Tales of the Old World Demon Lord

Chapter 30 – The calm during the storm

[Eternum Calendar 1971]

Destruction and chaos were concepts that often went hand in hand and this time was no exception. The demonic forests of Vertloch were characterized mainly by their dreaded and desolate landscapes yet not even a shred of such imagery remained as the torrents of violent winds smashed through the terrain. The only way to accurately assess this scene was to call it complete and utter pandemonium… or so it should have been. Unlike the chaos around him the eye of the storm was unnervingly tranquil. Though he was still able to feel some effect of the wind brush around him it did not justify the massive riptide of air that should have been.

However all of his concerns on that matter had been pushed aside as something else more important caught his immediate interest. A small and fragile figure of a lone child, floating peacefully above him as though an angel had slowly descended upon him, or more accurately the ‘heart of the storm’.

Like a perfectly crafted doll, her porcelain colored skin accentuated the richness of her golden hair. Eyes closed, long eye lashes that drew out the image of a sleeping beauty. For a moment Ren had lost all sense of himself and of time as he felt unable to pry his eyes away from such a divine figure. A figure he had known virtually for his entire span of existence yet this side of her was a first for him.

“Alice…”

He whispered aloud the true name of the figure hovering gently just off the ground. That being said, the kind of aura that she let out was far from tranquil, though herself was in such a state, black lightning surged across her, protecting her. In the form of two fleeting black snakes, slithering in and out of existence they guarded her with the intent on killing everything that came near.

Their paralyzing glare briefly caught glimpse of Ren. He found himself stricken with fear and unable to approach his dear friend or even utter a single word. His childhood friend, who he had constantly thought of as just an annoying brat, was at the center of this massive pandemonium but his opinions of her did not change. Ren still thought of her as his close childhood friend and would have done everything in his power to ‘save’ her, if she even needed saving that was.

"What the hell... she can be pretty cute too."

As loathed as he was to admit, looking up at her this was what he had truly felt, other than the fear and paralysis that is. Alas it was no time to be worrying about such things as there were other more prudent questions that needed to be tackled.

Strewn about the place were the dismembered bodies of those wretched Crystalline Goblins. Putrid yellow blood oozed out from their corpses, sliced and diced into parts with their original shapes no longer being recognizable. Ren could almost feel his throat tensing up, wanting to throw up but trying his best to keep it all in.

“Who did this…?”

Of course even if he asked himself only one answer would ever come to his mind. It was painfully obvious as to the identity of the culprit- because he was looking at her, possibly in deep slumber but most certainly not yet dead. ‘Alice…’ he thought; a serene decoration against the swirling chaos that was the dreaded gush of cruel winds.

He stopped to think about everything he knew, or rather everything he didn’t know about Alice. ‘Just what exactly did I know about her?’ They had been friends for most of their short lives together, yet he unfortunately had to admit he didn’t ‘truly’ know. He knew her personality, what she liked(Morgant), what she hated(being alone; ignored) and her general disposition. Yet the all important questions about the circumstances about her birth or who her parents were was a complete mystery. That was to be expected, being orphans, but that fact did not make him feel any better about it.

“Cough, cough.”

A sudden sound derailed his train of thought.

A survivor, a familiar survivor’s coughing could be heard from the distant background. Immediately looking back to its origin Ren found traces of small movement buried deep beneath the disgusting pile crystal corpses. Breaking free from his petrifaction he cautiously made his way over, all the while making sure to stay clear of the black lightning snake’s ire.

“Celina?!”

Digging deeper he found the small serpentine body of his other childhood friend. Upon discovering her body his body tensed up as he carefully checked her vitals, hoping desperately that the worst hadn’t come. He let out a sigh of relief as she was still very much alive, although the bruises around her neck looked extremely painful. His strength left him- glad, as he fell to the floor and let out a small chuckle.

Not being very talented in the art of healing type magic, Ren felt useless to help her. All he could do was let her rest as he cleaned off the disgusting ooze of the goblin’s blood from her body. He carefully rested Celina’s head on his lap as he tried to make her rest as comfortable as possible for a swift recovery.

“Haa… thank god they’re still alive.”

Of course the situation hadn’t changed but just knowing that his friends had all made it out of that impossibly horrid crisis was enough.

“R- Ren?”

A soft and feeble voice came from below him. Celina looked up at him, her eyes darting about in confusion but soon came to the realization that everything was finally over.

“Ah… I…”

She tried to speak but her throat had still been damaged and was unable to speak too much. It was a shame, since Celina had been at the center of it all she would’ve seen everything. Ren wanted to ask but figuring that she couldn’t speak he left the discussion for later when they all made it out safely.

“Don’t worry Celina, everything’s going to be okay.”

“Indeed everything is truly going to be okay… Ahh~ I feel as though I’ve been blessed by the stars themselves; I’ve finally found you, Queen Morrighan.”

A foreign voice came from the heavy vortex, with enough strength to traverse through such high pressure winds- it could only have been bad news. Ren gently rested Celina’s body against a small boulder as he stood up to defend her. She tried to stop him from approaching such an obviously dangerous figure but her body disobeyed her- she could only watch and pray for his safety. Walking through the uninviting winds with nonchalant ease was a figure of dark fiery shadows. A small bow and quiver attached to his back all Ren could make out from the hooded figure was a dreadful grin filled with nothing but malicious intents.

Appearing next to him was an enormous golden monolith, the same kind adorned by those horrendous goblins. It floated as it followed behind the shadowy figure. Even to Ren, who had no idea of the intricacies of the situation, he understood that the origins of those crystalline freaks were that monolith.

“Who are you?”

Was Ren’s first question but of course a straight answer was unlikely to be given. In fact no answer was given as he was thoroughly ignored by the shadow man who approached Alice. Feeling an imminent sense of danger by his actions Ren quickly acted on his impulse and shot out a few [ice bullets] towards him.

All of his glacial projectiles were swiftly intercepted and disintegrated in a single swing of the shadow man’s arms. At best it had only served to delay him by a few short seconds. It was impossible; clearly the man’s level was quite a bit above his own and there was nothing he could do to stop him. However Ren wasn’t willing to give up, not when he had just gotten done finding the strength to move past his fears.

He desperately rushed towards the man. If magic didn’t work then he’d try a physical assault. Even knowing that the result would not be much different he still tried.

“Tch, annoying brat. Do not bother me.”

The shadow man drew his bow and prepared to shoot Ren down without mercy. It had all happened way too quickly and by the time Ren had done registering what was going on he was face to face with an arrow flying directly towards his head. His brief but content life flashed before his eyes as he tightly shut them thinking that it was all ‘over’.

The arrows flew but did not directly connect with Ren and continued on its trajectory and hit the ground where he once was. When Ren opened his eyes he felt a bit of elevation and displacement as he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet.

“Thank god I made it in time.”

Another foreign voice came from directly next to Ren this time. Unlike the shadow man’s, this was a female’s voice that sounded a lot more benign, yet still rough in some areas. The source of the voice was extremely close, in fact Ren was being picked up by that person right now.

Long, silky white hair was all he could see from such a close range.

“You okay kid?”

The female voice asked.

“Y- yeah, thanks but please let me down.”

In compliance she let him down as Ren was able to fully grasp the identity of the person who had just saved his life. He knew this person, almost everyone in his hometown did- she was the Townguard captain, Yvonne.

“You followed me?”

The shadowy figure asked, slight irritation could be sensed from his tone of voice. Yvonne grinned as she picked up on that. She responded with a haughty grin as she raised her hand up towards the sky.

“More than you’ll ever know, Gerald.”

A small wine colored ball of energy was gathered in the hand Yvonne raised towards the sky. Thinking that she was preparing some sort of massive attack, Gerald leaped a few spaces back and silently casted a few defensive spells on himself.

Gerald had guessed wrong and offense was not at all what Yvonne was thinking. Instead the blood colored ball flew up high into the sky and briefly flashed a surprisingly bright red. It was only for a few seconds and seemed to serve no other purpose than to annoy and mock Gerald, but Yvonne’s job was now complete.

...

“Out of my way!”

Violently thrashing through the rigid counters of the demonic forest was a massive surge of dust and explosions. Rapidly advancing forward with no other disregard than its mission, it could only have been described as chaos incarnate. Yet not all was as it originally seemed as at the center of it all was but a mere child no older than seven years of age, Morgant.

The enemy, scores of disgusting Crystalline Goblins, they had been waiting amassed in order to call forth the literal apocalypse on his small hometown. Morgant had no intentions of letting the situation ever escalate to that that level; however he was pressed for time. The Crystalline Goblins served that reminder of what would happen if he failed in finding his true target. Using his Psychokinetic abilities he tried to annihilate whatever numbers of them as he could to limit the burden on his comrades who would have to deal with these monsters if they ever started advancing.

Entrusting the rest of the plans to his very capable comrades he had left the town’s fate in their hands. That being said, having only met just a few days ago they still held many secrets from each other, thus he couldn’t exactly say they were the most trustworthy of partners. Especially Sipher or Este, whom could have very well been his own blood related sister; they were too much of an unknown. So then why did he leave the security details of his beloved town to them?

The simple answer was that he didn’t really. There were a lot more pieces on the board than either of them could have realized, it was as Morgant had always said. The ‘unknown’ is both a powerful ally as it is a formidable foe. Secret exchanges and alliances were forged in the shadows as preparation for this crisis; more than what was plainly visible was at stake and no one person truly knew the entire story.

Still, with all malignant intentions Morgant frowned as he charged through the enemy’s front lines with reckless abandon. To stop this literal incarnation of a chaos god from tearing down their armies, countless bands of Crystalline Goblins engaged him.

“Tch, were there really this many Goblins crawling around the forest all this time? Disgusting, they’re worse than cockroaches.”

There were vastly more numbers than what Morgant had originally anticipated. It was to the point that he couldn’t fully accept that this many Goblins actually existed and that it was easier for him to convince himself that they were just hallucinations. Yet none of that actually mattered as all he felt, other than disgust at their horrid and distorted bodies, was the satisfaction of blowing them apart en mass like ragdolls with his new ‘rapid fire’ [Psionic Fission].

Thanks in part to this horrific event, in the past few days Morgant had become exceedingly more proficient at combat and mastering his abilities. Now levitating rocks and carving them into actual bullet shapes for extra penetration power all came naturally to him as breathing. In fact most of it was done subconsciously whenever he ‘reloaded’ by picking up more rocks from his surroundings. With these highly advanced, self-registered ‘stone bullets’, no barrier or shield could ever hope to stand up against him as they were torn apart as though they were wet tissue paper.

Those Crystalline goblins may have had an unlimited threshold to pain but none of that really mattered when they and their neighbors were blown to smithereens.

“Persistent bastards, since they don’t have any sort of self preservation they don’t even have any real sense of fear either, huh? Tch, this is becoming such a pain.”

Even after witnessing what Morgant was capable of, none of the Goblins even hesitated to approach him. This fact was only made worse when factoring in the part about these pests having total immunity to detection. Morgant was given little choice but to continue moving about as to not get ambushed from a blind spot as it could be fatal even with all his ‘advanced’ inner upgrades.

“Dammit… so he had more of those things.”

Morgant voice his complaints to the dreaded winds as a new breed of enemies emerged from the shadows. Though they weren’t exactly unfamiliar, just one of them had proven itself to be a bit of a headache. ‘Horned Crystal Stags’, and not just one or two but dozens of them had all crawled out of the forests bearing their wretched golden lights. Their infernal red glowing eyes stared at him, like the Goblins these Horned Crystal tags only had a single thing in their mind, to ‘destroy the enemy at all costs’.

“Fine, I get it. That’s how you want to play it right?”

Morgant raised his hands and snapped his fingers and as he did several more ‘stone bullets’ formed around him. However these ‘bullets’ were different to those he had used up until now, darker in color with a much larger and sharper tips. When he summoned these bullets a holographic command prompt appeared before him, serving as a minor distraction but not by too much.

Words like [skill analysis] and [skill integration] had popped up before a final command box appeared with the words…

[New Skill Developed: [Psionic Armor Piercer]]

Morgant flashed a triumphant grin.

Several more [Psionic Armor Piercers] spawned around Morgant, each one for every Crystal Horn stag there was. They vibrated menacingly as though alive and with every intent to smash the enemy, eagerly waiting for Morgant to just give the order.

There was a brief moment of silence between Morgant and the enemy forces as they stared each other down. Yet that peace did not last long as the battle started immediately after with an incredible volley of crystal shards being lobbed towards Morgant. Hundreds, if not thousands, were being hurled towards him at high speeds destroying everything in their path, be it trees or even other goblins. Giving him not even a moment to retaliate, all Morgant could do was quickly dash and roll behind a large stone boulder for cover until he could find an opportunity.

“Tch, I’ve focused so much on my offensive capabilities that I’ve neglected my defensive set. Can’t be helped then, [Overload].”

“[Usage of the skill – ‘Overload’ is ill-advised. Do you wish to continue?]”

A synthetic voice asked from within his head.

“[Personally I don’t want to experience that painful skill again but I’m out of options here. Just activate it for a few seconds.]”

“[Commencing].”

As though being ripped out of reality itself, everything around Morgant slowed down to a snail’s pace. The wind, dust, crystal shards and leaf, everything moved so slowly that it was almost comical to Morgant. Since [Overload] was a skill that placed extreme amount of strain on his body he needed to do this before any real feedback occurred.

Lunging out into the slow motion volley of crystal shards Morgant managed to effectively dance around them through the gaps to retaliate. The Psionic Armor Piercer bullets hovering around Morgant flew away from him at his command. Each of the bullets penetrated directly through somewhere on the Horned Crystal Stags’ bodies and were lodged firmly within.

Feeling the foreign objects lodged firmly into their body the Stags temporarily ceased their attacks but that was just the perfect opportunity for Morgant. He set off the explosions, leading up to a massive and spectacular display of pyrotechnics. Pillars of blue flame rose up high enough to carve a hole in the thick canopy of the forest. Smoke and dust was violently kicked about the place covering the entire area in darkness despite having the canopy shaved off.

Once the smog cleared out nothing, not even the trees, remained but a large dusty crater. Feeling satisfied Morgant stared back at the huge hole in the ground for a bit more, mesmerized by his own capabilities. Even after all that he felt only a bit fatigued but nothing a little rest couldn’t fix, ‘yet this is only a fraction of the power capable to the old world…’

He took a deep breath to take it all.

Suddenly the sky briefly flashed red for not even a second but Morgant instinctively knew what it was.

“Good work Yvonne… Now let’s finish this inane charade.”