"And Marshy's Wheel of Isekai got cancelled, which is why this place is in such a mess right now, and looks so broke," Deer elaborated as they walked. The cracked roads and abandoned piles of sand and gravel around them seemed to agree with his statement.

"That's depressing," Serpentine muttered, his gaze flitting to the ruined surroundings. "Maybe I'll set up shop here. At least get this place patched up."

"Where are we going anyway?"

"There." Deer pointed toward a large, golden spire that speared the sky. The closer they got, the more it loomed above them. It was still a good twelve-minute walk, though, assuming they walked at a human pace.

"Alright, finally. Come on, let's hurry this up!" Serpentine groaned. With a powerful flap of his wings, he shot forward, leaving Deer behind in a gust of cosmic energy and chaos force.

But abruptly – barely an eighth of the way there – he slammed his wings shut and skidded to a halt.

Deer caught up moments later, squinting at him. "What's wrong?"

"I wanna try something," Serpentine replied, ignoring the quizzical look Deer gave him.

"Now?"

"Yeah. Just... let me think for a moment."

His mind replayed the memory of his fight in the cavern with the giant catfish. Back then, he'd created cursed hands and chains, manipulating curses in bizarre and creative ways. That fight had taught him that Curse Manipulation could be far more versatile than he'd ever considered, most likely due never having been pushed that far. He'd only used it to weaken foes.

"What exactly makes the perfect wings?" he muttered to himself, staring at the sky.

"Huh?" Deer tilted his head.

Serpentine ignored him again, unfolding his two pairs of wings. His angelic wings, feathery and broad, were designed for soaring and high-altitude gliding, like those of an eagle. His demonic wings, on the other hand, were leathery and compact, built for agility and close-quarters maneuvers. But both had limitations. What if he could add another pair – something to complement the other two?

He flexed his fingers thoughtfully.

'Let’s test this out.'

Focusing his cursed energy, he visualized a third pair of wings.

The first attempt was a disaster.

A fanned structure like a manta ray's emerged from his back, wide and flat. It dragged against the air with every beat, pulling him off balance.

"Ugh, no good," he muttered, dispelling the cursed wings.

Deer crossed his arms. "Are you going to keep doing this all day?"

"Shut up," Serpentine shot back. "This is important."

Next, he tried glider-like wings, similar to a flying squirrel. These were even worse, flopping uselessly as he leaped into the air. He landed with a thud, scowling.

"Incredible," Deer exclaimed, throwing his arms up dramatically. With a snap of his fingers, cinders burst into the air like confetti, showering Serpentine in a mock celebration.

"Okay, I get it! Now shut up, I'm thinking." Serpentine growled, pacing. One by one, he went through every flight adaptation he could think of, and finally settled on insect-like wings.

Fast-flapping, lightweight, and capable of hovering or quick bursts of speed, they would give him precision in mid-air, hovering capabilities, or rapid direction changes. They'd aid in hovering, stabilizing during complex maneuvers, or maintaining position in turbulent air. These wings could also act as secondary stabilizers when he used his other wings.

But ah, insect wings varied far and wide too, greatly depending on the species and their evolutionary adaptations.

Channeling his energy, he created a pair of cursed beetle wings, with powerful beats and chitin for protection. But it also slowed him down. The wings were simply too heavy to keep up with the other two.

"At least we are getting somewhere." Serpentine sighed, before moving onto his next experiment while Deer groaned.

This time, he conjured the wings of a cicada. And to make it even better, he added a few circuits of various sonic circuits.

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Without warning, a deafening sonic boom erupted from Serpentine’s wings. A violent shockwave spiraled outwards, ripping through the air with destructive force. The ground cracked and splintered as debris scattered in every direction. Deer braced himself, crossing his arms to shield his face from the flying stones and dust.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a severely desecrated road... and Serpentine's body slammed across the wall of the golden spire, having crossed the distance in a single second.

As Deer caught up, Serpentine comically plopped down from the wall he stuck to, muttering, "Maybe mimicking Sonic Celerians was a mistake on my part."

"Careful there, buddy," Deer teased with a grin. "If you keep pushing yourself like that, you’re going to blow us all up." He chuckled merrily, but his foot tapped away incessantly at the ground.

It was fast, yes. But it was also uncontrollable, worked only in a single direction, functioned as simply one massive burst of speed rather than sustained flight, and cicada wings were too large to fit with his primary pair of wings.

"Try wasps?" Deer suggested, a poking at his own chin with a finger, his eyes tracing the pure destruction that Serpentine had left behind.

He was definitely going to make the demon pay for the reconstruction work.

Serpentine heeded, and focused his cursed energy to mobilise the wings of a wasp, before taking flight.

"This... actually works!" Serpentine exclaimed.

The pair greatly augmented his speed and agility, complimenting his demonic wings for darting, evasive manoeuvres, and fast paced combat. He changed directions rapidly, moving with an uncontrolled and brute, yet deadly grace.

Eventually, he dispersed them too – after slamming head first into the dirt – and sighed.

"The structure is banging into my other wings... this won't do." He needed something elongated and narrow.

The image of a dragonfly flashed in his mind.

Thin, translucent, and capable of rapid flapping – they offered precision, stability, and speed. He focused again, summoning a pair of dragonfly-like wings.

When they materialized, he leapt into the air and flapped. For a moment, they buzzed wildly, throwing him into a chaotic spiral before he tumbled back to the ground.

"This... could actually work," he muttered, brushing off dirt. He was starting to feel a glimmer of confidence.

Deer raised an eyebrow. "Better than wasps?"

"Watch and learn, violin boy."

The issue was simply the drafts created by the wings interfering with each other, so he had to simply consider the spatial positioning.

He unfurled his angelic wings first.

"They mounted on my upper back... they extend from the shoulder blades, right?" Serpentine asked, trying to peek at his own wings and failing.

Second, he unfurled his demonic pair, which extended from his mid-back.

"I still won't get over how edible they look..." Deer muttered under his breath, comparing the patagium to jerky.

"I will eat you alive."

Serpentine adjusted the placement of the cursed wings, positioning them lower on his back, near the base of his spine. With each adjustment, he tweaked the beat frequency, imagining how they could complement the drafts created by his other wings rather than disrupting them.

His angelic wings provided the primary lift and glide, with the demonic wings aiding in agility and propulsion. The dragonfly wings could supplement them both, provide a tailwind, and also aid in stabilisation.

However, he'd need the dragonfly wings to beat at a much, much higher best per second to not interfere with the other two pairs. He could fix that with tremor, quake, and tremble oriented curses.

The next flight was steadier. The dragonfly wings buzzed in tandem with the others, lifting him higher. Still, turbulence from his angelic and demonic wings caused the cursed wings to wobble.

'Think', he told himself, his mind racing. 'The drafts are interfering... how do I stabilize them?'

He then proceeded to curse the air itself, bending it into a smooth tailwind. The turbulence lessened.

'Sweet. Let's keep going.'

He placed a vortex spell at the edges, creating small whirlwinds along the edges of the wings, channeling airflow into laminar streams along all six of his wings.

He flapped again, this time soaring smoothly into the air.

He was still slower than his experiment with the cicada wings, but leagues faster than the rest. There was not the slightest hint of a drag, the very air resistance bent and funnelled into a tailwind.

'This... is insane.' He cackled uncontrollably, streaking through the atmosphere like a jet.

The faster he went, the more drag he faced. The more drag he faced, the greater his tailwind became, and the greater his tailwind became, the faster he went... and the cycle repeated, the demon now piercing holes into the clouds as he flew.

His directional control was instant too, redirecting inertia at a moment's notice, the added manoeuvrability not only clear, but also terrifying to witness.

"Not bad," he murmured, his lips curling into a grin as he hovered in place over the broken road.

"Finally," Deer said, rolling his eyes.

Inwardly, however, even he was stunned by the sheer speed, control, and stability that Serpentine had exhibited.

But the Ascended Demon wasn’t done yet. He added another curse, one that absorbed excess kinetic energy and redistributed it across all three pairs of wings.

The strain on his body eased immediately.

And for his final touch, he wove a localised anti-gravity curse into the wings. When he tested it, hovering required no effort at all.

He landed, the dragonfly wings shimmering behind him like glass. "Perfect."

Deer clapped slowly, smirking. "Well, you wasted half a day, but congrats on your bug wings, I guess."

"Oh, forgive me, my lord. It all but parried my mind that we had set on our path to the round table meeting, and His Highness could not afford lateness to the conference," Serpentine said, his tone both wavy and high-pitched as if acting out a Shakespearian play, his accent British beyond reason.

Deer broke into a chuckle, before gesturing at Serpentine with his hands, "Come, let's meet the big man."

"I will be very judgemental if the owner of this oversized golden pasta did not even back the Kickstarter Campaign." Serpentine muttered as he gazed at the sheer size of the spire, all six of his wings flapping majestically behind him.

As Deer left him and started to walk up the stairs, Serpentine too dispersed his cursed wings, and slammed his primary ones shut.

"No shot we are going to walk to the highest floor."

"Sure we are. In the meantime, you could think about what your wheel would be like."

"Hm... works for me."

Despite both being capable of flight, they spent the next three hours trudging up the endless staircase. By the time they reached the summit, the sky had darkened to a deep navy, the stars glittering like scattered jewels in the night.