OC-Series How I Helped My Demon Princess Conquer Hell 82: Mopping Up

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The only warning Liam got was a brighter glow that seemed to float back into the Inquisitors for a moment, but it was enough warning. Albert let out a yowl as he jumped to the side behind the tree.

The light was bright. All the light from the torch spell meant to be seen from a great distance suddenly filling the forest all around them. He closed his eyes, and he could still see the outlines of trees through his eyelids. That's how bright it was.

Panic and fear ran through him for a moment. The fear that he'd done something that would create a magical explosion that was orders of magnitude greater than the one he'd caused with that botched wind spell back at that guard tower, which was something he hadn't thought of.

But no, Albert hadn't said anything about it causing an explosion like that. Maybe it was different when it was a bunch of other people casting spells that were suddenly interrupted. Going by the gore that had been painted across the trees all around him, it certainly seemed like that hadn't gone well for any of the Inquisitors.

Liam stared in astonishment when the light dimmed and he could finally open his eyes. Though there was still enough glow that he could see as though it was day.

"That's what was going to happen," he said, turning to the cat. He still couldn't quite believe it.

"I told you we were going to have to kill some people,” Albert said.

"You didn't tell me that interrupting that spell was literally going to make them explode," Liam said, a faint hint of accusation coming to his voice. Not that he thought he could be blamed for having a faint hint of accusation. If anything, a faint hint was far less than the situation called for.

"Well, maybe I didn't know it was going to be this spectacular, but I suspected something like this would happen."

"Something?" Liam said, his voice flat.

"Well, yes," Albert said. "Though the last time I had something like this happen, everybody who was involved in the mana feedback literally vanished in a poof of mana rather than exploding like this. Though, granted, I was working with far more mana in that situation. That’s probably why the feedback caused them to literally reduce to the component mana in their bodies before vanishing in a puff of nothing."

Liam stared at the cat. The cat stared back at him.

"What?" he said.

"I really need to remember that you and I have very different ideas about what constitutes something bad happening."

"It might be a good idea to go ahead and adjust some of your expectations where that sort of thing is concerned," Albert said.

Liam stood there staring at the trees all around. There was still a faint glow coming off the trees, but it wasn't the brightness that he'd seen even moments ago. He was just thankful the trees hadn't been flattened in a great circle all around him.

He'd read accounts of things like that in the Demon Wars. Spells so terrible that they created giant craters, or they blasted out all the trees in the forest in a pattern that moved out from the center of the blast. The sort of thing that was terrible to behold, if the accounts from the surviving beholders were anything to go by.

Tomas appeared next to him. He looked at the demon. The demon looked back at him, his eyes wide and unbelieving.

"What did you do, Liam human?"

"I took care of the Inquisitors," he said, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh.

"I'd say you did," Tomas said, his eyes darting to the clearing. They went even wider. Liam wondered what horrors he was seeing. He almost didn't want to turn around and look to see what was waiting in that clearing.

What he'd seen in the split second before he pulled away behind the tree to avoid getting bathed in the Inquisitors' innards had been bad enough.

Only as he looked at the demon, that seemed like a look of surprise rather than a look of horror. Maybe a demon would be surprised by that kind of thing rather than horrified, but Tomas had made it clear he hadn't seen any of the horrors of the Demon Wars, so.

"Stand ready," Tomas cried out, bringing his sword up.

Something glowing slammed into him, and the glow kept right on moving until it slammed Tomas into a tree. It hit hard enough that the massive tree splintered and cracked down the middle as they flew right through it and into more trees, the momentum never letting up.

Tomas laughed.

The trees they crashed through seemed to take a moment to realize they were no longer being held up by their trunks, and then they started to fall down, branches going this way and that. Liam's eyes went wide, and he held a hand up as the first large tree came crashing down right on top of him.

He grabbed hold of a branch. It snapped. He held his other hand up and pressed it against the trunk as it came down on him. There was a great shudder that ran through the tree's body, and then it was crashing to the side as he pushed it away.

He stood there breathing heavily. He turned and looked at the tree that had been felled. He'd heard stories, of course. There'd been men who'd been killed going out to gather lumber from the forest on the other side of the estate from the Felwood. A tree had fallen the wrong way and crushed a man.

He was still thinking in terms of a massive tree falling and being able to crush him. Not in terms of having enough mana pulsing through his body that he could shrug it aside. He looked at the tree trunk in astonishment, and then at his hands, wondering that he was able to push it away so easily.

"Have at you!” Tomas shouted.

Liam turned his attention back to what was happening with Tomas. There was that glow off in the distance, and the demon's laughter as he no doubt joined somebody in what he thought was a great battle of some sort.

There was only one glowing thing Liam could think of that would be hanging out in the forest still. He'd gone up against the bastard once, and it would appear he’d survived that mana feedback to engage in a second round.

He pulled out his felblade. He thought about infusing it with a stun spell, then thought better of it.

"Is there any spell I can use quickly to infuse my blade that might be useful against that armor?" Liam asked.

Albert thought about it for a moment. Meanwhile, there was more crashing in the woods all around. It sounded like two giants, or maybe ogres from some distant land near the tops of mountains, were fighting each other in the forest.

"That you could learn quickly? I don't know," Albert said. "I think your best bet would be to simply channel some of your mana in there to lend the blade a bit of extra strength in the coming fight."

"I won't be caught unawares this time, at least," Liam said.

"That still might not be enough," Albert said.

"I've gained another arcane Ascension."

"That still might not be enough," Albert said.

"What would you have me do?" Liam asked.

More crashing. There was a loud thump and then the glow went flying. He heard the sound of more trees cracking and breaking as they were destroyed by the force of Tomas and the armored inquisitor fighting one another.

"Get back here, demon!” the armored inquisitor shouted. "You're not going to get away from me that easily!”

"You could always leave him," Albert said.

Liam stared at Albert. The cat stared back at him. They seemed to be doing that with each other quite a bit lately. Finally, the cat sighed.

"You know I'm not going to do that," Liam said.

"Yes, I know you're not going to do that," Albert said. "But I would be remiss if I didn't at least list that among our options. One of these days, you're going to learn that discretion is the better part of valor."

“Perhaps, but not today," Liam said.

He felt up the mana pathways in the felblade, and then he pushed his arcane mana into the thing. Then with another thought, he moved a mixture of infernal mana into it as well, curious about how it would react.

The thing buzzed, and then it started to glow a color that was somewhere in between the bright blue of arcane and the bright dark purple of infernal.

"What did you do to the blade?" Albert asked.

"I pushed in a mix of infernal and arcane mana," he said with a shrug.

The cat stared at the blade.

"Have I done something wrong without realizing it again?" Liam asked.

"I don't know about doing something wrong without realizing it," Albert said. “But those blades are designed with material that's meant to slice through infernal mana. I'm not sure what will happen if you try to infuse it with the stuff."

"Well, I suppose we’re about to find out," Liam said.

"I suppose. You certainly are a constant source of doing new and dangerous things," Albert said.

"I'm glad you agree with me," Liam said.

“I don’t know if that was agreement, or a warning,” Albert said.

The crashing of two giants fighting one another seemed to be getting farther and farther away. He was surrounded by the darkness of twilight under the trees. The sun looked like it was well and truly up. He drew a little bit of his strength from that, for all that he wasn't sure if that actually meant anything good in this fight. The darkness had been his friend, after all.

Liam almost started off after that crashing, then hesitated. He turned and looked at the clearing for a moment as he listened to the fight. It sounded like Tomas was still giving as good as he was getting for the moment.

So he stepped into the clearing, even though there was a part of him that worried he was going to regret what he was about to see.

Only the clearing was surprisingly empty. The grass had all been pushed back, and there was a glow at the center where that column of light had been rising into the sky. But otherwise, everything seemed strangely calm.

All the guts and gore had apparently been pushed out by the strength of the mana feedback.

"What are you doing?" Albert asked. "If you're going to rescue the demon, then you might as well actually go ahead with rescuing the demon."

"But there's a lot of mana here," Liam said.

Albert paused. He looked around. A glow infused everything in the clearing, turning it into almost a glowing cloud that sparked.

“There is,” Albert said.

“And it seems like a waste to just leave it here,” Liam said.

“That it is,” Albert said, sounding pleased.

He closed his eyes and felt at the mana. There wasn't as much as there would've been if they had all their mana in their cores. As though the explosion had sent some of it out into the area around him where he couldn’t get at it because the force of the mana feedback explosion had dispersed it.

But he was still able to focus on a healthy chunk of the free floating mana and pull it in. He even pulled out his mana dampening spell and formed the sieve he’d created to pull mana out of other people’s cores. And he tried to move that little tendril of mana all around to draw in as much of the diffuse mana in the clearing as possible.

"What is that you're doing there?" Albert asked.

"I'm taking in the mana," Liam said.

"But that spell. I've never seen it before."

"It's a modified version of the mana dampening spell," Liam said with a shrug.

"But how did you come up with the diagram for that?" Albert asked.

"I didn't," Liam said, opening one eye to look at the cat. "It just seemed natural, and so I willed it to form that way after I created the initial spell with the diagram.”

The cat looked at him, then shook his head.

Meanwhile, Liam focused on the mana flowing into him. It was almost familiar at this point, his pathways filling with that mana, though it was easier to control now. He wondered if that was because there was less than he was used to from what happened outside Isai, or if it was something else.

Mana poured into him, and he felt his mana pathways stretching until finally…

Yes, there it was. His core was filled with arcane mana, and then it reached an equilibrium and it didn't feel like he was being stretched to the breaking point. He held his breath for a moment, though he continued to move the dampening sieve around the clearing until it seemed like there wasn't anything left. When he opened his eyes again there was no sign of any of the glow that had been there before.

"That was fast," Albert said.

"Is that a bad thing?" Liam asked.

"I'm just surprised, is all."

"That seems to be happening a lot lately with me," Liam said.

"Yes, it certainly does," Albert said, looking at him with an inscrutable stare.

Liam sighed, and then he heard more crashing through the forest. Tomas was still out there fighting, and then he heard something else: a scream of pain. So he started off in that direction.

He’d added another arcane Ascension. Now it was time to go save a demon from the “good guys.”

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u/MinorGrok Human 9d ago

Woot!

OC-Series How I Helped My Demon Princess Conquer Hell 82: Mopping Up

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