Chapter 184: Arx.

—Elkar The Shepherd Commander PoV—“CHARGE!!!”

“WE HAVE THE BLESSING OF THE ANGELS!”

“THEY HAVE THE CURSE OF THE DEMON!”

“THEY’RE FALTERING! PRESS THE ADVANTAGE!”

“WE HAVE THEM OUTNUMBERED!”

“KILL THE REBELS!”

“FIGHT AND GO TO HEAVEN!”

I swung my banner. I shouted my encouragement to my assigned soldiers. Their hearts hardened under my influence, and by faith, they braved through battle to retake Elkanor City. Our side’s morale could not be compared who fought only to destroy!

It was then that I felt a sudden dread. My eyes snapped up in premonition. I cursed in my mind and prayed to the angels when I saw in the skies who I wanted to see the least. It had been months since her meeting with the New Granderan and we were hoping that her new presence here was only a bluff, but she had indeed come. And I was unlucky enough for my force to be the one that encountered her.

“STOP!” I immediately shouted before my thoughts could even materialize. Most of my soldiers listened, which brought a great measure of relief. Some still fell on the spot, others ran, and a few caused chaos among our ranks, but we managed to keep the line from collapsing. It would’ve surely been worse if they actually made eye contact with the demon.

I wrenched my view back up to look at her, and inevitably make eye-contact. Her ability wasn’t something she could constantly keep active, from what I’d read, and I used this interval to strengthen my mind and gather my elites close. There were only two true Level 40s among them, and the rest were only Level 20, but they would have to do. My squad wasn’t the only one here, and we would not face her alone. I commanded them to shoot down that demon in the sky as I touched upon their heads, and strengthened their minds in the same way I did mine.

We would not yield today. We would not be broken here.

My elites fired their projectiles straight for that demon. The damned harpies fouled most of them, and a cloud of bloodfire and curses suddenly appeared, centering on Haell. I commanded all the mages to counter it, even those who should not look up, simply by saturating the air above with the right elements. Water and winds rose, indeed countering the demon’s offensive, but parts of it still made it through, and my people were affected.

They fled in panic, confused. Others attacked their fellow men and women. And some only stood there, listless, and unmoving, perhaps curled into a ball.

I decisively commanded my forces to kill all of them. They could have resisted had they had more faith. We retaliated and weathered this storm as best we could, resisting Haell and the rebels that colluded with her, but then our lines destabilized once more when the neighboring squads crashed into us. Abyss damn it, we knew ahead of time that we might be targeted by this Haell! We had the protocol! And yet some of us still lacked the discipline to see it through!

“Retreat! RETREAT!” I commanded. We had to regroup and come up with a new plan.

“My lord!” my adjutant suddenly warned, before she was unceremoniously crushed and sliced in half.

. I knew she sometimes flew down to pick off the best of us, but why did it have to be me?

“STOP, DEMON!” I prayed as hard as I could, with faith that the angels would not abandon me. “WE ARE THE ARMIES OF THE ANGELS, AND YOU ARE NOT WELC–”

I saw a blade right in front of my face, and then nothing.

—Back to Haell PoV—

“Look at this,” Moonwash commanded.

“Okay.” I stared, wide-eyed and unblinking. We were currently in her expansive underground lair, as Pandemonium had begun to truly expand underground. The stronger concentration of curse and other kinds of mana would still seep through the city, but it would at least be much weaker than the alternative. We had already lost residents to it, , and people weren’t pleased, but I wasn’t too bothered. It was amusing to think of how the manor visible above would only be so to speak, given a few years or decades.

That being said, while there was certainly a lot to see here in Moonwash’s expanded lair, the current part we were at was nothing but a bare and open space. An undecorated room.

Sure enough, I noticed various illustrations related to blood magic. There was also fire, for the blood of mine that she drew with was filled with both blood and hellfire mana. I wondered what she might be making, when she finally spoke the ritual to completion.

“Hellfireball.”

And in the deep darkness of the cursed underground, a red sun blossomed. It was a massive fireball whose brightness seared into the eyes, and with heat that instantly made the room feel sweltering. I was unbothered, but Moonwash was right next to it, and she’d gotten injured!

“Moonwash!” I grabbed her just as she ran away from the fireball. I opened my wings and shielded her from the most painful flames imaginable. She had burns all over her skin, and a few drops of tears had fallen off her face. I quickly mobilized my magic, and cocooned her with healing blood.

It was a far more effective way of healing other people, compared to just touching them and relying on the blood we both contained within.

“Are you okay?” I asked as her wounds disappeared. She obviously wasn’t. “What happened? Are you still hurt?”

The cocoon of blood fell to the ground, all the magic spent. The hellfireball behind dimmed, and then finally winked out.

“I shouldn’t have tried to show off,” my girlfriend said blandly. “I should’ve stepped back further, but I wanted the ritual to be as powerful as it could be, so I didn’t. It hurt. I still feel bad.”

She hugged me and I embraced her even tighter. I stroked her head as she worked through that harrowing experience. Hellfire was truly no fucking joke.

“So, what really happened?” I eventually asked. “That was far stronger than I thought it would be. And you also used blood magic, right? But what for? I didn’t notice anything, and I don’t think it just dissipated either.”

She finally separated from me, and then spoke so very casually.

“I discovered that blood magic can have a generic amplifying effect for rituals if utilized correctly.”

…….What?

…What did she say?

“WHAT!?” I screamed. I grabbed her shoulders. “Are you serious!? Are you sure?!”

“Yes. You saw it happen.”

And I did. I just checked my memory core, and all signs I could discern pointed to that same conclusion.

“I got the idea from how your curse mana can naturally enhance ailments and other long-lasting negative effects. , I believe was the term you used. So I tried to see if it was possible to find other synergies within other elements, and my research was successful. I found that blood magic has the ability previously mentioned.”

I let her go and stepped back. “This…” my thoughts were still chaotic and a mess. I was happy. I was grateful to have such a brilliant girlfriend. But mostly, I pictured fire raining from the sky, and unending mountains of corpses stacked over broken cities. A thousand ritual formations painted both the sky and the ground, and through them remaining people who desperately fled were turned into charred husks of their former selves. Even angels could not resist such power. The dragons were awoken from their slumber and promptly slaughtered. An endlessly complex array turned the entire planet molten, and truly manifested Hell over This World.

“THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!!!!” I hugged and twirled her around like a princess.

“Okay. That was an exaggeration. It doesn’t change everything.” I pouted after days of trying to make the ritual work. And I did succeed. I was even more attuned to these elements, so the resulting hellfireball was even stronger than Moonwash’s. But I was so slow! There was no way I could actually use these rituals in battle. And forget ever using these in mini rituals! The many illustrations needed to make the blood enhance the whole ritual were too complex, and this only got worse the more complicated the original ritual was. I hadn’t even succeeded yet in drawing a single floating blood-enhanced hellfireball ritual. Controlling the shape of blood with only magic was too difficult!

I should squeeze more ritual practice into my schedule.

"Oh?" I tilted my head down and looked upon the massive mountain.

Below, a fierce battle ensued. An arbeast swung its massive front legs, snapping all the trees that were in the way. Its limbs dug into the mountain and maintained balance in the midst of the struggle. The creature’s main body showed numerous wounds that were visibly healing.

The Level 80 monster I’d grown familiar with was being suppressed.

But it was the opponent of this creature that surprised me. An inhex that was half its size. A massive on his own right. He shrieked a discordant note where one of the arbeast's leg-beaks bit him. The inhex man bit down on several tentacles in response, tearing off a dozen of them, and putting the monster mildly off balance.

He took this opportunity to jump back and create some distance. He suddenly shot forward just as his powerful foe was beginning to do the same. His body collided with the main body of the abreast, and the monster tilted dangerously. The inhex man’s front claws cracked through the bark-like exoskeleton, and his mandible tore off chunks of both the material and the flesh underneath.

That broke the final strings of balance, and the monster fell. The inhex man kept on ripping through its body until the arbeast's four limbs reached for him. He skittered around them for a few seconds more, before beating a hasty retreat with his powerful leaping power.

The monster swiftly switched to trying to get back up, which was when the inhex warrior jumped at it again. The arbeast was pushed back into the ground, and the same scenario repeated, with it losing more chunks of its body as other wounds hurried to close. The inhex man once again retreated, and then tried the same tactic, but the monster was ready this time and he was swatted out of the air. He saw it coming and managed to respond, of course, but now the powerful monster had gotten back up.

Their struggle continued in this same cycle, with the mysterious inhex person sustaining light wounds as he beat down the arbeast further and further. The monster eventually decided to flee, but it was far too late with the copious amounts of yellow blood and entrails leaking out of its lumpy torso. The inhex man caught up to it, time and again, adding more wounds, and smashing its massive body into the ground.

The sound of clapping filled the air once the powerful arbeast finally breathed its last.

"Hey." I grinned.

The inhex turned to look at me, unsurprised. I could easily recognize the boundless rage on his face, even when I found the faces of the inhex to be the most difficult to decipher, especially as I had not really hung out with them all that much.

I could feel the genuine anger in his words. Not that of an animal that could only bark and flare its feathers uselessly, but the voice of a soul so tortured that it had forgotten a world without pain.

I snorted. "Of course not. I was just out hunting when I spotted something interesting.”

he screeched a terrible sound.

I landed a good distance away from him instead, and the inhex man almost struck. He thought better of it at the last second.

If I wasn’t mistaken, then he was well past Level 80. He must be halfway to 160 already. And sapient to boot. I wondered how a fight between us both might end.

“I told you to ,” he loomed like a train about to smear me across the tracks.

My grin only widened. “Come on. I just want a chat, hmm? As two warriors battling through the uninhabited parts of the barrier range. We should get along!”

“No, we don’t. I did not come here for fun.”

“Then what, pray tell, did you come here for?”

The massive inhex man stared at me. He breathed heavily like a monster struggling against the base instinct to kill. I knew the feeling well.

“That is none of your business!”

“That’s fair.” I reached a hand out to shake. “I’m Haell Zharignan, by the way! What’s your name?”

He stared at my hand for a few long seconds, but didn’t even bother to shake it with his claw.

“My name is not important. !”

My eyes narrowed at how repeatedly rude he had been. I was no noble that demanded everyone to bow and scrape by my hooves, but he didn’t need to be that hostile! “Enough introductions, then. I can leave if you want. But we have a common enemy. At least, I think so. And in that case, would it not be better to fight together!” That and I was genuinely happy to find another person following the same path as me, but I suppose I would not be making a new friend today.

“No. I don’t need your help! !”

“Do what?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. “Kill the angels?” I sensed his blood lust redouble, and a smirk reemerged on my face.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Great!” I exclaimed. That was exactly what I expected. I finally got a straight answer out of him. “They are scum among scum. Which is why I wouldn’t say no to having one more powerful al–”

“But that is not my true goal.”

“...Huh?”

He looked at me. Really looked at me for the first time.

“What you?”

“You ask that now!?” I snapped. Then sighed as I folded my arms. “Well, that’s the natural first question. And it’s no wonder that you don’t know if you’ve literally been living in the middle of nowhere for who knows how long. An inhex as strong as you, yet I have heard nothing.” Angelore had not let a single one of them reach Level 40 for a time “I am a demon.”

“A demon?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a demon?”

“A species of people ,” I chose to volunteer. I wished to learn his secrets, so it was only right I gave up some of my own. This wasn’t really all that big a secret anymore anyway, as the Demon Aspires had demonstrated that it was all too easy to deduce this. I could also very easily be lying to conceal the true creator of demons if I volunteered the information so easily.

The inhex man looked at me skeptically.

“You don’t have to believe me if you wish,” I snarled. “But care to at least share your name now, or are you still not done brooding?”

“Arx,” he finally introduced himself, after only more brooding. “I still don’t trust you. What you say is just unbelievable.” He shifted to a more threatening stance, and I naturally did the same. “How do I know you’re not working for the angels? Even if you’re not, you could exchange the knowledge of my existence here with them to gain some stupid reward for yourself!”

I released some of the firm control I had over my anger, and my expression immediately shifted. I showed the burning ocean I kept inside. I empathized with what he had likely gone through, but if he thought that his skittering and squealing was enough to intimidate me, then the depths of my own despair had been gravely underestimated.

“I will not betray you to the angels, because fucking hate them. want to rip off their wings and tear them limb from fucking . want to keep going until their healing finally fails them. I have done the same many times to their insane followers. I have led entire wars against them, and eradicated whole armies. I left not a single one alive. All this before they made the mistake of They wanted to make more of my kind as slaves, and I burned every single one of them for their error! And I will not stop until this whole kingdom has fallen. It is not over until even the empire crumbles. So tell me again, Am I a fucking puppet to those !?”

I breathed. My evil eyes bore into Arx’s own, and he was forced to take a step back.

Finally, he spoke, “I don’t think anyone from that place would dare speak ill of the angels like that. I cannot hear the anger in your voice as anything but genuine. I… doubt my judgement.”

“Go back to New Grandera then,” I suggested irritably. “There, you can confirm that I’m not a fucking liar. I’ve seized so many of their cities, and killed a fucking duke, among other officials. Surely you won’t suggest that this is just one big triple-cross I’m pulling, right?

He chuckled very briefly, and without mirth. “If what you say is true, then no. I’m not that stupid.” He finally relaxed, and I had the grace to do the same, if only outwardly. “Fine, then. I’ll believe your words for now. I don’t want to check New Grandera, because I don’t want to be targeted by the angels just yet. They’ll mistreat our queen and my entire species further once I reveal myself.” He scratched his own head with his big claws, and his breaking chitin made a shrill sound.

I frowned sadly. He did carry a bigger burden with him. His anger remained unexpressed. “You’re still injured. Can I heal you with my blood magic?”

His head snapped towards me, deeply considering.

“Fine.” But of course, he was ready for my offer to turn sinister.

I laid a hand over him, and the broken chitin and ruptured flesh all began to visibly mend.

It took a little longer, especially with his massive body and the sheer quality of it, but it was still over in minutes.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can join you in your revenge. That isn’t even my goal. It would… be very satisfying, but it would also be hollow.” His three mandibles flexed hesitatingly. “What I want is to save my people. That is all… I want.”

“I understand,” I smiled kindly. But then I shook my head. “No. That’s a lie. I really don’t understand. All I have is my hate. It be very satisfying to kill them all, and I have no concerns beyond that. I… cannot fathom, well, about so many people. An entire species. It really is a massive burden.”

“We all carry it, us inhexes, to one degree or another. I know I’m not the only one who had the bright idea to train in secret, but I might be the only one left. How… how can we possibly break through this madness!?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed softly. “But I genuinely do empathize with the plight of the inhex. And I’m already willing to go against the entire Angelore Empire. So if you come up with a method, then tell me about it. I… would very likely help.”

“I uh–” Arx hesitated, before eventually settling on, “I’ll keep it in mind.”