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Chapter 32 – Demons
Was it because I had cast Advanced Magic barehanded using my Circulation?
Although a small amount of blood dripped from my left hand, it didn’t seem to be serious.
There was something more important than that though.
I looked up at the Demon that was floating in the air and staring at me.
It appeared that she, who had been rampaging as she wished, was quite displeased.
She did look displeased, but I should remain calm and kill her. Morris had almost lost himself with rage when I spoke with him after all.
Although my opponent was a Demon like my Mom’s enemy, this one wasn’t Mom’s enemy.
That was because Mom cured the King of Death from an epidemic five years ago.
“…Stop laughing, you bitch. It looks like you take pride in using powerful magic.”
The female Demon floating in the sky had been looking at me viciously, but she also seemed quite happy.
“You didn’t think you could win against this Demon-Sama who can use powerful Magic, right? You’re indeed a brat.”
As the Demon remained floating in the air, the black mist that was coming out from her body surrounded her, as if she were playing with the mist.
I knew what she wanted to say. For her to be floating freely in the air meant that she had a powerful advantage. In response to this, the Magic humans could use to fly was Levitation.
However, although it was Magic that could suspend one’s body, it was notorious for being ill suited for battle. It wasn’t something that could be compared to a Demon’s Flight Magic.
No matter how many powerful spells you had, it would be meaningless if they couldn’t hit the target. The moment someone activated an Advanced Spell and such was rather scary, since you could be easily discovered. Such was the case here.
If someone was to ask me about intermediate Magic and below, then the miasma, which was cloaking the body of this Demon, would become a problem. The true explanation behind this issue was something that should be called ‘Negative Magic’.
It caused the decay of normal Magic, and it would eat into the body of living things if one were to come into contact with it.
The sturdiness of her fleshly body and her physical abilities weren’t comparable to a normal human. She wouldn’t be swayed with a single hit.
But what was she trying to do?
“I know about Demons even without asking you. Let’s begin now.”
I wielded my Magic Staff after she spoke, and after her eyebrows furrowed for a moment, she opened her mouth and bared her fangs.
“You’re just a brat that isn’t supposed to know how to talk. I’ll squeeze the life out of you for as long as you live and stuff it into my mouth.”
She flew widely to the right as if signaling with her words. The stone pavement she had been standing on before only lasted a moment before it was destroyed.
What she had cast at me was a miasma bullet.
Miasma caused Magic to decay, so it held the specialty of being ‘absurdly strong’ when one used it in a shootout against normal Magic.
Sure enough, she maintained her distance from me and fired off bullets. They flew to the right and to the left, so I rolled on the ground. I avoided the miasma bullets that came at me incessantly. Perhaps she was known as a Magician Killer.
I countered it with Fireballs that seemed to weave through the gaps between the bullets, but she didn’t try to avoid them. She went up in flames with a direct hit, but I didn’t believe that she would be defeated with just that. Magic flames lacked the transmission of heat, but they would blind her. I immediately rushed forth and closed the gap.
A smiling Demon could be seen under the blast wave.
“Your terrible magic has no effect on me! Go crawl on the ground, you trashy insect!”
The Demon scattered bullets from her left hand in the shape of a fan.
Any of these could conceal a power destructive enough to kill a human.
On top of that, it was a Variable Shot. Even if they shot at me in order, the speed of each of the bullets was different. They were all timed to impact the ground simultaneously.
I activated Levitation and rose up into the sky. Maybe because she was confident in her victory, the edge of her lips distorted. A ball of miasma formed in her right hand.
If she were to follow through and use it–the miasma changed into a long blade and chopped through the area I was at. It was flawless, perfect. The speed she used wasn’t something that could be avoided with Levitation.
“Goh!?”
However, I wasn’t there. There was a change in the air as I concealed myself. The Demon lost sight of me as she followed through with creating that giant blade.
I thrust my knee, which had a concentration of Mana that was enhanced by my Circulation, into the side of her head.
The nature of Mana Circulation compared to normal Mana was different. As a result of mixing one’s Mana with one’s Life Energy, it would not decay from a Demon’s miasma, nor would the miasma be able to eat into my body.
“W-What!?”
The Demon was taken by surprise and tried to get away from me, but I kicked the air and stayed on her heels. I eluded the miasma bullet that was fired from her left hand by using a Magic Shield behind me and closed in on her without a moment’s delay. It was my chance.
She was shocked and her eyes were wide open, but she extended her claws towards me and I drew my Magic Staff to receive it.
“He’s freaking using the air as his footing!? What the hell is he going to do!?”
To begin with, I never said that I couldn’t battle in midair.
I expanded a Magic Circle under my feet and behind me. With a little bit of control, I cast Magic Shield and Air Blast, which were two beginner Spells.
By combining these with the Levitation that suspended my body, I was able to get some sort of propulsion by using Shield as my footing and Air Blast as a booster.
Those who could exhibit this type of free mobility in the air were high-rank BFO players, giving them the ability of carrying out three-dimensional aerial combat.
Instead of modifying techniques that players had developed, BFO was amazing enough to prepare additional items and martial arts to make this possible for those who weren’t Magicians, but after seeing the Demon’s reaction, it seemed like there weren’t any humans who were capable of doing this.
“Unbelievable! A mere human is controlling three spells at the same time!?”
As if three or four spells of the lower-tier would make her say ‘What the hell?’
She brandished her claws.
I received the slash that was trying to take my life with my Staff.
Her sharp claws immediately went by the side of my face, as if they were going to slice my head open. I thrust my Staff into her claws, causing them to go past me.
I swung the back of my Staff down. I still had a very small chance. It ended up grazing the Demon’s side, who barely dodged it. I wasn’t going to let her break away from me. I would overcome her like this.
Swing, sweep, defend, flow, thrust. Clashing with someone allowed me to deflect them like this.
The one thing that was unacceptable was probably my laughing during this moment of struggling for one’s life.
I couldn’t help being happy. My hands right now had the power to fight a Demon directly, like this.
However, this wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough at all. My strength, my speed, and my Staves. More, more, I needed more power!
Screeching noises resounded every time her claws and my magic staff collided with each other.
We crossed each other and clashed in midair many times, as if we had become intertwined.
Although my Staff wasn’t really that great–
“Gahah!”
Perhaps she didn’t feel the need to improve herself because she was of a high ranking species. Her close combat technique was weak. She moved to the right, and then to the left. As I dodged the claws that tried to defend against me, I struck the Demon’s head with the front end of my Staff. Then she was sent flying far away after being hit in the solar plexus with one attack from my Staff, which was fully loaded with Mana.
She was different from me, so she couldn’t support her body in midair with Flight Magic.
Although she broke up into pieces with one attack by an ‘ant’, it wasn’t a decisive blow.
As I thought, a Demon’s endurance was astounding.
However, it was within my expectations. I wouldn’t give her the time to recover. I immediately kicked the air and chased after her. I swooped down from above and, leaving it up to my Mana, I kicked her.
She slammed into the ground and rolled around.
However, I was confident. I had no interest in going easy on her, nor in giving her any mercy. As long as one had a Magician’s sense, she could control the miasma as long as she was alive, similar to being able to make a technique. She wasn’t an opponent who you could capture alive or squeeze information out of.
It appeared that the Staff had also reached its limits, so it would be the last time I would use it.
Magic Circles covered both ends of the Staff that was grasped in my hands.
“You monster–”
“It’s the end for you guys, since you said that.”
Both of us were laughing.
“Dig.”
I focused on the center of my Staff, causing a wind vortex infused with my mana to appear. The pressure of a spiraling storm gathered at the tip of my Staff.
This was a Rank 7 Spell, Vortex Lancer. I threw my Staff, infused with a tornado, towards the Demon.
It was accurate. I aimed for the center of the Demon’s chest, and she was engulfed by it.
The storm exploded at some point and at the final moment, it cut down the entire place, as if it were a ring. What remained at the end was the Demon lying on the ground, in the center of the giant hole that had been created.
Okay. Friggin badass!