I ducked a swing from a war mace that would have splattered my head across the stones. He went for another swing when emerald chains burst from my shadow and bound his arm.
He flailed and struggled for a few moments before becoming deadly calm. "What did you do to me? I didn't hear you say magic words to cast your spell."
The massive man struggled against emerald bindings but failed to free himself. If demonic chains could be broken so easily I wouldn't have escaped hell.
I left him on the floor after sensing the pull on my grace wasn't much. The elf struggled back to her feet.
"You aren't as weak as you claimed."
"I'm exactly as weak as I claimed. All I told you was I am no longer an archdemon."
That was true. Technically I never gave in and transformed so I was never an actual demon to begin with but details.
In hell, demonic power was everywhere, it was hard not to absorb it, and nearly crush my grace with it. So I didn't try.
I had some confidence after using the power for a century and growing accustomed to its familiarity. Tantric energy would be better, but that could wait until the small demon horde was defeated.
While the world would pay me, there was no reason I could get paid twice for the same task or possibly several times. The world was doomed without me, so why not get paid to turn this ship around?
I closed my eyes and smirked at the elf. "How much?" I asked.
"How much of what?"
"What will you give me to handle this demon problem?"
"Are you trying to make a pact with me?"
The castle rumbled and I heard a boom. Men screamed and died as they defended the open gate of the fort.
"We're running out of time here. I'm not lifting a finger to help unless I get something out of it."
Half my mind was on the elf while the other half prepared for the confrontation. I could feel those little dots of red crawling about at the end of my spirit sense.
I held up my hand. "I want your help in a ritual."
Humans weren't the only ones to go to hell. There were monsters, cultivators, and all kinds of degenerates.
I had this little hobby. Sometimes I talked with the lost and the damned and learned about their world, lives, and what landed them in hell. Through them, I cobbled together an empowerment ritual if I ever managed to get out.
A soldier ran up the stairs screamed as a red skinned imp jump on him. The demon clutched the man's helmeted head. Brown haired girl screamed and the demon cackled and the demon pulled. Flesh, muscle, and sinew tore as the demon took the man's head off as he screamed while the demon cackled. The demon smirked at the brown haired girl and stuck its long tongue out and at her.
I released the seven-foot-tall warrior.
"No Brian," the brown haired girl shrieked and said something. A fireball sparked to life in front of her hands before fizzling out. They were indeed drained of their magic to get him out of the void.
The imp charged and met a mace to the chest. It shrieked as it hit the hard stone floor before shooting back up to its feet. The demon roared and drew a long dagger from his belt. It charged the massive knight. The mace moved like lightning, parrying strikes for the imp's blade spikes, from the mace peeled off and I could see long cuts through it from each exchange.
I was sure the knight was stronger but the imp's weapon was made of better materials.
I glanced over at my elf summoner who watched the battle.
A lesser man would be more accommodating to them. They freed me, after all.
Never work for free, or my work would depreciate.
A wet squelch resounded as the knight's mace smashed the imp's face into a ruined mess. Sharp yellow teeth fell on the ground as the knight yanked his mace out of the creature's face. Blood and brain matter spilled on the stone ground spreading around the body and falling down the stairs.
A large red hand clutched the floor as the knight swung, only for an obsidian ax blade to parry his mace, forcing the knight to retreat or take the return swing. A warrior demon emerged from the shadows of the stairs.
It wore a belt of skulls and held a bloody black ax in its grip. His skin was red like blood, and his hair was worn back in a long ponytail. Atop its head was a single horn half grown in. It roared, revealing two large tusks sticking out of his gums. It towered over everyone when it reached the top.
The armored man's war mace slammed into the demon's knee, and the head of the mace broke off. The demon howled and slashed with his ax. The massive man parried the ax blade but stumbled when a meaty fist with spiked bones protruding from the knuckles impacted his chest. The plate bent inward and the man stumbled back.
I watched an Imp cast magic on the sly with horrid ear bleeding words.
"Siegfried is the best soldier in the kingdom. His ancestor fought a dragon. Even two demons are no match for him." The completely wrong beautiful elf said.
"Did you think I freed him to weaken my side of our negotiations?"
The imp shrieked, and a streak of red light hit Siegfried, slowing the man down. The ax sliced into the unprotected joint of the warrior's elbow. That arm lost its strength, and the demon slammed his ax down, denting the armor in Siegfried's chest plate but not quite piercing it. Siegfried collapsed; the dented breastplate prevented his chest from rising.
The demon turned to the brown haired girl and smirked
I made my move. "Can't you see she's going to die. Make the deal you know you want to save her."
The ax swung just as the girl stumbled and fell on her butt. She looked up at the towering demon with wide, terror-filled eyes.
The demon stepped closer, it grabbed its loin cloth and slid it aside revealing a massive dark red member with a thick foreskin held tight by a black ring. The ugly bastard demon grinned, letting drool pour down its lips.
An imp the size of a human man with long gnarly horns raced for the girl, only to receive a vicious backhand. It instead went for another of the cowering girls. She shrieked as the imp dragged her toward a dark section of the roof.
"You're just going to let my friends die."
No, but I was cutting it damn close.
She was stubborn, so it was time to needle her. "You must hate them," I said.
She looked between the two offal situations about to happen. Then she caved like I expected.
"Alright, fine, I'll help you in your ritual." The elf said.
I wanted to thrust my hands in the air like I didn't care. After a century of abstinence, I was getting laid with some elf pussy. Her ears were so cute, I just wanted to touch them.
She held out her hand and I shook it with grace to bind our agreement.
I extracted the remaining demonic power from the first imps corpse and immediately used it to fuel my technique.
My chain shot out from the demon's shadow and wrapped around his neck. It bellowed as I pulled him down. From the shadow my chain slid out and back in before blades appeared and the speed of the chain increased. Another chain with a spear tip shot out from the shadow and impaled the imp before he could penetrate the poor girl he took.
More imps shot up the stairs in time for the warrior demon's head to be sawed off.
I ran huffing hard as I threw myself on top of the corpse the moment the head was off. My chest throbbed. My grace was reaching its limits. I used way too much energy too quickly. Three uses of my chains without a method to refuel myself were too much. Using the energy as needed wasn't sustainable.
That was okay; I had a path forward.
I used my grace, and a dark ember emerged from the demon. I cupped it between my fingers. It was all the demon's remaining demonic power. The orange eyes staring up at me from below the stairs looked panicked when I rolled the ember like clay before turning it into a halo.
My action was impossible without a lifetime's experience wielding demonic power. I knew how the energy acted better than most demons.
There were things I always wanted to do but couldn't because the demonic energy of hell prevented me from using my grace. Outside of hell, with a demonic invasion on my doorstep, I had opportunities I never had before. Things I only dreamed of while trudging through the cold tundra of fraud searching for the 8th prime source were possible.
Even a spark could ignite into flame with the right conditions. I fed the dark halo the embers of demonic power from the other imp. The imps, so eager to sate their blood thirst, turned around and ran screaming as I stood on the corpse of the warrior demon with a grin.
Where there were shadows my chains struck. With my black halo I had all the ammunition I needed.
From under tables, behind chandeliers, and the demons' shadows chains with spiked ends launched like torpedoes tearing imps and war demons apart.
As demons fell within the fort I took their demonic power.
Instead of letting it flow through my body, I stored it in the halo and used it to collect the rest of the demonic power that was mine. In hell the winner took all. Every demon I killed gave up their demonic power to me if I chose to claim it.
Demonic power was always moving either in the body of a demon, a sinner, or through hell. I couldn't make a static core to dump demonic power into so I made a halo. The demonic power followed a loop keeping itself contained by the momentum of its flow and my ownership.
I was trying something I hadn't thought of before. Instead of feeding my techniques through my grace, I gathered a black halo.
This wouldn't be possible without grace. I set it above my head locking its orbit around my grace in above my head. It was the most bad ass, edgy, cringe, and most importantly fun thing I could have done with the demonic power.
Become a demon that was cringy and sad, who gave up their morals and became a cog in the machine of hell? No one I would look up to.
I looked up at the star vore and knew I had more work.
A purple meteor crashed in the middle of the demonic army and I froze. Then I put my hands on my face and tried not to scream into them.
"Is that a bad thing?" The majestic piece of elf asked.
"No, we're fine. Don't worry. It's just a jabberwock, nothing to be worried about. Oh, be sure to look at it directly in its madness eye for the best effect." Waves of demonic energy flowed off it, empowering the demons before it even emerged. "How about that orgy?"
"Is there nothing you can do?" The ignorant elf with the big titties asked.
"If I slew two large armies of demons I might have enough demonic power to fight it from a weak position. We could try the catacombs. It might ignore us with all the deathly energies down there."
"No that is a terrible idea. My ancestor defeated the dragon, I won't back down from a challenge." Siegfried said.
"Oh, you've heard of the jabberwock," I said.
"It's the demonic brother of the dragon," Siegfried said.
"Question, did your ancestor fight the dragon blindfolded, and are you as strong as he was. If not, then I think the catacombs are our best bet."
"You don't know the evil of the lich. He has enslaved the bodies and souls of countless people through the ages. It took the alliance of all races and a dragon to seal him. If we unleash him, then the sacrifices of the past will have been for nothing," Seigfried said.
I knew how this worked: If we got this guy on our side first, we would have to deal with him at the end. That was the best-case scenario.
I tried to stay calm. Seigfried seemed like a reasonable individual. "If we don't, the demons will probably free him anyway and make a deal with him. How well will your people handle the lich backed with a demonic army with the sun gone?"
In a thick accent the princess spoke. "What about the orgy?" The princess asked.
"Princess Charlotte, you aren't thinking of giving yourself to this creature."
"He doesn't seem like the type to give up." She turned her blue eyes on to me. "What would you gain from it?"
"That is a secret," I said.
"Then the catacombs." The wise elf said.
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