164 Blue Flames
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(Aden's P.O.V)
I waved a hand and the speed at which the mass of demons coming at me, instantly slowed to a snail's pace. I looked at Cerial, who seemed mildly surprised at the sudden turn of events. The glass sphere keeping her captive broke into small shards that fell to the ground. I walked over to the angel, who was only now standing up to her full height.
She looked down over herself, her lips separating in a little shock.
"¢€√°€€^°€&?"
The first words that escaped her mouth felt...glitched. As if reality could not register the meaning. I chuckled, gaining her attention.
"If you were wondering if this was real or not, trust me it's very...oof!" Her small body suddenly launched out and hugged me tightly.
I got over my surprise very quickly and patted her back in comfort. She broke away from the embrace with flaming cheeks.
"Thank you."
I felt as if I could get lost in those blue eyes. I blinked and smiled back.
A boom tube appeared to our side.
"This portal will take you to earth. You'll appear in the home of a friend of mine. He knows about you. Tell him I'll bring our mutual friend over once he's...calmed down."
That...was the fourth mountain Etrigan had destroyed since I had booted him to the fire dimension without a word.
She looked unsure, looking back at the slow moving forms of what was to be the test subjects to my new Subskill.
"Oh this?" I pointed at them.
"Don't worry about it. I can handle them just fine."
I said in what I hoped was assurance. Cerial nodded after a second and then gazed at me seriously.
"Thank you."
That one word filled me up. It left me feeling content. Even the possibility that I might have lost everything during this whole ordeal did not feel so grim. Something about that word told me at the end of it all, I wouldn't have had any regrets worth living with.
"You're welcome."
I answered her back.
With one final look of gratitude, the angel flapped her multicolored wings and entered the portal. The boom tube disappeared behind her and I turned to face my opponents who were already adapting to the time slow I had activated upon them.
Ok...time for some lesser known facts. Technically speaking, I couldn't do everything in my realm. What I had was a restricted reality manipulation as long as I was in my realm...but, there were things I couldn't overdo due to compromising the integrity of the realm. For example, I could increase the gravity upto 200× that of earth but with a heavy restriction. I could not keep it going for more than 5 minutes. To apply gravity that could last for days sustainably, it would be 10 percent of that, which was 20× that of earth. Bummer.
The time slow cast on the demons was meant to decrease their individual speeds to 10% of the slowest in the hoard. Meaning no matter how fast you were, you would be confined to a small percentage of your slowest member. For some reason, I could not go past 90% and the only instance I stopped time fully was when I was connected to that mystery concept.
I also couldn't keep it up for long without bringing risk to the realm. Something told me I needed to upgrade it a few several times for it to be a non issue. Luckily, with this latest mission, I had enough pull and influence to ask for a few favors from the good guys magicians. The only stable time manipulation that I could keep up indefinitely was maintaining a time difference of 3:1 between my realm and earth. Meaning 3 days inside the Elemental Dimension would be comparable to one. And...I was going to absolutely abuse that. 2 actual earth days remained to my birthday. I wanted to have attained some reasonable progress by that time.
With Cerial out of harm's way, I stretched my body out, removed my coat and was left with only a slightly loose blue t-shirt on. It wasn't part of my uniform but at some point you come to understand that while tight clothes give you a really amazing look, they are not that comfortable. In an actual fight, you needed something that was easy to move in but not too loose to become a liability.
'Ok, here goes nothing' I said to myself as I stopped the Time Slow cast. Immediately, I was besieged from all sides. The magical energy registering in my senses was crazy...and for lack of a better word, impure. My eyes widened! I couldn't risk tainting the main dimension with demonic energy.
I slammed my foot on the ground and immediately space overturned between the hoard and I. The enviroment changed as well. Gone was the arena and the castle, now it was just two forces staring at each other from the ends of a long stretch of land in the fire dimension, far from the family of dragons that made this place their home and lacking the usual pillars and mountains. The whole place also looked recently destroyed. I had teleported everyone out of the main dimension. All 6,660,043 demons who had declined my offer of leniency. The 3,000 who had taken it were imprisoned in the most secure place I could build in the elemental dimension.
"Gahh! Come here!"
Etrigan snarled from behind me and jumped up with his sword, ready to split my body into two. Sheesh, he sure knows how to hold a grudge. A portal opened up and swallowed him before he could fully reach me, sending him to a special place for time out. And with that, it was time to get crack-a-lackin...oh god, why did I say that.
Ny inner energy buzzed from within me. The distance between the hoard and I shortened considerably when I blasted off towards my opponents like a speeding bullet. A few miles were covered in a handful of minutes. I got to within distance where I could smell the noxious fumes of sulphur and blood before jumping up to the sky, then came down in a spin of blue flames.
I slammed to the ground at their front and released a wave of blue flames that swallowed a couple hundred demons at the very front. The plan was to use every move I could pull off with regular fire with blue fire while trying to maintain the same consistent effectiveness. A feral smile was plastered on my face. Fire was my favorite element. This...this was scratching my pyromaniac itch.
I avoided a geyser of poisonous liquid from a toad like demon and jumped back, landing with a fire stomp that managed to destroy the mole like demons trying to reach me from the ground. My foot outstretched to the front in a stabilized stance, hands blurring when I sent out fire balls with my fists that took out each approaching demon.
The hoard were now covering all of my sides. Luckily that also managed to work well against them. With my awareness of the surroundings, I could easily avoid strikes that would then take out their allies instead.
I swung my leg out, a blue flame scythe taking down dozens to my front then immediately landed in a rotation that transitioned into a low flip, with flames spewing out of my feet to create some space between my opponents and I. The burning cries of burning demons sounded out as I took a leap to the sky. Luckily, the blue flames seemed to have a more deadly effect on these common demons as compared to a Hell Lord like Beelzebub.
My feet pushed me into the air in a massive leap, blue jet flames bursting out of my heels to propel me. I noticed that the speed while smoother than with yellow flames, lacked an explosive quality which meant it was marginally slower.
At the apex of the jump, I hovered in mid air, holding my hands up to create a large ball of blue flames. Attacks like ice spikes, hell fire lances, poisonous breaths, bone projectiles and other elemental moves, thrown at me, did not make it past the zone of super heated air surrounding my vicinity.
Smoke filled the surroundings as a result and from within that smoke, something huge peeked out. Something that glowed blue with repressed power. Something that I was concentrating with all I had to make sure, remained stable before I could cast it down. The demons started freaking out, the attacks coming in even more relentlessly. Some chose to run away from the blast zone.
The blue sphere of flames reached a maximum size of close to 50 meters in diameter and I let it fall. It was slow moving yet warped the very air on its way down. This needed a cool name.
"Cruel Sun!"
I did my best impression of Escanor while peering down at the demons. Judgement day had come and it burned with the intensity of the actual sun.
The attack unravelled upon reaching the ground into a cascading torrent of vexed and turbulent flames, taking out thousands and thousands of the hoard, spreading out like a flame burning a piece of paper. It was a beautiful spectacle to watch. Ruined only by the cries of mercy and pain from the burning demons.
My lips were set into a thin line as I hardened my heart. This brought me no shreds of joy, yet it was necessary. I had offered them leniency, due to pride and arrogance, they turned it down. Then again, what creature wants their freedom to be shackled? I didn't bother giving myself an excuse. It was a flat mathematical fact. 8 billion earthlings over 6 million demons who had been conspiring to kill and enslave them was something I could live with.
So with a mechanical focus, I moved on to the next attack. The flames burning in the surroundings gathered to one point in the sky and spread out thinly to cover a distance of 2 miles in all directions.
"Flame shower."
I muttered silently and bore witness to the death I wrought.
That was how I spent the next three days.
