CH929

While Foast screamed, restructuring the stone filling his suit to try and force it out, the rest of them attacked his giant form. Arms and legs still exposed, Ben, Abel and Thera’s full focus shifted to cutting them away, stripping as much mass from him as they could, only to repeatedly watch it regrow, right until it didn’t, the stumps simply closing and the armour closing around it while meat and bone piled up in that blocked off space, though even that gradually shrunk.

Abel wasn’t hiding the fact that she was taking it for herself, a few of her monstrosities feasted while her true body and the rest she created worked, not that Ben was going to fault her for that. Even if their attacks seemed to be working, things were still dangerous enough. He wanted all of the strength on their side he could get.

Especially since we haven’t fucking won yet!

Six minutes left until he expected certain victory, but the fact that he wasn’t seeing any signs of it left him worried he was wrong. That there was some other thing he just wasn’t seeing but for the time, all he could do was continue to work, his subtler plans still unnoticed with the only setback being the demon, finally getting control of the stone in its suit enough to reshape it in a way that would take advantage of the armour’s designs, rock darts pushing through and shot out that Thera caught with her power before renewing her focus on her barrier, not wanting to let it escape when they’d already come so far.

“Oh, I am going to enjoy killing you all,” the demon growled out, his size shrinking down from his gargantuan form to something still twice Ben’s own, on all fours and looking rippled with muscle as it rushed them while Abel continued with the strategy they had been under, clinging to a leg but no longer able to get through. Not thanks to any configuration of flesh but instead an aspect of the demon’s original power before becoming Foast. Its light magic.

While Ben had felt it buffing itself to an extent, it had been content to ignore the healing aspects of that power at first but no longer. It had saved its mana by indulging in Foast’s nearly endless flesh but now that it had seen a limit to that it couldn’t continue to be so wasteful, leaving it to use its high level of power instead to rapidly heal its wounds, Ben seeing that clearly with his own attack.

A spinning circular blade was made and fired off, the speed and power put into it designed to catch both the front leg and the one behind it and even appeared to have succeeded, but the perfect blow failed when flesh and bone rejoined, knitting back together like they’d never been apart while continuing his charge, the monster trying to seem as if he was barreling right at Ben and would have kept looking like that if he wasn’t dealing with a mind reader.

At the last second it turned, the true target being Thera in the hopes that her death would be more of a psychological blow than out of any attempt to free itself but Thera was already prepared, using her dark magic to cancel out the effects of its light to sap it of its strength and weaken its healing as it crashed into the spiked barrier she put up, feeling them bite into its bits of exposed flesh, even after the wounds it left began to close when it jumped away, looking back to Ben and finding him far too composed.

“I suppose among everything else I’ll be taking from you, I’ve underestimated the value of seeing in one’s head,” it said, sounding almost disappointed. “You’re as bad as the original owner of this body. How a mortal can have so many useful skills and not put them to their true potential is beyond me.”

“What can I say, someone who thinks only of killing is never going to understand what my skills are worth,” he told the other, trying to look both proud and strong. “You want to know the real value of my skills? Something a beast from a species that couldn’t build a civilization if they wanted to would never be able to manage?”

“Humour me.”

“Getting paid! And trust me, asshole, after we’re done dealing with you and I’ve potentially helped save this world and the gods of it yet again, I’m making sure I get exactly that!”

An answer that genuinely caught the other off guard, the demon’s nature combined with Foast’s memories having expected plenty but not that, with even the thoughts in Thera’s head projecting a small level of exasperation at the notion that that was where his mind was at which he ignored, instead focusing everything that he was on the demon before him while that demon did the same.

“You are, perhaps, the strangest being in my memories.”

“Yeah? Well, most of them aren’t yours and that’s a bit unfair to someone else here, don’t you think, Abel?”

“What are you talking about? I’m fitting in great!” The mass of flesh screamed back as it wrapped around Foast’s body, trying to crush down. “And is there anyone else around other than you and Thera?”

“Not that I can see!”

“Alright, then someone better close their eyes for what’s coming next!”

Picking up exactly what she was saying, Thera averted her gaze, trusting Ben to tell her if something needed to be done while Abel’s form shifted, straining against reality itself as her outer ancestry warped her shape, leaving her stronger and more lethal for going through it and bringing a devastating effect.

Instantly Foast screamed, his exposed flesh and bones being eaten away at by Abel’s unnatural nature in a way he couldn’t simply heal and could only be replaced with more that he had hidden away, leaving the man to thrash and flail, all to try and free himself and created a new, greater distraction for Ben to work with surgical precision, cutting another minute off of his time before their foe found a solution.

The demon’s only weakness was its exposed flesh but that was mostly solvable as his form changed once more. It would always have a small hole in it, the armour’s design demanded as much, but everything beyond that was meant for Foast’s convenience and easily ignored when his limbs pulled back into themselves, creating nothing but a large ball for Abel to encase.

Not that he’d given up. Even as her flesh covered him in his entirety, the demon below her pulsed, new spikes jutting out from all over, retracting before her fluids could eat away at them entirely and repeating from there, again and again and again, even as Abel mocked them.

“Is this all you got left? I’ll give ya, you put up more of a fight than the perv normally would but-”

“Abel, get off him!”

In both of their heads, Ben had seen what the demon had been trying but though it was pointless, the accuracy of that assumption proven wrong too late. She hadn’t noticed at first, too deep in the battle to pay attention to her own state but throughout her, he could feel a growing dizziness and a small ache, both building up more by the second though and revealing something he’d thought they’d managed to avoid. Abel was poisoned.

Foast held the toxins of every creature he killed and it seemed in his desperation had managed to find a configuration that would hurt even a third tier like her, leaving Ben to groan.

He must have poked her a few places that her armour wasn’t covering her but that means I can no longer trust my own resistance either. Fuck me, it has to be just a little longer. It has to be.

Despite his fears though, Abel didn’t let go, hanging on with all she had and crushing down, trying to keep him trapped for Ben to work for as long as she could before being thrown to the side and staying there, her outer ancestry disappearing without the conscious will to keep it up.

Fuck!

“Thera, help Abel!”

“But-”

“I’ll be fine!”

I just need a little longer and if it doesn’t work… Fuck!

He wasn’t yet seeing the disturbance in the other’s mind that he wanted to, sinking his hope all the lower, with it only getting worse from there. The demon may have wanted him, that was true, but it wanted all of them in the end, he’d just looked like the best target among them. With Abel down though, that was no longer true.

Not sparing him a glance, it rushed at her, speeds far beyond what Ben could muster even with his magic with Thera being the one to save her, grabbing the girl with the earth below and trusting her physical strength to protect her from the rate Thera moved her at, bringing them together and allowed the healing to begin while Ben used his own power, the various senses he had letting him hone in on and materialize within Foast’s mouth, making the other choke on the iron pins now fill it while Ben just laughed.

“You know, I can see why you’d mention wanting my materialization before,” he mocked. “A shame that even if you get it, you’ll be too dumb to use it. You think a power like that comes easy through skill alone? You actually need a brain.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to see,” he said, shifting to the form Foast wore when Ben had taken a commission from the third tier for what psychological effect that would hold and not bothering to hide it in his thoughts. “Then I suppose I’ll have to learn. Perhaps the rest of my kin would struggle but I’d like to think I have a certain level of focus.”

“Pfff, all of you demons are fucking focused,” Ben scoffed, preparing as the other walked over, even if the comment left a sudden realization.

This asshole’s only been thinking about what he wants. It’s consumed him. Oh my god, could this literally still be going on just because he hasn’t noticed something is wrong? Is the issue that there’s just enough left of him to keep up the fight? Hell, then is fighting him the only reason he’s still here at all?

“Well, before you kill me, I’ve got one last question if you’ll indulge.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Quills poisoned with the same one that flooded Abel flew at him, forcing Ben to knock them away with his magic while painting a grin on his face.

“Come on, treat me here. After all, all I want to ask is why are we even fighting?”

“I think you’re well aware of that.”

“What, to kill me and make me yours? Sure, maybe, but tell me now, how did this fight start?”

“What are you blathering about? It…”

He trailed off, trying to remember while the silence was filled by Ben, using the distraction to speed up his work.

“How did we find you in the first place? Why did we find you?”

“I, you were looking for Foast.”

“Aren’t you Foast?” he asked, seeing it work. The mind of the demon needing only a little push away from the focus of the fight to start to crumble as its thoughts unraveled.

“No. No, I’m… What are you doing to me!”

“You’re what? A demon? Are you? We spoke about it early on in the fight but do you even remember being one?” Ben asked, watching as the other clutched at their head as they fell to their knees, his victory finally certain as he walked over. “You were just a collection of memories and now you’re not even that.”

Too wrapped in panic, an identity crisis caused by everything it was being stripped away and leaving only Foast behind, Ben went into its head like he’d been doing throughout the fight and, with his mind break, destroyed even the memories of that conversation, finally killing all that existed of the demon in its totality and leaving only Foast left.

<MIND BREAK LEVEL INCREASED>

<SOUL AFFINITY LEVEL INCREASED>

<DEEP MATERIAL SENSE LEVEL INCREASED>

<DEFENSE INCLINATION LEVEL INCREASED>

<MULTIVERSAL INCLINATION LEVEL INCREASED>

<MAX LEVEL OF THE HIGH MARKSMAN JOB ACHIEVED>

“Wha- Ben?” Foast said over the notifications, sounding dazed and confused. “What happened? Why are you… no, where am I? I was just in a swamp before I blacked out and-”

“Foast,” Ben said kindly, seeing nothing in the other’s mind to make him worry. “I’m sorry, but that’s going to have to be a discussion I’ll leave for Peac and your goddess. For now, just do me a favour and change to something meek-looking while we check on Abel.”

“I… alright.”

He neither knew nor understood the cause of the destruction he could see all around him but that didn’t matter. The air around Ben gave way to the seriousness of the request and without the information it seemed like he needed, he did as he was told, changing to something less conspicuous to wait until the time was right for the reveal, while Ben put his mind to work trying to figure out the best way he could possibly explain what had happened.