Chapter 128: Land and Sky IV
The reality before Damian was a surreal one.
He watched the scene ahead through eyes that crackled with blue fla, winged pupils perceiving flows of Mana and corruption in ways his human form could never have achieved.
The landscape had been transford by his attack, scorched earth and crystallized stone replacing what had once been forests and hills. Smoke rose from a thousand points across the terrain.
And at the center of that devastation lay the demon.
The Kishi that had been so terrifying, so overwhelming, so utterly beyond his ability to harm with his spear... had turned into a dark scorched piece of at. The combined form he had taken, multiple Land and Sky Physiques woven together with the Primordial Tongue, had accomplished what seed impossible monts ago.
The creature that had lted chunks from a Beast Lord and corrupted entire regions of the Lands of Stone was now a charred mass twitching weakly amid the ruins of its domain.
But even now, the aura of that demon still felt suffocating.
Damian’s leonine nostrils flared as he sensed sothing wrong.
The mass was moving. Not the weak twitches of sothing dying, but purposeful motion beneath that blackened surface. He watched with growing unease as the charred exterior cracked and split, crimson light bleeding through the gaps.
A limb shot out from the mass.
It was malford and incomplete, more bone than flesh, but it was unmistakably regenerating. The demon was trying to reform itself from what should have been fatal damage. That corrupted vitality, that refusal to simply die...oh!
He couldn’t allow such a terrible fucker to co back with its full power.
The thought burned through his mind with urgent clarity. His attack had wounded it grievously, yes. But wounded wasn’t dead. Wounded ant it could recover. Wounded ant it could return stronger, angrier, hungrier for the flesh and souls of those who had dared to harm it.
How could he turn it into ash that scattered across the Lands of Stone with surety?
His mind flickered with ideas and possibilities.
This form he had taken was still largely unexplored. He had acted on instinct when he unleashed that beam of golden-blue fla, drawing on powers he didn’t fully understand. The rivers of Mana still poured into him from all directions. The forge in his chest still burned with intensity that begged for release.
What else could this body do?
He thought of the flas that composed his mane, sacred fire from the Primordial Tongue burning endlessly around his leonine features. He thought of the golden lightning he had called from clouds he had conjured with nothing but will. He thought of the Crown floating above his head.
And then his eyes lit up brightly.
A surefire way erged in his mind. It was crude. It was brutal. It was exactly what sothing like this deserved.
He moved.
Damian flew out rapidly across the scorched sky.
His massive form crossed the distance like a behemoth descending upon prey, nine tails streaming behind him and wings cutting through air that still tasted of corruption and ash.
The Crown of Kingship blazed above his head as he dove toward the regenerating mass below. Golden winds gathered in his wake, currents of Mana responding to his passage without conscious thought.
He appeared before the wriggling and healing Kishi Demon in an instant!
The creature sensed his approach. That malford limb flailed toward him, trying to strike, trying to defend, trying to do anything against the predator that had descended upon it. Crimson light pulsed from the gaps in its charred exterior, corruption gathering for another assault.
It was too slow.
Damian opened his wide jaws.
The mouth of his lion form gaped impossibly large, fangs the size of spears framing an opening that seed to stretch beyond physical limitations. Heat poured from that opening, the furnace in his chest venting its fury into the Lands. And before the demon could react, before it could reform enough to resist, he lunged forward and...
He swallowed it.
Behind him, Serala’s gasp carried across the battlefield.
The Holy Daughter stared with wing-shaped pupils wide in shock, her spear hanging forgotten in nerveless fingers.
She had never seen soone eat a demon before! Would that be good for you? That couldn’t possibly be good for you!
Masamuk’s obsidian body pulsed with sothing between shock and admiration. His crimson eyes fixed on Damian’s massive leonine form.
"Did he just..."
The sli’s voice erged strangled and disbelieving as he shook his head!
"He fucking did!"
Inside Damian’s jaws, the world was a furnace.
The interior of his mouth burned with golden flas that roared inward from all directions, concentrated heat that would have vaporized ordinary matter instantly. The walls of his throat pulsed with the sa fire, muscles contracting around the demon while power poured in from every surface.
The healing mass of the Kishi Demon found itself trapped in an inferno.
Golden flas surged toward it from above and below and every side, giving it nowhere to flee and no space to regenerate. The creature writhed within that prison of fire, its attempts at reformation being burned away faster than they could complete. Screams erged from the mass, dual voices blending into sothing pitiful and enraged.
Damian sent his voice through waves of Mana, speaking directly into the mind of the thing he had consud.
"I will stop if you tell
anything decent."
His ntal voice carried cold authority.
"How many of you are there? Are all Imperators of the Dominion of Crimson Stone carrying Seeds of Demons? What are you planning?"
...!
The wriggling mass of the Kishi Demon roared in response.
Even trapped within his furnace, even being burned away by flas it couldn’t resist, the creature’s defiance remained absolute. Its dual voice scread with hatred.
"You all will die!"
The handso voice and the hyena voice rged into a single declaration of doom.
"Your souls will be consud in fiendish brilliance! The Light of The Emperor shall paint the Lands of Stone!"
...!
The Light of The Emperor.
The words held weight that made Damian’s transford body tense. This demon, even in its death throes, spoke of an Emperor. Not the Murderous Saint. Sothing else. Sothing that commanded the loyalty of beings from beyond the River of The World.
What had the Dominion of Crimson Stone truly allied themselves with?
But the demon offered nothing more. Its defiance was absolute. Its hatred was eternal. And a corrupted crimson light was beginning to spill from its mass, fighting against the golden flas that contained it.
Damian’s gaze beca heavy.
His chest churned with power that demanded release.
He could feel the forge within his ribcage responding to the threat, heat accumulating beyond anything he had unleashed before. The demon thought it could resist him. The demon thought its corruption could overco his flas. The demon was utterly wrong!
He unleashed concentrated lava-like golden flas into his jaws.
The fire intensified a hundredfold, pouring from his throat and filling every space the demon might have used to survive. The heat was beyond asurent now, beyond anything natural, beyond anything that belonged in the Lands of Stone.
And at the sa ti...
"Persevere."
HUUUM!
Blue flas rose up alongside the gold.
The sacred fire of the Primordial Tongue rged with the sovereign flas of his current body, two powers that should never have coexisted within the sa being combining into sothing unprecedented.
The blue flas elevated it, and they purified it. They transford already devastating destruction into sothing that could burn away existence itself.
These blue flas were even more terrifying in their potency and intensity!
They burned not just flesh but essence. They consud not just matter but aning. They reached into the core of what the demon was and declared that it would simply cease to be.
The mass of the Kishi Demon shriveled.
Its screams reached a crescendo of agony that would have shattered lesser minds. The corruption that had seed so overwhelming monts ago withered before flas that predated corruption itself. Crimson light flickered and died. Malford limbs dissolved into ash. The dual voices that had promised death and consumption and fiendish brilliance grew weaker and weaker.
And then they ceased entirely.
Seconds later, silence filled the furnace of Damian’s jaws.
He searched through the remains with senses that could perceive Mana in its most fundantal forms.
The demon was gone. Truly gone. Not regenerating. Not hiding. Not preparing for another assault. The Kishi that had erupted from Imperator Vienna’s corpse, that had corrupted an entire region, that had spoken of an Emperor and painted Lands of Stone... was nothing but ash now.
Nothing but ash and one other thing.
Inside the furnace of his jaws, he found the only object that hadn’t lted and scorched.
A dazzling crimson crystalline dallion.
It rested amid the ashes of the demon, its surface untouched by flas that had destroyed everything else. Runes covered its face. Power radiated from its core, corruption contained within crystal that refused to burn.
Damian stared at the dallion with his inner senses.
What was this thing?
And what did it an that even his flas couldn’t destroy it?
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