Demoness 2 - Chapter 38 - Civil War (Pt. 3) (Patreon)

The intensity of the sounds of fighting and the density of hostile monks increased as they pushed through the fortress toward their goal.

Several more groups went down in a whirlwind of [Power] infused fingers. Elania looked back at Yolani, who looked at her with a worried expression.

“Your robe looks good. They won’t notice,” Elania said.

Yolani nodded. “Same.”

Elania let out a tense breath as Gaston and Henri finished putting on the robes they’d picked out from the pile. It had taken several tries before she got the knack of taking out some monks without ruining their clothes.

Or getting them excessively bloody. She could have absorbed the dead to solve that part; but part of the disguise required her not to be glowing like a yellow orb of raw [Power].

Disguises were necessary. There was no way that they could make it through the single chokepoint without them. They’d tried and been forced to retreat; there were just too many monks rushing across the bridge.

It was a bit of a shock. The Fortress was large, yes, but she had no idea that there was essentially an entire district worth of people living inside of it.

That would be their way out, though. With the chaos, no one was going to notice five more monks charging into the battle.

Gaston hid his sword, and each of them carried one of the staves the monks favored.

A distant explosion powerful enough to shake the chamber they were in sent a spike through Elania’s core. If the bridge went down, they would be trapped inside with the enemy.

“We should hurry,” Gaston said.

No one objected to that.

They made their way through several corridors they had scouted before and then they arrived in a chamber with a large, open archway overhead.

Overhead, two high-ranking monks were watching and directing the groups filing into the room. One pointed at Gaston and gestured toward the massing group of monks.

The five of them obeyed silently. That was in line with expectations, Elania realized.

The other monks that had already gathered were silent, eerily so. All of them were facing away, so they slotted into the mass.

More monks followed them in, producing a claustrophobic feeling as they were surrounded.

Elania let out a quiet breath. Were they really using human wave tactics to assault the city? How had they had things organized so quickly?

The longer they waited, the more her mind raced with questions.

The door everyone was facing finally cracked open, and the first of the monks began to file out. That took longer than she expected, and Elania’s mind wandered to tune into the distant sounds of spells and gunfire.

Yolani tugged on her arm when it was finally their turn to move.

“Thanks,” Elania mumbled, before offering a grateful glance.

When they passed through the door, the bridge came into sight.

It was a long, solid stone arch that was wide enough for two dozen people, and it was clear what was causing the slowdown: there were multiple gathering rooms that were releasing monks onto the bridge at the same time.

They all moved in a slow shuffle until they reached the neck of the bridge, and then it was a mad rush, like someone pumping water through a hose that was too small.

The reason for that was obvious as a cannon erupted from far away, the solid stone ball slamming into a group of monks and sending stone and bodies flying out into the abyss.

Smaller firearms continued a constant beat of smaller eruptions, and the chokepoint was a bloodbath.

Yet, the fight wasn’t completely one sided. Magic flashed in the air, disrupting most of the musket fire, and everywhere Elania could see there were monks claiming more and more buildings on the other side.

There were far too few guards for the human wave washing over them, and the reason for that, she could only imagine, was the other series of explosions flashing in the distance on the pillar that housed the noble district. And the lift to the surface.

“Attention!” Gaston hissed at her as he grabbed her arm and pulled her forward. “We need to stick together.”

Elania nodded and slapped her cheeks. “Right.”

Grabbing Yolani’s hand, the five of them pushed forward with the wave. No one paid them any heed. That was good.

When it was their turn to begin to sprint, Elania moderated her footsteps to keep pace.

They were going to make it out of the wasp nest!

A distant echo heralded an incoming ball of metal. It moved faster than a normal human eye could track, but her senses were vibrating with contained [Power] just below her threshold.

Fuck.

No golden bell popped into place to protect them.

A glance told her the bridge was too crowded for her to find a way to throw her group out of the way. There wasn’t time to save anyone other than Yolani, anyway.

The “cannonball” was far larger than she realized, at least a meter in diameter. Maybe it wasn’t actually made of metal?

She almost stumbled on a body. The man hadn’t been dead for long, and she triggered her absorption ability and jumped forward.

“Elania!” Yolani shouted after her.

She didn’t look back; and instead channeled the additional source of [Power] into her fist.

Just before impact, she jumped up to meet it.

There was a resounding crack at the impact. A disc of energy spread out from her knuckles to redistribute the force more evenly, but even physics protested at what she was asking of the magic.

The giant sphere split down the middle in a jagged line and then exploded into two shards diverting to the left and right.

She’d been right; the cannonball was made of stone!

One shard dug a line into the monks behind them while the other flashed into the abyss below to strike the cliff face.

Then Newton took back control, and she slammed into the bridge with enough force to crack the stone in a circular spiderweb.

It felt like her bones had shattered; actually, that was exactly what had happened.

[Regeneration] kicked in with a series of warning messages she dismissed as normal before pushing herself back up onto her feet.

Yolani and Henri had stopped and were watching her with wide eyes. Gaston and the guide didn’t pause until they were further ahead.

The herd of rampaging monks in front of them had continued without missing a beat.

Behind her...

The flow had stopped; all of them were staring at her.

They raised their staves and began to chant together.

She turned back toward her friends. “Go! I’ll catch up!”

There was a single moment of hesitation, which she was grateful for, before they turned and did exactly that.

A wave of musket balls sent a spray of stone shards into the air as they impacted into the thickening mass of monks.

[Power: 1591/1623]

She was going to need a lot more than that to deal with the monks in front of her.

The first wave of spells came forward at her like a wall. She jumped back and grabbed a body and held it up as a shield, the [Power] motes forming into a ward before she could even absorb them properly.

The onslaught lasted for far longer than she expected, and she was slowly driven back by the sheer volume of golden light pouring onto her.

When it finally abated, her hand was smoldering, fingers blackened and charred. The edges of her clothes were smoking as well.

The shock on the monks’ faces was evident, and she took advantage of it to charge forward before they could blast her in unison again.

Her lips twitched into a grim smile as soon as she reached the first man.

Some of them seemed to realize the mistake because they tried to flee. Except there wasn’t anywhere to go, because the mass behind them was still pushing forward.

Wood snapped and cracked as staves were broken and she tossed bodies into the air off the bridge with concussive force. Wherever she could, she absorbed the dead to keep her [Power] up.

They finally realized the only escape was pushing forward past her.

That was not acceptable.

She was going to kill them all.

[Power] motes formed blades around her, allowing her to slice through flesh with ease, and that made her grim harvest even easier. A pressure began to build in the back of her neck as the field of light from the dead began to thicken into a mist.

[Your body has reached the limit of its capacity for Power!]

[Due to your high Power, Regeneration is enhanced!]

She’d collected too much, and it was nearing her limit to hold it all back from crushing her.

She realized the tide had shifted; the mass of humanity was fleeing back into the fortress.

Unacceptable.

[You have achieved maximum Divine Affinity. Would you like to attempt Seraph Transformation? Y/N]