Chapter Three: Silverpeak Disaster

Kieran, Andrea, Lucas, Lily, and Ethan are all sitting in a classroom. Having been directed here and am now being instructed by the vice principal of the school. A guy with a scrawny build in a business vest and slacks, he looks like someone who just got out of a wedding, almost.

"There are reports of a high-level demon terrorizing the mountain village of Haven on Silverpeak Mountain."

Lucas: "Oh, my grandparents live there; are they safe?"

"From all recent reports, yes, it seems to be nothing except a demonic thief that comes in the night and erases memories. We are doing our best to secure the mountain with a barrier, but the five of you, along with four other teams from other Academies, will be exterminating this demon. You'll be representing the Balance Academy, but they'll also be teams from the fire, shadow, light, and Arcadia prime schools."

Kieran: "So they'll be novices from my older brothers academy and from Arcadia? Shouldn't they be more than enough?"

"It's better to move in teams of five than just send a team of two academies; you never know what can happen. Safety in overwhelming numbers is better than being weak and scattered. Now to finish this briefing, you five and the light academy will be in the village while the fire, shadow, and Arcadia schools search for its lair in three suspected locations."

Andrea: "Sooooo, what I am hearing is that we are going to be babysitting?"

Lily: "Yeah, I kind of want to get more involved. I mean, aren't we above that?"

"Above saving lives? An exorcist's duties aren't just to supernatural threats and slaying demons; we have a duty to the innocent who can't use magic and defend themselves against threats of this caliber."

Kieran: "He's right, you should place more value on the lives of people. Why are you even an exorcist if it isn't to protect?"

Lily: "Listen, not all of us were born into families of great renown or had an easy route. I awakened my essence only a few years ago, and I'll be devastated if the hard work I've put forth is going to have me on babysitting duty."

"ENOUGH. Do not start arguing, Lily. What do you think would happen if this demon slipped away from one of the other teams?"

"It would run?"

"Yes, but where to?"

Andrea: "To the village for hostages, we aren't babysitting; we are just a contingency. Have you never been on an exorcism hunt?"

Lily: "Yes, but only for moderate threats."

"Don't question then; just learn and listen. It's novices like you who can get us in a lot of trouble in battle. Don't think so much; you'll find trying to flow with the fight will make it much easier."

-five hours later-

Andrea stretches her tan, muscular arms behind her back, letting out a sigh of relief as her team stands in their posts around the village. She's paired up with Lily and Kieran at the south gate of the rural village, while Lucas and the leader of the light cover the north gate.

In the center of the village stand Ethan and the other two light team members. The light school is all wearing cloaks a roaring yellow color like the sun on a bright day. The barrier surrounding the mountain was just a simple cloak draped over the mountain.

These barriers, while having a physical manifestation in the world, are more of a doorway or portal for people who can interact with them. Without knowledge of your essence or essence core, it is impossible for any regular person to pass through this barrier. It basically works by displacing the space encompassed and placing it in a voided space outside of the dimension it originally inhabited. It isn't as simple as just traveling through the barrier; it is more like having to traverse the fabric between dimensions. Even low-class exorcists struggle to truly traverse these barriers, so the highest-class exorcist casting it will basically give lower-class exorcists a 'key' of their essence, allowing it to be trivial to enter and exit.

"I believe this is your cue, Reaver; why don't you feed your bloodlust?"

A cloaked and masked man spoke to the demonic humanoid, standing on two legs with the shape of a human, but that was all it had. It's six arms, unnatural-looking musculature, and bright red skin. It's size is even more shocking—a fifteen-foot-tall Oni of a demon with a single white horn protruding from its head. Brandishing a giant axe made of its own blood, one in each of its monstrous hands. The demon's abnormally large head has six eyes, three on each side of its face, and a deep yellow iris with orange pupils within each eye. "I wish you had let me be the killer of the strongest, but... a slaughter is just as good as a back-and-forth battle."

The vice principal stood outside of the barrier he made when he felt overwhelming energy and bloodlust. As he spun around, he would be greeted by the fifteen-foot-tall Oni. "I am bloodlust, the very essence of battle." The vice principal shot his left hand up, pointing two fingers at the entity, but it was too late. The top half of his head slid off as sparks of his essence leaked off of his fingers. His body slumped to the dirt.

"Too slow; let's hope the others are more entertaining."

It approached the barrier with its six eyes shifting all over before it raised its left blood axe, tearing a hole through the dimensional barrier and walking in. Upon traversing the dimensional threads, it arrived ten miles from the village, and it only took one-thousandth of a second for the next few events to occur.

It appeared within the center of the village, and with a hundred rapid slashes in every direction, it bisected the two light team members, fragmented the nearby buildings, and cut off the left arm of Ethan. Lifting its foot, it would kick him square in the chest, and if it wasn't for his essence reinforcement, it would have tore him in half. Instead, his body flew the air towards the south gate, where the first reaction to his presence would occur. Andrea's lightning aura was erupting off of her body as she flew into the sky, catching Ethan while kicking a lightning bolt towards his tainted presence.

"Finally, an attack." It raised its right axe as the lightning bolt crackled through the air, hitting the liquid blood axe with a boom you would only expect to hear from a bomb. The demon swept its axe aside, deflecting the lightning bolt into the east forest, incinerating a clear batch of trees, and leaving a giant crater.

There stood only two of the original forty buildings. Kieran immediately went into action, appearing in the nearest home from the shadows and displacing the family as far as he could from the demonic disaster occurring. In that one thousandth of a second, it had already slaughtered the small town, and if not for the retaliation strike, it likely would have finished the job. Kieran was shaking as he held the shoulders of a mother and daughter in a shadowy cave to the east. This amount of energy was something he had never felt before. Just what is this thing?

Andrea, Lucas, and Lily stand around the monster. Lucas clapped his hands together, making a dome of earth around it. "DO YOUR THING, LILY!"

"Way ahead of you~"

Raising the spear in her left hand, she would spin with it, transferring it behind her back to her right hand as she slid to a knee. Firing the enhanced metal tip of the spear straight through the dirt and earth dome Using her left hand to guide it off the walls of the dome, she rapidly bounced at faster and faster speeds, attempting to use her control over momentum. However, even with its increasing speed on every ricochet, she could feel it not landing even a single time.

The demon contorted its body unnaturally, bending around every single ricochet, easily avoiding the rapid attacks. "Pitiful. Amateurish battle tactics." It slammed its foot into the ground as it slipped its head out of the way of a ricochet. The spear tip, like a particle of light, flashed out, striking Lucas in his chest. Its foot slam had fragmented the dome and even cracked the ground everyone was standing on. Andrea leapt up, starting to kick another lightning bolt, as the demonic oni appeared behind her, grabbing the leg as it was cocked back in a ready position to kick.

"Too telegraphed!" It flung the electrically charged Andrea right towards Lucas, who was kneeling, holding his chest, and attempting to close the wound around the spear tip so he wouldn't bleed out. Lily, in a last-ditch effort, tossed a pebble, allowing Andrea to place her foot on it. Applying her essence to her to allow her to ricochet back towards Oni, narrowly blocking her thunderous left-head kick. The handle of his blood axe was not even disturbed a little against her shin, the force of her kick sending him rocketing towards the east.

Kieran was there. His hands clasped together as shadowy tendrils erupted from the shadow behind him. "Dark Ensnare, I hope you enjoy darkness." The oni smiled as he was dragged into Kieran's shadow, the boy's cheeks soon filling with red and burning hot blood. Puking his own blood up, his shadow exploded, and the demonic force was standing again. "Exorcists of the modern day use such simple techniques. You bore me. Die." Its left axe swung down at the back of Kieran's head, but Andrea, working in tandem with Lily's momentum, arrived even faster than last time, landing a left kick again on his right axe. This time, however, she spun off of it, using him as a ricochet into the ground, and back up, placing a thunderous knee into its chest and a right elbow across the demon's jaw.

It flew with a thunderous boom into an earth wall made by Lucas, as he had sealed his wound around the spear head. The demon smashed through the earth wall, but it slowed him just enough to allow him to give the hardened small rocks to Lily, who threw them all together. Bouncing off the ground and each other before striking it's chest, making six small indents where they hit. "Such beautiful cooperation between all of you... together you almost equal an opponent that would be worthy of my undivided bloodlust, but you lot simply are atrocious."

Andrea: "YOU TALK TOO MUCH!"

The tan girl was behind and above the demon falling towards the ground, landing three incredible kicks like a machine gun right into its back. Smashing it into the ground, leaving a crater where it now stands.

With Ethan's arm healed up, the leader of the light team joined the battle, riding in on a ray of light. "You killed my friends! Your DEAD!" He snarled the last word, but as he pulled his left arm to his chest and extended his right arm, ready to activate his technique, the demon spoke.

"Rift, Bloodlust Incarnate."

A second barrier appeared, containing the mountain now in its special rift. "Welcome to my soul; you'll all be joining your comrades soon." The once-cracked earthy ground is stained with an eternal crimson twilight, casting everything in eerie shades of red and black. The air is thick with the scent of blood, and battle cries echo endlessly from the red dome surrounding the inhabitants. Jagged, floating islands of dark rock hover above a sea of churning crimson energy encasing the village. Blood lightning crackles through the skies, and storm clouds of blood-red swirl ominously.

The leader of the light team then implodes his being erased by an impossible swing from the oni. "You all will die. I can't believe I got stuck with the weaklings. I don't feel any excitement from the likes of you all. I don't even want to remember this boring battle."