C22: Snakes

My heart said that it was too dangerous. But I knew if anyone important died, that would have consequences in the future.

Also if more people than the original Manga survived, that would be good too. In a couple of months, we will have a lack of exorcists. By a couple of years, it would have been better if we had more Exorcists. Humanity might even have a chance of survival.

The dangers were there either way. So I had to take the lower risk now to avoid an even more deadly future.

With the decision already made, I walked out of the barrier.

"Wait! What the hell are you doing?!" Anika yelled out at me. She had a baffled gaze. She looked scared. Despite becoming a badass in the future, she was still a young girl who hadn't seen anyone die until now.

Were my actions so strange to her?

I tried looking at things from her point of view. Yeah, everything I did was strange to them.

Hell, if they were a bit more cautious I would seem suspicious. No one was as well prepared as me for this attack and I had no injuries despite fighting the main baddie.

Better think of an excuse now. So I don't get cornered into something in the future.

"Don't worry about it. I'm going to save some of our future comrades." After that, I ran. I didn't want her asking all kinds of weird questions.

Anika was a tsundere character who in the Manga would grow to become quite likable. Kind of badass too. But that had nothing to do with me.

My body moved on instinct alone. I needed to survive! To survive I needed more people on my side. There was only so much a lone person could do. magic

I generally remembered the direction where the other groups had gone. So I charged toward the group which had Bets in. After all, he was the one more in danger. If memory serves me right, Professor Chain would die here with only a couple of students escaping.

Most of the nine survivors in the Manga came from Professor Chain's group. But this time with the groups being a bit different, I was going to tackle one problem at a time. Starting from the easiest.

If the situation was something I couldn't handle. Then I will run away. At least that was what I told myself. To try and get rid of the uncomfortable chill of terror rummaging through my body.

…

It took almost an hour of me running until I arrived at what looked like a battlefield. Demon corpses littered the place. Amongst them were some human-looking body parts, but they seemed to belong to demons.

Trees were ripped apart and the ground smelled like blood. There was a taste of rotten flesh in the air, likely some undead demons got killed. A week before, I would have thrown up at something like this. But now I was calmer than ever, taking everything into account, and looking out for sneak attacks.

I couldn't say with 100% certainty who would win between the Headmaster and the Demonic Exorcist. The fight wouldn't be something the Demonic Exorcist could handle so easily that he could afford to leave demons hanging about.

Now that I think about it, the Headmaster caught him in a bad situation as most of his demons weren't with him.

I was about to walk out of the battlefield when the sound of something wheezing stopped me.

Was I just hearing things?

I checked around where the wheezing was coming from. It was one of the demon corpses, a giant crow. A demon was still alive?

Since it was still here it meant that they were too weak to even move. Should I act like I didn't see it?

After all, if it's a high-class demon then it would be a death wish if I approached.

No, no. I must think about this logically. Why would a high class demon try and sneak attack me? Even if it got injured, I doubt I would be much of a threat to the creature.

There was also another reason why I wasn't that afraid. Professor Chain would never have left a demon alive.

I went with a sword in hand and approached the demon. Once closer, it was clear that half the head of the crow was missing. I still kept my guard up, because there were demons who could kill me even with their head cut off.

Using my sword to hack into the demon, it didn't even twitch in pain. Though I noticed that my sword barely went into its flesh, despite the demon already being dead. This was one tough bastard. A high class demon when it was alive.

A crow demon, its main power should have been its flight speed. But even then, if this demon was alive even if I tried my best, my sword wouldn't be able to dig through his flesh.

Pushing the corpse of the crow demon to the side what I saw under it shook me.

A man with white hair, and almost gray eyes. He had a missing arm. Also, there were some wrinkles on his face and he looked old. His eyes were grey, and he looked almost blind.

If it wasn't for his clothes I wouldn't have recognized him.

"Professor Chain?"

He opened his eyes, and his eyelids shook. Even such a simple action, opening his eyes, seemed like it was heavier than lifting a mountain. Professor Chain looked more than a couple of decades older.

There was something similar in the manga, but with a different character. He used lifespan to pay for certain moves and while that made him strong it also killed him in the end.

Well, no use thinking about it now.

I picked up the unconscious professor Chain, and put him over my shoulder. Then I started following some trails of where the students might have gone. Hopefully, the professor will still be alive by the time we reach a doctor.

In the manga, he would have died trying to buy time for his students.

Once again, my presence alone had changed things.

…

After almost an hour of more walking. My shoulder felt numb from carrying professor Chain. So I switched to my other shoulder.

We arrived at another fighting ground. There was a giant lizard-like demon with metallic skin. It looked like at least a middle class demon.

Who fought this one? Its corpse had injuries like it was bitten into by some similar-sized beast.

In the Manga, Bets didn't have any ability like this. He created an armor-like ability that would increase his strength and defenses. Complimenting his already strong body.

The only one who had the potential to do something like this was the delinquent from the Kuro Clan. But it would be years before he would have enough Ord to develop his shadow wolf ability.

Searching around for a bit, I found another track. It was the track of something dragged through the ground. Animals had the instinct to stay away from demons, and even demon corpses don't usually interest them.

There was also the chance that these tracks were made before the battle. But there wasn't any other lead so I followed them.

As I followed along, the sounds of another battle rang out. There was an ongoing fight and there were blood splatters all over the ground. Though there wasn't any corpse.

I wasn't sure how comforting that could be. As some demons were big enough to swallow humans whole.

After sneaking closer to the battle. A shadow raised from the ground. Assaulting what looked like a ball of snakes intertwined with each other. The creature had many snake heads, and it was the size of a small car.

As I had suspected. The Kuro Clan delinquent had created his ability years sooner.

A shadow wolf rose out of the ground and was battling head-on against the sphere of snakes. But the shadow wolf was weak and seemed to be losing as the snake heads formed a perfect defense.

The shadow wolf bit the demon, ripping a couple of snake heads, and chunks of flesh. But as he was doing that, the other snakes bit down on the shadow.

Though the shadow wolf wasn't poisoned. It still got weaker due to all the attacks.

There were countless demons out there in the world. Almost all of them had different appearances and abilities from the other. There were certain low-class demons who had similar abilities to each other. This ball of serpents was one where there were others like it.

Demons are formed from human resentment and other negative emotions. While other demons are simply born.

But this ball of snakes was something created naturally. It was a demon created when too many snakes get killed and their rotten corpses are ditched in a hole. The snakes' hate would pool together and form a demon like this.

A snake ball demon usually formed around snake skin traders. Who killed snakes only for their skin, and discarded the corpses without a second thought.

Attacking the snake-ball demon in close-quarters combat wasn't the best way to handle them. Neither was long-range, as hitting one head would be useless as it had too many heads. None of the heads was a weak point.

Among the low class demons, this one was one of the trickiest for amateur Exorcists to handle.

I was nowhere near a veteran either. But I had the knowledge of one.

Taking a small flask of disinfectant liquor flask, I threw it. After it landed on the creature, the bottle broke. Then I threw a talisman that combusted in a weak fireball and landed on the snake.

Due to being a clump of snakes, the demon wasn't fast enough to dodge my attack. So the fireball landed on the alcohol and the demon combusted into the fire.

"Hisssssss!" A bone-chilling hissing scream rang out.

The snakes wriggled around as they burned, the skin fell off their flesh, and flesh fell off their bones. A disgusting smell permeated through the air.

But the creature wasn't dead yet

**

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