Past Demons (Part 3)

(Lilith POV)

I threw three quick strikes with my fists at the demon in front of me. Two were blocked while the last one was dodged. I finally understood why father had asked me to deal with him after that one exchange. This guy was tough!

"Hoh? Not bad for an incarnated Archdemon!" I taunted before sweeping his legs and covering my fists with {|Magic Aura|}. I then sent a devastating blow to the demon's mid-section, blowing a hole clean through the abdomen. "But not good enough!"

The Demon rolled on the ground a bit before hopping backward and righting himself. He didn't seem phased by the physical damage he received and merely gave me an annoyed glare followed by a huff.

"Woman, do not test me. You are already marked for death, but if you continue your meaningless taunts it will not be nearly as pleasant as I was originally planning it to be." He growled before raising his hand and firing off several {|Magic Missiles|} at me.

I grinned wildly when I saw that and immediately began to charge toward the man, ignoring the magic which came to a stop directly in front of my body before dissipating. The Demon looked confused for a moment but didn't hesitate and began swapping his tactics. He fired off all sorts of magic, from Fire to Ice to Nuclear and each one came to a complete stop before it hit my body and vanished. Thankfully, while he was wasting his time with that, I closed the distance between the two of us and charged up a large amount of magic power in my fist.

{|Triple Threat!|}" I called out the name of the Magic Art father and I developed together when he was teaching me martial arts.

My fist glided forward wrapped in spatial magic and struck the demon dead center. He staggered a bit before coughing up blood, looking down at his chest, which now had a second hole in it where his heart should have been. The earlier strike had hit his gut and now, with two holes in his midsection, a good third of his torso had been blown away.

"H-how? Why does my magic not work on you!?!" The demon asked in a panic as it fell to its knees.

"It's my Unique Skill [Denier]. It can cancel out physical and magical energies. It also allows me to damage your spiritual and astral bodies. Cool huh!?!" I replied with a wicked smile.

(A/N: Think of it as [Anti-Skill] but it doesn't disable skills when used offensively and can cancel purely physical attacks too. She got it after wishing she would never be hurt again from the bottom of her heart after being saved by Alaster and co.)

The demon seemed to quiver in anger seeing me looking down on him that. Despite his injuries making it difficult, the demon did manage to get to his feet once more. He then used Demonic Magic {Material Creation} to create a shortsword.

I raised a singular eyebrow at that move. "Oh? I didn't think demons used swords as weapons?" I commented.

"I'll gut you like a fish, bitch! No one looks down on me! Especially not a woman like you!" He spoke venomously.

I was mildly taken aback by his vulgar language before smiling wryly at him. "That so? I guess I'd better start to take this seriously then." I replied getting into a martial arts stance.

I was never good with swords or spears, much to my father's shock, but that didn't mean I was defenseless. The demon then took a quick step forward and swung his sword upwards as if to uppercut me with his blade. I was so shocked by this movement that I nearly allowed myself to get cut, but quickly side-stepped the strike and ducked under the horizontal slash that he attempted to employ.

'No way! That's one of father's moves! No wait, this is only a two-step attack. Father's move has three wings. is it a coincidence?' I thought as I began to parry.

The more we continued on, the more I realized that his fighting style was nearly identical, if not worse, to my father's swordplay. My father's modern style used both a spear for quick thrusts and spacing and a sword for counters, parries, and slashes. It was incredibly confusing to learn and even harder to fight against, but when using his sword alone he was much more traditional. This Demon was using a far less advanced form of what he tried to teach me, so I was able to easily read all of his attacks and spot the openings that my father's modern style had filled in.

One such opening occurred when the demon parried one of my strikes and overcorrected his return stroke. This one was fatal for the demon, however, as I didn't let it slide. Once more I gathered the Aura, however, I decided he would just parry another fist strike, so I made a feint before kicking him with all of my might right in his neck.

"{|Decapitation Heel|}!" I called out as the demon's head soared threw the air and his body flopped to the floor.

I took a moment to gather my wits before looking back on the opponent I had just faced. "I don't know what happened between you and father in the past but I won't let you continue to get in his way now," I said as I sensed the remaining Demonic Essence vanish from this world to reincarnate in the Underworld.

I turned around and noticed the waves of majin bodys that lay all around me and blushed a bit. "Father kept all the bugs away so I could enjoy myself! Kyaa~" Lilith squealed in happiness before joining her father in the slaughter fest that was the main that stood between him and Jahil.

(Evelyn POV)

I was panting hard as I roasted another one of the seemingly endless majin that stood between my group and Alaster's. In terms of purely physical and magical capabilities, these monsters were on par with myself, however, in terms of actual ability, they were several levels below. These creatures were only barely intelligent enough to know not to attack each other, and even that was seemingly due to my father's 'modifications'. Still though, after I had defeated ten and the others had defeated another hundred or so, I thought it would let up, but I was very wrong.

The tide didn't seem to be turning at all. In fact, I believe there were actually more of them here now than before. I was physically exhausted and was only at around 20% of my magicule capacity right now. If things continued on this way, we'd be wiped out by sheer numbers alone.

I looked around me and noticed that Sylvia and Sarion were having a relatively easy time, though even they looked like their steam was beginning to run out. Some of my fellow prisoners were already out of gas and had to be saved by the fairy Ramiris, who was playing support by slowing down, confusing, and occasionally killing the odd creature. It appeared as though her attention was on something else though.

It was then that I noticed that the air around us was actually becoming cleaner than before. Despite all of the miasma that should fill this space due to the huge amounts of magic we were using and the large number of deaths, the air felt as clean as a forest meadow.

I sidestepped another majin as it attempted to grab me from behind and in one swift motion, pulled out a hidden dagger I had on me and I shoved it into the majin's right eye. It began to scream and attempt to pull it out of his eye but I used a small {Thunder} spell to short circuit the animal's brain using the danger as a conduit.

I looked down at the danger with a sigh. I was keeping it hidden to use on myself and the other women if it came down to it. In the case an of us were going to be violated while we were in prison then I'd use it to stop the humiliation.

At that moment I noticed the slightly unnerved look on my father's face as Alaster got ever nearer. It seemed his will to stay vanished and he turned to flee the somewhat cramped hallway. "Oh no you don't!" I cried out and cast an Ice magic spell {Ice Wall} on the side door he was going to use to escape.

He glared at me before casting his own fire spell without chanting that not only melted my ice but also melted some of the stonework around the doorway as well. He looked back on me to gloat, only to jump out of the way when a sudden wave of frost covered the entire room.

"Ok, I'm done with this," Velzard said calmly. "Alaster, I think you've blown off enough steam. It's time to end this."

I looked at Alaster and was shocked. "I guess that's fair. I saw everyone was having fun so I didn't want to spoil it by eliminating them all at once." he replied to her before sighing to himself.

Alaster then positioned himself in a stance before his sword glowed brightly. "[Heavenly Domain]!" He called out as he swung the sword and the entire room was filled with a blinding light.

I felt my energy restored in an instant and all of my fatigue and pain be blown away. The energy that engulfed us was purer than anything I could have possibly imagined. I even felt my soul leaping joyously as it seemingly soaked itself in the energy. And just like that, it was over. I opened my eyes and noticed that all of the wounds on my body were gone, but not just that, all of the stonework in the castle above us was also obliterated, leaving only the parts of the castle below this floor left.

The Majin had all been vaporized and all looked like they had been turned into statues of ash which began to fall apart in the wind. Only my father remained as an enemy. Everyone else had been healed up by and fully restored to their full glory.

"If you can do that so easily wy don't you just do it from the beginning?" I heard Aunt Sylvia complain.

Alaster chuckled at that and looked towards Jahil. "I just wanted to give him the hope that he could escape before taking it away from him at the last second." In that instant, he crossed several dozen meters and plunged his sword deep into my father's chest.

"Aaaggghhh!" He cried out in pain.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure to roast your soul so you won't escape," Alaster said uncaringly.

My father, for the first time in, looked genuinely afraid at this statement. "N-*cough* No! You *cough* you can't kill this GREAT MAGICIAN JAHIL-SAMA!" he roared back but was silenced by Alaster violently removing his sword from his gut by slicing him from his mid-section up threw his shoulders.

I walked over to the barely alive corpse of my father and looked him in the eyes. My own face was expressionless. My eyes were bloodshot and I felt like crying but no tears fell from my face. My tears had all been used up. "Was it worth it?" I asked him.

In his final moments, all I saw were not eyes filled with remorse or regret. They were eyes that desperately pleaded for help. Eyes that cried out and cursed the world for the unfairness that 'he' the 'Great Magician Jahil' would die like in a place like this, having not accomplished whatever goal he had set out to achieve.

And then, all was still.

.~.~.~.

Lore Bit: The Demon that Lilith fought earlier was Scar's soul that had survived the same {Deathstreak} that Alaster did, though his physical body was destroyed. He reincarnated as a Demon from Guy's lineage due to it being Guy who killed him.

Although he didn't retain any memories of his past life, Scar did retain his hatred of women he gained from his trauma as a human and he also retained the lessons he learned from Alaster, as they were the happiest time of his life, when he was surrounded by friends he could trust and open up to, even if he didn't actually talk that much. Unfortunately, back then Alaster's fighting style wasn't complete, so he wasn't much of a challenge for Lilith who had refined martial arts knowledge from someone who studied under a literal god.

Lore Bit 2: Did you know that when Demons are destroyed, when they reincarnate they will do so with submission to the one who defeated them? I wonder if Scar will be important anytime in the future?