Newly Summoned Demoness - Chapter 34 – Fight or Flight (Patreon)

Elania turned and hurried after the monks without missing a beat. If Marcus didn’t want any help, he wouldn’t get any! She didn’t want to fight that thing herself, anyway! It was a literal raid boss!

She quickly caught up and then outpaced the monks, letting herself go loose enough to leap from rock to rock. While they trudged along on the path, she took the chance to make sure there wasn’t anything else looking to jump them in the chaos.

The sounds of a battle carried on behind them. Stone cracked, and a series of smaller explosions shook the ground. Rubble from above fell in concerning rockfalls, sending clouds of dust exploding in small plumes. It seemed like the cavern was being torn apart from the combat.

A gust of wind blew through the cavern, lashing at her hair and loose cloth. She paused and looked at the monks. One of the novices had fallen behind considerably, and Taniel had stopped to tend to the young man.

“Maurice! Hurry! We can’t slow down!” Taniel shouted.

The boy looked winded. Exasperation filled his face. “I’m sorry, Taniel! That rock took a chunk out of my HP! It’s slowing me down.”

Elania’s jaw dropped. H-fucking-P? As in Hitpoints HP? She pulled her [Status] screen up to make sure she wasn’t blind and had missed the entry somehow.

[Status: Elania Reyes]

[Level 36 Lesser Demon (Summoned Potency 9999+)]

[Karma: 12345]

[Power: 231/233]

[Perks: (Summoned from Another World!) (Regeneration) (Demonic Transformation)]

[Class: Darkwalker Huntress]

[Skill Slots: 4]

[Slotted Skills: Improvised Combat (Rank S+), Stealth (Rank S+), Mana Manipulation (Rank A), Basic Handcrafting (Rank E)]

[Affinities: (Demonic), (Mana), (Darkwalker)]

[Magical: Demonic Aura (Rank B) (Deactivated)]

[Physical: Darkvision (Rank B) (Activated), Throwing (Rank S+), Tracking (Rank D)]

[Mundane: Identify (Rank C), Universal Speech (Rank S), Reading (Rank A), Writing (Rank B), Crisis Management (Rank S+)]

No, she hadn’t missed anything.

Why didn’t she have any HP? Was that fair?

The cavern shook again, and she had to shift her balance slightly on the rock she had perched on. Joren and the novices with him nearly turned into a pile of monks as they scrambled for balance while they continued to run.

“Dammit!” Taniel shouted.

She could see his frustration: Maurice was going even slower.

Did HP work the same way her [Power] did? If it got lower, they got weaker? That seemed very punitive for a broken nose. Taniel continued to shout at Maurice while the younger man became frantic.

He was almost in tears. “I can’t keep up!”

Taniel slipped an arm under his shoulder and tried to help him.

Joren and the rest of the group finally realized how far the two had fallen behind, and stopped to look at them. “Hurry!”

Their encouragement seemed ineffective. Elania decided she would help and jumped down beside them as soon as they reached her. They skidded to a stop, Taniel flashing an angry glare at her.

She ignored him and looked at Maurice. “I’ll carry you.”

Taniel frowned at her. “I don’t think you—”

She gave him a glare, then knelt down. “Get on my back, quick!”

Maurice looked between the two of them, hesitating. Sure, she wasn’t that big, but she felt annoyance prick at her. “Hurry up!”

An approaching roar forced the manner and he all but jumped on her, his arms cinching around her neck and his legs digging into her ribs. It was a good thing she didn’t need to breathe. He was unwieldy, especially with the giant [Glow-Moss Basket] on his back, but the weight was a non-issue for her. She stood up, and she appreciated the shocked look on Taniel’s face.

She took off, leaving the Spiritual Monk behind. Maybe if the Manzitore caught up, it would eat him first. One could only hope.

Maurice’s weight shifted with each leap she took, but the bouncing didn’t slow her down. She caught up to Joren and the other novices and the party was able to move together at full speed now that they didn’t have to try to slow to Maurice’s pace.

The offshoot from the tunnel they had been traveling along reached another intersection. They took the hard ninety degree turn, and Elania hoped Joren was pointing them in the right direction. She had no idea where they were and had to trust their navigation.

As they rounded a corner, a Darkwalker stood in their path and let out a roar. The group momentarily skidded to a stop, but Elania felt a rumble in her throat and let out a roar of her own.

The beast looked at her, its tail went between its hind legs. A second later, it turned and fled.

They pushed forward into the new cavern section. The distant rumbles and shaking seemed to catch up with them as they went until suddenly they were everywhere. When rocks fell from the ceiling, she realized that somehow the battle had found its way to another chamber, above.

“Watch out!” she shouted. Rocks sent everyone scurrying for cover, including her and Maurice. A burst of light piercing through the ceiling and dug into the floor near the center of the cavern, sending huge chunks of rock flying out in every direction.

One piece flew directly at her, and she filled with panic as she did not know how to stop it with Maurice clinging to her. A yellow shield appeared just in front of the both of them as it struck, the rock crushing itself into a million smaller pieces of rubble and pelting the wall just behind them.

Taniel stepped up nearby, wheezing, a set of prayer beads wrapped in his hands.

She blinked. Had he used some ability to save them? “Thank you?”

“I was protecting Maurice, not you, demon,” Taniel hissed at her.

The [Manzitore] suddenly crashed through the ceiling, widening the hole. It slammed into the floor, but immediately rolled onto its feet and let out its guttural roar. A pair of blue arrows flashed downward, exploding into clouds of shrapnel. Each spray blew out cones of flesh from the beast. The wounds immediately started to knit themselves together as the thing’s blood seemed to writhe together.

A whirlwind of hot air whipped outward, and she had to raise her forearm in front of her face to protect from the whipping. They were so fucked. How were they supposed to fight something like this?

A fireball formed in the mouth of the thing’s tail, which it released upwards into the hole in the ceiling. The entire cavern shook heavily as it exploded. Rock flexed as the chamber above bulged.

A momentary silence filled the air, and then the [Manzitore] turned on her and Maurice.

What the absolute fuck. She jumped back on her feet, then started to move to the side. The beast’s eyes followed them intently, like it was sizing her up.

Or was it focused on Maurice? She turned her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye. Was the monster attracted like a neodymium magnet to his fucking nosebleed?

Marcus erupted from the raging inferno above, only to fall right into a heavy tail slap that sent him flying back into the upper chamber. That didn’t seem great for his survival chances, but she didn’t really know what he was capable of…or able to survive. Maybe he’d be fine.

More importantly, the Manzitore jumped toward her—and Maurice—and attacked.

She jumped straight up to avoid a tail swipe, only for it to nearly catch her in its meter long claws. Her feet caught the side of the cavern though, and she pushed off hard, propelling them away from the monster.

She sensed more than saw some type of energetic line intersecting her chest as they touched down, causing her to hurl them to the side. A bolt of red light lanced the area a second later, and she felt a momentary surge of panic as she realized Maurice was carrying a literal firebomb on his back.

The ground behind her erupted in stony explosions as the beast scrambled after them. She lost track of the direction the other monks had gone, and it was all that she could do just to try to outpace the thing.

[Mobility Rank E has been unlocked.]

There was no time to celebrate getting a new skill, because the [Manzitore] was right on top of them, and its teethy tail snapped right at them. She dived out of the way, but that dislodged Maurice right off of her back and he went rolling. There was no time to pick him back up, and she needed to do something; running wasn’t an option!

Her best attack was throwing things like an angry monkey. A quick slot swap replaced [Basic Handcrafting] with [Throwing] as she pulled a javelin off her back. Shoving a decent amount of power into it, she threw with all her strength right into the thing’s tail as it streaked toward her again with another snap.

The [Tower-Cap] javelin dissolved as it struck out, turning into a simple energy bolt as the material failed to withstand the [Power] infused in it. That didn’t reduce the attack’s potency, and it struck with enough force to whip the tail in the opposite direction, lift the [Manzitore] off its feet slightly, and then explode out the back of the tail’s throat.

That elicited a furious, pained roar.

Oh shit, she’d made it more mad. The attack had taken a chunk of fifty [Power], too.

She needed to keep her speed and physical enhancement at the maximum and couldn’t afford more of those, not if she didn’t want to get immediately caught and munched on. She ran to collect Maurice, only for his body to suddenly lift into the air.

“What?” Elania shouted.

A panicked look filled his face, and he began to spin as he twisted and turned and tried to get a hold of something. Then he shot straight toward the [Manzitore]. Right toward the thing’s waiting lion-shaped maw.

A frantic screaming escaped from the novice. “Help! Help!”

The fucking monster had telekinesis or something. What the fuck was she supposed to do?

Meter long teeth snapped, bisecting Maurice’s torso and silencing the shrieks. Then it gobbled the other half, [Glow-Moss Basket] and all.

Her frozen indecision lasted long enough for the beast to turn its attention back to her, and before she could try to run away, she was lifted off her feet as well. Floating straight for the thing’s mouth.

Panic filled her; she tried to pulse her [Power] around her body like a shield instinctively, but nothing happened. Halfway to the thing’s teeth, she tried [Demonic Aura]. That broke the connection, and she fell straight down as gravity re-established its hold on her.

An angry claw swipe angled in at her, but she twisted and kicked off the thing’s paw. Another swipe slammed into the ground as soon as she landed, but she jumped off an exploding rock. Its tail thrust itself into her path, maw open wide, ready to catch her.

She reached out, grabbed two of the teeth, and flipped herself out of the maw and onto the tail itself. Her leather trousers immediately began to sizzle and smoke, while the scaly burning acid blood scoured her palms.

One thing she hadn’t tried was thrusting [Power] into something else other than her weapons. Punching her fist into the acidic flesh, she imagined her power flowing through the thing like electricity, then pushed hard.

The beast’s entire body went rigid, like it had fallen on an electric fence, toppling it to the ground. The cost to her [Power] reserve was massive, though, and she cut off the attack quickly to jump away. Her hands immediately began to knit themselves together. The beast was slow to react as it tried to pick itself back off the ground.

Then a red arrow slashed through the air toward the thing’s face, exploding into a fireball. She didn’t have any time to brace herself as the explosion sent her flying away, tumbling down a pile of stone rubble.

Dazed, she slowly started to sort herself when hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her onto her feet. Taniel’s face was only inches away. Her hearing had turned into a relentless ringing, but she realized he was shouting at her. “—et go him, you stupi—”

Joren pulled the monk off of her, then dragged the both of them toward a smaller tunnel. Marcus floated to the ground just in front of them, his boots glowing blue with magic runes. Flying boots? What was next, a magic cannon?

The inside of her ears repaired themselves in time for her to hear the angry ranger’s shout. “I told you all to get out of here! Go!”

Elania blinked. Hadn’t they won?

Looking over her shoulder, the [Manzitore] slowly rose to its feet, a massive bloody hole in the side of its face slowly gluing itself back together in a dripping mess of burgundy red. It roared at them all.

What did it take to kill that stupid thing?

Marcus readied more of his magical arrows and began to fire at it, while the rest of them fled through the small tunnel. It didn’t seem large enough for the [Manzitore] to fit in, but the thing was so strong it would probably dig its way through the rock to them anyway. Or use its telekinesis?

This time, the sounds of combat became more distant with every step. Long after the sounds of battle had disappeared, the group kept running. Several of the novices began to sob and cry. When one stumbled and nearly fell, she caught him.

They continued at a slower pace.

She lost interest in the different cavern biomes after several hours. Each one seemed to have a different color scheme, but they all pulsed with bioluminescent plants. It seemed the further they traveled from the Mushroohum village, the more vegetation there was. Multiple streams had to be crossed, and in one cavern, there was a massive lake that would have been capable of housing a lake monster.

There was no end to the march, and when Taniel ordered them to finally stop, it felt like they had been traveling for days on end.

“Stop. Everyone stop. We’ll take a ten-minute break.” Taniel ordered.

Everyone fell to the ground. Joren gave the other senior monk a worried look. “Do you think we are far enough away?”

Elania’s jaw dropped. They’d traveled so far. How would it sense them? The notion that it was vindictive enough to track them down over such a distance—and capable of it—terrified her. What if she had been spotted by the thing and she had been alone?

“I don’t know, but we need to rest, then find a waystation,” Taniel said.

“What’s a waystation?” she blurted out.

“A place to rest,” Joren informed her. His normal, helpful tone had disappeared into exhaustion and he didn’t expand on the answer.

A place to rest. Well, yeah. That was sort of inferred. What made it safe from something like a [Manzitore], though?

One of the novices gasped, then pointed. “Look! We made it!”

Everyone turned their head toward the direction. There was a small rectangular cutout on the cavern’s side. A faint blue hue of light pulsed gently from inside the chamber.

“I guess we ran further than I thought. Let’s get inside,” Taniel said.

Elania blinked and stood up. It looked like she was going to find out how the waystations worked, sooner rather than later.