Clara dashed past Himeko and Elysia which took them by surprise. They hadn't seen Clara transform, so suddenly seeing a demon dash past them left them confused wondering who might that be.
Clara had retracted her whips so she could use them as swords. Her own movement was too fast for her to use whips so she opted to use the sword form of her whips blades. She hadn't used this form too often since she preferred using whips, they also wouldn't be enough to destroy the core so she had to switch anyway.
The boss tried to defend itself by shooting purple flames from its core directly at Clara, but she was able to easily dodge them. Once she was close to the boss' body, Clara fueled her swords with demonic essence evolving her usual purple lighting into pure red lighting.
Stabbing into the stomach of the boss, her swords hit with the impact of a lightning strike. The lighting completely destroyed the bottom half of his body leaving it to fall to the ground.
This opened up a chance for Shaman to attack again. With the support of Elanor once more, Shaman came from above stabbing directly into the boss' body. Its purple light dimmed as the boss went back to its dormant state.
"Silver, restrain the body!" Clara was going to seal the core so she needed the boss to stand still while she sealed the demon god.
Shadow chains emerged from the ground holding the boss in place. Clara put away one of her swords while getting on its back. Putting her hand to the core, a sharp pain filled her arm forcing a scream. Luna quickly put a pain nullifier spell on Clara while also healing her just in case.
'WHYYYY!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!! DIEEEEE!!!! I M-MUST KILLL!!! FAKE DEMONS!!!' These mad screams reverberated in Clara's mind, making her almost go insane. The amount of hatred inside the core was immeasurable, which made Clara wonder if this was the boss' inner thoughts. However, once she started wrapping her mana around the core she felt demonic essence merging with her mana. After merging, the red coloured essence that was seeping out took to a new shade of purple, giving Clara a new understanding on the interactions of demonic essence and mana.
It was now clear to her that pure demonic essence was red, meaning the boss was mixing it with mana to produce its purple hue. Which raised the question, can she do the same, and if so do the other demons use this as well?
These would be questions better saved for Luna as she was the resident demon who would know more about it.
Meanwhile, the boss was still struggling to stop her flow of mana and tried to fight back by submerging itself in magma. Luckily, thanks to Clara's new form she was able to resist the heat with Luna's help.
Eventually, the core was completely covered, but nothing seemed to change. Its body lit up as it shot both normal and purple flames at Clara. Jumping away, Clara landed and flicked the magma off her hand, freeing it only to reveal it now black and burned. Luna's healing restored it back to normal, but without her Clara could have very well lost her hand.
'Let's not get too comfortable with Luna around.' Clara was intentionally being risky because Luna was supporting them, but once she was gone, there was no way in hell Clara would try to get that close to such a dangerous enemy.
The boss destroyed Silver's restraints as it lifted itself back up while restoring its legs. Even though a lot of it was turned to ash, It was as if it was turning back time for its body.
'Maybe it's the spear and the core.' Clara didn't initially think the spear was involved as it shared no resemblance to the demon weapons they saw before. It was worth a shot, but if this didn't work then their only hope would be to destroy it.
The boss turned its attention to Clara as now she was the biggest threat of them all. Himeko tried to grab its attention, but she was swatted away as it walked towards Clara.
"Looks like I am playing the tank." Clara didn't like the change of roles, but it was probably for the best.
However, before Clara could get a taste of what it is like to be a tank, Ice shot up from under the boss' feet. Shaman decided to go all out to give Clara a second chance which was completely uncalled for and stupid.
"Clara go now!" Shaman held her hands to the ground pouring every last drop of mana without restraint, trying to engulf most of the boss' body. She also made sure to make the ice as dense as possible, giving Clara plenty of time to do what she needed to do.
The boss was unable to move and once again his body began to cool, causing its light to dim. Shaman saw this before finally passing out from mana exhaustion. Elanor was about to catch her, but Elysia quickly swept in, catching Shaman while nearly slamming Elanor out of the way.
Even though Elysia was better at dealing with her jealousy, it still did show itself out of pure instinct every now and again.
Clara was a bit stunned to see what Shaman just did, but now she had her chance. Luckily Shaman had not frozen the spear within the ice as she focused more on covering the core and making sure the ice was as dense as possible.
Going up to the base of the spear's blade, Clara used some of her demonic essence on the spear to see what kind of reaction it would show. Just as she hoped the form of the spear suddenly changed, now resembling Silver's weapon.
It now made sense to Clara as to why she couldn't seal the demon as it wasn't actually in the core, as the weapon's shapeshifting capability proved it was a full fledged demonic weapon. A red gem glowed in the spear flowing demonic essence into the boss' body.
Now with the true source in front of her, she covered the gem with both her hands. Using mana and demonic essence together she cut the flow from the spear to the body and felt the spear trying to send all the essence into her instead. The voices returned in her head, but much louder than before.
Clara's hand shook trying to not give in to the voices that were trying to take over her.
"Ą̸̛̬̳͐̅͜͠ƨ̶̡̫̼͐͋́͘ͅɔ̴̨̡̬̆͆̈́́͜ɒ̸̫͈̖̹̎̽́̋ɿ̷̬̗̯̤̆̾͝͠ ̴̥̭͕̲̏́̒̾ƨ̸̡̮͈̟͒̂̔̾ɒ̶̨͚͉͇̀̉̾̔l̴̡̛͓͍̎̆̒͜ȏ̷̢̪̠͓́͛͑" Clara spoke in demon tongue which no one but Luna could understand, surprising the demon-cat. Clara didn't have much recollection of ever learning this language, but when she entered her demon form it was like knowledge was passed down to her.
Suddenly a surge of purple essence flowed into the purple gem and its glow dimmed. The spear was now inactive, no longer possessing the boss, but it still was alive.
"She really is royalty…" Luna knew Clara just did a sealing spell, but what interested her more was the fact she could speak it. No one other than the royal family had the capability to articulate the words which are inherited through blood and essence.
What Clara didn't know was that by activating her demon form to its fullest she finally was able to inherit her family's innate abilities.
"Now we just need to kill the boss." Clara took the spear off the boss, placing it in their inventory for later as Elysia may be able to use it.
Silver took the initiative as with the boss still encased in ice, a good smash would shatter it to pieces.
Creating the strongest shadow hammer he could, he let fall from the top of the volcano.
"Heads up!" Silver gave a warning, sending everyone scrambling to get to a safe distance away from the boss. Just as Silver hoped his hammer shattered the ice alongside the boss' body. It had become much weaker after losing the demon weapon making what seemed like steel as soft as butter.
[Ding]
A system notification rang out for everyone letting them know that they indeed killed the boss which was a relief. Clara returned back to normal, but her body was not working as intended. This was her first proper transformation which took a big toll on her body.
Everyone else was in a similar state as they all let themselves fall to the ground. Even Himeko felt the mental exhaustion kick in which is something Luna couldn't remedy.
"I would use my magic to help you all, but excessive abuse of my magic may cause some damage to your body, so with our fight over you're gonna have to rest." Luna's magic wasn't a cure-all, but more of a supplement that pushed the body's limiters, so there was only so much she could do before it caused problems.
"That's fine, I could use a nap." Elanor laid on the ground feeling the adrenaline wear away. She hadn't done a lot of big moves, but it was her first ever boss fight which her body wasn't used to at all.
Taking the moment to rest, Luna wanted to ask the questions she built up during the fight, but almost everyone was half asleep.
"Oh my look at this lazy kitty." A voice echoed out in the volcano causing Luna to instantly stiffen and her hair to stand up. It was a voice she did not want to hear, especially in her current position.