The demon snarled at Serenity. “You did this. You took my passion from me.” It didn’t wait for him to respond; instead, it charged.

This time, it wasn’t an insubstantial shadow where he only had to avoid the points. This time, it wasn’t a magical attack his ax could cut. This time, the demon wasn’t going to stay in the shadow that was no longer there.

Before the demon hit him, Serenity tossed the Wand of Severing to the side. If he kept ahold of it, all that would happen was breaking it and it was something he couldn’t easily replace. If someone landed on it, it would probably break, but this was the best chance he had to keep it around.

Serenity avoided the demon’s claws but he couldn’t avoid the demon itself. It slammed into him and they both found out which of the shorter, wider dragonblooded human and taller, thinner demon was more massive: the demon. Despite Serenity’s shield, the demon shoved Serenity backwards with its sheer weight. He wasn’t quite able to bring the ax up in time to hit the demon before it slammed into him; instead, it skidded off the stronger plating on the back of the demon’s arm.

“Demon,” the demon spat out the word. “Kill the demon lord.” Its claws stabbed into the shield emanating from Serenity’s robes before he could stop it.

The shield was holding, for now. Serenity didn’t know how long it would hold, but for the moment it gave him an advantage. He couldn’t get at the demon’s softer parts with his ax, so he grabbed his crystal hilt off his belt. A strike with the ax made the demon move to the side just enough that Serenity was able to get the hilt in position to strike the demon’s belly as he activated the manablade.

The demon’s claws scraped along the shield before it registered the pain from the Arcane-attuned blade in its belly. It roared in pain, but didn’t let go; instead, it wrapped its ridiculously long arms around Serenity and his shield and pulled him closer. It then attempted to bite his shoulder, but its fangs slid off the shield just as the claws had. His shield gave a little under the stress but the teeth still didn’t quite reach his clothing, much less his skin.

Serenity assumed it was trying to keep him from pulling the weapon out. It didn’t manage that, but it did make it so that he didn’t have any leverage; he’d have to deactivate the blade if he wanted it back. He would have preferred to use the blade to tear up the demon’s insides, but even a manablade couldn’t cut through something sturdy without some strength behind it and he simply didn’t have the leverage.

Serenity regretted his lack of Skills; he didn’t have nearly as many options as a normal Tier Eight would have, even if he did have the attributes for it. His Death Field was still up, so he pulled his aura in close to himself. It wouldn’t be fast but it would progressively weaken the demon. It probably wouldn’t be fast enough to save his rapidly weakening shield, but it would help.

The demon’s claws skittered on Serenity’s shield as he twisted in its grasp. He released both of his weapons in an attempt to free himself. He couldn’t quickly recover the manablade but leaving it in the demon’s guts seemed useful, while he could easily call the ax to his hand later. He wasn’t strong enough to break free if the demon had a good grip on him, but it didn’t; Serenity pushed against it and quickly slid down, then ducked out from under the demon’s arms.

When the demon lunged for him again, it was claws-out in an attempt to skewer Serenity on the points. Serenity moved to the side, but once again was not quite quick enough; this time, while most of the force was blunted by the shield, the claws did tear a hole in the robe at Serenity’s side. The shield would give less and less protection as it failed; he was lucky he’d gotten as much out of it as he had.

Serenity called his ax to his hand and moved away from the demon. He felt very rusty; he hadn’t fought anyone faster and stronger than himself who was trying to kill him in years. Possibly just subjective years, but it still counted. His only advantage seemed to be that the demon was, if anything, even worse than he was; it didn’t quite seem to know what to do when it couldn’t strike from the shadows.

As he circled to get a better position, something behind the demon caught Serenity’s eye; there was something very bright with magical potential on the floor. The demon had to have dropped it when the fight started; he’d have to deal with it after the fight.

Or would he? If it was important to the demon, maybe it would move to protect it?

This time, when the demon lunged at Serenity, Serenity was ready for it. He kicked off against the wall to his left and slid on air quickly to his right, a fast movement that was only possible because of his footwraps. It shouldn’t work twice, but once might be enough; Serenity quickly grabbed his manablade as he went by, cutting the hole wider as he slipped past the demon.

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The demon was caught by surprise and didn’t manage to stop itself before it was well past Serenity. It skidded against the stone floor and turned just in time to catch a thrown ax with its face. The ax did less damage than Serenity had hoped; it bloodied the demon’s nose and cut a line in its skin, but the demon’s skull was more than hard enough to stop the ax from doing more.

It turned out that this particular demon bled red blood.

It snarled again. Serenity couldn’t tell if it was wordless or if the demon actually said a mangled form of the word kill. Either way, that was clearly what it meant as the demon charged yet again.

Serenity couldn’t help but wish for a spear. Any polearm would have been useful here.

Once again, Serenity did not want to take the attack head-on, so he tried to dodge. Just like the first time, however, he wasn’t fast enough; this time, the demon anticipated his quick kick providing some additional sideways movement and stayed slow enough to deal with it.

That meant it had worked twice: it gave him more time. This time, he already knew he was going to be hit and decided he might as well get something out of it. Serenity used the extra moment to line up his manablade with the demon’s upper chest. He already knew it could stab through the demon’s skin; he might as well try to repeat that in an area that was likely to have some vital parts.

The manablade penetrated the demon’s chest at almost the same moment that its claws tore through his now-failed shield and penetrated an inch into his chest near his left shoulder. The demon tore long slashes as it drug its claws up to the shoulder and out of his flesh.

Serenity didn’t have to look down to know that he wasn’t bleeding red blood. His blood was translucent with a shifting multicolored sheen.

Serenity’s left hand felt weaker than it should, which was a very bad thing when that was the hand that held the manablade. He tried to drag the manablade out as he dodged away from the demon, but it seemed to be stuck; with a manablade, he knew that said more about the damage to his shoulder joint than it did about the position of the blade. The blade stayed in the demon a second time.

Serenity danced around the demon again as he called his ax back to his right hand. The mana-bright light caught his eye again; he’d somehow ended up with the demon between him and it once again. It was so bright that there had to be a significant power source supplying a significant enchantment; Serenity wondered what it was for. Whatever it was, Serenity doubted he wanted it on his father’s island.

The demon was weakening. Between the Death Field and the two large injuries he’d given it, it was in bad shape. Serenity expected another charge; after all, he was weakened with his damaged shoulder. This was the best opportunity the demon had to take him out. It hadn’t given him any sign of higher thought, only anger and a willingness to charge into danger regardless of the outcome.

That was one of the things that made it so dangerous. The demon was utterly committed to every attack, right or wrong, and it was strong enough to smash through Serenity’s defenses if he tried to get fancy.

The demon didn’t do what Serenity expected; it didn’t charge. Perhaps it had decided that was fruitless, despite Serenity’s injury. Instead, it backed up several steps and muttered to itself. Serenity had to strain to make out the words.

“Killed my darkness … the demon lord must die. To the surface … no, death. He must die, command and retribution. Kill him for killing me. Bring Darkness to us both. Yes. Darkness for all. The Dark is mine!” The demon’s words rose to a screech as it turned and leapt towards the magic stone on the floor.

Serenity did not want to know what it did, so he hurried after the darkness-obsessed demon. Unfortunately, he hadn’t expected the direction it went and he’d already discovered that he wasn’t as fast as it was unless he was running through unobstructed territory while it beat down walls.

The demon got to the stone first. Once again, Serenity’s expectations were broken when it didn’t activate it as a magic item. Instead, the demon crushed it between its clawed hands.

Serenity had a moment to swear at himself for running towards something he definitely should have been running away from and another moment to see the grin the demon gave as it turned towards him. The third moment was a moment of realization as magic blasted from the crushed stone: he wasn’t looking at a magic item at all, at least not in the ordinary sense. He was looking at part of a magic item.

Specifically, he was looking at a mana storage crystal. It was a very, very large mana storage crystal, too, at almost a foot in diameter and half that at the thinner elongated ends. Mana storage crystals were larger than the equivalent monster cores but they were reusable; non-delvers who had access to enough money to pay a good enchanter used them for all sorts of things.

One that large could easily run a base as large as the Viper’s continuously, even full of people, as long as there was enough mana input. It probably couldn’t have run all of Stallet Academy, but two of them would be sufficient for the teaching part of the Academy, even with powering the protections that kept students from harming themselves too badly in the practice areas. A third would probably have been needed for the external defenses. Serenity suspected that something extra would be needed to power the teachers’ experiments as well.

There was one large downside to mana storage crystals that monster cores didn’t suffer from, however: mana storage crystals were volatile if they were damaged, and they could be damaged simply by time and use. This one seemed to be in good shape right up until the demon’s claws tore it apart.

The bright not-light Serenity could see with his magesight became blinding as the mana crystal shattered. The demon disappeared almost immediately, leaving only the memory of its triumphant grin.