Chrysalis



When the black hole finally flickers and fades away, I release my death-grip on the rock with a sigh of relief.

The basin as it had been is pretty much gone. What remains is a twisted, blasted landscape, ripped and torn apart by the strength of the gravity bomb. It doesn't look like I cast a spell, it looks like a natural disaster took place. This is on the same sort of scale as the mountain-exploding eruption magic I hit the termites with.

In fact… if I'd cast this bomb inside the mountain, it may have just hollowed the damn thing out.

Huge chunks of rock have been ripped up, pulled by the unrelenting force of the bomb. They almost look like fingers, curling up from the floor and reaching toward the place the spell had detonated.

Phew.

Considering how much of my precious, non-replenishable Altar resources I poured into that one, the effect needed to be worthwhile! I hardly expect it was enough to kill the tier eight demons, but I'm hoping it was enough to do some damage, at the very least.

Before the ash, smoke and dust can settle, I emerge from my temporary bunker and begin to cautiously advance. My gravity sense is going crazy as the normal order of the planet reasserts itself, causing that sense to be useless, but my vague sense of the future is still present and I rely on that as I edge forward.

[Quite the blow, insect! But not enough!]

Well… I'm glad you're dumb enough to announce it, and give away your general location via the bridge.

[Al! Time to go all out. Unleash everything you've got on them!]

With no need to hide anymore, I conjure a wind to blast the debris away, clearing the field in an instant.

The three demons stand defiant.

A little battered… but defiant nonetheless. I think Torrifex might be regrowing an arm….

Somonax appears to be covered in ichor, but I'm not sure that isn't just her natural state, given all the blades. Pyrixan… is still surrounded by a cloud of disintegration death.

I hadn't expected that bomb, as devastating as it was, to be enough to finish these powerful demons off, but I'd hoped. Ah well, I guess we go in and do it the old fashioned way.

I snap my mandibles together before I begin to run forward, while Al gathers power into his eye and unleashes a heatray as thick as a car at Somonax. The grinning demon slashes out with her thousand swords, slicing through the mana and cutting the beam apart, but it's enough cover for me to get closer.

All of my mind constructs kick into overdrive as they weave innumerable threads of mana, each contributing to the greater whole. I don't have bottomless gravity reserves, so I'll need to rely on my omni-elemental construct at times in this fight. The little stuff won't do, either. Bolts or even spears of ice won't do squat down here, the demons are resistant to heat as well, which leaves me having to rely on something a little more solid.

Spears of stone, as dense and thick as I can make them, begin to hurtle at Torrifex. The big demon brushes the first few aside contemptuously, but they don't stop, and he quickly grows frustrated, fire billowing from his maw.

I use the chance to close in on Pyrixan, jaws open wide as the swirling cloud of ash sits waiting for me to approach.

VOID CHOMP!

Empowered by the Altar, the bite attack is dramatically more powerful. The void forms between my mandibles, drawing Pyrixan in and tearing away fragments of her ash-shield, revealing a little more of the amorphous eye-blob that she is.

How do you like these apples?!

My mandibles slam shut with a deafening roar and Pyrixan… just takes it. The swirling ash condenses around her and, though it buckles under the weight of my bite, it doesn't break.

OUCH!

I release my grip and leap back as the ash begins to eat into my mandibles, dissolving them just through contact. Nasty stuff.

But the demoness doesn't want to let me go, the cloud of ash surges after me like a living thing. Wherever it touches my chitin, it strips away a tiny fragment of the diamond, but enough tiny fragments will add up quickly if I get surrounded by the stuff.

I pour more power into the gravity domain, but it's ineffective at keeping the drifting clumps of malevolent mana away, so I turn it off and switch strategies.

Time to introduce this demon to the business district!

POW! POW! POW! POW!

I fire wide blasts of acid in all directions, coating huge chunks of the ash in the stuff.

At first, it might seem like a nonsense move, but my acid has some beneficial properties. For starters, it eats away at mana! Not quickly, but it does do it, and secondly, it propagates itself, which means the ash that I shot will be destroyed eventually, the acid won't run out and isn't likely to be removed.

Gweheheheh!

How do you like that, you disintegrating demon of doom? Give me a little more time and you'll have no ash left at all!

Oh wait, she's producing more.

DAMMIT.

With her shield dispersed to attack me, the full glory of Pyrixan is revealed, and I have to say, I'm not a fan. She's like… a stalk, or… a chunky, twisted and bulbous pillar, covered in eyes. From the top of the stalk, a solid stream of ash is emerging, billowing out of her like smoke from a chimney.

Why the heck do you look so freaky?! Demons have such a ridiculous variety of evolutions and appearances, it's crazy! Are you really trying to tell me that this thing and Al AND Torrifex all share the same underlying species?! One is an eye made of fire, one is a four armed, smoke-billowing, jackal-headed juggernaught and the other is a… thing.

Only one solution to this mess.

More acid!

As if there's a holiday special and my produce is marked to clear, I unload rapid-fire acid shots at the demon, the wide area spray covering every possible avenue of escape.

Of course, Pyrixan doesn't look that quick, so she doesn't bother to dodge. Instead, she uses her newly produced ash to form a new shield around herself, which promptly gets coated in acid. So she starts to make more.

Of course, during this time, I'm still running and dodging from the remnants of the first batch she trained on me.

So annoying!

Oh, it looks like Torrifex got sick of smacking my spears away. That explains the giant fireball heading my way.

EMPOWERED DASH!