Demons Everywhere

The trip to the Magic Council had thankfully been very brief and soon Mira and Alex were on their way to the border of the massive kingdom of Pergrande. They made small talk on the trip, discussing fighting strategies and the conditions required for Mira to be able to take the soul of a demon for her magic. It seemed like the only requirements were that the soul needed to belong to a demon and belong to a female. Alex told her of the two female demons that belonged to the 'Nine Demon Gates', Tartaros' elite. He didn't remember their powers all that well and the information they got from the council wasn't very good either. Tartaros had done well to keep any information about their group from getting out.

They found the first destroyed village on the very first day and spent quite a few days searching everything around the area. This was originally a recon mission and their objective was to see if they could figure out what the guild was up to, not actually destroy them. They were on the trail of carnage for months. Any locals they found, Alex asked about sightings of a floating Island. The first solid lead they had took them further north and they came upon a small settlement actually in the process of being overrun by the demons. Alex could tell right away that these demons did not possess the strength to be ranked highly within Tartaros, but they should at the very least be able to tell them where the main guild force was or what their plans were. He was wrong. Mira and Alex had no difficulty beating the demons but any that they actually captured alive and managed to incapacitate would mysteriously die. In the end, the few Demon particles Alex was able to get from the corpses were the only thing they got from them.

Another month and another raiding party of weak demons were destroyed. They had managed to find the group before they attacked another village but were met with no luck in getting information out of the captured demons. They could talk to them but the demons would usually only yell insults until they died by whatever suicide technique was killing them. Whatever it was actively blocked Alex's interference when he tried to keep the demons alive so he could question them. Even trying to read their minds didn't work as the telepathy spell Alex used would always break apart when he tried. He guessed it had to do with the bane particles that went into making up the demons. Mira and Alex received messages from their family members that they were going to be participating in some trial set up by the master and he wasn't going to let them keep the communication orbs for fear of cheating. They said they didn't know how long the trial was going to last but it was at least a couple weeks. Thinking nothing of it, Mira and Alex threw themselves into the mission without any distractions.

The fights were becoming more frequent and the demons they fought were either in larger groups or made up of stronger individuals. They were getting closer and it was obvious that Tartaros knew there were people actively hunting them down. Months passed and the battles raged on. The demons were getting smarter and a few times Mira and Alex had almost walked right into traps or ambushes. Eventually the demons started hunting them, it was usually spaced out and at random to keep them on their toes and exhausted. They would often attack at night when they were trying to rest or just use wave tactics with grunt level demons. Alex had a theory that they were using the captured humans from the raided villages as slaves and were turning them into demons to replenish their numbers. This was proved one day when they found a freshly turned human who still kept most of his human appearance. Alex was able to keep the guy from dying, from whatever curse had been placed on him, long enough for the guy to tell them what was happening. Though he couldn't give them a location of the guildhall, they finally had something to report to the council.

It didn't make Alex or Mira feel good knowing they had been killing humans turned Demons this whole time, but the vast majority of them had completely lost their human appearance and seemed to revel in the suffering of others. It some-what helped their conscience knowing they were finally at peace. They also weren't able to undo the damage caused by the curse on them, every time Alex tried it seemed to only make them suffer before death. The council had also agreed with them that the victims were no longer humans and needed to be put out of their suffering.

Things started really picking up after the tenth month of the quest. They had been chasing Tartaros all around northern and eastern Ishgar and they finally got to fight one of the big bosses. The Demon they fought introduced himself as Jackal of the Nine Demon Gates. He was a user of explosive Curse magic and liked to cause massive damage to the area as he fought. It made him a very tough opponent but he was still beaten. Alex and Mira were catching their breath when Jackal started glowing and laughing like a lunatic about how he will take them down with him. Feeling the massive energy build up and knowing his shield wasn't good against curse magic, Alex could only grab Mira and flee the area. After the massive explosion calmed down, Alex and Mira made their way back to the pit. They searched for the body or any lingering demon particles but were unable to find any. This made Alex remember that these stupid demons could be revived, making him want to curse.

Alex and Mira were too exhausted from the fight and being constantly hounded by the demons that Alex tunneled underground and used his stealth domain to vanish from the world so they could catch up on rest. He hadn't done this before as they had never been pushed so far in a fight and they were not complaining about the demons coming to them. Sure it was exhausting, but it was way more efficient than having to search for them. As the fights raged and the slew more demons, their strength only increased. As he drifted off to sleep, Alex dreamed of green fire and noted with some annoyance that had he been alone he could have used the dangerous flame on the exploding freak. That thought was quickly kicked out of his head though, he was very happy Mira was here and would rather struggle a little bit than send her away in fear of his own flames. While under his own control he could make the {Fel-Fire} do whatever he wanted, including not burn people, once it ignited something else it was no longer his to command. It wouldn't hurt him, but his friends were not safe from the side effects of the extreme heat.

In the next couple days they clashed with the higher ranked members of Tartaros. As strong as the demons were they could not beat Mira and Alex together and usually ended up running. Not all of them were lucky enough to get away though and Alex only counted it as a victory when he was absorbing their particles. If the demons got away without leaving any particles he assumed they were collected by whatever was resurrecting them. This was proved when they fought and ultimately killed Jackal for the second time though this time Alex had been ready for it and ripped all the particles out of his corpse before he could self-destruct. Jackal was not the first of the Nine Demon Gates to be killed though, that honor belonged to a really annoying demon that called himself 'Franmalth'. He only had a single eye on a round spiky body that was a yellow-green color. He had a grating voice and a very annoying personality. Alex remembered this demon was supposed to be very dangerous. The Demon liked to talk and they used that against him. Mira kept him distracted while Alex entered Stealth and put both his Fel-Blades through the round demon. This strategy didn't work on the others though as they seemed way more observant and as soon as Alex disappeared, they started blasting the area with AoE curses.

The next of the Demon Gates to die to the duo was a skeleton necromancer. Alex noticed right away that the guy's entire body was made from Magic barrier particles giving him a wide range of movement and making him highly resistant to most magics. This was one of the few times Alex had told Mira to run as far and as fast as she could, he didn't have a way to nullify the MBP and wanted to just nuke this guy with {Fel-Fire}. When Mira was far enough away and before the demon could do much, Alex ignited him in green flame. The explosion that resulted from the demon's energy body going up in flames leveled a good ten kilometers of the forest they were fighting in. While he was immune to the fire, the force of the explosion still sent Alex flying all the way to where Mira had retreated. When she found him, she had made sure he was okay before they both had a good laugh at the fact that his highly flame-resistant clothes completely burned off his body.

The third Demon to go was a sadistic bitch. She called herself Kyoka and got great pleasure out of torturing people. During the fight, she had caught Alex in some form of body modification curse that rendered him immobile and took all his senses away. He had to enter stealth to undo it and figure out a counter for it. When he got his senses back moments later, Mira had already been captured in the same form of magic and was being tortured by the evil bitch. Alex snapped and started beating the demon in the most painful way he could, even going so far as to use her own curse against her all while healing Mira. When Mira regained her bearings she used her 'Soul take-over' magic on the unconscious demon. There weren't any demon particles to collect from her but stealing her soul would keep her from reviving anyway. It also came with the delicious memories of their base's current location and how to track it.

The hunt had truly begun then and they started hounding the remaining Members of Tartaros, dead set on hunting them to the last man. With the Demons running scared they sent out the remaining underlings to stall the two 'monsters' who were hunting them. The floating island was making its way west toward the ocean in the direction of Alikitasia.

Alex and Mira knew when Tartaros had run out of the weak demons, it was the only time the 'Gates' made an appearance themselves since the death of Kyoka. The first Demon Gate to show up since they started the pursuit of the cube was a Demon Alex actually recognized from the Anime, it was the demon he had modeled his own curse magic from, Tempester. The fight against Tempester had been the longest so far. He was by far the quickest and most elusive of the demons, but in the end he died all the same.

When they made it to the coast, Jackal confronted them again, he was hoping to buy time for the cube to cross the ocean into Alikitasia, completely believing in his ability to be revived if he died. Even though the others hadn't been able to, he did and it made him feel special. Tartaros was in a very bad way right now as they had lost almost all of their members. Kyoka was the one that knew the most about creating more demons and even the resurrection machines. And when the necromancer died, so too did all the corpses that he had been controlling. One of which had been one of the Demon Gates himself, the 'Demon Slayer Silver Fullbuster'. Alex and Mira didn't know this, but they probably wouldn't have cared. Alex was just wondering why 'the underworld King' hadn't bothered to make an appearance himself and instead chose to flee across the ocean. By the time they had permanently beaten Jackal, the cube was long out of sight. Alex knew that as long as Mira had her connection through Kyoka's soul, that they could find the cube but for now it was no longer Ishgar's problem. They were both way too tired from all the fighting and as soon as they reported back to the magic council, they were due for a long vacation. After all, the whole war with Tartaros had taken almost a full eighteen months.