Chapter: 56
Wow, Thor honestly wasn't doing half bad against the stray devil I'd basically sicced on him. Yeah he was losing, but it wasn't an instant defeat like I thought it would be. Thor was deceptively quick on his feet and he was making the beast work for it. I could tell Thor was facing a low-tier bishop. It was quite large, as most strays were, but it seemed to be moving sluggishly as if it was struggling under its own body weight. I figured that was due to the bishop piece being the only evil piece that didn't enhance innate strength. All the power of the bishop piece went to magic. The stray devil had barely the strength of an average human, but it had some halfway decent magic reserves for its class.
"You are no match for the Mighty Thor, creature!" The stray that Thor was facing, like most of its kind, had obviously seen better days. It hardly had any semblance of a human form remaining and instead resembled some kind of monkey/naga hybrid. It had the upper body of a gorilla, but the legs were gone and replaced with a snake tail. I've said it before, but Ajuka was one messed up guy to implement this kind of punishment into his slaves' pieces.
The stray's voice kept alternating between hisses and growls. "YoU ArE nOt tHe rEal ThOr. YoU aRe MeAt!" It conjured a small fireball in its hand before launching it towards Thor. The mortal god rolled out of the way before the fireball hit where he was previously standing and exploded. The heat from the blast turned the nearby desert sand into glass, which exploded outwards as makeshift shrapnel.
"Uggh," Thor grunted in pain as a small bit of molten glass pelted him. Luckily he was able to cover his face and avoid being blinded. Before Thor could recover, the stray slithered closer before trying to hit Thor with a conjured ice blast this time. Thor was not lucky enough to dodge a second time as he was blasted by a wave of frost that sent him flying backward. His skin started to turn purple, and I figured if I didn't step in, he'd soon have frostbite.
"Y-you t-think s-some c-cold will s-stop me, monster!?" Thor said between shivers as he made to stand up again and keep fighting. Well, I wouldn't really call it fighting, as I had been watching the whole time and he had yet to actually land a single blow on the stray.
"I kILl YoU AnD EaT yOu nOw!"
"Alright, that's enough!" I declared as I swooped in and made my presence known. The low-tier devil had been so focused on its prey that it completely stopped sensing for anyone else. The bait tactic proving effective once again…
The monkey-faced devil let out a squawk of panic at seeing me descend with all six of my wings on display.
"nO! AnGeL! ThOUgHt YoU LeFt!?" It said fearfully as I conjured a light spear in my hand. I toned down the Light Energy in my weapon as I didn't want to one-shot the creature before I could interrogate it.
"You thought wrong, devil. Now you'll answer my questions!" I said as I hurled my spear downward. It struck true exactly where I was aiming. My spear pierced right through the naga tail and impaled it to the ground. The stray let out a shriek of pain as it was immobilized.
With it temporarily dealt with, I flew over to Thor, who was looking on the verge of keeling over. "SACRED GEAR!" I called out as TWILIGHT HEALING's green rings appeared on my hands. I started immediately healing Thor's frostbite, burns, and cuts.
"Lady Layla, you're a…" Thor seemed taken aback by my current appearance as he stared at me. "An Angel!? We had thought your kind vanished over a thousand years ago! My father searched for you and your Creator God for over a century but never found a trace of where you all vanished to! We thought you were all dead and that some Celestial had wiped out half of Midgard to do it."
Huh, wasn't that interesting? It seems that Father, along with the other Earth gods, had just up and left without so much as a "see you later" to the Asgardians. The Asgardians in this universe weren't technically even gods of Earth, so maybe they figured the ritual to split the world was none of their business. Odin, as the 'ruler' of the nine realms, probably would have made a move to stop it. I suppose in a way, he was the real ruler of the nine. In his prime, Odin was powerful enough that even Celestials feared him. The whole reason for the world being split in the first place was that Father and the other Earth gods wanted to hide away from the Celestials… or maybe even Odin himself.
Gods in DxD were really weak to be honest. The average 10 winged angel could match most lower level gods. And then Twelve winged Angels and the current Devil Maous were even stronger! They were able to kick the buts of most of the gods in the DxD world. It was only the strongest gods such as Indra or Shiva that were able to actually defeat Archangels and Maous. Even then, it would be a grueling fight that would leave them potentially too injured to risk such confrontations.
"Yeah, it was a whole thing honestly. I can tell you what happened later," I said to Thor before turning back to my current mission objective. The stray had not been idly waiting for its fate while I was healing Thor. It had been trying to pull my Lightspear out of its tail but wasn't able to because every time its monkey paws touched the weapon, they started burning.
"AhH. iT hUrTs so BaD!"
"Alright, devil, how the hell did you get here!?" I yelled at the creature as I conjured another Lightspear and pointed it towards the beast. This spear had a lot more Holy Energy inside it, and just bearing near the weapon was causing the weak devil to hiss in pain.
"nO! I tAlK! I TALK!" It squeaked out in fear. "iT wAs FaLlEn LiKe YoU! He SeNd mE hEre! I WaS a TeSt SuBjEcT hE SaY!" The stray hissed out in pain as I retracted my spear from its throat.
This stray was a test subject that was sent here? Who would even be able to do that besides… Big Brother Azazel! Of course! I knew he wouldn't just be sitting around and twiddling his thumbs after I disappeared during that artificial sacred gear experiment gone wrong. This whole time he must have been working on that space-time artificial sacred gear to try and find out where I ended up. If he managed to successfully get this stray devil to this side of the world, then he must be incredibly close to completing the gear as well!
"Take us to where you first appeared in this area, devil! If you do that, I'll let you go and even heal you." I lied. There was no way I was letting it go, but it didn't need to know that. The creature rapidly nodded its monkey head up and down. I willed my Lightspear impaling its snake tail to the ground to vanish, and the devil was temporarily freed.
"CoMe–FoLlOw. It WaS ThIs Way…" It started slowly slithering south of the small town. The hole in its tail guaranteed that it wasn't escaping. Something about stray devils was that most of them ended up losing the ability to summon their wings and fly.
"I thank you for healing me, my lady!" Thor said boisterously. "I must confess though… I have no idea what's going on…" Thor admitted to me. Yeah, I figured the guy must be pretty confused at this point.
"What do you want to know?" I said.
"Was this creature I fought a devil truly? I must confess, it has been a thousand years, but I vaguely remember them not looking like… that." Thor replied as we walked through the desert and followed the creature.
I once again gave Thor the rundown on what stray devils were, but this time he was listening with more rapt attention. "Thank you for your explanation once again, Lady Layla. I admit, we thought your pantheon was lost along with half of Midgard, so my studies were lacking."
I waved him off. "It's fine, and it's fine to admit you don't know something," I added.
Thor grimaced. "Indeed. I used to do just that, but then my brother Loki would always make fun of me for my lack of knowledge. Eventually, I just stopped asking questions altogether and started pretending like I knew all the answers…" Thor said as some kind of realization dawned on his face. "Hmm, I think I'm starting to see why my father cast me down to Midgard. Maybe me killing all the Frost Giants wasn't a great idea."
"Why'd you want to do that?" I asked him. I knew the answer already, but I wanted to see how accurate my movie knowledge was compared to this real world.
"Well, it all started when my coronation was interrupted by intruders in the treasury…" Thor started explaining as we kept walking through the desert.
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