He Who Fights Demons Ch 8

Oof, sorry for late post. This one was hard to get the whole thing done.

But I managed!

That said, I normally prefer to sleep on it and then give it a more thorough editing pass, give my brain a chance to rest and increase the chance I'll catch any mistake, but don't have the time for that today unfortunately. XD

Here is chapter of He Who Fights Demons. Let me know what y'all think on a comment.

Poll to decide which side story gets an update coming soon(tm).

That's it from me. Hope you enjoy.

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Uzui Tengen studied the rent earth, the tree stumps with a scorched surface that was smooth as glass, the gravel that looked to have been a boulder that was cut in half before being pummeled into the aforementioned gravel, the splinters that could only have been caused by someone or something being thrown through a tree before it fell.

Then he studied the line of similar destruction that stretched deeper into the forest, a line that he noted led directly away from the intact abandoned home with the weird architecture and the nearby town.

“Yep.” He said, resting his hands on his hips. “Something real flashy happened here last night.”

The question being, what?

Tengen had come out to investigate a string of disappearances, possibly bandits, but most likely a new demon, if he was lucky one of the Lower Six. He felt he'd managed to close the distance to his prey, right on the demon’s tail as it were.

When he saw the strange and isolated home, he figured he’d been too late. But the inside…well the mansion didn’t look normal. No rice paper walls, no tatami mats, instead there was a shower with warm water! So in his opinion they got the flashier end of the deal.

Not to mention, some kind of piping that led the water away without making mud near the outdoor shower.

Tengen shrugged his shoulders, feeling constrained by his jacket. He’d made the garment as flashy as possible, but there was only so much you could do with bulky, boring clothes.

It had jewels, beads, and colorful rocks setting him apart. But it did not hold a candle to his usual uniform that let him show off his arms and his golden arm rings.

“Ah, good morning to you.”

Tengen whirled around, Nichirin cleavers flying to his hands as he instinctively took a combat stance.

However, what greeted his sight was a man, a very unflashy man with dark red hair and eyes, he had a peculiar birthmark on his forehead and he was tightly bundled for warmth.

He smiled kindly and spoke without fear or hurry. “My apologies for startling you, but I’ll ask you to kindly refrain from drawing steel in my home, you might frighten my children.”

“Oh! My sincerest apologies!” Tengen said, sheathing his cleavers and bowing deeply at the man in apology. “As you said, I was startled and acted without thinking.”

Tengen blinked when his mind had caught up to his body’s unflashy actions. Something about this man’s manner reminded him of Master Ubuyashiki, so he’d reacted as if he had brought offense to a superior in the Demon Slayer Corps.

“As my eldest son is so fond of saying. No harm, no foul.” The man said with enviable serenity and easy forgiveness. “Please, make yourself at home, I’ll ask my wife to make tea. One moment please, I’ll signal my family that it is safe to approach.”

He bade Tengen to follow him, then walked to the shower. He drew a coal-black Nichirin blade of exquisite make and with a complete lack of the respect such a weapon deserved, stroke the flat of it against the shower stall three times with significant force, the blade producing a clean reverberating note. Seconds after that, he could hear the sound of eight people, most of them children, making their way through the snow.

Inscribed on the man’s blade was a foreign script that Tengen could not read, rather than the ‘Destroyer of Demons’ that all Demon Slayer Corps blades were marked with.

“That is an interesting katana.” Tengen said leadingly.

For the first time, the man’s serenity broke, happiness and pride shining on his features with such intensity that Tengen felt a longing pang in his chest.

“Thank you.” The man said, smiling down at the blade before smoothly sheathing it. “My son made it for me. But where are my manners? My name is Kamado Tanjuro, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh! Likewise, forgive my lapse in manners. Uzui Tengen at your service.” Tengen said.

“Papa! Did you find Big Brother? Why are the funny ladies here?” A black-haired miniature version of Tanjuro asked as he ran around the house and slid to a stop in front of his father.

Wait, funny ladies?

Tengen did not have long to wonder, as practically on the boy’s heels, one of the flashiest women he’d ever seen stepped around the corner.

A giantess among women, the top of her head would nearly reach Tengen’s nose, and he towered chest and shoulders above the average man. Her hair was a vibrant red like freshly spilled arterial blood, her eyes bright green and seemingly shining as the light of the sun reflected from them. She wore a sturdy red kimono and a tan haori.

Her right arm held a mortified Hinatsuru and a fearful Suma in a casual headlock that neither of them fought, her left held Makio by the collar of her kimono, her feet suspended quite a ways from the ground. The woman’s arm showed no strain at holding a grown woman at arm’s length.

Makio snorted, returning to consciousness and delivering a vicious kick at the woman’s midsection with a growled oath, followed by a follow-up kick to the back of her knee.

The woman did not so much as twitch. Without removing her eyes from Tengen, her left hand blurred and she was holding Makio by the neck, weathering his wife’s savage blows as if the deadly kunoichi were naught more than a misbehaving child.

Her grip was a blood choke, Tengen noticed, not removing Makio’s ability to breathe, but it was no more than a few seconds before she was rendered unconscious and she was once again hanging limply.

The woman’s hand blurred again, and Makio once again hung by the front of her kimono.

Tengen would have helped, but a sudden and overwhelming certainty that he did not want to provoke this family’s patriarch to violence had stayed his hand.

Makio’s easy subdual would explain why Hinatsuru and Suma allowed themselves to be so easily contained. Whoever this girl was, she was not only tough, but she was skilled enough to overpower Tengen’s three wives, each a trained and accomplished assassin in her own right.

A few seconds later, a boy and two girls stepped forward, carrying between them his wives’ equipment and weapons.

A very flashy place Tengen found himself in.

“Pyrrha?” The man said the foreign name with the ease of long familiarity.

The woman, Pyrrha, scowled, and spoke in halting, stilted Japanese. “These three, hide and go seek, dangerous.”

“Ah, you found these three skulking about?” The man asked, his speech slower than when he spoke to Tengen.

“Y-Yes.” The woman answered hesitantly.

“I see, Master Uzui, do I have your assurance that you mean my family and I no harm?” Tanjuro asked.

“Of course!” Tengen said boisterously. “My wives were merely looking for all of you to ascertain your safety!”

Tanjuro blinked multiple times, then nodded. “Pyrrha, please let go of them.”

The flashy woman scowled. “Dangerous, the children.”

Tanjuro smiled kindly. “Please, Pyrrha. Trust me, they mean us no harm.”

With her scowl unabated, she released both of Tengen’s wives from the headlock, then gently handed Makio to Hinatsuru.

Suma crashed into his chest like a comely black-haired arrow. “Lord Tengen! She was really scary! She’s really fast! And super strong! And I was so scared!”

As Suma descended to wails, Hinatsuru sighed as she walked toward him, dragging her unconscious sister-wife. “Suma, help me carry Makio.”

Tengen bowed to Tanjuro and Pyrrha, drawing disbelieving stares from his wives. “My apologies for any offense, none was meant, I assure you I was merely being careful. You have my deepest thanks for treating them so gently and extending me this trust.”

Pyrrha looked confused and looked to Tanjuro to follow his lead, the man smiled with the same easy serenity and said. “You are a very polite young man. I have a feeling my eldest and you would get along very well. Children, to the house, to the house, I’ll go look for your big brother. Kie, please make some tea for when we return.”

“Yes dear,” said a much smaller woman than the giantess, she wasn’t dressed very flashily, but there was a quiet strength and dignity to her, he could also spot a discerning eye as she judged him and his three wives.

She reminded him of the castellan who ran his father’s household while he grew up.

A strange family full of hidden flashiness.

Tanjuro’s wife herded the children inside, and though the serenity remained, Tanjuro lost his smile. “You are a Demon Slayer, yes?”

Tengen’s heart jumped, as he opened his mouth to answer, Makio woke up with a snort and threw a kick at the largest thing she saw.

Specifically, him, he caught her ankle and held it above her head, making her balance herself in a very flashy pose and forcing her to wake up to manage the feat.

“Yes! Uzui Tengen, Sound Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps!” He said with pride.

The man nodded. “My apologies, I know nothing about your organization beyond its existence.”

Tengen released Makio’s leg and leaned back. “Hah! Just know I’m a big shot and I’m here to keep you safe!”

Tanjuro nodded. “My son told our family to flee last night before confronting a demon, instructing us not to come back until after daybreak. He too was armed with a blade like this one. I was on my way to try to find him, I would welcome your assistance.”

Tengen smiled. “But of course! I’m an old hand at this I’ll have you know!”

“We’re coming too!”

Tengen turned to the pretty girl who had spoken, and the oldest of the boys he’d seen standing next to her.

“Nezuko, Tanjiro.” Tanjuro began, but the girl cut him off.

“No, father! He’s my older brother! He would not stay behind if I were lost in the mountain! Besides, I forage in the mountain every day, I’ll be useful!”

“I’m coming too!” The boy, Tanjiro said. “Big Brother needs us!”

“Very well, bring our guest’s equipment please, and be careful.” Tanjuro said with a nod and after the three Kunoichi had their weapons back, began walking, his two children and Pyrrha falling into step behind him.

Tengen’s wives kept a wary eye on the girl.

“What’s wrong? I get that she bested you, but I’ve never seen you this spooked.” He said.

“That girl’s a witch!” Makio hissed.

“Very scary!” Suma agreed.

“What are you two going on about?” Tengen asked with a laugh.

“It was like she was warded against blades.” Hinatsuru murmured. “She fought unarmed and quickly disarmed us, I drew a kunai by instinct, but when I tried to stab her with it I felt it fight me, as if it refused to bite her flesh.”

That brought Tengen up short. He knew plenty of subpar swordsmen who would claim an opponent that bested them had supernatural powers, but a ninja was trained better.

A true ninja would cajole, obfuscate, he’d beat around the bush and trick a man into revealing more than he meant to in order to get to the bottom of things.

“Hey, Mister Kamado Tanjuro, what’s the deal with the tall girl?” Such tactics were far too unflashy for Uzui Tengen!

“Oh, she was sent here by the Heavens.” Tanjuro said affably.

Tengen waited for the rest of the explanation, but as they passed the spot he’d initially surveyed, it became obvious no more explanation was coming.

“Could…Could you elaborate?” He asked awkwardly, which was unflashy in the extreme, but Tanjuro was making a habit of confusing Tengen.

“Certainly!” The man said affably, and launched into a tale of a girl, plucked from the river moments before her death, brought by his eldest to his home to heal her. Clad in ruined vestments that were of unnatural make and impossible quality, speaking a foreign tongue that had never before been heard in this part of the Empire. Impossibly skilled in combat and capable at any moment of possessing supernatural strength and speed yet being humble enough to be happy with the simple life they provided her and gentle with all of his children.

It sounded like a load of horseshit to Tengen.

She said some gobbledygook to the girl, Nezuko, who responded in kind though clearly with hesitation and difficulty.

Tengen rallied. “So, how have you been communicating? It’s obvious you’ve started learning each other’s language but haven’t yet mastered it.”

“Ah yes, you see, my eldest was granted the gift of tongues by the Heavens.” Tanjuro said with fierce pride. “He has been the one to translate for us for the months Pyrrha has been with us.”

Tengen stared.

And decided to shelf that for a later conversation.

The boy sniffed at the air, then started scrambling. “Father, I smell Xolo! And brother’s blood!”

The rest of the family raced forward, perhaps Tanjiro was gifted in the same way as Urokodaki Sakonji, either way Tengen followed close on their heels.

Tanjuro moved with the grace of a master swordsman, seeming to all but glide above the surface of the snow. Pyrrha very flashily plowed a path through the snow that the two children followed gratefully.

They crested a hill and came upon a sight that gave Tengen pause.

The trees had grown in such a way as to make a circular clearing in the forest, where the clouds parted just enough for a sunbeam to shine brightly into it, but where Tengen would have expected to see snow, he beheld grass and dirt. In the center of the clearance there was a boulder, bathed in a beam of sunlight and lying on its side in a divot in the boulder that looked suspiciously like it had been made by impacting against it, was the ugliest dog Tengen had ever seen. It was largely hairless, its skin a deep brown and wrinkly, if he didn’t know better he’d suspect it to have been cursed by god or demon.

Stabbed into the ground in front of the dog was a sword of unusual make, straight instead of curved, edged on both sides, with a steel crossguard instead of a tsuba. The blade had the same unusual signature as Tanjuro’s, and it glowed red, as if freshly pulled from the forge.

As he approached, a furnace heat that emanated from the weapon banished the cold and made sweat immediately bead on his face.

“Xolo!” Nezuko and Tanjuro screamed as they ran past the sword and knelt next to the animal and seeing it in relation to the size of the children, Tengen saw that the dog was significantly larger than he’d initially thought.

The dog twitched, looking up at them with puppy-dog eyes and whining piteously.

Tengen made his way to the sword, next to Tanjuro and Pyrrha.

“Most peculiar.” Tanjuro said.

Yeah, Tengen had never seen a Nichirin blade glow red-hot like that before, the closest he’d seen was the flame-like patterns and the red blade of Rengoku Kyojuro’s blade.

“It’s not…It’s only that, when Morihito wields it.” Pyrrha said hesitantly.

“Wait what?” Tengen demanded.

“Yes.” She said, scowling at the weapon. “When he…killed demons. The blade glows.”

Tanjuro stepped forward, Tengen wasn’t sure how he managed, it was swelteringly hot and he was significantly more than an arm’s length away from the blade.

“Morihito left it here to guard Xolo, when he could fight no more.” Tanjuro said, crouching in front of the weapon. “He must have worried that the Father of Demons last night had other demons with it.”

Tengen’s heart froze. “Wait, Kibutsuji Muzan!? He was here last night!?”

“I know not that name.” Tanjuro said, reaching a hand out to the sword’s guard. “But the description of the demon that Pyrrha gave me, matches the description given by Hinokami to my ancestor, Kamado Sumiyoshi. I thought to go to Morihito to aid him, but the fear that there may be other demons in the forest forced me to stay behind. I see now, I made the wrong choice, and thus the Heavens demand penance from me.”

He reached out and closed his hand on the grip of the blade, his palm hissing as he touched it. When he spoke, his voice did not show the meekest hint of pain. “You are back among family, you have done well guarding him, but he is safe now. Rest.”

Somehow, as if it could understand him, the sword slowly lost its red glow, cooling to the same coal black as Tanjuro’s blade. He drew it from the ground, and Tengen could see that no sign of combat marred the blade, it was not chipped, bent, or even scratched, its edge still looked to be razor sharp.

Considering all the things that Tengen had seen that were cut with an instrument that was a long thin blade, Tengen could only marvel at the quality of the steel that Tanjuro’s son had smelted.

“Where is Morihito?” Pyrrha demanded.

“I do not know. The trail leads here, but not away from here.” Tanjuro said. “Mister Uzui, could you perhaps help us search for a trail that leads further from here?”

“Way ahead of you there.” Tengen answered. “I sent Hinatsuru, Suma and Makio to scouting further, if there is anything to find, they will find it.”

After a good long while waiting, Tengen’s three wives came back, the trail that they’d been following ran to another clearing, this one recently made by burning the trees in a circle to ash, the ground having turned into black glass, the trail then resumed away from that strange place, in a straight line toward the mountain before vanishing completely.

They made their way to the Kamado home, Tengen carrying the dog, which was heavier than it looked, a huge bundle of muscle and warmth. While most dogs would be grateful at being carried, the Kamado dog eyed him suspiciously the entire way and would growl any time one of Tengen’s wives came close to the children.

“You have a very good dog.” Tengen said.

“Thank you.” Tanjuro said with a smile.

Once they arrived to the man’s home, his wife, Kie, had not only made tea, but breakfast, and invited Tengen and his wives to join them. Not wishing to be rude, Tengen agreed.

However, the sight that greeted him upon entering gave him pause, lined up on the wall were seven blades, next to those blades was a shield made entirely of metal, a straight sword that, like the one Tanjuro had retrieved, was of an unusual make and model, as well as three javelins with a significant portion of the haft made of steel.

“Father! We found those on big brother’s shed!” the tiny Tanjuro said, beaming proudly. “I brought them over!”

“You have done well Takeo.” Tanjuro said.

The little boy puffed out his chest with pride. “It only took me twelve trips!”

“Papa? Where is big brother?” Asked the second oldest girl.

“We were unable to find him, Hanako.” Tanjuro said, setting his son’s blade down next to the family armory. “We will continue looking for him later, or perhaps he’ll return on his own.”

Tengen spied a futon on the floor that struck him as the dog’s bed and set him down gently on top of it. Which is when the children realized something was wrong with the family’s dog.

“Xolo!” Came the horrified gasp as they all rushed the animal.

Tengen went to the blades and, pinching the grip so as to not wield it and change the color of its blade, drew the first few centimeters of the weapon. Just like the other two blades he had seen, its craftsmanship was immaculate.

If the craftsmanship of all the weapons was the same, then the small collection of blades before Tengen were worth an Emperor’s ransom.

“Nichirin blades.” He murmured. “The mountain must be rich in the ore for your son to be able to make so many.”

The girl, Pyrrha, walked to the weird sword and the shield, and picked them up, the weapons flashed and turned from a dull grey to a vibrant bronze. Meaning that Tanjro had not lied when he’d said that her skill with a blade was outstanding.

But how exactly would one use a shield as a weapon?

The girl murmured something in her mother tongue, her tone was low, despondent, and furious. As she glared at the weapons, Tengen’s blades began to tremble on his back, the Kamado blades fell over, even the mansion groaned as the girl’s rage seemingly made everything around her shake in fright.

“I told you she was a witch!” Makio hissed and Suma huffed and did her level best to burrow into his side.

Tanjuro said nothing, merely reaching up and placing his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. Eventually, the trembling all around them subsided as the girl visibly brought her emotions back under her control.

A long silence reigned before Tengen broke it. “Well…guess she really did come from the heavens.”

A very flashy family he found here indeed.

Tengen’s intuition told him that this was an unprecedented find for the Demon Slayer corps. Recruitment was usually Lady Ubuyashiki’s domain, but there was no reason why he couldn’t take a swing at it. “Mister Kamado, I fear other demons might come, now that you have survived an encounter with one.” Probably not Kibutsuji Muzan, but he’d gain nothing other than the man’s animosity if he brought up his doubts. “I would like you to consider joining the Demon Slayer corps, if you do, the organization will provide your family with a home and security…”

Still, as he continued his pitch, Tengen couldn’t help but wonder what exactly happened last night?

Considering that their only witness was a dog, unless the man’s son came back, last night would forever remain a mystery.

=][=

HOURS BEFORE

I shot forward, the snow blowing out into a cloud behind me at the strength of my kick, with a swing of my blade I cut through the small flab of skin and cartilage that still connected his head to the rest of his body. A pirouette brought the tumbling head back into my striking range. Eight more slashes reduced the head to roughly sixteen lumps of burning ash that soon vanished under my blade’s conjured flames.

I finished the pirouette by delivering a roundhouse kick to the headless body’s stomach and sending it tumbling away into the trees.

“Xolo!” I gasped, running to my pupper, only to stop and stare in amazement.

The brilliant light of the midday sun shone out of the dog’s muzzle, his teeth giving out a blinding radiance that turned the blood on his teeth into powdered ash and vapor.

“Semblance.” I whispered, then grinned. “Good boy!”

His tail wagged.

“What matter of trickery is this!?” Demanded my uninvited victim’s resonant voice. The headless body having grown a lower and upper jaw, before with a visible exertion of will, the rest of his head came into being with a disgusting squelching crunch.

“Xoloitzcuintlis are sun dogs!” I said with malicious glee as the both of us rushed the demon, he kept a closer eye on my sword than on my dog and paid for it when he darted forward and bit through his right knee, amputating the limb and turning it to ash as he savaged it by shaking his head. I cut off his agonized wail by cutting his head off again, reducing it to twenty smaller pieces, then with a sideways figure ‘8’, tore his body into nine separate pieces and kicked the biggest piece further away.

Xolo snarled, picking up each of the burning and bubbling pieces in kind and reducing them to ash and vapor.

“Descendants of the God Xolotl! Guardians of the Sun and the mortal lives of Man! For they were made with the very same bones that man was made with and share their father’s burden of guiding the souls of the departed through the afterlife!” I continued in glee, following after the bubbling lump of meat that had grown legs and arms and a head by the time I arrived to cut it in two, the trees of the forest packed so tightly together that I was forced to cut through the trunks in order to savage the demon’s flesh. Kicking the larger piece away and leaving the other for Xolo to deal with.

“What nonsense do you spout!?” Snarled the demon’s head before I cut it off in a flash of plasma-bright fire and repeated the same treatment I had twice before. The body grew a set of legs and attempted to kick me, a last second dodge resulting in the trunk of a tree detonating at the force of the demon’s drop kick.

I cut off its legs and arms for the impudence, then kicked it further into the forest.

“The noonday sun is shining out of my dog’s muzzle!” I hollered with laughter in my voice as I rushed after it and continued to cut away, sabotaging its attempts to regrow its bodymass. “I ain’t gotta explain shit!”

Flesh and sinew and enamel exploded out of the lump of meat; tentacles tipped with razor-sharp bone, enamel and bone spikes bounced off my aura as I was forced back.

At least until Xolo arrived, using the light of his muzzle like a plasma torch, the cone of light shining from his gullet turning the writhing flesh into vapor and ash where it touched it, drawing another agonized howl from the biomass, the distraction he caused giving me a chance to regain my footing and launch into an offensive, hacking a path through the writhing flesh puddle in search for a weak point.

With a sudden squelch, the ocean of meat was reabsorbed into the demon’s humanoid form, his reformed clothes unwrinkled, his fedora unstained, his blood-red, slitted eyes glaring.

A tentacle erupted out of the ground and flung a boulder at my dog, I slid in front of him, drawing my power sword and flicking on its molecular field, I swung it in a vertical strike, the annihilator field propagating forward and parting the boulder at the molecular level, leaving a cut that was smooth as glass as the two halves tumbled away from each other to crash to the ground behind us.

“That was rude.” I said with a huff an instant before he pointed his arm at me and another wall of flesh shot forward.

I yelped and threw myself to the side, Xolo jumping the other way, the flesh pillar crashed into the two halves of the boulder and judging by the noise it was making, crushed it into powder.

Not one to let go of an opportunity, I charged forward, dodging a retaliatory swipe and with a horizontal swing, cutting the head off the body, I swung the power sword in two wide sweeping swings, cutting his chest apart, before stabbing my demon slaying blade through the heart that slid out of the chest cavity.

The legs, the ones attached to the part of the body whose spinal cord I’d severed, kicked me in the stomach. The impact blew the air out of my lungs in a huff and sent me all the way through a tree trunk. I pushed the blinding phantom pain down and threw myself to my feet and sheathed the power sword.

Note to self, severing the spine at the molecular level does not, in fact, result in cessation of neurotransmission through the severed nervous system of a demon without the use of sunlight or equivalent material. Good to know.

I was surprised that he hadn’t taken advantage of my moment of vulnerability but saw that Xolo had not only beheaded him again but had used his teeth shining with sunlight to amputate large chunks of the demon’s body while dodging around his clumsy if powerful swipes.

The next instant I’d severed both his legs at the hip, both arms at the shoulder, his head, and chopped his chest into five separate pieces.

As Xolo began the process of rendering each piece into powder, the second smallest piece of the chest expanded into a full humanoid body that thundered. “ENOUGH!”

The scream was accompanied by a shockwave that blew the snow off the trees and ground around him, the impact feeling like a god had hit my whole body with a hammer, my aura flaring as it dissipated the attack before it could do more than short-circuit my nervous system.

I picked up Xolo under my left arm and sprang back, an instant later, a mass of cruelly barbed tentacles squelched out of the demon’s body and eviscerated the ground I’d stood on with multiple ‘cracks!’ as they impolitely told the sound barrier to fuck off.

The real dick move was that the whips would lengthen or shrink mid-swing without warning, forcing me to dodge or slice through them whenever I could, sending burning bit of demon flying into the darkness of the forest.

A single touch from one of those whips would disembowel, amputate, or behead the toughest man with arms like tree trunks and necks like boulders.

Unfortunately for the Demon King. I had aura.

I dropped Xolo on the ground and gave him a sharp whistle, he yiped and sprang behind me, crouching down and getting ready to sprint.

I took a deep breath and raised my sword into a high guard, then sprang forward, flames licking out from my sword with every swing, cutting and burning through the forest of razor-sharp thorns and whips. Out of every twenty attacks, one slipped through and struck me, my aura flaring brightly, drops of the demon’s blood staining my clothes before the stain vaporized under the baleful glow of my sword.

“Why won’t you die!? What are you!?” The demon snarled an instant before I charged past him, cutting his body in two horizontally an instant before Xolo leapt and tore his head off, leaving behind a cauterized bubbling stump as he savaged his prize into a lump of ash.

“That’s hilarious coming from you.” I snarled, reducing the body to mincemeat and kicking the biggest lump uphill before following after it. “How many lives have you ended!? How many children have you made orphans!? How many families have you sundered!?”

His head was back, I split it vertically down the middle before cutting through the neck again. “Over a millennium have you inflicted yourself upon humanity! And for what!? You’re nothing more than a cancer! Sapping away strength and vitality, doing nothing to aid, nothing to help! You, who has forgotten what it means to be human! Or did you ever know it!? Did you simply refuse to learn it!?”

Each word was punctuated by a slash, reducing the bloody mass one slash at a time.

“You who refuses to die and face judgement for what you’ve done! And you demand to know why I stand against you!? You wonder why I haven’t fallen purely because you’ve scratched me!?” I slashed the arm that had just reformed before he could use it to swipe at me. “You want to know what I am!? I am the monument to all your sins! The righteous retribution you rightly earned!”

Xolo joined me, tearing chunks out of the mass and charbroiling the rest wherever the light of his teeth touched it.

The lump of meat was now too small for me to easily cut, so I aimed my left hand at it.

It would be fair to say that I had some buyer’s remorse with my second Template. The Chosen Undead was a potent Template to have. Its flawed immortality was, legitimately, one of the best ways to avoid permanent death out in the multiverse. The fact that the Company sold how to mitigate its side effects (at a premium) cemented it as one of the best ways to cheat death.

That, however, was not the reason I’d bought it.

No, that reason was one of the most iconic spells that the Chosen Undead was known for. The Sunlight Spear. A great bolt of lightning that, apart from all of the things that it did (very few things across the multiverse could shrug off getting hit with a literal bolt of lightning, after all), had the properties of literal sunlight.

I’d learned its use in Basic in one of the many seminars. But that seminar overlooked one small but very important fact.

One needed actual, honest-to-goodness Faith in order to use it.

Faith in a God, faith in goodness, faith in a Higher Purpose. Without this faith, the spell rejected the would-be wielder.

And seeing as to I was a stubborn atheist, even after having been taught by a number of lower-case ‘G’ gods during my time at Basic? Not to mention that whatever small flickering hope I’d had on the goodness of the multiverse died somewhere after I got decanted from the clone vats?

Suffice it to say, I would likely never get to throw lighting spears made of literal sunlight.

Pyromancy however? That did not require any belief in anything, merely understanding of thermodynamics.

As he was bathed in bright-blue flames, so thick and hot that they acted almost like a liquid as they clung to his form and charred, melted, sublimated, and vaporized his flesh and bone and blood. The demon howled in agony and I felt my lips stretching out into a manic grin at the smell of foul flesh and sinew and blood being cleansed in purifying flame.

“So do yourself a favor, and—!”

The demon released another screech, this one so powerful it stripped some of the bark off the trees around us, I stood back, blinded and stunned, and the demon exploded out, taking on an armored form three meters tall at least as he roared in incandescent rage.

And I could do little more than twitch.

Xolo snarled and tore a chunk off the demon’s calf, he retaliated by kicking my dog so hard he was flung away in a straight line into the darkness of the forest, a flash of yellows and reds that were often seen during twilight informing me that his aura had shattered.

The demon snarled and pointed its enormous arm at where it had flung my dog, a torrent of flesh and bone flying out after him.

A smart or wise man would sacrifice the dog in order to press the assault, to not give the demon even a breath of respite, to cut away more and more biomass until it had no more and could no longer regenerate.

As I ignited a flame on my back and flung myself at where my dog had been kicked, I could be blamed of many things, but certainly not of being intelligent or wise. I burst through the trees into a clearing, sliding into place in front of the boulder my boy had crashed against, planted my feet, and cut.

Tons of flesh and bone were flung at me in an attempt to kill my dog. But I made my body into a line and refused to let even a drop of the demon’s blood cross it.

Strategy and tactics ceased to matter, my entire world reduced to the present and only the present, the instant of perception before the sword flowed from one attack to the other, blasting out tongues of flames, the only thing that mattered being standing in place and not allowing the monster through.

Slowly. Little by little. One scratch at a time. My aura suffered. What he’d been unable to accomplish in one big attack, the demon managed with thousands upon thousands upon thousands of small ones.

Until a tendril, small enough not to have been easily spotted, slipped through my defense and stabbed into my abdomen, and my aura flashed blue one final time before shattering.

Minutes later, the attacks finally stopped, a dozen pulsating bone-tipped tentacles stabbed into my chest and arms and legs, icy poison pumped into my body with each twitch. The demon, once again an elegant young man in a white outfit, walked into the clearing.

“All you humans are always the same.” He said, pure malicious glee in his voice. “You are always all talk! Always with the same tired words! The same tired arguments!”

With a groan, I fell to my knees, stabbing the sword into the ground and leaning against it not to fall further. The demon’s face split into a manic grin. “And you, you, those that use the Breath of the Sun. Always the most self-righteous of all. Always the ones who preach the loudest. I don’t know what weird trick you were using to keep yourself safe, it lasted you almost all the way to sunrise, but it proved itself useless as it always does!”

His arm flexed and I grunted as I felt the icy poison entering my body go from a trickle to a stream.

“Most demons can only dream of being granted such a generous quantity of my blood.” He continued as I grit my teeth so as to not give him the satisfaction of getting a reaction out of me. “Demons all over the Empire would die of envy at the ‘gift’ you are receiving. My blood is potent, and all who take it change.”

I lost the fight against the rising agony inside me and grunted as I felt something inside me shift. Xolo whined behind me, I felt his tongue lapping at my back as he tried to comfort me.

“But if I give too much, the change is faster than the body can accommodate.” The demon continued, the stream of his poisonous blood becoming a monsoon. “Even the strongest demons could not withstand the amount of blood I am injecting into you now, no living being has managed to retain its form after but a portion of what I’ve given you, any moment now, your body’s cells will begin to rupture, and you will become nothing more than a pitiful pile of demonic goo, and come the morning, nothing of you will remain beyond a few flecks of scattered ash!”

I couldn’t hold on to the blade anymore, contact brought agony, the light it gave off was blinding, I could feel it burning my skin. My arms and legs began to tremble without my input.

He came closer as my limbs seized. “What does it feel like? To know you have failed utterly? You brought me pain, I will admit. More pain than any has in four hundred years. For this, I will return tomorrow night and track down your family; I will make each and every one of them a demon, and I will torture them all, a thousand years for every cut you inflicted on my flesh, and only then will I consider your debt to me paid.”

A red haze filled my vision, I drove forward as strength flooded my limbs, I sank my hands into his chest and took hold of his spine and heart as I pushed until we left the clearing behind, smashing him through a tree that splintered as if it were made of paper mache.

He spat blood as I pulled, tearing the still-beating heart out of his chest and crushing it in my grip. I bared my teeth in something that certainly was not a smile as his face morphed from triumph into fear.

“I…am the monument…to all your sins!” I snarled, and ignited, concentrating the conflagration around the two of us, creating a sphere of plasma that caused an explosion of steam as the snow sublimated and the ground beneath us turned molten. The demon screamed and screamed and screamed as I made the flames hotter every second.

He struggled, and fought, and slithered. He tried that sonic attack again, but I withstood it and merely made the flames hotter in retaliation. In desperation, he tried throwing pieces of himself away in order to escape, but my flames reduced one and all to ash.

“I will burn you, demon!” I snarled, sinking one of my hands into his head to make a handhold with which to keep him pinned. “You will burn under the sun if it’s the last thing I do!”

“You’re a demon!” He gasped, more and more flesh bubbling out from its seemingly endless source. “If you hold me to the sun, you’ll die too!”

I laughed, there was more than a little madness in the sound. “I’m no demon! I’m human!”

“I turned you!” The demon pleaded. “I turned you! My blood has made you immortal! The only thing you have to fear is the sun!”

I kept laughing and burned all the brighter. “You die with the rise of the sun, monster! And I will dance upon your ashes!”

“You fool! Listen to reason! You’re an immortal demon! You’ll die!”

“Sounds like a personal problem!” I howled and poured more of myself into the flame.

And then, the tide shifted. His regeneration became ever slower, his arms beat uselessly against my arms and body, he burned until his skin stopped regenerating, soon after his muscles no longer came back from the ash I reduced them to, then there was only a blackened skeleton that nonetheless screamed.

Then ash. And once my flame guttered out. Silence.

I fell to my knees, heaving for breath, and laughed long and hard. I laughed so hard that tears fell down my cheeks.

I summoned a victory sandwich, which immediately burned to a crisp, as I was still sitting on, essentially, magma.

Magma that somehow did not touch my clothes, weird.

I stumbled my way away from it, then summoned another sandwich. Peanut butter, banana, and bacon. It sounded disgusting, but who am I to say no?

I took a bite and heaved, as my tongue informed me I had bitten into a particularly filthy decomposing maggot.

I stared down at my sandwich. “Oh that’s not good. Fuck.”

Okay, I was a demon. That’s fine, I could fix this.

I blinked as I saw the sky lightening, somehow the fight had lasted all the way until sunrise. Goddamn.

I was going to have to hide until nightfall, then I was going to have to find some way to hide my demonhood from my family, at least until I could get it fixed.

Maybe I could buy a panacea pill?

Movement drew my eye. A piece of meat was slithering through the foliage.

I gaped and gave chase. The piece of meat realized it had been spotted, grew into the full demon, and took off running.

“Get back here!” I shouted, spurring the demon to run even faster. “Get back here and die like the worthless parasite you are! I’m not done with you!”

The demon scurried, at times falling to hands and knees and scrabbling to go faster.

The sky became brighter, the sun peeking over the mountains.

The demon was closer to the base of the mountain than I was. I raced forward, trying to reach it, to immobilize it and force it to burn alongside me. Racing the quickly receding shadow of the mountain.

As I felt the furnace heat of sunlight getting close to me, I grit my teeth and used my HUD to create an opening into my apartment in front of me, and dove through it.

I crashed into my apartment’s floor and immediately turned around and reoriented the portal.

The demon was running, running into the same trouble I had, finding safety from the rapidly approaching sun.

He reached the base of the mountain and crashed into it, digging into it, burrowing into the ground, creating a tunnel whose entrance soon collapsed behind him, moments before sunlight could have filled it.

I stared in dismay.

So close, but the bastard got away because, of all things, I got curious.

He was free, free to slink back, crawl into a hole, and refuse to come out until the goddam heat-death of the universe.

I had my one chance and just like Yoriichi before me, I fucked it up.

Because I had to fucking experiment mid-fight.

I screamed.