The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 90: Speed Run, The Starting Line

Chapter 90: Speed Run, The Starting Line

After the sex they had, the last thing Kir expected was for Stella to suddenly be all-business.

Yet even unable to stand, she had a serious look he’d seen only once. "Remember that favor you owe me?" she looked him in the eyes. "I’m calling it in."

Kir nodded. "Alright. What do you need from me?" he asked.

"I need you to teach me magic. Real magic."

"Okay," Kir said, but Stella continued to explain.

"Now I know you might be against it, but I’m half-gnosinian now... that means if our contract ever ends, I go back to house Goetia... I don’t want to end up on a table getting studied for being a freak... so... that’s my favor. I need to be able to hold my own with the mages of Hell and that spell you cast-"

"Stella. I already said yes," Kir interrupted. "But just so you know, I can teach you but I can’t demonstrate very well. Not with these in my ears," he gestured at one of the two remaining seals. "And some of what I have to teach will break with most concepts of what people believe about magic in the first place... and until you understand them, you can’t use spells like the one I did."

Hopefully, he’d never be in a situation where she needed to learn it in the first place.

"Like what?" she asked.

"How many elements are there, Stella?" he asked.

"Four, duh. Even kids know that. And then, like, eight mixes or something."

"Stella, there are one hundred and twenty known elements to me; each composed of three fundamental particles. And holding those together are four fundamental forces. If you’re going to learn magic from me, first you have to learn math, physics, and chemistry."

"I have to be on drugs? Most of the shit Aytherians use barely does anything for demons."

"Not that kind of chemistry. I’m talking about how things interact. Substances bond together, creating new mixtures. Chemical reactions."

"Ohhhh. Alchemy."

"No, chemistry. Without magic. That includes things like metallurgy."

"I’m already confused. How the heaven is there one hundred twenty elements? And they’re made up of other shit?"

Kir smiled weakly. It felt good to talk about something he was good at but he also knew it was going to be a long journey for him to teach Stella his kind of magic. Especially since he couldn’t even perform it without putting them both in pain. "Once you learn the concepts I have to teach, it’ll start to make sense. Learning these things without magic is just the starting line. Are you sure you want to learn what I have to teach?"

Stella hesitated.

"I’m not even learning yet and I feel like my head wants to explode... But if I can eventually learn to take out monsters the size of a building" she gestured off toward the once-occupied platform "then sign me the fuck up."

"Alright then," Kir said. "But if we ever approach something as deadly as the magic I used against that creature, I will need an oath from you. A demon’s oath not to allow that sort of information fall into the wrong hands."

"I’ll swear right now if I have to," Stella said.

"Not right now. We still have to start this speed run." Kir let Stella down off his palm and sat up straight, cracking his neck.

"Damn. We went at it so hard I can barely walk," she said as she took a few shaky steps back to her clothes. "How long are you sticking to your war form?"

"Uh, until I figure out how to change back," Kir said.

"Pfft. Tells me he’s going to teach me all the secrets of magic but can’t even control his own body... What an oddball," she joked.

"Takes one to know one," Kir said.

"What are you, twenty?" she snarked back.

"I’m eighteen," Kir replied flatly.

"Wow, I’m such a cradle robber...You do not want to meet an imp under thirty, trust me," Stella said as she pulled on her skirt.

Kir stood, checking his pants - well, shorts, really - and finding that they were repairing themselves just fine. Thankfully that included being self-cleaning. He did not want to risk a rash... if he even could get one with how thick his skin was in this form.

Before they left their little slice of the dungeon, Stella insisted on packing away as much of the junk she’d found into Kir’s dimensional storage.

"Why do you want me to keep these?" he asked.

"It’s all magic!" she said. "I had nothing to do but check them while you were out cold."

Kir didn’t fail to notice that the things she retrieved were all degraded, either as a result of ages spent in the moist environment of the grotesque’s body or his neutron blast.

Inorganic matter could survive being washed in neutrons far better than organic matter, but even magic, it seemed, could not entirely preserve them against an onslaught of subatomic particles.

One wooden staff snapped when he tried to pick it up, crumbling away until it was just the end caps.

"Are you sure any of this stuff still works?" Kir asked.

"I put a little mana through most. Don’t worry about the staff, it wasn’t the wood that was magic... Not like your magic wood, heheh."

Kir didn’t get it. Not until she started poking one of her fingers through a hole made out of her thumb and forefinger.

"Good to see you getting back to your old self," he said through a slight blush.

"Old? I’m brand-fucking new! You know how many imps would kill for these curves?" she asked rhetorically.

"All of them?" Kir answered anyway.

"Well you’re not wrong," she said as she picked up a shiny object. It was a small amulet on a silvery chain, completely intact and shining as if freshly polished. "Mithril... I don’t suppose you know the mysteries of its creation too, Master Nerd?"

"Titanium, Aluminum, and Vanadium in a mix of ninety, six, and four percent respectively," Kir said without missing a beat.

"What, what, and what?!" Stella blurted. "If that’s really the formula, why the fuck haven’t you made gold on it? You need gold, right?"

Kir shrugged. He’d destroyed a mithril hunting knife owned by his mom, Darlae, using her grindstone only to eventually figure out it was basically the same as titanium alloy from Earth. Perhaps the spanking she’d given him had somehow kept it out of his mind.

Besides, he wanted to get more of a sense of the world before upending its current economies. And he wanted to see how profitable dungeon delving was.

"I have something tougher anyway," he said while gingerly picking up Kangetsu by the handle and stowing it dimensionally.

Having Kangetsu made had been a bit of an exception, but he knew how difficult two of the three elements had been to source on Earth, and he doubted anyone but Enumasam would figure out the formula. Not with the world being as steel-centric as it was for combat.

Passing that knowledge to the smith had come with a solemn vow never to reveal the composition without Kir’s permission, even though Kir was more than willing to let him make and sell as many pieces as he could.

As far as Stella could tell, the amulet offered a small amount of mana protection, but against what was beyond her. Since Kir couldn’t use it, he recommended she wear it.

Aside from that, there were the endcaps of the staff that had disintegrated, enchantments unknown. A pair of amber and gold rings, their circles faded and likely ruined. The shield, which Stella said was warded against rust, and a surprisingly intact leather and parchment journal that had been rolled and stuffed into a metal tube, the last warded against rust and bearing other unidentifiable enchantments.

Once everything that could be stored dimensionally was - they ended up having to leave the shield behind - Kir released his wings once more.

Together, he and Stella made the trip to the platform once occupied by the grotesque.

Landing, Kir took in the sight of what the creature had lived in. A bowl-shaped cavity was all that remained, formed from the tilted breakage of six other structures, all leaning equally against the central one.

In a nearly equal radius, the remains of the creature’s teeth were everywhere. There were curved, almost triangular formations of bones as well, still standing because Kir suspected they had anchored it or acted as feet. He would never know. And there were not just the grotesque’s bones.

Unidentifiable skulls, some of them warped and twisted, lay with the predominantly avian ones amidst uncountable ribs, limbs, horns, and teeth. So many teeth Kir winced to think of how many might have been from people. The bones were scattered about with no apparent pattern, and more than once he saw humanoid skulls.

Metal objects were also scattered everywhere, and Kir noted that in some places were piles of what looked like the rusted and blended elements of different currencies, parts of weapons, and mundane jewelry. Not once did he find an intact coin, but he guessed that whatever had been in the purses of the unfortunate adventurers to die here had fused under the weight, and fluids, of the grotesque.

He could at least tell that some of it had gold. Fitting a few of the cow-pie-like currency fusions into his dimensional storage, he vaguely hoped that nothing they were taking back to the surface was contaminated.

After an hour of talking while Kir poked around, they stared up at the starting line for their journey back.

Then they flew up together.