First Sage CH23

A drop of blood fell from the demon’s tail before the wound closed completely. The demon’s energy was spent to heal itself, but it didn’t matter. I could feel the wellspring feeding the demon like an endless energy filler. I remembered an Inquisitor who surgically replaced his heart with an MN engine. The runes on his skin converted the MN particles into mana. That was impressive, a feat of ingenuity even Father probably wouldn’t roll his eyes at.

The demon had a similar setup. It must have let them jump ranks quickly as long as they had the needed fuel for their culture. This place was to a demon what my farm was to me. Once they gained enough power, they would spread their culture to the four winds.

My cube buzzed, warning me of an incoming nuclear strike. Penal teams were probably already invading the city on a suicide mission to save the city. Even a Borg couldn’t get away with launching tactical nukes when there were other options. We only had to destroy the wellspring; nothing had changed.

I raised my power to the maximum without giving myself away. The demon smirked at me like it had figured everything out. My energy blade crackled back to life with a minor energy discharge as my culture clashed with the demon culture. Our differences caused the effects as energy sought to rebalance itself.

Ember gave me a disparaging look as the tail tightened. Her neck snapped, and the demon tossed her into a pile of mangled bodies. I saw red.

My body crossed the distance faster than ever before as the demon brought its scythe down. “Unfortunately,” I stumbled on a pebble, and her scythe slashed across my barrier. A thin line of blood appeared as I struggled to find my footing. “You can’t tell up from down.” The demon cackled, and the world flipped. More slashes opened wounds on my body, and the demon reached for my throat with her massive arm. I grabbed her thumb and snapped it out of joint.

Ember liked to dismember her opponents with joint locks and precise cuts from her rapier. She moved like a shadow, killing with the least energy possible when she wasn’t trying to show off for me. Fighting the demon’s power for power would never work. I fired off a few underpowered lasers point-blank and missed. Trying to strengthen my stance made my feet move in reverse.

Somehow, the demon could use its words to convince my body to act up. This was the power of a greater demon. I saw her scythe aim at my chest and felt it strike my back. Pain lanced through me as the strike opened a deeper wound than the ones before. When I braced for the attack, I unconsciously moved my barrier to become thicker, where I took the hit.

“What are you doing?” The demon asked.

I opened my mouth to answer and shut it. Suggestions altered my perception answering questions might do something even worse to me.

My eyes couldn’t be relied on, and my ears were the gateway for the demon to get in and mess with me. What could I do to turn this fight around?

Oh, I closed my eyes and focused only on my energy sense. The woman-shaped demon vanished, replaced with a mass of energy. I could feel that she hadn’t managed to corrupt my energy sense. She moved to my right, and twisting streams of power erupted as she spoke, bouncing in waves aimed at my ears.

I shifted my aura just as I did to conceal my mana and altered my barrier to keep the demonic energy away. “Kill yourself.” The demon said.

My hand raised, placing my energy blade against my neck. Then I slashed.

I felt my blade slice into the glowing tattoo over the greater demon’s womb. The demon shrieked in both pleasure and pain as I moved in. I stabbed the side of the demon’s knee with my energy blade, skewering the joint. It would heal; its thumb was fully recovered from my joint lock.

My culture, even without a name, had a single quality beyond all others: we could sense energy. With enough time, no ability could remain a mystery to me. I spartan kicked the demon in the crotch, sending it down on its ass. The greater demon swung its scythe, and I met it with my blade.

Sparks ignited in the air, and a demonic miasma caught fire as I struggled against this impossibly powerful opponent. Its energy constantly refilled while I struggled with my dwindling reserves. My mind’s eyes caught on to her moves, and I began maneuvering her into a trap. I slashed at her throat, forcing the demon to block at an angle with her scythe.

Her legs spread, and the demon laughed as our weapons struck full force, blasting the underground garage with lightning bolts, twisting cyclones of flames, and pressure waves. She was on her ass and had no stance, but her blows had hardly weakened. A grin formed over the energetic face of the demonic energy I fought.

“My name is Morgen.” The demon revealed, and then miasma turned into lube.

I took a step, slipped, and fell on my ass while a tidal wave of lube slammed into me.

Morgen, as in the demon that drowns men. Probably not the original, but that hardly mattered. I dropped my energy sword and raised my arms as the demon slashed me. As I fell, deep cuts opened across my arms, chest, and stomach.

I slid into something shining to my senses when I hit the ground. “Go ahead and try; it will do you no good,” Morgen said.

Since I wasn’t using my eyes to keep track of my opponent or the rainbow of miasma that mostly consisted of layers of purple, I had more RAM available. Morgen wasn’t the only one benefiting from the wellspring.

With every breakdown and repair, my black halo had grown more adaptable. After a decade of speculation and writing the seals for the construct until my hands cramped, I placed it above my head, and it spun. With every revolution of the halo, my reserves recovered, and my PL slowly climbed. As I attempted a construct, a dark shade grew and slid into my aura.

After concealment, there were two paths to travel: construct and manifestation. Constructs were weapons made of aura, like my energy blade or the demon’s scythe. Manifestations were the equivalent of Magna Meister’s mobile suits and were permanent fixtures in aura. They formed an entity made of aura around the user. The idea was to extend enhancement to a body that could be repaired with energy. While making a Titan pilot sounded awesome, I hadn’t put in the time yet.

Constructs were expensive disposable weapons.

My construct was a chained spear. I threw the spear hard enough to break the sound barrier. The spear hit the demon in the stomach even as a wave of lube washed over me. I held onto the chain wrapped around my arm and pulled. My reserves dropped to less than 5% while my black halo cycled to recover them. Everything I had left was devoted to enhancing my defense against the demon’s words. Still, I pulled the demon to the ground.

The Uber succubi splashed into the waist-deep and rising parking garage of lube. She tried to move and fell into her trap while I pulled myself closer. 6% of my energy had returned, and it all went into enhancement.

Claws raked against my torn skin when we closed in, and I punched it in the mouth. I held my breath as it dragged me down into the lube and looped her tail around my ankle. I punched out with all my strength.

7%

All the while, I could feel my PL slowly rising as she clawed at my face and pummeled my chest. My adrenaline kept me in the fight while the black halo improved its absorption seals. Every failure was isolated, repaired, and improved using preprogrammed seals. Anything I thought might help had been added.

8%

This was what it meant to consume what was needed and leave the rest. I wouldn’t become a demon or use their culture. I took their power and added it to my own through my own culture. Jason should have chosen a similar approach, but instead, he pulled entire parts of another culture and added to himself.

I threw a punch and leaped to the surface, gasping for air before the tail pulled me back down. My hands squeezed around the demon’s neck, but her barrier was too strong to make a dent.

9%

A blow knocked me out of the lube, and the tail pulled me back in for a follow-up. My body was bruised and bleeding from too many slashes, and my vision blurred. None of her word magic was needed to put me down at this rate. I threw another punch into the demon’s perfect face, and this time, she flinched.

10%

My muscles bulged as I forced all my energy into enhancement. The black halo rotated ever faster as it improved its filter speed. From the wellspring, I could feel my energy fill.

13%

I gripped the spear, stabbed into the demon’s gut, and pushed it deeper.

“I like it deep,” Morgen said.

Her moan nearly shattered my mind as my ears rang from the noise. My barrier was down. I had no defense as her claws raked across my body, only enhancement. As the pain took me, I was forced to enhance myself more deeply than in high gravity. Adrenaline could only last so long, and our fight was a marathon.

Another blow from me sent the demoness nearly an arm's length away until I pulled on the chain, dragging her closer. I had taken the momentum despite the demon’s words.

19%

More of my reserves went only into enhancement. Even as my lungs screamed for air, I ignored them; my cells were filled with my energy; they needed nothing else. Morgen was the demoness of drowning; I would make myself impervious to drowning.

18%

Keeping myself alive through energy carried its own risks.

My next blow took a tooth with it. Blood from the succubus sucked into my black halo, and several parts of my powerful tool broke down. The AI went to work as I delivered another heavy punch.

14%

The tail flung me, and I yanked on my chain, but her strength was greater; we landed on the lube-submerged parking garage floor with her on top. Her hand quickly moved to the only part of me undamaged by her claws. She raised, ready to end the fight.

My black halo repaired itself and consumed energy from the wellspring with new vigor.

22%.

I grabbed my spear and pulled it out with a meaty twist. Another moan nearly scrambled my brain before I struck. For the first time, the succubus screamed in pain. She grabbed my spear and struggled to free herself.

25%

A hard blow knocked her back. The blood from my attack flowed into my black halo. As the succubus wrenched my spear free, my black halo took more spilled blood.

Thoughts of becoming a warlock came to me if only to summon demons for my black halo to devour. I was sure I could use seals instead of runes with superior results.

28%

I swam to the surface and took a refreshing breath.

34%

I could feel my black halo revolve, refilling my reserves even quicker when I didn’t need to give myself life support.

My black halo could be approved upon with a second ring around the first one or another, crossing the first. I could add an ability once I learned more about demons, truly adding their power to my own through my culture, not the culture of another.

40%

Bolts of electricity launched from my body like rain, and the lube bubbled and evaporated around me as I turned my aura up. Another wave of lube crashed against my barrier and evaporated before touching me. My energy recovery rate had reached a tipping point. The evaporated lube flowed into the black halo.

51%

My energy blade formed at the end of my fingertips, a darker shade of red than before. Then, an irritated Ember picked her sword out of the knee-deep lube.

She raised a finger, and the demoness’s blood dropped. It glowed before crossing the distance. My senses perceived the blood hardening, widening, and lengthening until it resembled buckshot. A core of relic flame waited inside the new construct until it bypassed the demoness barrier. Brains splattered the pillar behind the demon, and it fell.

“Did you enjoy your fight?” Ember asked while ringing lube out of her blood silk spun shirt. I pointed my hand at the wellspring while my halo absorbed the greater demon’s blood. My attack was like the laser, only taken to its obvious conclusion. Waves of heat filled the air until my attack glowed white hot. Then, I fired a fist-sized laser at the wellspring, slicing through its ritual circles of runic arrays.

The wellspring instantly vanished as the stable door to hell collapsed.