The Chopping Block

Year 208 (continued)

The heroes exchanged greetings, and their arrival was greeted with bombardments from demon champions. Six heroes. Those were relatively good odds, and both Adrian and Kelly were in the low level 100s after their long periods of hunting demons. 

It actually cost me quite a bit of mana to send heroes through my clones, and it drained about one third of my mana-storage potatoes. 

The heroes were ready, and the demon king, continued to pump out demon champions and sent them our way. Magical projectiles from their champions were now a regular occurrence. 

There was an air of tension in the air. Expectations. 

“We’ve killed a few demon kings. We’ve seen something like this in the hero journals, and so, we’ll do it again. I know you are afraid, but this is our job, and we’re good at it. You two will be, too.” Chung was the one that spoke and tried to calm both Adrian and Kelly. “All we need you guys to do is hang in there, and don’t get killed.”

After a bit of pep talk, the heroes briefed Adrian and Kelly, again, on what we’ve seen in our own exchange with a similar demon king. A castle demon, perhaps? 

“When you come to our world, you should have a look at the journals.” Prabu added. “And snacks. Trust me. You’ll feel better with snacks.” Colette promptly gave Prabu an elbow. 

“Don’t diminish their trauma like that.” 

“I mean, I know. The snacks are just the equivalent of putting flowers on poop. It’s still poop.” Prabu responded. “But between the two I know I prefer flowers on poop.”

Adrian and Kelly just sniggered. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not.” Colette stared at Prabu. “We’ve all lost our friends in our own fights against the demons, and all of us will learn to cope in a different way. It’s not helpful to make it sound so simple.”

Prabu probably realised this was a dangerous conversation, and decided to back off. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Colette took a deep breath, and after an awkward silence, sighed. “I know you don’t mean any harm.” 

Adrian and Kelly, the two heroes of the Mountainworld just stared. Colette, of course, realised how awkward the conversation had become, and decided to switch topics. 

“We’ll be fighting together for some time. So let’s get to know each other.” The female archmage answered. She looked not much older than when she first came, courtesy of the immense magic she held. 

They shared a pot of tea, and the two looked visibly calmer after a cup. They once again went through why their first assault failed, and how that led to their capture. The four heroes of Treehome also shared their own battles with their demon king, and they too shared the failures they faced. 

How their friends died the first time. There was something about sharing their own losses that seemed to really relieve both Adrian and Kelly’s hearts. Even if it didn’t fix it. Even if it didn’t even heal all that much. 

“We should get Kei and Stella here.” Prabu added. “They are former heroes. Well, Kei was, but both of them saw as much shit as we all did. But I guess we can meet them ”

“If we live through this, we will.” Adrian said. 

Based on what the two heroes shared, there were some differences compared to Sabnoc. For one, this hero didn’t jam our communication system, so they were not forced to build communication towers. In many ways, what they suggested even seemed to say that this demon king was a ‘weaker’ variant of Sabnoc.

That’s not confirmed, of course. It’s likely that the demon king didn’t even bring out its best skills, since the heroes were so weak. It still didn’t make sense why it did this, of course. Why did the demon king ‘capture’ some heroes?

Why keep them alive?

The heroes went through something similar to Alexis. They saw the fields of demonic spires, the vast lands. The demons read their minds, for sure. What was the purpose? Did they use the hero’s mana to help their capture of the world? 

Or use their minds to help improve or feed their own? Or were they looking for something in the hero’s minds? Or is it just a kind of parasitic or herding behavior, that the captured heroes are ‘farmed’ for something?

I felt like I wasn’t truly understanding all the pieces that were now available to me. My trees also searched the Mountainworld for daemolite, and we found it everywhere. I was fairly sure I would find it in the Threeworlds too. 

The demons had rift gates, and these rift gates were the way to open paths across worlds. We also knew, at least from a simple guess, that these daemolite were meant to mark their presence to the demons. 

Back home we had accumulated daemolite over the years, since our discovery of their purpose, but we have yet to destroy them. Not until we figured out how to manipulate it, or at least, mislead it. 

I had one of the wild ideas to plant the daemolite on the moon, and lure the demon king there instead. The fight against the demon king would happen somewhere away from population centers, and we could, if we need to, blow up the moon. Or use the daemolite to subtly control the rift gates. 

Or they could be two entirely independent things. Daemolites are just nothing more than location markers, and once sufficient worlds ‘locked’ onto a world, the daemolites serve no other function. If rift gates don’t rely on daemolites for any sort of specific targeting beyond locating it as a world, then destroying daemolites may be futile.

It’s all speculation at this point.

***

We took full advantage of the demon king not attacking us to fully prepare ourselves for the fight. Roon was especially keen on unleashing hell on the demon king for a distance. The heroes themselves made plans for failures, and Ken walked through quite a few gimmicks that he thought would be commonly seen in such immobile bosses.

It’s surprisingly insightful, and in hindsight, it’s actually quite common to see immobile bosses in earlier games, especially side scrollers. 

“Ready?” I asked everyone present, spread throughout the theater of war. They would all launch attacks from their respective positions, and then all head towards the demon king. 

Everyone gave their signal.We were all going to hit it together with long range weapons. An all out attack, from everyone, and then we’ll see what happens. Edna and the close range heroes will move in then. Lumoof would move to support them with healing. 

Everyone unleashed their skills, as the entire world was momentarily flooded with side effects of using so much magic in a short period of time. The mages launched a massive volley of long range fireballs, magical missiles and other kinds of energy blasts. Chung shipped fifty large hero-items through my abilities and used them to shoot a barrage of hero-powered ballista bolts.

Momentarily, there was enough magic flying through the skies that everyone, even those without magic, could feel a pulse in the air. Men and women from villages an entire continent away could feel the vibrations caused by so much magic.

The close-range heroes Hafiz and Kelly both had to stay back. 

Roon also used his domain ability to fire star mana bombs at the demon king. The attacks landed within a span of an hour, and for a moment, the world was greeted with an earthquake that could be felt throughout the entire world. This explosion was bigger than the minefield we had for the previous demon king, there were more heroes attacking, and coupled with Alka’s star mana bombs. 

The explosion was so intense that it would scar that plot of land with magical residue for decades, and cause tremendous magical instability for at least months, but in time, it would heal. 

As it always did.

I could sense that the attacks landed, because there was a momentary weakness in the demonic energies, and I felt it ebb in the ground beneath and around us. 

Then a pulse, and another strong shake. The dust had not settled, but the heroes continued to attack. 

They were not going to wait for it to transform. A rookie mistake, and Ken strictly reminded them to double-tap, even if it seemed dead. Roon waited, however, since we didn’t have that many star mana bombs. 

As the magical attacks provided cover fire, Edna was the first to approach, confident that she could survive anything the demon king threw at it. 

The attacks kept on going, and for a moment, we felt the world suddenly tear. A rift opened right around where the demon king once was, and then, we sensed demon champions from throughout the world vanish, and reappeared around the demon king. 

From those rifts, the demons counterattacked with magical explosions. 

“It’s still transforming!” Chung said, his eyes glowed with some kind of sight-ability. “Don’t let it finish.” He recharged his array of magic ballistas, and another volley was unleashed. 

The second volley mostly smashed into the demon champions, they took the hit on behalf of their king, and were vaporised by the star-mana charged bolts. 

The land around the demon king had transformed into a huge crater a result of all the weapons we deployed, and there was a thick layer of fire, plasma, dust and dirt whipped up by all the explosions.

Through my spiritual sight, my view of the demon king was not obscured by dust, only interrupted by the sparks of magic in the air. I saw it transforming and splitting apart, and then, for a brief second, a surge in magical energy from within the demon king. Immediately, energy beams fired outwards, aimed at the heroes and also our array of weapons. 

The heroes dodged and some of the weapons were destroyed. Our shields couldn’t fully block the beam. It was still strong enough to destroy my shields and some. Only Edna’s ability allowed it to take the hit head on.

At the same time, the demon champions that survived Chung’s volley of ballista bolts started to fuse, and a few turned into the supercannon-type demons. This transformation happened incredibly quickly, far faster than what I’ve seen or heard, and once completed, they added cover fire and fired a constant ray of demonic energy. 

The rift sent more demon champions through. The heroes weaved through the magical beams, and moved closer. Ranged attacks needed longer charge times, and just were not as powerful as their mid or close range attacks or skills.

Meanwhile, I kept my focus locked on the demon king. My artificial minds supported the wider battle, and we spawned trees as fast as we could. Beetles from these trees supported the larger battlefield, as the attack on the demon king seemed to rouse the regular demons out of their routine, and caused them to attack their nearby kingdoms.

My trees also tried to close in on the demon king.

“Let’s shift to close combat.” Hafiz dodged a massive beam of energy overhead, his magical shield battered from all the attacks. The supercannon-type demon champion also blanketed the battlefield with it’s rays and projectiles.

The earth rumbled again, and this time, I felt a presence inject itself into the ground. It moved towards us.

My roots spread to intercept it, and then, something blew up from beneath my subsidiary trees. Or tried to. My roots managed to hold the rocks in place. Another demon champion type surged out of the ground, and it looked like a spiky hedgehog. 

I didn’t hesitate, and in those moments, my roots pierced it quite easily, and for a moment I seemed to have gotten it. It should’ve disintegrated. 

But the demon King wouldn’t let its’ army of demons die.

Then a pulse of demonic energy spread outwards, as I thought I saw the demon king’s energy splinter into a thousand pieces. 

The spiky demonic hedgehog, skewered by my roots, glowed, and empowered by demonic energy from the King itself, revived. Multiple champions throughout the battlefield, some killed earlier, were instantly revived by that demonic energy.

“It revives destroyed champions. That’s a new trick.” Chung commented, partly in bewilderment. I was partly amazed that it had an ‘Edna-like’ skill. Essentially an army of undying.

The champions themselves were still quite weak, even with the slightly enhanced power, so it didn’t take much effort to crush them. Not with my current levels, but they kept reviving. I skewered the demonic hedgehog again, and then wrapped my roots around it. I crushed it, but I didn’t move fast enough. 

And yes, even as I thought it was dead, it wriggled, and revived once there was another pulse from the demon king. 

“Focus on the demon king!” Edna had already closed in on the main body, a large blob of demonic energy that started to swirl.... And then suddenly, it released something strange. 

Souls. Spirits.

Three dead heroes, and then, demonic flesh gathered around those souls. 

Kelly and Adrian, the two mountainworld heroes, recognised them, and screamed. Kelly immediately charged in her star mana armor. 

The flesh shaped into surprisingly life-like versions of the dead heroes.

“Kelly! It’s us! Don’t you recognise us?” One of the demonic fleshed heroes said in an alien but incredibly lifelike voice, but I saw an intense gathering of demonic energy. “What are you doing?” 

“Edna! Intercept! It’s a trap!” I commanded, as my roots immediately surged out and attempted to attack the ‘dead heroes’. “Kelly, retreat!”

But Kelly didn’t listen, my roots didn’t do enough damage, and once she got close enough, an intense beam of demonic energy blasted outwards from the ‘demonic hero’. Edna couldn’t get there in time. My wooden shields and Colette’s magic barrier appeared and we blocked a large bit of the blast, but that attack was no weaker than the demon king’s deathrays, so the heroine still took a bad hit. 

The demon hero disintegrated, it’s energy spent, and there were two of the demonic flesh heroes left.

Lumoof quickly moved aside to assist, and we saw her soul fluctuate and weaken. Her skin was charred, like she had just walked through an intense fire. Had we not blocked it, I was sure that would’ve instantly killed her. “She’s out.” Lumoof lifted her and immediately retreated as fast as he could. She would need intense healing, and the demon’s energies were so strong it even injected itself into her body.

I vaguely sensed the presence of a demonic curse. 

“That’s fucking low.” Chung cursed and they kept up their volleys at the main blob. It was irritating though, because the demon champions kept reviving, and even when defeated, they would only remain dead for fifteen minutes or so. The pulses would revive them, and once revived, it would force all the heroes to be on the defense. 

It was so irritating that both Johann and Roon directed their attention on the demon champions, and concentrated their attacks on the champions to redirect some of the ‘aggro’ and open up some attack-windows. The heroes could not attack and defend at the same time, and I could instantly see why this demon king won the first round.

This was one pain in the ass. 

Prabu and Colette naturally focused on the other two demonic heroes, and the other two demonic hero-lookalikes just looked at the remaining mountainworld hero, and smiled creepily. “Adrian!” 

Adrian cursed. “Don’t speak to me! You’re not them. Don’t fucking pretend to be them.” He retaliated with magical attacks, and the demon heroes blocked it with magic of their own.

“But we are! Come. Join us! Join our rebellion against the Puppeteers!” They said with a smile. “Why do we serve the Puppeteers, anyway?”

They moved incredibly quickly, with speeds that did not seem weaker than the heroes. 

How? How did the demon king animate these lookalikes that even had some almost-hero-tier abilities? I was very curious what kind of world this demon king came from. What kind of environment created this demon king?

Colette, Prabu and Chung, the three heroes in ‘middle-range’ all shared a glance. “He needs help.”  

I surveyed the battlefield then. Roon and Johann kept destroying the demon champions, but this took all their time. Edna and Hafiz were both in close range, and they hacked away at the massive demon king blob. They seemed to be doing damage, but they didn’t have much window to assist others, since the blob itself had close-range offensive magics and also detonated small explosions around it’s main body. 

They were occupied, and in fact, Edna and Hafiz needed support too. 

Lumoof withdrew all the way to the rear, a good distance away from the battlefield. He was still focused on stabilising Kelly. An army of healers were on standby, mostly from the Kingdom, but some from the Valthorns. They quickly got to work and suppressed the demonic curse within Kelly’s body, while keeping her alive. 

Lumoof’s magical energies were exceptional at healing, and she got better, but it’ll be at least half a day before she can return to combat. 

I needed to free up Roon and Johann to support the others. I helped to kill the demon champions with my roots, but they weren’t dying permanently. I believe there must be a way to kill them permanently. I remembered how it was possible to interrupt the demon king’s reincarnation mechanic, so it must be possible with these lesser creatures. Even if they won’t die, I’ll just take over these champions, or at least, drain that ‘piece’ of demon king away, since that seemed to be the key to their revival mechanic. 

Prabu decided to help, so he teleported next to Adrian, and created a magical shield. It blocked one of the demon’s magical blasts. “Don’t fall for it. They’re goading you.”

“I know.” Adrian said, angry. “But I can’t help it.” 

The heroes traded attacks with the demons, but I concentrated on the demon champions nearby, and attacked them with my roots. 

But, this time, my roots pierced the body, and hunted for the demon king’s energy. I found it nestled within a slightly harder part of it’s body. 

My root snaked through the innards of the demon champion and touched it. And I absorbed it. 

Strangely easy. 

The demon champion crumbled, as if all the damage it took from the past suddenly took hold once more. 

I immediately set out to repeat it with every demon champion. It was fairly slow, as the demons traded attacks. 

Edna and Hafiz both cut away at the demon king, but they couldn’t land that many hits. Not with the demon king detonating explosions. They would retreat, close in to land a cut or three, and then retreat again. Colette and Chung would then attack during the times Edna and Hafiz couldn’t land a hit.

The gaps between their attacks were also fairly long, since the demon king seemed to constantly shapeshift, and would regularly release beams of intense demonic energy that they had to evade.

It was kinda shit realisation, but I realised ‘defensive’ heroes did not perform that well. Not against this demon king where our shields just vaporised so easily, and sometimes, even taking a hit behind shields still dealt too much damage. The demon king is in its own class, and the meta at that level of combat was offense and evasive abilities. Defense was useless unless they had something like Edna. 

“Roon, Johann, are you able to see the demon king’s energies within the demon champion? If you can take it out, it would immediately make it crumble.” They nodded and both switched their weapons to the mana-draining weapons, and went for close range attacks instead. 

They both had some kind of mana-sight ability, and it was quite hard to spot the demon king’s energy, but the anti-mana glass worked incredibly well, and the champions’ revival was interrupted once they managed to hack through the demon champions and get to where that demon energy was stored. They crumbled when that energy was drained. 

We cleared the champions quickly, and the battlefield’s bullet-hell of magical projectiles gradually became less dense. It would lessen the strain on the heroes to deal damage. With all three of us taking out the champions, it still took about two hours to eliminate all of them from the battlefield. 

We were left with the shadow of heroes, and we shifted our focus to help with Adrian and Prabu. I was very curious what these two creatures were.

They weaved and dodged quickly. These ‘demonic flesh heroes’ were very high quality, and had the speed and power to back it up. Still, I noticed that they were still susceptible to my aura, even if just a little bit, and that slowed them a bit. 

Eventually, working together with Roon and Johann, I finally stabbed my roots into one of them, and I began draining it’s mana. 

The demonic hero screamed and shouted, and then, detonated itself up. Or tried to. I detected it’s mana gathering, and my roots immediately intercepted it and interfered with it’s mana gathering. 

Instead, it just disintegrated.

The last remaining demonic hero sensed it’s doom, and before anything, decided to detonate itself. 

That very act, however, meant it’s magical defenses were down, Prabu, immediately wrapped his magic around the demon then, flung the demonic hero high up into the sky where it detonated midair harmlessly. 

Adrian was exhausted. He wasn’t as high level as the rest, and this battle weakened him. The trauma of facing his deceased friends drained him out. 

“Retreat. We’ll handle it.” We were left with the main body. Kelly had stabilised, but she remained at the rear to recover under the care of the other healers. 

“The demon king is hurt, for sure.” 

The heroes moved to attack, this time it was a clean fight. Four heroes, Edna and the demon king. The rifts occasionally spawned demon champions, but I took care of that. 

I mostly spectated this phase of the battle, occasionally helping with a shield or a root strike. My attacks still didn’t do much damage. Roon and Johann also retreated, but they also helped with cover fire. The repeated attacks from the heroes eventually weakened it, and we sensed the reduced intensity of it’s demonic energy, dropping over time. “Let’s end this.” 

With all of its gimmicks removed, the concentrated attacks eventually destroyed the blob, and then, a spire-like thing was within. 

Then, I saw an immaterial energy-beam that reached for the core of the world.

The spire-like thing started to glow as it floated midair, and I detected a huge surge in corruption-type energies. Very, very familiar stuff.

This was the Rottedlands bomb all over again, and this time, I won’t let it happen. Lumoof charged forward at my command, as the spire created a magical barrier around itself. The magical barrier blocked the attacks from the heroes, but did not stop Lumoof, Edna or Hafiz from going through it. 

I felt my domain push through the barrier, and Lumoof touched the spire itself. At that moment, it attempted to attack us mentally.

‘Natives. Submit to us.’

[Domain has blocked attempted mental attack]. 

Lumoof recoiled at the attack, but he too had a domain, and my energies flooded the spire. The spire smashed into the ground beneath us, and it’s energies attempted to infect the land. 

But by now, my trees were everywhere in the battlefield, and my mana was ready to resist. “Destroy the spire!” I shouted, and the heroes came and unleashed hell on the spire. The spire cracked, and then, disintegrated into nothingness. 

Not even the demon core remained. At that moment, the flesh of the demon king, many of it separated and cut off, started to transform into daemolite. 

[You’ve defeated an otherworld demon king!]

[Title obtained : Multiverse Demonhunter]

[You’ve gained seven levels! You are now level 221]

The heroes slew the demon King of the Mountainworld. Many others gained level too. More importantly, Alka leveled from his constant supply of the weapons of war, and ascended to be my 5th domain-holder.