Thousands of demons had lined up in front of Ars the day the blue star appeared. Gemini, who remembered standing on the wall back then, watched alongside the stunned defenders of the wall as over fifty demons flew up, before slamming into the walls in what literally was a suicide bombing.
Hundreds of defenders would have fallen into the ravenous crowd of monstrous demons below, if Gemini didn’t break out of his stunned state in time, but even then, the Constellation couldn’t save everyone. The great walls of Ars were too vast for his qi to catch them all in time, and the demons atop the walls could only watch as some of their peers fell to their doom below.
And for the first time that day, Gemini understood what hissatsu entailed. The demons on the ground had torn into the fallen demons, carving apart their bodies to reveal a small orb, which would be promptly swallowed. From what the Constellation understood, these orbs contained the awareness of any demon. So long as it survived, a demon could rebuild its body slowly, or be instantly revived by their tribe. But if it was destroyed...
There were some discrepancies between these demons and the undying demons of legend, but Gemini wasn’t in the mood to find out then.
After thirty minutes of repelling climbers, the horde finally retreated, leaving nothing but dead corpses behind. Their dead allies were also thoroughly killed without any reservation, an act that made no sense to Gemini and Ars-Maia when they inspected the scene later.
From that day on, the demons of Ars Tribe stayed away from the battlements’ edge. Suicide bombings by the attackers had become a daily thing, but their attackers had grown more judicious about employing these tactics. They would join their fellows in climbing the walls, and after baiting enough defenders to start impeding their advance, some of them would detonate on the spot, killing the demons around them and damaging the wall to create a foothold. Fortunately, nothing else happened when two more stars suddenly appeared in the skies, but hysteria had taken hold for a few minutes when the sky was split into four different colours.
But the fact that the defenders were taking more and more irreplaceable casualties was undeniable. Gemini’s lessons on how to use artefacts, especially the Straight Shot, was the main reason why the enemies never managed to get pass the defenders on the city walls. His suggestion to build towers at regular intervals along the city walls and station shooters there had been implemented almost immediately, and the results were showing. Normally, when the enemies managed to scale the walls, a bloody melee would occur, but with the shooters providing support fire and overwatch, most incursions would last for mere seconds before being pushed off the walls.
For the most part, his suggestions had managed to offset the losses made by the suicidal demon bombers, but the regular explosions had started to unnerve most of the demons in the fortress city. Ars-Maia and his brothers had been making regular walks around the place to reassure the old and the young that nothing much was going on, and that they were still very much secure. It was tough work, something that Gemini wouldn’t trade his current job for, given that these impromptu ambassadors had been on the receiving act of what looked like violent assaults.
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Ars-Maia had managed to get away relatively unscathed, but his family had been sporting a face artfully decorated by black and blue pigments. Had the demon not gloated in a semi-public setting, Ars-Maia would have gotten away like that, but he made fun of his father during what seemed to be a drunken stupor, so a gentle round of domestic violence naturally followed suit.
Gemini smiled at that memory, and stood up as the last volley of shots slammed into a wall decorated with human-sized target boards. “Alright, that’s enough! Everyone present should have gotten the hang of the Straight Shot. As per the orders of the tribe’s Inner Sanctum, these artefacts now belong to you. There’ll be no replacement for the time being if you lose or break them, so remember to keep them as safe as possible!”
The little group made some noises of assent, but Gemini could tell that they were quite interested in the Straight Shots. Most of them were stroking it lovingly, like children who had encountered a brand-new toy to play with.
“Remember not to take it apart!” Gemini called out at their departing figures. “If you do, I’m not putting it back!”
Some of the demons froze up at these words, an action that the Constellation immediately chose to not notice as he drifted over to Ars-Maia, intent on engaging the demon in what probably was nonsensical small talk before the other demons caught up to him for repairs. Gemini had the feeling that some of them had already dismantled the artefact out of curiosity, an action that he unfortunately could not reverse. It would not do if he was shown to be as knowledgeable as the other demons about how to repair and create artefacts — it would sour the relations between the Commonwealth and the Ars Tribe, especially if the reason behind him being sent here was due to internal politics.
The young man joined Ars-Maia at the table. The latter looked up briefly, and then continued his task of playing with what looked like a Rubik’s cube, except that it was five squares per side. Gemini wasn’t too sure where the demon got it from, but watching him play with it was something a bored Constellation could do the entire day, with the pace the demon was solving the puzzle at.
Gemini was on the verge of falling asleep when a female voice spoke in his head. “Server connection with DG-Oh-One and HG-Oh-One detected. Factory reset complete. Champion Support System, CSS, has been reactivated. Configuring new user profile under granted name. User Gemini, welcome to Orb.”
“What the—”
“Something wrong, Gemini?” Ars-Maia spoke up.
“No, noth—”
The city walls shook, and the two looked up into the sky. A solid pillar of black light stabbed into the heavens, its origins somewhere deep within the heart of the Wildlands. The four-coloured sky began to recede immediately, but it was clear that the powers that made it up weren’t doing so obediently. Whatever being that had created that pillar of darkness was slamming its metaphorical palm at the sky, and the resulting shockwave forced everyone onto the ground, gasping for air.
“Gods…”
Ars-Maia forced himself into a kneeling position. “It can’t be. But…no one else could do that…”
Gemini pushed his body off the ground. “Is that…”
“The Demon God,” Ars-Maia whispered. “He’s reawakened.”