Revenge Creates some Incomprehensible Schemes

The two returned to Glynn's World airborne. 

With quick wit and desperation, Dige grabbed onto Fuuma and thought about his boots very hard until the flames jetted out, sending them careening around the lake. However, it was not the time for slapstick. They were out of action for several minutes, and the demon general could’ve made a break for it in that time, so once low enough, he cut the engines and the two rolled away their inertia.

The area was quiet, eerily so. They could still hear the sounds of battle down the range, the roaring and clashing of magical spells matched with epileptic flashing lights. Was the demon general going towards the battle, or away? The only local sounds were the cries of a young girl.

Fuuma ran to Tama. The kunoichi writhed in pain, and her hands covered her face as if to keep something sealed. She had to be submerged immediately, and they did so with haste. Just like before, the tendrils found their way out, and with no path to the surface, drowned. Another percentage down.

“Tama, what happened? Where’s Kuroni?”

She couldn’t answer easily. Her voice was garbled and her mouth sloshed with blood, but she tried. She faced her master bravely, ready to assist in any way she could, but the boy threw himself back. Tama would remember that face for a long time.

The Demon General’s worms had eaten through her. From the skin to cheekbones, out her jaw, through her eye socket, she had been dug through to where half her face was eaten through raw. She had become a living corpse, a cadaver that by some miracle still drew breath. 

“Master, I’m sorry,” she groaned. “Sister tried to stop it. They’re luring it up the mountain.”

Fuuma was already in full sprint, leaving the girl behind to contend with the monster, but she and Dige could see what resolve Fuuma had. She wept even harder.

A wriggling sound caught the dwarf’s attention, and from behind, more tendrils, a lot more, but not the general. It was only a new hive, trying to find use for this ravaged new body. The tattered remains were barely recognizable, but were unmistakable nonetheless.

“Artemis, my boy,” Dige said slowly, as if he’d somehow answer. He gritted his teeth. “Get out of him, creature!”

Despite the painful barbs, the dwarf launched the corpse into the lake, and as before, the worms died. Artemis’s husk was all that remained. It was so buried through that there weren’t any organs left. He had been decomposed to bone and muscle. Even then, Dige could read his expression. Artemis was locked in a state of painful, dying agony. The end of his life was nothing but torture.

“I’m sorry, boy,” Dige said. “I guess I ruined your life.”

He wasn’t sure why he said it that way, but it cast a dark shadow over him. It felt like an eternity had passed before he could think again, but the dwarf pulled himself through with the power of rage. His answer was to turn to Tama.

“Girl! Give me your wiregun!” 

She didn’t answer, which enraged Dige further. 

“If you’re not going to fight, I will! I’ll never forgive that monster! I’ll kill it!”

Dige stole her weapon and made a run for the mountain, leaving her alone and in pain, her body barely able to move.

“Master, why?” she wept. “Why did you run away from me?”

Up on the mountain’s peak, Kuroni was the last woman standing. In the frantic game of cat and mouse, the high-heeled ninja did everything in her power to evade the tendriled monster with a particular interest in her, and only her. 

Mars had been left in the dust. Valiant as he was, he did not have the speed or range to combat this creature. He could burn it. The worms in his arms were rooted out almost by force before getting cooked to a crispy texture. Perhaps that was why it avoided him. Perhaps it had more sinister plans.

“Everything I touch dies,” the monster said telepathically. “It requires a special touch to keep the body pure. Give me yours.”

Kuroni tried to keep away as much as possible, but her body was failing. A worm found a way into her chest, and she could slowly feel it tunneling through her body, one chomp after another. She made it to the shrine at the peak, and through the gates, she found Marine’s spring. If she could dive into it, she could heal up instantly. It was a hundred meters away.

A tentacle got her leg, and it was over. 

“Allow me to enter.” It called as tendrils wrapped and encroached up her leg, looking for the cleanest way into her body. The ear was the easiest, or the nose, mouth, the fresh wounds? There were many opportunities. 

Kuroni closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, waiting for the torture to begin, cursing herself for not being strong enough.

“Get away from her!”

A force carried the demon general away, and Kuroni too. She couldn’t tell what was happening, but she knew that voice.

“Mars!” she called out. “Help me!”

“What do you think I’m doing!?” 

What he was doing was lifting the creature with his bare strength and hauling him up a flight of stairs. The tendrils were not happy, their spikes piercing his hands and body, but all that did was secure his grip. With hundreds of kilograms fused to him and a body full of orcish adrenaline, the barbarian reached the summit and threw himself into the stone swimming pool.

Instantly, the orc could feel its effects. Once detached, the pool went red with his blood, but just as quickly, the wounds sealed up, and a relaxing, empowering agent revitalized the warrior and the ninja in tow. The general did not agree. It splashed and floundered in the meter-deep pool, offended by its holiness and liquidity. A light world goddess and a dark world demon did not mix. It burned. 

The Demon General held nothing back. Its size expanded, and its body became sharper than ever, willing to rush down its enemies while inhibited by water. If the two could understand it, they would hear every curse in the book, the full rage of a demon frustrated by their unwillingness to die. 

A spike shot out and pierced Mars through the heart, causing him to fall to the watery floor, but before it could secure the kill, a weight fell upon it.

In the seconds that it was raging, a missile launched itself from the midpoint of the mountain. That missile came with a strong noggin, and with the full force of his helmet, Dige crashed into the demon and pancaked it. It cracked his skull, too, but the water made sure he didn’t notice. 

Between the spikes, Dige unloaded the wiregun straight down. He didn’t understand its functions, but it did operate to his will. As expected for one of Fuuma’s designs. It reached through and around the beast, weaving together like a tapestry to keep the demon as one sealed beast. It couldn’t cut the hardened tendrils, but the same could be said for the wire. 

The pool wasn’t too deep. The demon had some way to stay above water, but not all of it, and not with water this pure. The demon general was already in a losing position. It was dying. All Dige needed to do was prevent its escape. Mars had figured out the plan without knowing anything. He hoped to tell him about it later.

The demon general wormed its way into Dige. “You can’t contain me! I am immortal! I’ll take your form if I have to!”

But Dige heeded him not, and using the wiregun as a rod, he dove into the spring and activated his boots, propelling him underwater straight into a corner. His face smashed into the masonry. He was without air, and his body was stabbed over and over with malicious hairs, but he kept thrusting, trusting in his magic, his strength, his goddess’s healing. The demon general thrashed and wriggled and screeched for minutes in a desperate attempt to free itself. It could draw itself toward Dige and murder him with its full force, like the mage beforehand, but it couldn’t. It was tethered.

It was so incensed at the dwarf, the beast didn’t realize that the kunoichi had a wire of her own. Paper, wire, kunai, blades. All were tools that ninjas like her carried. There were a dozen kunai with wire attached, connected to grates, statues, buried in the wild grounds. It was like a net cast over a school of fish. Her quick thinking doomed the general.

Eventually, Dige came up for air, and despite his terrible swimming skills, he managed to scale the marble back onto dry land. He felt like Swiss cheese from the waist down, and looking down, that confirmed it. Everything from the trousers down had been cut up and mutilated, while healed at the same time. His legs were unrecognizable. His boots were still pristine, though. Funny that.

The demon thrashed for minutes on end, but eventually, the demon slowly lost tendrils as its bottom half drowned, and the more it lost mass, the tighter the wire pressed, and the further it was pushed down. The goddess’s blessing slowly evaporated the beast until there was nothing left. The pool went black with its liquid form, a cloud of dead bacteria settling on the marble depths. The beast was defeated.

But at what cost?