RD 2 Ch 39 (Patreon)

Chapter 39

The yacht was cutting through the waves while I double-checked the gas tank, measuring the decrease in gas against the progress I was making. I was going to cut it close. They must have not planned to leave the boat running for as long as they had.

In fairness, they were also dead.

To pass the time, I had found a coffee pot and filters, using them to purify the poison from the Stymphalian Bird’s poop. It was a tedious process as I kept breaking filters and had to triple up to make any progress, going through them quickly.

The coffee machine was absolutely ruined by this point, but I’d just smash it when I was done, so no one killed themselves trying to use it later.

While I was working through the process again, the boat rocked enough that I had to balance the damned thing to keep it from spilling the current batch.

“Damnit,” I swore as I almost poisoned myself.

I froze, hearing guttural words that brought back many old memories. I recognized the demonic language, and I sucked the coffee pot into my spatial ring for later.

Apparently, I was not alone.

“Up. Up,” one growled.

I flattened myself against the wall, hearing their feet on the steps up to the helm.

The second I saw black I twisted, calling forth my Blood Blade even as I thrust. I skewered the first and the second demon on the stairs before quickly snapping a kick and sending them flying back along with the blood blade.

They tried to get back on their feet seeing that I was unarmed.

It didn’t matter.

A second blood blade was already forming. I severed their heads with the next stroke.

The two bodies were still pinned to the wall with the sword.

The system was quick in retaking their bodies. The more stats a player had from the system, the faster the process.

Other demons on the boat were making enough noise that my killing of those two didn’t alarm any of them.

I pulled out the first sword and reabsorbed the blood. Did these demons follow me?

No, they seemed to be searching rather than having a solid goal.

Which was interesting. Demons were already operating in this area.

I listened for the demon barking orders. He stood at the bow of the ship with his arms crossed, watching as his small crew went to work.

I had learned demonic given it was the best way to get intelligence. He was shouting something about a perimeter in particularly garbled language, even for a demon.

But now I had my target. Blood Bolt took him by surprise, and Sanguine Locking kept him there for later.

I moved over the side of the boat, my sword skewering another demon before I caught the next and threw him against the doorway, my fist connecting with his chest three times before it caved him in as well as destroying the door.

The leader was shouting at the top of his lungs as others moved through the boat.

I pulled the sword out of the deck and waited by the doorway, only to dodge back at the last second as a demon peeled himself out of the shadows to strike me from the right.

Another swooped down on a pair of bat wings.

I punched the shadow user, only for my fist to go through him as he melted away and tried to take my legs out from under me.

The flier latched a pair of claws on my forearm as I warded him off and tried to take flight with me.

I laughed as my blood wound up on his legs, and Blood Hex activated, causing him to scream and crash down on the boat as electricity crackled over his body.

“Now. Let’s get rid of you.” I looked for the shadow demon as I strode over the flier and executed him with a flick of my sword.

If the other hadn’t made a move to save this one… then.

I spun and threw the sword like a spear that tore the railing off the ship as a demon that had tried to free their leader flailed in the air. “Got you.” Without so much as a thought, I was making and throwing another blood blade that spun through the air, slicing the demon in half.

I confirmed his death as he hit the waves and his body disappeared, then I focused back on the leader. “Now, what to do with you.”

The leader struggled in the bindings. His crew was dead.

Thankfully, none of the demons were high enough level to be difficult.

Just in case, I spread out talismans across the ship to alert me if anything came close.

The boat still had another half a day before we arrived at the Heros Clan, and this time, Persephone wasn’t here to kill the demon I was going to interrogate.

He struggled in the bindings, but I bit my thumb and drew a number of inscriptions directly onto his skin. His breathing slowed, and his body went limp. That ought to keep him from causing trouble.

I made a mark on my forehead, not using a talisman this time, and headbutted him.

The world turned upside down as I fell into his soul, which was a cavern dotted with a twisting maze of puddles that had water-filled tunnels beneath them. It seemed he was very comfortable in the water, probably why he was part of this perimeter.

The demon’s eyes rose from one of the puddles. “You have made your final mistake.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved his words away. “You’re all so cocky. Let’s have some fun, you and me.”

The demon immediately disappeared under the water with barely a ripple.

I walked calmly through the hundreds of puddles, staring into the surfaces for information. This demon was connected to water enough that he had pretty tight control of the water in his soul.

That is to say, he was more aware of reflections and what they might give off.

The faintest splash sounded to my right, and I leaned forward, out of the way of a jagged spine that embedded itself in the cavern.

“Going to have to try harder than that. Let’s see. Start with the basics. What perimeter are you setting up?” I asked.

He answered me with another spine that I casually dodged.

I stared at the mirror-smooth ceiling that told me everything I needed to know.

The Heros Clan was clearly depicted, its barrier shattered and burning. The image I was seeing was not necessarily reality, but it was his expected reality. The demon believed this was occurring.

Another spine came up, and this time I caught it, earning myself a few cuts on my hand, but now I had a weapon.

“So, you’re leading an assault on the Heros Clan. Why?” I flicked my spine to the side and deflected another of his attacks while trying to read his soul.

A number of images flashed by. Several large, powerful-looking demons lording over the viewer as well as several important figures of the clan. It stayed locked on Persephone for a moment before moving on.

I never showed up in any of the images.

Curious.

Had the clan’s boat just been in the way of demons traveling to the clan?

An attack like this would be huge and draw from many demonic cells.

The trick was, I doubted this happened in my past life. Though I wasn’t initiated then, I doubted the Clan wouldn’t have remembered and talked about this. Especially if they successfully repelled the demons, which they must have.

The question was, what had I changed?

Obviously, I had made a few ripples, but the big ones would be removing the Blood Dragon and upsetting the secret operation underneath the clan islands.

“Was it the Blood Dragon?” I asked.

The demon attacked me again, the roof of the place rippling with uncertainty, fogging over.

It was confused by my question, so the answer was not my killing of the Blood Dragon. “Then it was the underground operation. What were they doing?”

Rather than answer, the demon jumped from a puddle and tried to stab me with another spine.

I parried his strike, locking the spines together and pulling him forward to headbutt. “Not a great idea.” I grabbed his throat while he was stunned and threw him down face-first before putting my foot on his head. “Now, stay still. What were they doing under the clan?”

Images moved by almost too quickly for me to digest.

“Intelligence, spy work. That’s a no-brainer. Same too for making husks. Who were you looking for?” As I asked the question, his mind solidified on Persephone before he actively tried to think of something else. “No.” I stomped on him hard enough to derail his train of thoughts. “Why are you looking for Persephone?”

Meanwhile, my thoughts were racing. Their search for Persephone had nothing to do with me. That warren under the clan wasn’t new; it had been an ongoing project.

If…

Yeah. In my past life, they must have eventually rooted out Tartarus. The demons might have even taken it out before their invasion.

The clan would absolutely be the type to pretend the branch didn’t exist after such a massive failure. They were also so removed from everything that the layperson among the clan might not even know the branch disappeared, not to mention those outside the clan.

My meddling in that underground chamber had likely set off their plans early.

“Why Tartarus?” I asked the demon.

The image above when I’d asked about Persephone was too vague. She wasn’t the goal. It had something to do with the branch.

The demon was clearly resisting me, trying to think of anything but the question I was asking.

There was a splash, and one of the puddles appeared under him and, unfortunately, under me.

My weight on him was gone, and I nearly fell face-first. But my fall was changed as the demon snatched my leg and tried to drag me underwater, thrashing like a shark with its prey.

The water went red with blood, but not really from me. The water was changing from his imagination of what was happening to me.

I didn’t panic, going limp for a moment as he tried to harm me.

Once he stopped to check to see if he’d succeeded, I grabbed him and kicked hard off the bottom of the tunnel to launch us back up out of the puddle.

He landed first, with my knee in the small of his back, letting out a pained cry. “Stop! I don’t know!”

I pinned his head to the ground and breathed. Part of him dissolved and was absorbed by my Soul Absorption Arts. “That’s fine. I’ll just finish you then.”

The demon panicked, squirmed, and completely forgot about resisting my questions.

“Why Tartarus?” I asked again, glancing up at the stone for answers.

The fog he’d laid over his thoughts lifted, and I saw a circular dais covered in inscription runes. It was made of dark stone and covered in blood-red designs.

My jaw dropped.

A second later, the image in the demon’s mind changed from the dais to the Demon Lord, the powerful demon staring down his red eyes boring through the demon’s soul and threatening to shake my own just seeing the demon’s memory.

I breathed deep and devoured a good chunk of the demon's soul before I fled from his mind.

The demon was screaming despite my bindings as his skin bulged.

Rolling to my feet, I jumped to the top of the boat and then dove into the water as waves rocked me in every direction.

The demon I had interrogated had just detonated himself. I wasn’t sure if it was something the Demon Lord had put inside of him or bound him to or what.

But by revealing that image to me, something had activated.

And now I knew why.

Because, apparently, Tartarus had the anchor for one of the nine hell gates.

I let the waves lap at me for a moment as I floated in the ocean and watched the yacht sink.

Fuck me. No wonder the Demon Lord was directly involved and sending people after the Heros Clan, and why there were so many demons and even a corpse tree underneath the clan.

I didn’t even know that the anchors for the demon gates were already on Earth. I had always figured they arrived with The Rapture. The term ‘gate’ was always a bit misleading. Everybody considered them big archways.

Which there was, but the archway wall was all shimmering magic.

That magic came from the anchors, which were big black stone slabs absolutely covered in inscriptions. Until the anchors were smashed, another gateway could always appear on them.

Later, during the second war, we learned that they were used to hone in on the newly hatched world while the rest of the universe didn’t even know Earth existed.

Right now, there were legions and legions of demons waiting for Earth’s protective barrier to fade. Once it did, they could launch themselves through the hell gates to this world before anyone else.

I shook my head.

How was this never discussed? No, that was wrong. The Heros Clan likely had no idea what they even held. Sure, black stones with red writings were a little ominous, but that anchor had a lot more functionality than just making portals…

I sighed.

Persephone was using the anchor to hide Tartarus. It would have plenty of inscriptions baked into it to obscure all manners of tracking. Not only could it make portals, but it was a powerful tool.

With that in my mind, I checked the sun for my bearings and then leaned forward, starting to swim towards the clan.

I hoped I would arrive in time to help with the demon siege.