NOVEL NEXT CCXXII – Despair and Joy
Esperanza had to admit that the demon she was fighting against was a skilled, experienced veteran, quite likely one that might have participated in the previous war, even. The demon was a Nevilosk and they were supposedly long-lived, with lifespans of up to two centuries or more. Despite the demon’s brutish manner of fighting, it was clearly tempered by experience and situational judgment as well, which made it hard for her to take down the demon quickly.
Normally she would have thought that the demon would face great difficulty defending against her attacks given his rather unwieldy weapons, but the demon used his greater experience to compensate instead. At times, it was as if the demon already guessed what move Esperanza was about to do before she even pulled it off, and that, combined with the demon’s notably greater strength, allowed him to fight against her on relatively equal grounds.
Similarly, the demon’s soul seemed to be quite sturdy since he barely showed any effect from the side effects of Esperanza’s [Far Down the Deep End], which she naturally amplified with her [Aura Mastery]. Some of the second tier demons had even directly clawed out their eyes or throats under its effects, but the older Nevilosk she faced seemed mostly unperturbed by the skill.
Where the older demon had experience and strength on his side however, Esperanza was faster than he was, and more importantly, had more limbs to swing at him. Because of that, she managed to slowly but surely gain an advantage over her opponent, and definitely kept him so occupied to the point that he had no opportunity to come to the help of his compatriots who were being massacred by the rest of Esperanza’s group.
She sent out two of her right-side tentacles to strike towards the demon’s feet, forcing him to take a step back to avoid the strikes, while at the same time the third tentacle on the right side went for the demon’s head from above. The three tentacles on her left side, she used to strike at different angles towards the demon’s body.
Each of the tentacles writhed and jived as they struck, almost as if they were living serpents instead of just appendages, and when the demon struck with his weapons while he retreated to ward them off, they avoided his strikes as if they had eyes – which they did, Esperanza had plenty and shifting some to each tentacle to get a better viewpoint was normal for her – on them.
The demon managed to avoid injury once more, but he was forced on the backfoot yet again. His fighting style was obvious, it was one where he would rampage within the enemy formation and steal the initiative from his foes. Esperanza forcing him into a reactive defense meant that she had the initiative in their fight, and she knew that it was hers to abuse as much as she could.
As such, she pressed on. Fortunately shifting her legs to its current form where it acted like suction cups on the mountainside meant that she could devote more attention elsewhere, so she shifted some of her mass and split off two more tentacles out of her six, similarly tipped with bone blades. The additional limbs started attacking as well, the eight limbs moving in tandem with each other.
Rather than have them attack one after another, which would give her foe more time to defend himself, Esperanza had all eight strike simultaneously from different directions and angles, which made it far trickier to defend properly. She also had some of them halt briefly from time to time to throw off her opponent’s defensive timing before striking again.
This time, her opponent’s defense faltered before her onslaught, and while she only managed to inflict small wounds with two of her tentacles, Esperanza had coated all of them with [Soul Armament], so the minor wounds were not that simple, and also injured her opponent’s soul directly. The old Nevilosk clearly had a rather sturdy soul given how he did not scream out in pain from the hit, but even so, he still flinched momentarily from the unexpected wounding of his soul.
It was but a small opening, one that would have been too brief for most to exploit, but Esperanza was not most people.
Her “weapons” were literally part of her body, and although they had been drawn back after the strike, they were capable of returning for another attack far faster than a normal person’s limbs or weapons would be able to. All eight limbs returned for another assault towards the Nevilosk one after another rather than arrange themselves for a simultaneous strike as usual before the man could react.
The Nevilosk still managed to ward off five of her strikes with his flails even under such conditions, but the three that struck home did the trick. One of her tenebrous limbs pierced through the man’s calf, while another slashed his forearm. The fatal blow, however, was the tentacle that managed to pierce through the side of the man’s abdomen and straight into his gut.
Esperanza naturally didn’t waste the chance. The moment the tentacle entered the Nevilosk’s abdominal cavity, its tip spread open into a three-petaled toothy maw and bit down, the serrated fangs of the maw shredding and mulching any internal organ in their reach. At the same time, her other tentacle lodged in the Nevilosk’s calf grew spines and barbs all over and completely made itself stuck within the fleshy part of the man’s calf.
Needless to say, the demon’s defenses faltered from the horrific pain he suffered from his injuries. Esperanza yanked the tentacle lodged in the Nevilosk’s calf and made him lose his balance, before her other limbs pierced through the man in several places. At the same time, she also made sure to directly destroy the demon’s vital organs with the parts of her limbs inside his body.
The damage she did was enough to kill the demon, if not instantly. A fourth tier demon’s vitality was far greater than weaker ones, and even in the throes of death, with most of his vital organs destroyed and a bone spike through his brain, the Nevilosk still swung his flail one last time towards Esperanza, smashing one of her tentacles that couldn’t move away in time since it was stuck to the demon.
It was a minor injury for Esperanza, though, one that she would quickly recover from just from her natural regeneration and absorbing the severed part of the tentacle back into her body. She kept the demon’s soul in case it might end up useful later, and dropped the remains of his body – he was too high a level for her to use [Essence Devourer] on his corpse anyway – where he stood.
By then. The rest of the fighting had pretty much settled down, though she noticed how Dali, Gordy, Legisvula, and the scouts were missing. They were probably off chasing a few who tried to escape by jumping down the cliff, she guessed, as they were all agile enough to chase after them without risking injury to themselves in the process.
The other two demon fourth tiers had been slain as well. Resitia had slain one on her own before help could arrive, while Nali had fought the other until Tiesya reached him and helped him bring down the demon in very short order. The demon was already struggling to fight Nali off, so when Tiesya joined the fight they never had any chance to survive.
As for the rest of the supply convoy and its guards, they laid dead on the mountain path, and some of Ani’s people were stacking the bodies in piles next to the carts of supplies. Esperanza herself didn’t have that much room left in her [Soul Storage], so they only picked out the best bits of the supplies in the wagons, the more luxurious things intended for the officers and higher tier people, and left the rest behind.
Naturally, the convoy’s drivers and beasts of burden had not been spared either. All of them lay dead in piles next to the supply wagons they had driven or pulled just moments ago. Perhaps they were uninvolved civilians that were only helping out, but at the moment, Esperanza couldn’t afford to worry about such things. It was imperative for her to leave no witnesses behind while they were operating in secret.
Before too long, Legisvula and the others had returned. Each of them carried a couple of corpses – often broken as they had tumbled and fell down the cliff – with them as they climbed up. The corpses were quickly deposited on the piles near the supply wagons. Dali also dragged a corpse up in his mouth, while Gordy carried another half dozen corpses on her back and two in her mouth as they returned to the mountain path with their respective methods.
Once all the corpses were piled up and they counted to make sure that they weren’t missing any, the group doused the piles of corpses and the supply wagons in oil they found inside one of the wagons. The oil was likely meant for cooking, but it would serve their purpose well enough in this case. Once they had everything doused in oil, everyone then moved over towards where the second bridge used to be.
Meanwhile, Esperanza brought out a torch and had it lit, before she extended her arm as far as she could to drop the torch in the middle of the pile. The flame caught on rapidly, and within mere moments, it had engulfed all the wagons and piles of corpses around it, helped by the oil they had been doused with. A few more moments and the fire turned into a raging inferno as the bodies and the wagons started to burn as well, themselves turning into more fuel for the fire.
Satisfied with how the fire would most likely burn everything while leaving little to no traces, Esperanza gave a nod, and one after another, her people leapt over the gap where the second bridge used to be and landed on the other side. Some of them had to take a running start, while some others used different methods to get over, but everyone had their own ways.
The most agile and powerful amongst the group, like Legisvula and Val-Kas’j, just directly jumped over, their legs providing them with enough power to hurl their body over the distance. Those who were weaker in physique took running starts to help them gain enough momentum to jump the gap instead, or used things like poles to leap over.
Some, like Ani and the two that had been with her at the start, actually jumped into the stream and swam over to the other side before leaping back out, almost like how some dolphins would leap out of the water. They were already wet and covered in all sorts of blood and viscera from the fighting anyway, so the quick dip helped them clean up as well.
Esperanza herself decided to try something that she had thought of doing but hadn’t truly managed to pull off before, as she thought that with her shapeshifting skills leveled to the current point, she might manage to do it now. She spread her arms wide and shifted their forms into bat-like wings that were each as wide as her height and easily three times as long as she was tall.
She flapped the wings a few times and then took a jump off the cliffside with whooping laughter as she used the wings to glide on the wind and rise higher, a few more flaps carrying her even higher. It was quite a thrilling experience to actually fly under her own power, something completely different to just gliding on the air currents, and she circled around a few times in the air while enjoying that feeling.
Esperanza only landed a couple minutes later where the rest of her group had been waiting for her, fortunately unbothered by the short wait.
