“Sorry—you’re not really thinking of fighting that thing now, are you?”
Ashtoreth ran through the halls, backtracking to where they’d seen the giant carnage demon. Luftschloss was a little too heavy to comfortably shoulder at her current stats, so she was holding it with both hands, dragging across on the ground behind her.
“We’ve built a stock of resources, and I’ve gathered enough power.”
“You don’t even have your class.”
“This is the perfect way to get ahead.”
“You don’t even have your class!”
Ashtoreth grinned. “I will soon!”
“Did you see the size of that thing?”
Ashtoreth stopped for a second, then glanced meaningfully down at her greatsword. She looked back at Dazel, raised her eyebrows. “Obviously.”
“You’re insane!”
“Look—I get it, okay? I’m easy to underestimate. I think it’s because I’m so nice. Anyway, I’m not going to ask you to fight it with me—you don’t seem like you’re very strong.”
“I’m most definitely am not,” said Dazel, perking up immediately. “Good luck out there, master.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re the archfiend, after all,” said Dazel. “You’ve got the training. You’ve got the power. And you’ve definitely got the spirit.”
“You think I’m gonna die.”
“You are gonna die,” said Dazel. “And when you do, I’m going straight home to crawl into the deepest, most moist crevice I can find and forget that any of this ever happened.”
Within a few minutes they’d come back to the bend in the halls that would lead to the demon door.
“You can do it,” Dazel said tonelessly. “Just, uh, believe in yourself.”
Ashtoreth flashed him her teeth. “Oh, but I do. I really, really do.”
She moved around the corner, locking gazes once more with the six-eyed, colossal brute that was crouched in the middle of the stone bridge.
It let out a ground-shaking roar as she approached, but as before, didn’t move toward her.
She crossed the threshold of the doorway, stepping out onto the bridge. There was a flash of red light and a puff of smoke next to her, and Dazel appeared just as a studded door of burnt black iron slammed down behind them.
Dazel sighed.
Immediately once she’d come through the door, the demonic brute began to stomp toward them. Ashtoreth found that she could tag it, now:
{Carnage Hulk — Level 10 Boss}
She grabbed Luftschloss with both hands, heaving the sword up off the ground—then placed one leg against the iron door behind her and spent a hefty chunk of mana to launch the sword at the demon with a massive burst of force.
Luftschloss sped through the air between them, arcing under the pull of gravity even as it continued to accelerate, Ashtoreth pouring as much mana into the ability as she could.
It sped across the platform, toward one of the demon’s upper eyes… and then missed as the demon crouched low, continuing through the air to embed itself deep in the rocky wall on the other side of the chasm, cracks spidering out from where it had struck blade-down.
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“Whoops!” Ashtoreth said.
She charged at the demon as it continued to speed toward her, its footsteps so heavy they made the platform shake.
Then, just as they reached one another, she pulled on her sword. It didn’t come free of the stone wall—it was embedded too deep for that—and so the effect was to pull her toward it, giving her a sudden boost of speed that the demon hadn’t anticipated, allowing her to just barely dive clear of its snapping jaws, then roll to her feet and sprint past its blade-studded forelegs.
She made it past the demon’s hind legs a moment later, sprinting for one edge of the bridge, her eyes on Luftschloss….
Then she felt something slam into the middle of her back, sending her tumbling forward to crash to the ground, roll off the platform and fall into the pit below—it had whipped her with its tail just as she’d run clear of its body.
She flared her wings, using them along with what little magical flight she had to stop herself spinning and slow her fall to a controlled glide. She looked down as she descended to see that the bottom of the pit was strewn with smeared blood and the gore-covered bones of several humans.
She guided herself to land on a stone before the gore-pile, then craned her neck to look up at the platform as she rummaged through the heart-bag still affixed to her neck with some difficulty. She’d left herself only a small opening to grab out of, and the bag was on tight.
With a squish, she ate a heart and restored some [Blood], then ate another to fill her [Mana] to full. A moment later the demon’s head appeared over the edge of the platform, and, spotting her, the demon leapt into the pit.
Ashtoreth reached out and found Luftschloss still embedded in the stone above her, then sprinted toward it, leaping up onto the rock wall of the pit and pulling herself to the sword. Again, she spent a high amount of [Mana] to pull herself with great force, hard enough that she could run up the wall of the pit with wide bounds as the sword pulled her toward it.
The boss fell past her a moment later, the wind of its passage almost pushing her off balance as she made for her weapon. The stone beneath her feet shook a moment later as the great bulk of the demon collided with the pit floor.
She reached her sword, its blade facing downward from where it was embedded into the rock….
She pulled herself toward it, grabbing the hilt and flipping herself over it to land with both feet on its spine. Then she gripped the sword, planted her legs against the rock wall and heaved, pulling the blade free and leaping off the wall toward the bridge as she spread her wings and looked down on the demon below her and gave it a single command:
“Hate!” she told it.
Compared to the demon’s defenses, her command was so weak that it was nothing but a flicker of added rage in the demon’s mind, one moment of wrath in which it paused in its upward climb to look up at her and roar.
The sound of its hateful cry filled the cavern, shaking dust from the ceiling….
Ashtoreth’s [Mana] had already run dry, so she used the last of her [Blood] to push on Luftschloss, launching the greatsword downward and pushing herself higher into the air in the same moment.
Luftschloss shot downward with the combined forces of magic and gravity, the massive blade streaking down into the chasm and directly into the open mouth of the roaring demon.
The demon gave a choked cry as the blade buried itself deep in its innards. Above, Ashtoreth glided down onto the edge of the bridge, then reached into the bag around her neck and pulled out two hearts. She folded her wings behind her as she ate both hearts at once.
Below her, the demon writhe around on the ground. As it did, she braced herself against the platform, then reached down and yanked on her sword, tugging the blade through more of the creature’s innards as it howled in agony, thrashing on the ground and paying her no mind.
She waited until it had changed position, then pulled her sword toward her again, then repeated this process until she was out of [Blood] and [Mana].
Then she dismissed the blade and conjured it once more, creating the greatsword in one hand while she looked over the edge of the platform and licked some blood off her fingers, giggling.
Once she’d made the sword again, she regarded the writhing demon carefully, waiting for her chance before leaping off the platform, perching on the hilt of the sword with both hands and feet and using her limited flight to guide herself toward it.
“Look!” she commanded.
Again the command did very little—but it let the demon know she was coming, and its small influence was enough to get its head to snap up and look at her.
—Just in time for her to drive the point of Luftschloss directly through one of its largest eyes, hammering its head down into the rock beneath it as the blade tore straight through into brain. She spent another huge portion of [Mana] to force the blade in deeper, the counterforce throwing her up and backward.
{You gain and absorb 1 [Carnage Hulk Core]; Tier 1 Boss}
{Congratulations, you’ve absorbed enough power to advance your racial path!}
{Congratulations! You’ve absorbed enough power to choose your third Class Aspect!}
{Ding! You’ve absorbed enough power to gain a level! You will level up once you gain your class.}
She turned over once in the air, then landed before the boss’s carcass in a coiled crouch and grinned, spreading her arms as if she were a magician who had just finished performing a particularly spectacular magic trick.
“Ding!”