Chapter 28: Flash and Thunder |
The demon twisted mid-air, reacting faster than it should’ve managed. It flared its wings, one lagging like a busted rudder, leg jerking to compensate – flashing grace it shouldn’t have had, not after that blast. One of their shots caught the right wing, ripping through the membrane near the base; didn’t sever it, but purple blood punched out with a satisfying tear he could almost taste. The second landed better – plugged the left leg above the knee, gouging flesh and scraping bone. Not a kill, but enough to make it pay. The last went wide, damn near hitting a tree instead, bark splintering off to the side.
Damn. Cole worked his bolt. One astray he’d curse in a perfect world, but two out of three was more than this beast had earned.
It hit the ground hard, leg buckling and eyes flashing up at him. Its eyes flashed up, slits of pure rage boring into him, no hint of that previous swagger. The kingly glare had vanished; all that remained was the raw, lashing kick of a pissed-off animal. Hell, a cornered animal.
Blood pooled beneath, wing sagging like a kite snapped mid-flight. Yeah, it was still upright, still lethal, but its sheen was cracking. They had a foothold that they could press.
Cole had the bolt halfway home, lining up the other knee, when it shifted onto its good leg. Then it was gone. No flash-step fanfare – just one brutal, upward surge, launching off that single limb with a force that split the ground where it kicked free. The canopy gulped it down before the rifle’s click echoed back, leaves rustling as it vanished. Gone, just like that.
That wasn’t a retreat, not with that look. It wasn’t just taking a breather, either.
Cole’s neck prickled. He didn’t need a mana detection spell to feel the overpowering wave of magic that just blanketed the forest. The clouds started to churn overhead, purple hues concentrating in multiple locations above. Between that and the tingling buzz on his skin, it was obvious what the Vampire Lord was going for.
Mack’s shout beat him to it. “LIGHTNING!”
Cole glanced down at the mud underfoot – wet, treacherous, a conductor begging to fry him if a bolt got close. One stray hit and he’d be figuratively and literally cooked, armor notwithstanding. Of course, it was Slayer Elite gear, jam-packed with high-end defensive enchantments, but he’d have to be out of his mind to bank on that. Or be out of options. Neither applied – not yet, anyway.
Sustaining both – an overhang of clay and a moat of mud – tempted him; shit, he could almost taste the triumph of pulling it off. No, that wasn’t his forte. That sense of ambition was as faulty as it had been against those Mimics. He’d considered riding a barrier out the window then – float down on it like some magic carpet. It was too far-fetched though; too much of a gamble on skills he hadn’t honed yet.
Fuck it. Best stick with prudence.
He yanked the water from the ground beneath him, clay hardening fast. He raised the dried formation into a sloped overhang above him – thick, angled, and ready to take the hits.
Mack matched him, shaping his own clay bunker. Elina followed suit across the way, finishing hers just as the sky broke.
Bolts tore down, white hot and booming. One slammed Cole’s overhang, the crack damn near about to split his ears despite his hearing protection. Another ripped into a tree twenty feet out, completely shattering it. Wood shards blasted outward like shrapnel. Their barriers caught the worst of it, flaring blue-white as wood chunks pinged off it, some sizzling where sap met heat.
For an injured demon, it sure as hell didn’t act injured. Just his luck to face off against some nameless king pulling out a second phase – hopefully hadn’t healed itself. Even worse, this was real life. No respeccing any ‘builds’, no luxury of respawning. If the Vampire Lord had yet another phase waiting, they’d be completely fucked. They needed to end this as fast as possible, but how? It hadn’t even shown itself yet.
Cole edged to the overhang’s lip. He squinted through the lightshow for the Vampire Lord. Bad move – a bolt jagged sideways, bending like it smelled his armor, and smashed his barrier into a shower of sparks. The force shoved him back with nothing more than an afterimage seared into his eyes. “Oh, shit.”
He ducked deeper under the clay dome, back pressed against hardened earth. Visibility was a joke – the overhang that kept him from getting fried now blocked half his field of view. The lightning transformed everything into a strobing nightmare – flash, dark, flash, dark – each bolt casting wild shadows that twisted the forest into a living Rorschach test. Cole couldn't track shit through that chaos, let alone accurately aim at a speed blitzer.
It seemed like two out of three wasn’t enough after all. Just like Icarus, they’d gotten that rush of success. Now, here they were, watching their own wax melt – plummeting, hoping they wouldn’t get fully burnt.
Lightning hammered down without letting up, bolts smashing into the earthen overhang one after another. Each hit jarred Cole, rattling his teeth, threatening to split the damn thing apart. He pushed mana into it, reinforcing the structure as much as he could. His spine began to protest – his reserves were running thin.
He reached for his vest pockets, pulled a mana potion, and knocked it back. At this point, the bitterness seemed less like a stranger and more like an acquaintance. It was still unpleasant, of course – perfect for monetizing if he could ever figure out a recipe to remedy the taste a bit – but it did its job, and that was enough for now.
The only concern? He didn’t know how long it’d last for. Would it be enough to outlast the Vampire Lord? He had three more vials to spare, could drag this out, maybe. But it wasn’t a lock. The storm sure looked like it’d be mana-intensive, but so did their modernized fireballs. What if the bastard barely tapped its well for this? Or siphoned the ambient mana to power its spell? No way to know, and that lack of intel dug at him.
He needed something. Move the overhang? Keep it sliding, use it as mobile cover? Sure, he could, but then what? Roam blind with no target? Huddle up with Mack and Elina, make it easy for that thing to carve them all at once? Bad idea.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The bastard was up there somewhere, calling these shots. To consistently slam into their defenses, it must be perched with a clear line of sight to all three of them. Not an exact fix, but that still cut the possibilities down hard – had to be above, eyes on them, not skulking off in the brush. Hell, a rough guess was plenty. They’d knocked it off its throne once before with concussive fireballs, blasted its senses into a tailspin and sent it crashing down dazed. Same move could crack this stalemate; just unload a barrage into the canopy and force it out where they could see it bleed. He readied a flame, applying his first layer of air over it.
He tensed to signal the play to the others, but a lightning bolt sliced under Elina’s overhang, viciously precise. It slammed the ground barely a foot from her. She jerked back quickly, but that sliver of distraction was the respite the enemy needed.
The Vampire Lord plunged through her roof like a guillotine, smashing the structure apart. Even with its leg banged up, it still moved like it owned the fight.
Just his fucking luck, alright. It just had to jump the gun. Cole lined up the shot, but Elina was too close, right in the mix. One slip, and he’d tag her instead. Mack held his fire as well.
She’d been forced alone, but thank God her reaction speed outpaced theirs. She’d willed the ground underneath the demon to slide back – trying to make it slip. It stepped through, easy, like it knew the move. Simultaneously, her rifle cracked, a shot ripping out before he could blink – too fast to see where it went. A purple splatter suggested a hit, at least, but it didn’t deter the Vampire Lord in the slightest. It continued with its swing, contact inevitable.
Elina had prepared for the worst. She’d already brought up her other hand, bracer rising to block the swing. She kept going, though – earth wall in front, a barrier right behind, and her bracer set to catch the rest. Three layers, solid, thrown up in a heartbeat.
Too bad reaction speed and intelligence didn’t buy her a damn thing against that blade. It tore through the earth wall like it was fragile pottery, split the barrier with a flash that stung Cole’s eyes, and smashed into her bracer with a clang that hit like a gunshot. The force was obscene – blasted Elina off her feet and sent her flying back at a speed that blurred her into a streak, like some anime brawler launched across the screen.
She vanished from sight, cutting through the forest – crashing into trees just as he had and snapping trunks with sharp cracks that faded into a low rumble. A dust cloud billowed up about fifty meters out, swallowing whatever she’d hit, and Cole’s chest seized. He’d just have to trust she was alright; focus on making the demon pay.
But he didn’t even get a second to chase that thought. The Vampire Lord swiveled right out of the strike and closed half the gap in an instant, still darting faster than anything that wounded should move.
Cole gripped his rifle and fired, missing. It smelled blood and came charging – fine, let it try. He smelled blood too.
The Vampire Lord ate the distance – twenty meters down to ten in a blink, a shadow hauling ass straight for him. Cole’s gut clenched; he’d be lying if he said it didn't scare the shit out of him – that baleful aura, that sword, all screaming death. Still, the tighter it closed, the better his odds stacked. It hit five meters, just one more step from a swing that could lop his head off. Close enough. He dropped the hammer.
He spawned a conical barrier right above its head and flung his flashbang spell, detonating it right between its head and the cone. The concussive force had nowhere to go but down. The shockwave slammed into it like a thunderclap forged in a furnace. Pressure. Heat. Sound. All forced into a brutal, focused eruption, rattling bone, frying its hypersensitive eardrums, and blinding it with a burst of searing white light.
It stopped its lunge, brought down in a moment of pure, suffocating agony. Perfectly immobilized.
Cole bent the surrounding earth to his will, mana ripping out. The hardened mud exploded upward in a jagged cone spiking up, not just around the Vampire Lord but into it. He knew the bastard could smash stone – hell, it’d probably rip through this clay without breaking a sweat. But like with any other living creature, such a maneuver assumed its muscles had the freedom to move. Strength meant nothing when the body had nowhere to put it.
Raw power wouldn’t break it. Brute force only wedged the creature in tighter – made its own muscle resistance fight against itself. The good knee, though? Cole left it pinned but jutting out, trapped tight in the cone’s grip, exposed just enough for a clear shot – a bullseye he’d planned from the jump.
Cole snapped his rifle up and fired point-blank, right into that good knee. The shot cracked loud, bullet ripping through cartilage and bone with a wet, satisfying snap. Purple blood sprayed out, coating its earthen prison.
The Vampire Lord let out a scream – first crack in its visage all damn fight, a sound so sweet it hit Cole like a tune he’d been dying to hear, and he soaked it up. An uncontrollable grin spread across his lips as he called out, “Mack, light the motherfucker up!”
Mack squared up, feet planted like he was daring the ground to buck him off, and Cole knew he wasn’t playing soft anymore. No trace of that cautious first test, all the shackles taken off – this was full throttle, mana pouring out like he’d opened a vein.
First came the ignition: a furious knot of flame compressed under double barriers, the front tapering into a razor-sharp cone. It started a lurid yellow, growing brighter as Mack added in more air, topping it off with compacted shards of earth. But as he poured more mana into it, something changed. The flame’s center flared from orange to a brilliant white-hot corona, then finally stabilized into a pulsing blue at the edges, like the heart of a star – complete combustion.
Holy shit. Mack was going supernova.
As Cole fell back, he slammed more mana into the earth, spiking another jagged rock into that bloodied knee – just for good measure. The brutal spike pinned it deeper, earning another roar of pain from the demon.
Mack’s entire form trembled, but his focus never wavered. He shaped the outer barrier into a cone and added a small aperture in the back to vent the pressurized air – just like a missile. The rock fragments spun in an orbit, barely hanging on. Even from a few paces away, Cole could feel the air heat up, a flame so powerful that the heat leaked through the barriers. It sweltered and turned the surrounding air into a shimmering mess, like he was standing next to an open furnace.
The Vampire Lord’s voice cut through then, uttering its first words. They came out as not some feral snarl, but with a cold, refined fury that fit its throne.
“Behold what filth appears before the Vampire Lord K’hinnum – mortals presuming authority over a vessel of the Demon Lord’s will. Through what arrogance do you challenge powers that have devoured civilizations when your ancestors still dwelled in caves? Your feeble resistance offends Their vigil, not mine alone. You think yourselves victorious, goaded by lies of salvation, beguiled into complacency by the hubris of your Heroes. I say unto you, neither shield shall guard you, nor prayer deliver you, nor love preserve you when the Legion comes to claim what belongs to the Darkness – when I return to exact the wages of your sins and feast upon your despair!”
Cole raised a magic barrier – hopefully strong enough to shield them from Mack’s spell. “Then we’ll just keep sending you back where you belong.” He gave Mack a nod.
Mack finished forming his spell, the fireball culminating in a blue flash. “Burn in hell.”