[TTIABAD] Chapter 118: A Fight for your Life

Beams rained down all around me but none reached me. My claws twisted, grabbing one of the innumerable holes that now pockmarked the ground. I felt my momentum shift, being aerial for a moment, as I predicted correctly where Rinkaru would appear.

My tail slashed out and-

Missed. No, not missed. For the first time, I managed to hit Rinkaru. I saw her being flung out and wasted not a second in sprinting at full speed away as my blood coated the ground. But my eyes and analyze were already informing me of something terrible. An energy barrier. One that had to be passive.

Give me a break…

The distance I gained was nearly pointless as Rinkaru teleported back near me, trying to come out from under me. The only reason I could dodge at all was instinct. I saw a beam coming at me but my body dove through it. I didn’t understand at that moment, not at these insane speeds, and fear slammed into my heart as I saw it approach my head. It hit me dead on… and did nothing. Another beam came from behind me, right where I just was.

Fuck. She had mixed in a harmless feint. My analyze was as fast as my thoughts but my thoughts weren’t fast enough for this fight. I moved, feeling like I had transcended my body. I was moving so fast, dodging so quickly, it didn’t even feel like sweat, heat, the beating of my heart, or the pouring of my blood had time to reach my brain. It was all decisions, a million split second decisions that decided whether I lived or died.

“Enough!” I heard a voice call out but my body never stopped moving, running away, gaining distance. Then I felt it, a ball of energy, of force hovering in the sky. It was like a second sun had erupted in the air, bigger than a five story building. The power radiating off it sent cold sweat pouring down my neck.

Massive in scope… before it exploded downwards.

I felt my mind heat up as my analyze went into overdrive, as thousands of laser beams fell towards me practically instantly. There was no dodging this. No surviving this. My analyze kept screaming the same thing as a rain of death fell down towards me. It felt like there were millions of answers but only one way to live. I moved, jumped into the air, and spun into a ball, bending into a shape that would’ve put me in the record books for contortionists. My tail spun around me, extending over my smaller form twice, and my arm flashed out with my claws.

The lasers fell like bullets.

I’d angled in a way that many hit my tail, searing through it, biting into my body all around as it tossed me through a certain path. My claws managed to deflect two beams that would’ve pierced my head. The rest hit me dead on, searing holes through my body.

When it was done, I slammed into the ground, more holes than man. The beams had been smaller, more numerous, but comparatively weaker. That meant little when a B-Grade attacks a C-Grade. I stood, my legs filled with holes, my last remaining arm filled with holes, small divots an inch deeper going all throughout my body, and my tail… it fell apart around me, turned into swiss cheese.

Even my head had not fully escaped unharmed. I felt a distinct lack of an ear, a very scary inch deep hole in my neck, and my remaining horn had been vaporized and my skull burnt into. But I was alive. Bleeding out profusely but alive.

Rinkaru teleported in front of me but neither of us moved for the moment. She simply stared at me, standing there, unfazed. For once, she looked slightly winded.

“That’s… this is impossible. I can not believe a C-Rank could survive that.” She said. Her pink eyes were open wide in disbelief.

I didn’t trust myself to speak. Not for any emotional reasons, but simply because the damage to my body was so extreme that it was only through an absolutely constant use of aura that I was standing and still alive, let alone trying to do anything else. My body may have been still but my mind wasn’t. It was speeding up, ramping up, trying to find a way out. A way to live, to dodge, to move, to escape, to survive.

“You are a terrifying creature Demon. Far too strong, far too powerful. Ending you here before you grew anymore is the good fortune of the world.” Rinkaru said, before a massive amount of energy coalesced into her small palms. It grew and grew, becoming half as strong as the small sun she had just unleashed onto me.

I was going to die.

My analyze burned, my thoughts went faster and faster, time seemed to slow down.

There was no way out. There was no taking damage to continue to survive. My analyze, my Power Gauge, it slammed the information into my brain. No last second alternates, no words I could say, no creative use of Aura.

These were my limits. This was my end. I glared down at Rinkaru as she unleashed a blast the size of my body.

It fell towards me, arriving instantly. Less an energy beam and more like an energy wall. Death had arrived. My emotions sparked, terror going through me.

But it paled in comparison to what else I was feeling.

I was angry, but only barely. I was extremely scared, but so what? I was unhappy and annoyed and worried, but those weren’t too abnormal feelings in this kind of fight. More than anything else… I felt refusal and confidence.

I would not die here and I would survive.

My analyze screamed at me that I was wrong. That this was it. That I had no way forward. That I had reached my limits. I simply snorted. Yeah yeah, I’ve heard it before. There’s always another powerful idiot or monster or warrior in my path it seems. Always another person trying to step on me. Getting yanked this way and that, a life without too much rest or relaxation. Didn’t I already say? Didn’t I already realize when I’d fought for a month straight with Xilvia? So long as I exist, there would always be suffering and life or death battles. There would always be new enemies, new close calls, new adventures, new problems.

I was an enemy to the world, a threat to the natural order, a monster that Emperors and Empresses feared the rise of.

And to survive?

All I had to do was break through my limits.

*****

Rinkaru was disturbed. Greatly disturbed. She had come down to the dungeon to specifically end this insult to her species. She had fought in those wars, her family and sisters had fought in those wars, and now for less than the time it takes to make a cup of tea humans were trying to join forces with demons? She’d seen it before, despicable cultists and monsters in human skin trying to make deals.

But a demon joining a Hero team? So openly and brazenly?

Unacceptable. Fairies were meant to protect and guard mankind and they did! They had done more for them than any other species. Humans worshipped and respected them, even their innate xenophobia falling away over the literal Ages they had worked together, and now a kingdom was already trying to make amends and work together with the Enemy?

If someone had told her it would happen in five thousand years, she might have believed it, even if her heart refused.

Ten? Ten years? It might as well have been a single day after the war. She would tear this demon apart and this team and would scour the kingdom they came from, looking for signs of corruption. And she wouldn’t be the only one. But it all started with getting rid of these pests.

And yet the demon lived. Few monsters survived her attacks, B-Rank or otherwise. And yet a C-Rank demon had survived her. Not just one or two attacks, but hundreds, possibly thousands of her attacks. Even the finisher she had made for particularly tough, large, or fast enemies had been survived. It was… daunting. In all her years of combat, in all her travels, nothing had managed that. She was eternally grateful she’d found this Demon now and not when it had grown. That would have been dangerous.

She readied her attack, firing it out… only to feel herself be launched across the field a moment later. Her energy protected her but before she could so much as teleport, she felt another three attacks slam into her, bouncing her around. She quickly teleported up and above, staring down at who had attacked her.

Cold sweat and shock infused her at the sight.

The Demon was alive. Her attack had been dodged and now suffusing over it like a second skin, was a red aura. It filled all the holes of his body, even going so far as creating an aura tail, wings, and horns where they should be. She felt it, she saw it, she knew immediately.

The Demon had broken through to B-Rank.

The next moment the creature practically vanished from her sight and she quickly teleported away, seeing a figure leaping through the air where she just was. Fast. Beyond fast. She had to end this… immediately.

*****

I was on a timer. That was the first thing I realized as I felt my soul erupt sending an insane amount of power coursing through my existence. As I felt my aura grow and change and adapt, as I felt my speed skyrocket, as I dodged the undodgeable and attacked relentlessly. That I was on a timer.

My wounds were not magically healed, my blood was not magically back inside my body, I had the benefit of feeling my flesh grow stronger in a myriad of ways that dazzled me but I was running out of time. Miraculously, I felt like I could survive the blood loss for longer, but not forever.

My body was practically running off Aura at this point and I needed to kill this damn fairy right the hell now. I had attacked, using my feet to try and crush her with all my speed, hitting her multiple times, but her energy barrier had blocked it all.

One way or another… I had to end this… immediately.