The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 98: Interlude - Rainier

Chapter 98: Interlude - Rainier

"It looks like the next floor’s going to be another forest," Kordia said.

"Are we sure this is the right way down?" Lugh asked. "They almost lost us with that dead-end room when you couldn’t sniff them out."

"I’m not entirely convinced that was intentional," Kordia said, "and for the last time, foxkin aren’t known for our noses."

Rainier listened as they argued with each other.

Six floors beyond the outpost, they’d spend most of two weeks together now.

The Knight Commander and Professor Fayren were still ahead of them, but they’d pushed hard, and according to Lugh, their tracks were getting fresher and fresher.

Rain appreciated that Lugh was cooperating, despite not being allowed a weapon beyond his utility dagger. The human really was quite skilled, but there were so many wrong things with what Lugh thought about them both and Kir.

The fact that he was largely on the positive end of Lugh’s prejudice made him very uncomfortable. And it didn’t matter that Rain tried to argue he was just as normal as him, Lugh seemed to hold angelic blood quite sacrosanct and often seemed to express subtle jealousies that Rain didn’t know what to do about.

Just keeping everyone cooperating was the minimum he wanted for the group... and while he was seeing it so far... the little things in between were also wearing on him.

"Kordia, Lugh, please," Rain interrupted. "We need to get on the same floor or they’re just going to increase their lead." He rubbed at his jaw. If he’d had this many days on the surface, he’d have had another birthday... At least if Kordia’s math was correct.

His jaw felt rough. Rain wasn’t used to having facial hair. He didn’t like that his facial hair came in white while his hair was blue, but his razor had dulled too much and he needed his whetstone to keep his sword in shape for the monsters and dungeon beasts.

"You’re right," Kordia said. "Let me discharge some mana and I’ll be ready."

They’d taken to alternating the discharge of excess mana building up inside them, one of them staying almost topped off at all times in case they finally caught up to their quarry.

This far down, they were both experiencing constant pain from the ever-present inflow of mana. In private, Kordia confessed that her pain was even worse than she let on, because in her case her evolution to three tails had yet to settle completely, and so she was far more unstable thanks to her heritage.

Lugh, being human with a maven’s talent for endurance and little enhancement training, was ironically in the most optimal shape of them all. His capacities were expanding steadily, while Rain and Kordia’s were straining under pressure from mana poisoning. Simply put, they weren’t trained to be this deep in a dungeon, even if they were technically qualified.

It had gotten to the point that Rain had started wearing his halo constantly, letting some of his excess mana out through the accessory he’d received from his parents upon his coming of age; when his future had been decided. His "engagement ring" as Kir had once joked, before Rain made such a hurt face Kir never said it again.

If they succeeded and brought Kir back alive, Rain promised himself to let Kir say it as much as he liked. Even though it was still going to hurt having to say goodbye.

It had occurred to him more than once that if Professor Fayren was, as Lugh claimed, an agent of Heaven, then Rain and his parents might face some trouble for what they might have to do. But if Professor Fayren was working with an agent of Hell, and Heaven wasn’t aware of it, wouldn’t that make them heroes for stopping him?

But how could they even be sure on either count? What if Lugh had lied?

Nothing about this seemed simple.

Nothing about Kir seemed simple, not like Rain had thought when he first saw the smart, handsome, deeply lonely guy; fighting in his own defense from the first moment he set foot on the Academy grounds. He thought they’d just have a good time, and there was plenty of that, but Kir had wound up challenging him in ways that he didn’t know he needed.

It was why Rain had been increasingly thinking he would invite Kir to go to the Kingdom of Amrita after he was done with the Academy. The Heavenswar would need his power, perhaps even more than Rain’s. If Rain could convince others to see Kir’s worth, instead of seeing him as a threat, then maybe... he could give Kir a place beyond the Academy.

A place to belong to after he finished saving his family from the Duke of Heresy. As a close friend, since they would no longer be allowed to be closer once Rain was wed. Rain had communicated in confidence with his brother... but when his parents found out, the only issue they cared about with regard to Kir was the fact that he was demonkin.

He hadn’t even told his brother they were together; mostly because Rain still didn’t quite know how to explain that he was with Kordia and Kir and they were also with each other. But it was just for their time at the Academy. Reidern only knew Kir, a demonkin, was Rain’s friend... and yet that was all it took.

To his parents, Kir’s heritage was "a problem" and "not worth risking his future prospects." If he told them Kir was Maledict’s son...

Rain shook his head to clear his thoughts. He wasn’t going to get anywhere thinking like that. He just needed to get through the Heavenswar and hope that whoever he and Kir wound up becoming by then, they could still be friends.

As soon as Kordia came back, they traversed the final distance to the entrance of the next floor.

As soon as they stepped through, Rain saw something was off.

"It’s on fire," Lugh said.

"No shit," Kordia snapped at him. "They must have seen us coming."

"Or they’re fighting Kir," Rain proposed. "Kor, can you do anything about the smoke?" A white-grey fog had descended over everything, rendering the biome unseeable beyond the first few unburnt trees and the field cleared by the Adventurer’s Guild.

"I can’t! There are two reasons you aren’t supposed to make fires on floors like this, and one is that there’s almost nowhere for it to go!"

""What’s the other?"" Lugh and Rain asked at the same time. They shared a look.

The ground started to rumble. From the edges of the forest burst countless fleeing animals and spirits. A tidal wave of terror, and one that they had mere moments to-

"Look out!" Rain shouted, turning and grabbing Kordia.

He managed to pull her aside right as the lead creature - a massive moosegarden stag with moss growing on the curves of its horns - barreled through the door they’d just come through.

At first, Rain was confused by the sense of seeing the animals all approaching the same line of exit, but then he saw: Someone had cleared a tunnel of air that led straight from the edge of the forest to the exit, and the denizens of the floor were following the clearest route to safety.

Lugh, who had come to a landing next to them, was having some trouble with the small critters trampling over and around him as they tried to escape. He kept trying to bat them away but there were always more.

"Oh no. Oh no-no-no. We need to get out of this room," Kordia said from under Rain’s arm.

"How are we going to get through? We can’t see anything," Rain looked into the grey with concern.

The whole room shuddered. A high-pitched tone started filling the air. When Rain looked to Kordia, he saw her crying as she formed her next words.

"We aren’t. Rain... They’re triggering a dungeon collapse. If we don’t get out now, we’ll be stuck here," her voice cracked and she coughed. "It could take ages for a new room to form."

Rain ground his teeth. There had to be another way.

Lugh pushed himself to his feet. "We can camp out on the floor above... wait for a new door to form."

"We came all this way," Rain blurted out. "We can’t give up," Rain said, "It’s a small floor. The next door should only be a great measure-"

"RAIN!" Kordia shouted. As soon as they met each others’ gazes she softened her voice. "We have to."

He looked again into the white-grey haze. Felt his lungs seizing slightly from the smoke.

Surging to his feet, he carried Kordia with him as he quietly ran for the door, pushing Lugh through before taking one last look and following.

The creatures of the room had spread out, most disappearing into the biome - a floor of scrub bushes, moss, and giant, aggressively territorial grazers. Predator and prey alike seemed to maintain a desperate peace as they caught their breath.

Rain watched as the stream of particles and creatures entering the room began to slow. The tremors on this side of the door were less, but each one set some of the escapees on their feet and fleeing further away.

"Keep moving," Kordia encouraged. A handful of minutes passed before she finally said it was safe to stop.

Turning, they were just in time to see the door flicker, shutting in fitful surges until it was just a thin, smoky line.

Then it exploded, leaving nothing but a charred black circle around where it had been.

They were still gazing at the site when the sounds of armored footsteps approached behind them.

"Well now," Knight Commander Tul said, as Professor Fayren floated above and behind him. "What do we have here?"

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