Chapter 41

Red lights flashed and sirens blared throughout the facility as the ceiling suddenly burst open spraying chunks of concrete throughout the hall.

Jumping through the hole was the demon prince of pride himself, completely covered in gore and looking mildly scuffed up, but other than that he was almost completely unharmed.

"I have to commend you on how you handled my attack. You're a special one, but sadly I'll have to kill you anyway. My deals already been made, and besides, you're absolutely dripping with souls."

"Well, I'd kind of hoped that you'd be more injured than this, but the way I figure it is I've probably completed what Order sent me here to do sooo~."

Michael snapped his fingers, and several dozen bolts swarmed the demon, forcing him to go on the defensive.

"Here's hoping you can make it out before this place explodes. Later."

With that Michael teleported up to the surface where all hell was currently breaking loose. The world was made of melted flesh that seemed to go on forever, and in the few seconds he'd arrived, fleshy hands had already gripped onto his legs.

Michael cursed and quickly tore them away and began to move. It was a tedious process, but one that needed to be done. Truth be told he didn't know what the range for the omega warhead was and didn't really feel like finding out.

So onward he went, each step sending him far off into the distance where he'd stop for little more than a second to process the scenery before being able to teleport to the edge of what he could see once more.

It was rather effective, and didn't give much time for the ground to try grabbing onto him, but apparently he still hadn't been moving fast enough because he could hear something rocketing towards him off in the distance.

A quick glance revealed the demon smiling like a maniac and flying at an incredibly fast speed towards him.

"Goddamnit."

Michael immediately picked up the pace, teleporting as fast as his body could handle, but those few seconds that he needed to process the landscape were slowing him down, while the demon seemed to stop for nothing.

The major problem was that the sun was still beating down on him, and because of that he couldn't really utilize the bagged infected since they were currently busy not letting him melt to death.

This was leading to delays that were letting the demon catch up, especially since he didn't seem to be affected by the sun at all.

Not to mention that the flesh tried to consume him all along the way, not it had much success with that, but it was slowing him down considerably. He could sense how it moved, where and when it would try to drag him into its mass making it easy to avoid, but these simple movements took time and it was slowing him down, even if it was only a tiny bit.

After several more minutes of moving Michael could heard an explosion go off in the distance and the flesh beneath his feet began to writhe.

The ground shook violently, throwing off Michael's steps. It was as if the whole world had come alive with the sole purpose of hindering his advancement.

And it was doing a damn good job. He'd planned to just run far away and teleport back to the start once he'd made enough distance, but now that he actually tried it wasn't working, and if he had to bet why he'd probably guess it was because the space simply wasn't there anymore.

Off in the distance he could see the flesh rising towards the sky, shifting and warping as it moved and completely changing the landscape he'd moved through.

But all he could do was keep moving, so he did. Until the demon's hand finally gripped onto his shoulder and slammed him into the ground.

The demon smiled, "I finally got you!"

He had several areas covering his body where chunks of flesh seemed to have been removed. It seemed his quick escape from the facility had actually cost him. Michael tried to think of a way to get the demon off of him and almost immediately pulled the pins to all the grenades he had.

But the demon simply smiled as the fragmentation flew into him, bouncing off his skin and not injuring him in the slightest.

"Now what to do with you I wonder? Hmm, I guess I still have to uphold my deal with the skeleton. Lucky you! You hear that you monster, have at 'em!"

Michael did his best to ignore the demon and the flesh covering the ground that threatened to pull him in. If he didn't have the sun beating down on him this wouldn't be so one sided. He'd be able to at the very least stall for time, able to push the demon off. To smash his mace into the bastard's smug grin

The fleshy earth tried to dig into Michael's skin, and he could literally feel its joy at the situation.

Then he realized something. Ever since he'd arrived here, he'd been fighting the sun, but weren't they both kind of similar?

They both had dominion over flesh, they both infected people. Hell, the scale was nearly the same as well. The only difference was that he was sentient, and it for the most part wasn't.

So he decided to try something. It was a gamble he'd never take given a better circumstance. He'd try to gain control over it.

Michael reached out his senses into the flesh surrounding him, stretching them to their peak, and then after a moment he felt something click, and he yelled, "Get the hell off me!"

The demon laughed in response, "No can do, you're way too slippery for me to do something like that. Why don't you just take your loss like a man? Come on, have some more pride."

But while the demon was talking the flesh had stopped trying to pull him into its mass, and Michael couldn't help but grin.

"Good, now get this guy off me."

The flesh hesitated for a moment, seemingly unsure if it should listen.

"What, are you going insane? There's nobody else here. Well, I guess there's the mask, but he doesn't really have arms so that request may be in poor taste."

That comment got some swearing from Keith, but that was quickly drowned out by the truck sized beam of flesh that slammed into the demon and threw him into the ground.

Michael quickly stood up and brushed himself off while the sun continued to beat down on the demon, with slight hesitation. Like it was a dog that didn't know if what it was doing was wrong or not.

So he told it to stop for a second, and to his surprise it actually did. He could feel the slightest bit of mental connection to the sun forming, but he quickly halted it before it got out of hand.

One simple command had been all it took to get the sun to lay off. That was all it took, a simple request and some mental probing and it ceased all aggression against him.

"Goddamn I can be way to careful sometimes."

Meanwhile the demon was getting thrown about by the flesh as he desperately tried to regain his footing, but the ground itself refused to allow that so he was having a hard time.

"Hey Pride, you're a cunt. Sun, see if you can kill him. No hard feelings if you can't though. This bastard's durable. Oh, and Pride. I'm 2-0 right now. Take your loss with some pride will ya?"

With that Michael walked away and not ten seconds later was enveloped by weightlessness and carried back to his universe.

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"What do you mean we need to make sure the sun isn't out to kill us?"

"Just how I said it. Y'all need to make sure it isn't going to commit genocide like the last one I saw. As far as I can tell the world was pretty much the same as ours so it's worth checking out.

"...we'll keep that in mind, but if you're not too busy we have another task for you."

"Look, Hearthgrieve, I've only been back a day. Can't this wait?"

He sighed, "I get where you're coming from, but you're an extremely valuable asset to pretty much every field mission I can think of. Besides, this one is important. We can't really afford to mess it up. It could end the world if we do.

"You talk about the world ending rather nonchalantly. Fine, what do you want me to do?"

"Well there's a cult trying to kill off the human race that's made a portal to another world in a shopping mall, and we'd like you to accompany the mobile task force unit we're planning to send in there to stop them."

"Uh huh. You really just said that like it's a normal Tuesday for you didn't ya."

"This isn't a laughing matter Michael. Now let me give you the details."

Hearthgrieve cleared his throat, "This particular cult is called the Daughters of Eden. They believe that the human race is a plague upon nature that should be wiped off the planet, but in my personal opinion they're a bunch of psychopathic hippies that have no idea what they're messing with. They also partake in human sacrifice, so there's that. We believe they're trying to summon some kind of world ending monster, we don't really know what it is exactly."

"You had me at hippy. Where do I need to go?"

"We'll be sending in a team in roughly two hours. Here's a picture of the operation site, be there."

With that Hearthgrieve got up and moved to leave the room before turning back around.

"And Michael, please for the love of god don't put on that mask while you're in there."

In response Michael simply chuckled and waved his hands in innocence, "Don't worry. If I do end up putting on this bastard, then I'll have a damn good reason to."

"You know I can hear you right?"

"You were meant to."