Chapter 333 - Freeing the Demon (Patreon)

With corrosive mana racing through him, Zeke let out a roar of pure hate and aggression, then bounded toward the enormous dwarf. His stride quickly ate the distance, and in only an instant, his hammer found its mark in the shocked Roknag’s chest. He took it without any preparation, and the sound of destroyed armor and broken bones echoed through the coral forest before the impact sent the huge figure rocketing backwards to carve a wide path of destruction through the twisting white spires.

Any other time, Zeke might’ve enjoyed the spectacle. Or planned his next move. However, with demonic energy signing through him and powering both [Cambion’s Awakening] as well as [Triune Colossus], he could scarcely string two thoughts together, much less make an elaborate battle plan. Instead, he bellowed another inarticulate war cry before following the dwarf’s flight path. When he reached the point where Roknag had slid to a stop, he was rewarded with the brief sight of a dwarf with an entirely crushed chest.

That sent a thrill of satisfaction whirring through Zeke’s mind, but it was barely a taste of what he really needed. So, he reared back, intending to continue the attack until the dwarf was ripped limb from limb. Only then would he be truly satisfied.

However, before Zeke could once again bring his hammer to bear, more snaking lights pierced through the dwarf’s chest, and the same flash of illumination preceded a shockwave of force that sent Zeke skidding backward a few yards. More trees crumbled to dust, and when the air cleared, Zeke saw that Roknag had again grown larger. In the beginning, he’d reached somewhere around twelve feet in height. After the first burst of light, he’d grown to almost double that. Now? If he was less than thirty-five feet tall – and with a thick, dwarven body – Zeke would have been surprised.

More, he was entirely healed. Even his armor had been mended.

That probably should have brought Zeke’s plans to a screeching halt. Or at least given him some ideas on how to proceed. But flooding his body with demonic mana was not conducive to rational thought. Instead, it sent him into an unthinking and reactive rage that could only be sated by violence. So, he reacted to the new development predictably.

By trying to hit Roknag even harder.

The first hammer blow took the overgrown dwarf in the knee. The second, in the stomach. The third was blocked by Roknag’s greatsword. And Zeke’s fourth attack held enough force, augmented by his Will, to send Roknag arcing high into the air only to land a mile into the coral forest. When he landed, the demonic earth shook as if a meteor had just crashed down.

But only a moment later, twisting snakes of light raced through the forest and, even from so far away, Zeke could see the following explosion of light. Even if he’d been blind to it, he couldn’t have missed it when Roknag’s head rose above the tops of the coral spires. He must’ve been over a hundred feet tall.

When the oversized dwarf took a step towards Zeke, the ground trembled. Then he took another. And another after that. Soon, he was running, battering the coral into dust with every footfall. It only took him a few seconds to reach Zeke, who met his increased size and strength with unmatched fury.

Fury lost.

Zeke tried to dodge the oncoming sword strike, but a combination of being too focused on attack as well as the sheer size of the weapon made it all but impossible. He took it in the shoulder, and it very nearly cleaved him in two. The sword bit deep into his body, only stopping when it hit his hip bone. There, it stopped with a great metallic clang.

Zeke roared in shock, pain, and anger as he was driven into the ground. Eveline screamed something in his mind, but he was too far gone to pay her any mind. With agony racing through him, Zeke threw himself away from the blade, ripping his arm from his body in the process.

It instantly began to regrow.

But even with the explosive mana of the demon realm coursing through him, Zeke had limits. And having his arm ripped off was one of them.

He didn’t care, though. He couldn’t. Not with so much anger roaring in his mind. Fortunately, he still had one good arm. He tightened his one-handed grip on Voromir, tensed his muscles, and with a berserker’s cry, sprang from the crater. His leap surprised Roknag. The hammer to the face probably surprised him even more.

Blood and bone exploded from the dwarf’s jaw as Zeke’s leaping uppercut hammer blow sent him staggering backward. Zeke landed before a howling Roknag could recover, and he immediately went on the attack, targeting the dwarf’s feet and ankles. More cries of pain echoed through the coral forest as Zeke fell upon Roknag like a one-armed whirlwind of blunt force trauma.

Within the dwarf’s armored boots, bones crunched. Tendons snapped. And flesh was pulverized. Soon enough, Roknag’s damaged feet could no longer support his massive weight, and he toppled to ground, destroying acres of coral forest with his fall. Zeke couldn’t have cared less, save that it brought the more necessary bits into his range.

He raced up the dwarf’s prone body, his feet cratering Roknag’s shiny armor with each heavy step. Then, when he reached the overgrown dwarf’s chest, he started digging, one hammer blow at a time.

Hammers were not built to get through armor. Sure, they were great for pulverizing the fleshy bits beneath, but actually getting through the metallic barrier required more force than most warriors could bring to bear. Fortunately, Zeke had plenty of strength to spare, and it only took him three attacks before the dwarf’s breastplate exploded into shrapnel, revealing his naked chest.

Zeke howled in glee as he fell hammer-first upon the pale, gray flesh.

He actually got a few feet in before those damnable lights returned, snaking into the dwarf’s body. A moment later, Zeke was thrown free by a heretofore-unprecedented explosion that sent him flying hundreds of feet away. For a moment, he blacked out, but when he looked up, even his demonic mana-soaked mind had cause for pause.

Roknag towered hundreds of feet in the air. Maybe thousands.

Zeke pushed himself to his feet, preparing to once again assault the mountainous figure. But suddenly, he heard a voice. Perhaps Eveline had finally managed to tear through the rage in his mind. Or maybe the most recent blow had jarred something loose in his brain. He had no way of knowing. But for the first time since embracing the demonic mana, Zeke could hear Eveline clearly.

“Stop! You overgrown moron, stop!” she screamed in his head.

“What?” he growled, even his inner voice hoarse with strain.

“Oh. You…you’re back…”

“What do you want?” he spat. “Kind of in the middle of something here.”

“In the middle of banging your head against the wall,” she stated. “You won’t beat that dwarf doing what you’re doing. You have to see that.”

Zeke started to respond, but he bit back his retort. In the middle of the fight, there hadn’t been any room for anything but more aggression. However, now that he’d taken a step back – or been thrown almost mile away – he had the space to look at the situation from a different angle. And when he did, it all seemed so obvious.

“He’s just going to keep healing and growing until I can’t stop him, right?” he said, forcibly keeping his mind separate from the roiling anger that came with the influx of demonic mana.

“Well, he’ll stop eventually,” Eveline answered. “But by that point, you’ll be a puddle of flesh and blood.”

“I can take him.”

“No. You can’t. Not like this,” she said.

“I’ll use the braid.”

“Too little, too late. Maybe if you’d started with that, but now? He’s too big. He has too much power in him.”

As she spoke, the mountainous dwarf cast his gaze around. His every movement looked slow and ponderous, but Zeke knew that was just a trick of perspective.

“What’s the answer then?”

“It’s obvious.”

“Yeah? Then tell me. I’m really struggling to maintain control here.”

It was true. Zeke could scarcely stitch two thoughts together, much less figure out a complex battle plan. The anger was useful, but only when the enemy – and how to beat them – was plain. When it required thought, the demon-enhanced fury could become more detrimental than helpful.

“Kill the followers,” Eveline said. “That’s where his power’s coming from. Nobody in this realm can do what he’s doing alone.”

“Dammit.”

“You would have figured it out if you were in your right mind.”

Zeke just shook his head in disappointment. He should have been better than that. He knew he’d never be a great thinker, but he needed to at least notice the obvious things. It was easy to blame the effects of the demonic mana, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. He had to learn how to manage it, or he’d end up ignoring the obvious right up until something bigger and stronger than him ended his life.

“Speaking of bigger and stronger…”

Zeke looked up to see that the dwarf had started moving in his direction. The corruption within him told Zeke to race ahead and meet Roknag halfway and finish the fight, then and there. But that was the wrong path, and it would only end with Zeke broken and buried.

So, with a mental shove, he pushed the fury aside and turned away.  It felt like tearing a piece of his body loose, but he managed it all the same. Each step away from the mountainous dwarf was excruciatingly painful, but Zeke kept moving. He broke into a jog that soon became a sprint, and within a minute of explosive speed, he’d returned to the dwarven stronghold. There, he saw twelve armored dwarves, each with their weapons pointed at their leader’s enlarged form.

The ground shook, and Zeke didn’t have to look back to know that Roknag had discovered his location. He only had a few moments to act.

It would have to be enough.

Bounding forward, Zeke aimed a one-armed attack at the closest dwarf. She had no time to react, but when Zeke’s hammer fell, it collided with an invisible sheet of mana. Suspended in mid-air, yellow cracks spread out from the point of impact, and Zeke quickly recovered to aim another blow at the shield. The shield shattered before his might, exposing the alarmed dwarf to Zeke’s fury.

She lasted only a moment before his hammer descended upon the crown of her head, crushing her helmet and skull alike. She fell, dead before she hit the ground, and Zeke turned his attention to the eleven others.

He pounced.

They died.

It was easy. Too easy, really. If the demonic mana hadn’t been urging him forward, he might’ve hesitated. But with that corrosive energy flooding his body and mind, Zeke couldn’t consider stopping – not even for a moment.

By the time Zeke had completed his slaughter, the huge dwarf had reached the stronghold. Only seconds had passed, but each of Roknag’s steps covered hundreds of yards.

A rational person might’ve cowered before such a mountainous figure. But killing the twelve dwarves had reignited Zeke’s bloodlust, and when he looked upon Roknag’s enormous form, he could only roar in challenge as he once again resumed his attacks.

This time, the effects were quite a bit different. Utilizing only his raw strength, Zeke leaped at Roknag’s ankle, bounded off an enormous rivet in the armored boot, and brought his hammer down on the shin with resounding force. A crack like a series of splintering gunshots filled the air as the bone shattered. Zeke kept going, dismissing his hammer and latching onto the suddenly protruding bone. A moment later, he’d regained his balance, so he grabbed his hammer from his spatial storage and aimed another blow at the wound.

The dwarf howled in agony as Zeke tore into the flesh, one attack at a time, until, after a few more seconds, he carved his way all the way through Roknag’s lower leg. It came free, and Zeke fell to the ground. The dwarf followed soon after, toppling over and landing with the force of an earthquake.

Zeke rolled to his feet and sprinted at the now-vulnerable dwarf, aiming for his oversized head. Roknag tried to swat him away, but Zeke met his hand with a hammer strike that flattened the surrounding coral forest, crushing the twisting spires to dust. Zeke skidded back a few dozen yards, but he was unharmed.

The dwarf wasn’t so lucky.

His hand, like the coral, had exploded, showering the surroundings with blood, flesh, and bone. In the wake of that clash, Roknag held up his stumpy wrist and stared at it in a mixture of horror and surprise. Then, he screamed.

It was music to Zeke’s ears.

His demonic side joined the chorus as he bellowed a challenging war cry and bounded forward. His own arm had almost completely reformed, his regeneration powered by the demon-mana fueled version of [Cambion’s Awakening]. Still, it hung limp by his side, completely unresponsive.

He didn’t care. After all, he still had one good arm, and that was all he needed to finish Roknag off.

Zeke seized upon the dwarf’s distraction, leaping atop his hulking body and sprinting up his leg, past his waist, and across his chest. It took longer than Zeke expected, and eventually, Roknag attempted to dislodge him. However, the dwarf had already begun to weaken, and Zeke had no problem dodging his clumsy attacks.

Finally, Zeke reached his destination and, harnessing the force-constrained version of braid technique, let loose with [Unleash Momentum].

It exploded with an explosion like an atomic bomb. The metal of Roknag’s helmet melted into slag, and a second later, dissolved into dust that was instantly blown away.  The dwarf’s flesh came next, and for a brief moment, Zeke saw an exposed skull. That too was soon gone, and that was the last thing he saw before he was blown back by the shockwave.

Zeke blacked out only to regain consciousness when he hit a copse of coral miles away and skidded to a stop. He lay there for a long while, just looking up into the fiery sky. At some point during that dazed interlude, he’d let his skills lapse. His body shrank down to its normal size, and when it did, he forced himself to embrace [Cambion’s Awakening], powering it with pure mana.

Was it instinct?

Or had Eveline influenced him? Vaguely, he was aware that she was speaking to him, but he couldn’t really understand what she was saying. Instead, he could only trust that he was making the right choice.

Finally, hours later, his mind began to clear.

“Well, that didn’t go as I’d planned,” he muttered aloud.

“It went exactly as I expected,” Eveline said. “Minus a detail or two.”

“You could’ve warned me.”

“I tried! The whole time you were rampaging like a wild demon, I was screaming at you to stop and think!”

“You know that’s not really my thing,” he groaned, sitting up. His arm was still numb, both physically and spiritually. Hopefully, the Crimson Spring would help. “At least the dwarves are dead.”

Indeed, the moment he’d regained enough clarity of mind, Zeke had confirmed via his notifications that Roknag was dead.

“And you think they’re going to leave the stronghold undefended?” Eveline asked.

“No. Not really,” he said, arduously climbing to his feet. “I guess it’s time to finish this thing, then. You ready to visit Heaven?”

“More than you could know, Ezekiel. More than you could possibly know.”