbling sound had started. Then from atop the mound crawled a massive bug, with such a small body for the massive, fluid-filled abdomen that sloshed behind it. It took a moment to realize that a mass of workers was underneath the abdomen, helping carry the load.

"SPITTER! SCATTER!" Lugh shouted, right as the workers began to pile upon themselves, leveraging the sack to an angle that added to the pressure of the bracing creature before-

With a roar and a spray of green, gloopy mucus, a cone of destruction burned its way into the tall grass.

The archers pelted it with arrows, but a swarm of warriors suicidally jumped into their path, blocking for the spitter as more soldiers swarmed into a defensive position around it.

With the formation thoroughly broken, the bugs could have swarmed the group, but instead they seemed intent on merely keeping everyone away.

Kir rain in a clockwise arc as he made his assessments. He saw that at one nearby mound, a scout had emerged and was watching the fleeing squad as Lugh tried to rally everyone. It was only he and Ata who fled in this direction.

"Shit, they’re in trouble," she said, noticing where Kir was looking.

"I need to take out that spitter... can you cover me?" he asked.

"I might only get three or four shots," she said, preparing a bolt and tapping the rune for the crossbow to wind itself. "What are you going to do?"

Kir didn’t answer.

Enhancement magic worked on concepts, an ideal form of self that mana could fulfill, even if only for a moment, but he’d discovered one way to put his knowledge to work.

It was going to be taxing on him physically, but he needed to try. Succeeding in this dungeon wasn’t just about him getting stronger. For him to continue learning at the Academy, he needed to succeed here. He needed to prove to himself that he wasn’t useless without the ability to cast.

He crouched, Kangetsu held in both hands as he readied his stance, his breath.

"Soundspeed..."

One moment, Kir was next to Ata. The next, he was cruising past the mound as the spitter tensed for another expulsion of acid.

At first, he thought he had missed. But suddenly a gash opened up in its abdomen, spraying a circle of acidic death down on the gathered bugs and itself. It cried out in pain as its own acid coursed into the cracks of its chitin, eating it from the outside in.

Kir tucked his body in as much as he could. The one thing he hadn’t been able to stick when he’d come up with this technique was the landing. But he’d come to one of two conclusions.

The first was that the amount of mana he could release with the technique was gated well below what it would take to actually reach the speed of sound, but it still accelerated him fast. He’d improved his enhancement magic in both offense and defense, but couldn’t be sure of the latter with this technique yet. He assumed he’d at least suffer broken bones.

The second was that he could cast for a moment, trading the physical pain for the agony of his seals.

He went with the second option, forcing himself to bleed speed by pulling the wind against himself until he landed softly.

The seals reacted immediately, filling him with pain to rival that of being flayed alive.

"Go! Go!" He heard Lugh shouting as he writhed. Up above, he saw the Professor staring down at him with surprise under his contempt.

Rough hands seized Kir as the squad took the chance to get past the hill.

"Ata get his sword!" the minotaur bellowed. "If he dies I want it!"

"He’s my friend. I call dibs," she said as she dashed up, grabbing Kir’s sword from where it had fallen and accelerating to catch up.

If Kir hadn’t been in so much pain, he might have laughed.

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