The demon was enormous and Rowan, for the first time in his life, realized how small a human being was. He struggled to move. Not because of some tangible effect or some sort of fear effect, but rather because he saw how insignificant he was in comparison to the demon.
The demon was like a floating castle. There was no way Rowan, hero or not, could even hope to bring it down.
Rowan had expected the demon to look closer to a humanoid, like the first demon he’d faced off against. This was not that. The only thing they had in common was their power. Air around the demon shimmered blue and the rain kept falling like it was celebrating the return of their favored son.
It was impossible to defeat the demon.
Still, he had to try. He was the hero.
Rowan took a quick glance at his companions. Seeing him move must have jogged them into action, since they also broke out of their stupor and downed their own potions.
“Marcus, can you throw me?” Rowan asked. Although his voice was firm and emotionless, his mind was turning to humor to justify the suicide mission. Perhaps I’m getting used taking magic drugs and fighting magic enemies. I’m going native.
“Maybe,” Marcus muttered, letting the empty potion bottle plop right down next to him. Rowan was almost upset at the casual littering. “It’s a long shot.”
“We need to bring it down lower somehow. If we leave it up there, we’re as good as dead,” Rowan grumbled, glaring at the demon. “I don’t like our chances if it stays up in the sky and blasts us with ranged attacks. And don’t say that it doesn’t have them. It’s bending the weather to its whims.”
“Even if you can get up there, what are you going to do?” Milena asked before volunteering a bit more information of her own. “I have a ritual but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough. And the costs… they’re staggering.”
“Hold on.” Olivia chose that moment to speak up, her free hand dipping into her potion pouch and producing a dozen different ingredients. She half crouched in the water and combined them together. Gradually, a potion began to take shape under her hands. It looked fairly innocent until Olivia produced a card and shoved it into the potion. Almost immediately, the potion bubbled a vibrant yellow-green and looked entirely vile.
Rowan forced down his unease as he watched it take shape. He wanted to stop things, to knock the potion out of Olivia’s hands, pick her up, and get as far away from it as possible. The only reason he didn’t try was because his urge to not touch it was much greater.
“Olivia? What’s that?” Milena, thankfully, made the query for him. “It feels cursed, far too cursed, and that’s coming from a shaman.”
“Let’s just say I can use a lot of things as material if properly motivated. If we can get this potion into that thing above us somehow, I guarantee we’ll at least have a fighting chance. Just don’t get into contact with it yourself,” Olivia said.
That went without saying, in Rowan's opinion. Still, he eyed the flying demon once more. It was just floating there. It had announced itself and was now waiting. Just like the first demon, it was giving the hero party time to think and plan before they fought it. Was it a matter of some kind of honor? Complete assurance that weak humans could never do a thing against it?
Rowan turned his gaze back in the direction of their troops. They were bloodied, bruised, tired, but definitely not broken. The soldiers and mercenaries had mostly survived the assault despite the overwhelming numbers of the demonic army and most of the ranged attackers now readied their attacks against the demon.
If Rowan had more time, he would have waded over to them and asked where they got that courage from. But he thankfully had his own pool to pull from.
“Okay. So the plan right now. I fly up there, maybe hurt it so that it’s lower, hopefully feed it Olivia’s potion. And then we win. Question is, can you throw me up there Marcus?” Rowan phrased that last sentence as a challenge, hoping the levity would be infectious.
It wasn’t. Marcus looked like he’d bitten into a lemon, but eventually nodded. “Oh, I just need to launch the hero hundreds of feet into the air? Easy. No problem. At least you’re not in heavy armor.”
“Well, then, I go up, you go to rally the troops. I think I can take out one of its wings, but that still leaves three. We need to damage at least one more,” Rowan said. He wasn’t sure at all if he could damage anything of that beast. But his courage was starting to spread among the party.
“Let’s aim for the front. That way, if it does start destabilizing at least partly, its mouth will be closer to me,” Olivia suggested, and Rowan nodded. He had no objections to that.
“I’ll slow it down,” Milena offered. “It won’t be much, I’ve never fought against anything like this before.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Rowan said, offering his companion a smile. Then, he turned to Marcus. “It’s go time.”
“Jump on the front of my shield, in three, two, one.” Marcus counted down, positioning his shield somewhat parallel to the ground.
Rowan didn’t bother with a running start. With how much water was bogging them down, it would have been a waste of time. The stats he’d earned allowed him to leap straight onto the shield. Right as his toes touched down on the metal surface, Marcus heaved.
The upwards movement of his bulging muscles was only part of the equation.
It was the sudden corona of blinding light that actually gave Rowan most of his propulsion.
Marcus had chosen to expand his shield aura as far and as explosively as he could, and Rowan could do little other than brace himself and struggle to blink spots out of his eyes as he was repelled by the bright barrier and launched up into the sky.
Thankfully, his perception stat was high enough to shake off the blinding effects in mere seconds, letting Rowan actually see where he was headed.
Marcus’s all out attempt for his aura was impressive. Rowan rose and kept flying higher. For a second, he was lost in the feeling of being weightless. When he remembered his mission, Rowan lit up his spear with mana. The potion he had swallowed earlier had replenished most of his mana and he poured it all into his spear without reserve.
And then Rowan thudded against the monster. His spear, supercharged with all his mana and all of their hopes, pierced past the creature’s hide and deep into the flesh of one of its wings.
The demon screamed and Rowan screamed with it.
It was the blood. The moment he’d dealt his blow, a deluge of blue blood had erupted out of the wound, drenching him. Unlike the Rotflower, this blood wasn’t directly corrosive. There was no smoking where it touched his armor, and it didn’t eat through anything. But there was an energy in the blood and it sought to pierce into Rowan’s body, burning and altering it. His own mana rose up in response instinctively, and the sensation eased.
What the hell is wrong with demons? Can’t they just have normal blood?
Rowan kept his grip on the spear, dangling in the sky. The demon listed the tiniest bit in his direction and Rowan dreaded the idea of it doing a barrel roll, but it quickly rebalanced itself.
The retaliation began. Wind and rain whipped up, slamming against Rowan with almost enough force to dislodge him. But it seemed unable or unwilling to strike too hard so close to its own bulk, sparing Rowan from anything worse than just water and air.
Rowan gritted his teeth, steeling himself before pulling himself higher and sticking his fingers right into the edge of the wound. The demon’s hide was tough and strong enough to fully support his weight without tearing, even if it was a struggle for his fingers to find purchase in the oddly spongy flesh.
The moment he was secure in his hold, Rowan ripped out his weapon, sending another burst of blood free, then stabbed up again.
This time, the spearhead actually bounced. It glanced against the creature’s hide, leaving a shallow gorge and almost destabilizing him.
Upset he’d basically wasted mana on an unsuccessful strike, Rowan tried again. This time, when he doubled the amount of mana used, the attack went through.
It also left him at around twenty points of mana, in spite of the fact that the battle had started mere moments ago. There’d only be enough for one more strike.
Blood once again erupted from the beast and Rowan prepared for more pain. Shockingly, it never came. Instead, a sickly film snapped around his body, and the liquid started to bubble and steam against it.
Rowan recognized it as Marcus’s aura protection combined with the Rot Shield card protecting him.
But Rowan soon had a small grimace when he realized the new effect was making the wound he was using as a handhold slowly sizzle and liquefy. He had to scramble for a better hold.
Before Rowan could stab his spear into the demon again, it started moving erratically through the air. When the wing went up, Rowan got a dizzying view of the thing’s back. In the center of it, right above its spine, was a pile of metal.
Then, the world turned upside down, and Rowan almost lost his lunch.
As the creature began its maneuvers, Rowan clung desperately to his spear and what little hold he had. For the first few seconds, it was all he could do to pray for strength in his arms. But when Rowan found himself still up in the air after a particularly lunch-losing dive and twist, he began to get used to the motions. And he began to think.
Piercing the hide? Difficult. Preventing a wound from closing and hopefully bleeding it to death? Doable.
Rowan gave his spear a jerk, feeding it minimal mana just to do some damage and worsen the wound. It worked. Blue blood started pouring consistently from the wound instead of petering out relatively quickly like it did before.
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Things got more difficult when salvo after salvo of colorful slashes and arrows erupted from the defenders, even as they were forced to scatter due to the thunderbolts cracking out of the sky and aiming directly for them. Most of the attacks did nothing against the creature’s hide, but some shredded through the thin webbing that presumably helped it fly.
It was working. The demon lilted to the front and lost height.
Soon, lightning wasn’t the only thing that struck down from the sky.
It flapped its wings against the ground, summoning massive slashes of condensed air that sent water bursting away from points of impact. The rain itself condensed into spikes, stabbing and striking the soldiers and mercenaries.
Some of the water strikes were turned away by the aura defenses, accompanied by the grunts of Marcus’s pain. However, the wind strikes that found their targets always reaped a life. They left behind disemboweled or mutilated bodies floating on the water, making the defenders even more desperate to dodge.
Milena was, amusingly enough, on Olivia’s back. The baron’s daughter struggled under the weight, yet she still doggedly avoided the blows coming from above, desperate to keep ahead of the strikes.
Above Milena’s head, a massive storm cloud of miasma was building up. Screaming and weeping faces flashed through it, responding to the shaman’s quietly muttered incantation she was wholeheartedly focused on.
Rowan wasn’t sure what did it. It might have been the constant barrage of attacks on the creature’s left fin, or perhaps the relentless prodding of his own spear. But the demon’s descent got faster and faster.
Twenty yards from the ground. Ten. Five.
Rowan’s instincts kicked in just in time to stop him from being driven deep into the water and potentially squished to death. He ripped his spear out of the demon’s side and kicked off against its hide, putting much needed distance between him and the falling hazard.
When the demon crashed into the water, Rowan was already back on his feet and charging at the creature’s head. Or at least what should have been a head. The neck simply opened up to rows of concentric teeth that moved like a blender, sending an odd, resounding sound into the air.
“Guys?” Rowan whispered as he realized that there was no vital spot to attack.
Olivia answered with her actions. She pitched the revolting potion forward like she was a baseball player. The small glass vial sailed through the air, landed well inside the creature’s mouth, and was swallowed without a sound.
At the same moment, the ritual Milena was performing also surged forward. The horde of ghosts rushed into the demon, seeping into every single opening it could find like a horde intent on devouring it from the inside.
At that, finally, the behemoth briefly paused.
From the stunned silence of all combatants, it was obvious they expected something to happen.
And something did.
The demon surged forward, its bizarre neck-mouth extending and snapping out to close around a soldier who hadn’t retreated far enough. The man’s screams mercifully lasted only for a moment, but the wet crunching that echoed out was far worse.
Rowan managed to get out of the way and found himself directly behind the demon. Its tail was whipping back and forth surprisingly quickly, and an unlucky mercenary who stood too tall was immediately beheaded.
Still, that gave Rowan a unique opportunity.
The demon’s tail was huge like the rest of its body, but it still came down to a tip, and there was little to stop him from dealing a crippling blow to the area where the tail was only as thick as his wrist. Instead of trying to make his way back to the group assaulting the demon from the front, Rowan eyed the whipping tail.
The moment of respite also let his mana regenerate thanks to his higher stats. Rowan waited. And waited. When he spotted his chance, the hero struck.
He aimed straight for the middle of the tail where the demon’s spine lay, emptying out nearly all of his mana. As the tip of his spear sank into demonic flesh and scraped against cartilage and bone, he even managed to give his mana a twist.
In a shower of blood and pieces of flesh, a large chunk of the demon’s tail detached from its body.
Blood Siphon did the rest. A literal geyser of blue blood sprayed out, staining the nearby water. The tail, or what was left of it, thrashed wildly.
The demon attacked blindly and with no real target, simply trying to punish whatever creature had dared hurt it. In practical terms, that meant that the area around it lit up with electricity, and a gust of wind sent Rowan streaking away from the demon.
He landed on the water with a painful splat before it parted and swallowed him. Even that didn’t give him a reprieve, however, since the demon had now created a mini pool of tidal waves that spread out in all directions. It was hard to even orient himself in the water.
If it weren’t for a hand suddenly gripping the back of Rowan’s armor and roughly pulling him out of the water, he might have actually drowned then and there.
Rowan came face to face with one of the soldiers. The man just offered him a nod of respect and motioned back towards the colossus.
Hurt, bleeding deeply from its mangled tail and front wing, the demon was still not flagging. If anything, it had finally overcome its rage, and was now eying up its arrayed enemies. It roared again, extending its odd mouth fully, and made to lunge.
Then it faltered, swayed, and almost collapsed.
“Attack! Attack immediately!” Rowan heard Olivia bellow, and he didn’t hesitate to follow the order.
He rushed forward as quickly as he could, his spear lighting up weakly with the six points of mana, the dregs of his mana pool.
If he had to pass out to wrap up the battle, so be it.
All around him, it seemed like the soldiers and mercenaries were following the same logic. Their attacks struck the demon’s sides, now actually doing damage and creating new wounds.
Rowan couldn’t believe his eyes. Where he needed to pour large amounts of mana to even pierce the demon’s skin, his measly six-point Empowered Thrust now penetrated so deep that he almost lost his spear.
The reason why became apparent quickly.
Where the demon’s blood once ran blue, it now came out as a sickly greenish-black. Its near-impenetrable hide was breaking out in what resembled sores, and its crystalline look made it easy to spot the blackened, pulsing veins.
Rowan had no idea how she’d done it, but Olivia had poisoned the demon somehow, weakening the beast far enough to make it possible for them to damage it.
The alchemist herself was out there, slinging potions in a continuous stream of explosions against the demon’s side.
Now, entire sections of the demon were starting to resemble a pincushion.
Even Milena was attacking directly. Instead of her usual curses, she had her arms up, and bolts of light black energy erupted from her hands, striking the demon. Wherever they touched, they worsened the effects of the poison. Under concentrate fire, an entire section of the demon’s hide was starting to rise up and slough off, revealing wiggling and necrotic muscle.
Some of the soldiers were completely covered in the demon’s blood and kept fighting even though the blood was starting to eat into the soldiers themselves. In fact, one of the mercenaries was actually inside of the beast. The red-haired woman was wielding two short swords like a dance, and she was outright burrowing through the demon’s flesh with her chain of attacks. It was like watching a drill at work, and their enemy’s cries had long since turned unceasing.
But the demon would not die.
Even with how savaged and punished it was, it still continued to attack. Even the constant downpour of rain hadn’t weakened, only lagging once or twice when a particularly large attack landed on the demon.
Recognizing the fact that the creature was not going to go down until it was thoroughly ripped apart, Rowan led the charge against its limbs.
“Cripple it! Try to stop it from attacking and moving!” Rowan screamed out for whoever was around him to hear, then dove headfirst into trying to outright sever the colossus’s wing.
Rowan was forced to wield his spear with both hands near the very tip of it, tearing and mangling the limb with short stabs.
The demon’s efforts redoubled, and it tried to spin and lurch in place, catching the occasional unlucky human with its lunges. Some were caught by its maws and swallowed, and some were mushed into paste by its bulk.
No one dared retreat or try to run.
Each and every one of them knew that if the demon was allowed to catch its breath, it would eventually find its way back to them. And that would mean death. Every soldier and mercenary threw themselves into the assault with wild abandon, joining swords, maces, and even some daggers to Rowan’s efforts.
Their work resembled butchers more than soldiers.
The water around the demon had long since churned into a muddy mess by the battle, but now it had taken on the sickly tint of the colossus’s blood.
It was almost tempting to stop, Rowan found. He wasn’t striking so much as he was allowing his arms to fall and deliver blows at that point. Even the burning ember of the potion churning in his gut wasn’t entirely enough to overwhelm the sheer exhaustion he was feeling.
Yet, it wasn’t for nothing.
The demon was slowing, weakening, and even its unceasing bombardment was losing some of its intensity.
Then, finally, with an even louder wail, one of the thing’s wings gave out and collapsed into the water, completely detached from the rest of its body.
That freed up the soldiers to join other groups, and their grisly work doubled in intensity.
By the time all four of its limbs were severed, the demon was on the verge of death. No one was brave enough to climb up to where the spikes on its back still twitched and sparked with electricity. Nor were people foolish enough to go near its thrashing legs.
However, the attackers had carved deep into the creature’s sides, going nearly as deep as some of its vital organs.
As soon as that much progress was made, ranged attackers showed their worth again.
Without having to literally dig into the demon, they bombarded its insides, weakening its cries and causing ever-increasing amounts of blood to seep out of its body.
Rowan had no clue what finally did it. What he did know was the immense relief when his system pinged away at him, and he risked opening it for long enough to look at the very top of his combat log.
[Draconic Sea Slug Cambion] +624080
That’s a very big number, Rowan noted absently, trying to stop his swimming mind from suddenly collapsing under the weight of relief.
All around him, the soldiers and mercenaries slowly stopped attacking, catching onto the fact that the battle was won. It was a subdued cheer that erupted at first. Then, it rapidly gained in volume, until it seemed to be louder than the lightning and thunder conjured up by the demon.
Rowan, too, allowed himself to scream until his voice went hoarse. The adrenaline, the knowledge that he’d get to live, the relief of knowing that none of the hero party members were dead, it all coursed through his body.
No one could trump the twins. Their loud, ear-splitting howls rang out, and Rowan was convinced that even the baron, wherever he might be, was able to hear them.
“Everyone, back away from the demon! Get out of its fluids, people!” Olivia was the only one still with reason, trying to push everyone away from the corpse of their enemy.
“Olivia? What was that potion you fed the demon?” Rowan asked, brushing his hair out of his face with some frustration. It was getting way too long, and the persistent rain was driving it right into his eyes in thick, vision-obstructing clumps.
“I used a card,” Olivia said. When she that Rowan didn’t understand, she tried again. “People think that the only things you can use in potions are herbs and minerals. They’re not.”
In that moment, Rowan thought that Olivia's confidence looked beautiful. Then, of course, what she was saying caught up to his brain.
“Wait, what card did you actually use?” Rowan eyed the demon’s blood with a newfound sense of horror.
“Plague Incubator. We're not using it, so when I thought of ways to take down the demon, I just…”
“Are you telling me we’re standing in the middle of a potential plague outbreak?” Rowan asked as calmly as he could manage, the dread over just how far all the water could take the plague pooling in his stomach.
Olivia murmured something in response, looking contritely away from him, that he couldn’t even hear properly over the rain.
“You’re going to have to repeat that because all this rain is making me nearly deaf,” Rowan grumbled, glaring at her a little and brushing his hair away again.
Then he froze and his head whipped up to stare into the sky. The same rainy sky, which hadn’t let up even with the demon slain.
“I’m sorry, okay. I’ll tell you next time,” Olivia apologized. “But this was the only way I could think of that could weaken an epic ranked demon enough for us to kill it. We’ll find some priests who can purify the land and make the plague go away. Rowan? Rowan, are you that mad at me?”
Rowan ignored her, terror and worry and disbelief all warring inside of him. There’s no way, right?
The sound of footsteps rang out loud and forceful, overwhelming even the splatter of rain. Tremors boomed in the land.
Every single eye fell to the beast, hands gripping weapons and faces going pale.
No one could really see the top of the dead beast properly. It was too tall. But whatever was happening came from above the monster. The footsteps made their way up the demon, following its spine, and finally became visible just short of the creature’s head.
It was a knight. Completely covered in heavy armor, with water sloshing out of its many openings and joints. Underneath its feet, the beast sagged.
The knight finally stopped, hand coming to rest on the massive sheathed sword on its side, and it surveyed its surroundings like a noble standing on a lavish balcony and looking over their domain.
“Impressive, mortals.” Its voice rang out like the deepest current of an ancient sea, or the most violent storm. “You have slain my mount. A pity. Yet it seems you’ve proven yourselves worthy of serving me.”
As Rowan took in his new opponent, he wondered if sinking into the water where he stood was an option.