Sitting cross legged on the roof of a building a few blocks away from my targets, carefully loading advanced ammunition into an oversized rifle braced on a stable stack of debris really made me feel much more like a fun action hero and not a luck-reliant comedy protagonist.

Everything else about my situation did the opposite. My ammunition was technically advanced, being magically crafted as vaguely football shapes with fins, each filled with chlorine trifluoride I felt compelled to gently hum lullabies to, lest it decide sitting around wasn’t fun enough and combust. The whole ‘chemicals having personalities’ was still both confusing and concerning to me, but it was easier to just go along with it at this point- and it had let me still have all my limbs, so I had to begrudgingly admit it was effective.

My oversized rifle was a jankier-than-normal potato cannon. Not to be confused with Potatocannon, who I feel would have approved my choice of weaponry. The ‘rifle’ was held together by lots of glue and lots of magic. Heavy use of [Improvised Weapon Proficiency] was necessary since I preferred if the compressed mixture of air and silane was able to explode in a controlled manner to propel my ammunition at the demons, and not shrapnel at me. Additionally, the inevitable hot gas from combustion would have to be covered up by a cloud of cold tear gas to hopefully not alert the likely heat-sensitive demon to my position.

Still quietly humming, I made some adjustments to my aim, feeling the magic holding the weapon together also wanting to make slight adjustments. A little more ULE poured into imparting accuracy into the rifle resulted in feeling that a little more shimmying was necessary.

Just as I was physicing myself up to shoot the first shot, the virtual machine running the communication and coordination program spiked in resource utilization and was terminated before it could cause any larger issues. The sudden interruption made me lose focus on the ClF3, which started to wake up and get excited. In a panic, I ejected the round off the side of the building with only the gas pressure, just before it burst into flames.

Between all the things that needed my attention, the danger of the powerful demon came out on the top of my priorities. Confusingly, it hadn’t reacted to the sudden fire- a fact my still freaking out mind noted but didn’t dwell on.

Immediately deadly threats taken care of, I calmed down and tried to reboot the VM to ask what happened, only to find it was completely dead. I wasn’t exactly great with computers, but everything I tried ended up doing nothing. Switching plans, I tried to signal one of the lure-drones that Carlos had been vaguely following me with. After almost a minute of waving at them, I realized they were stationary- only maintaining position like they had lost connection to their controller.

Taking a minute to think things through, I decided to send my thankfully still operational drone to the command center. It would take quite a while even going in a straight line as fast as it could, but it was only a backup in case Carlos or one of the other MGs couldn’t get in contact with me first.

For now, I would continue with my plan of attack. Since no one had said not to while I was preparing, it was likely that I’d be able to deal with the demon if I was careful and smart about it. Still shaking slightly, I repeated my motions of preparing and loading the air rifle- the hummed lullaby working to calm both me and the chemicals as I lined up the shot again.

It wasn’t in any way ergonomic to brace my contraption, but it was certainly a good thing I did. The projectile was much heavier than a normal bullet and the speed it got from both the gas’ expansion and its near homogeneous ignition imparted a lot of force into it. Ignoring the sore shoulder, I focused on keeping the ClF3 calm as it parted the cold cloud of teargas and sailed on a gently arcing trajectory. Another splinter of my mind maintained the aim-helping magic, subtly nudging the shot to counteract gusts of wind and avoid hitting a wooden cross brace in the window I was shooting through.

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Once the shell of the projectile shattered, there was very little I could- or wanted- to do to prevent the chlorine trifluoride from erupting in a wave of flames. The distance made it much more difficult to have fine control over my chemicals. Instead I pushed appreciable chunks of ULE into bolstering the flames and siccing them on the more robust looking demons.

Any and all of the extensive property damage I considered to be permissible.

The sudden eruption of heat off to one side attracted the sword-arm demon’s attention this time. While it didn’t move its body, it did turn its head to let the slightly larger eyes look in the fire’s direction. It made no effort to help its brethren, simply watching for a few seconds as I carefully reloaded before turning back to look at its disgusting collection of bodies.

Musket-like reload finished, I repeated my actions as best as possible. The new target was the cluster of demons in the building next to the one I had just set on fire. The angle was a lot tighter, being a shot through a partially open door instead of a slightly side-on window. In preparation to hopefully give myself a bit more leeway, I had thickened the front of the projectile so it had a better chance of skipping off a surface on its way through the doorway.

Like before, I let [Improvised Weapon Proficiency] guide my aim, opening the valve and inducing ignition as I broke from humming to take a breath.

The shot went low, but was perfectly aligned laterally. This ended up better than if it had been higher as the projectile bounced off the gravel to the side of the door’s path, coming up to chest hip height where I pushed the incendiary liquid to burst free. The combined forces resulted in the ClF3 spraying out in a cone, bathing the interior of the room in a blanket of death.

Again, the sword-arm demon only turned its head to look in the general direction of the new fire. At this point, I assumed it either didn’t care about any other demons or, more likely, simply had an alien way of thinking that excused their deaths.

Now somewhat familiar with the process, reloading took half as long- a little of the time saved coming from not needing to alter the shell of the projectile. Targets on the right side of the courtyard taken care of, I readjusted to be able to hit the ones on the left.

The first was another relatively easy window shot. Especially with my perks and magic doing most of the work. It was still a little strange putting ULE into something and getting unplaceable feelings like, “I need to sit up a little straighter,” or “I should lean a tiny bit to the left” as I acted upon them. It helped that all the… advice was accurate and made shots that should have been impossible actually feasible. While I only had two data points to support that, both would have been absolute crapshots without the magical guidance.

As I monitored the projectile's flight, I readied myself to try to repeat the previous shot’s effectiveness. Just before the shot broke through the window, I stopped humming and roused the chlorine trifluoride to its excitable state- seeing it burst the shell almost too soon. Like before the conical spread of the already burning liquid caught every demon, quickly incapacitating them as the room started burning.

Seeing the sword demon turn like before I nodded at myself at the indecipherable but consistent reaction. However, as I was prepping the shot’s payload, it turned its head to face the final group of demons waiting around the courtyard. It slowly stood, joints bending backwards to make what I thought of as its back the new front, and raised the normal hand, palm open where the group of demons were.

I only briefly picked up ULE focusing in its palm before a diagonal line cut through the building and demons, anything flammable the line intersected catching fire.

It then slowly and almost elegantly moved to the center of the courtyard where it stopped for a few seconds. As this had been going on, I decided to lay down while reloading, staying out of sight from the demon. Whatever thinking or waiting it had been doing now done, it aimed its palm vaguely near me and carved an increasingly deep line from a nearby building's rooftop to its feet.

It didn’t take an expert to guess it was challenging me to fight it more directly. At the range I had shot from, the heat-beam would have maybe felt like a blowdryer being pointed at me, but anything a hundred feet and in looked exponentially more painful.

Since I wasn’t an idiot, I took the opportunity to shoot it with my final shot.