Chapter 59: Chaotic Demon Hunters

Aila might have had a point about planning.

The thought came unbidden to Jadis as she rapidly backtracked away from the mob of twisted wretches that were trying to swarm and overwhelm her three selves. Five of them had long, wicked spears they were jabbing at her, while another five had swords and axes and were constantly trying to flank on the edges, pulling around the three of her in a wide circle. If it were just the ten vicious boar and elk demons the situation would be bad enough, but they were not all.

“Duck!” Aila screamed from her protected position behind the three giants.

A rock the size of a watermelon went hurtling past Dys’ head a second later, barely missing by inches as she dodged out of the way. The huge projectile struck the ground with a thump, the sound mostly drowned out by the accompanying roar of stone grinding against stone.

A grundwyrm, this one about half the size of the one she’d killed before, was plodding along behind the ten wretches. It had a different tactic from the previous stone lizard, though. Dipping its tail into the earth like water, it would pull out a rock or boulder and then hurl it through the air at great speed. Its accuracy was poor, but the demon was throwing a rock every few seconds, forcing Jadis to abort her own attacks or risk being crushed.

“Keep backing up!” Syd shouted from her position in the front of the wedge, solely for Aila’s benefit.

The pell-mell retreat from harassing demons had not been how Jadis had planned her hunt with Aila would go, but she only had herself to blame.

Upon killing the first pig-like wretch in the shallow valley, Jadis’ three selves had gathered together with Aila and had decided to head in the direction the demon had been going. Jadis figured that if the wretch was carrying a body somewhere for demonic possession or whatever it was the demons were doing, then it stood to reason she’d find more demons wherever the ugly boar-man was going to. She’d been right, though her successful prediction wasn’t as desirable an outcome as she would have liked.

As they had walked, she’d not been paying full attention to her surroundings, much to her chagrin. Thoughts of her new skill options had been foremost in her mind.

The skill was, upon a quick check, a slightly upgraded version of the Minor Attribute Improvement Jadis had received access to ever since level three. From what Jadis had learned in conversation with Aila, attribute improvement skills were something everyone gained access to. Perhaps every certain number of levels it offered better versions? That made sense to her, at least.

Adding five points to her eldritch stat would most definitely be useful, but Jadis would reserve that choice for when no other skills on offer looked better. She checked her next skill.

A forgettable option. Jadis figured she’d been offered the skill as a consequence of her use of a spear recently. The skill was no different from Crushing Blow, other than the type of damage it affected, so far as she could tell. Jadis saw no reason to take the skill barring a lack of better options. Fortunately, she had a much, much better option presented to her by the system, or gods, or however it worked.

The Improved Mirrored Body skill was exciting to Jadis for two reasons. First and foremost, it meant that better versions of skills were confirmed as something she could potentially unlock. If there was an improved version of that skill, that meant there could be improved versions of Mirrored Strikes or Mirror Knight’s Might as well. How much harder would an Improved Mirrored Strikes hit if that skill existed?

The second reason and more immediate reason the skill excited Jadis was the possibility of freeing up her Debauched Duplication spell. It seemed everything Improved Mirrored Body would give her was already being provided by her duplication of the base version of the skill. Taking the improved version would allow her to keep the benefits of having three bodies, plus even more distance to play with without having negative effects, and would then give her the option of using her duplication ritual on another skill.

The thought of what passive skill she would duplicate instead of Mirrored Body had been her big distraction when she had rounded the hillside and encountered the ten wretches, all of them on high alert, spotting the three of her instantly.

She had, naturally, started running straight at them, her conviction that bold action would see her through only shaken when the rock behind the wretches had stood up and charged.

“There should not be another grundwyrm here!” Aila shouted, sprinting back the way they had come. Even when she was running full tilt, Jadis could keep up while running backwards, fending off the attacks of the twisted demons. “They are only seen in the north! Two in two days is ridiculous!”

“Run now, analyze later!” Jay shouted back, knocking one of the wretch’s spears back with her hammer.

The demons weren’t attacking blindly, Jadis noticed. They would poke with their spears or swords in unison, trying to attack from multiple angles at the same time, the better to catch her with one attack while the other was parried. They couldn’t move with the same synchronicity as she could, but they still attacked like they were practiced in the art of combat and trained as a unit.

She saw that there was no way she could take on ten of the determined wretches, not while dodging the boulder-dile’s projectiles and watching out for Aila. That was far too much for her to handle at once.

“Time to make space!” Syd yelled before leaping back and hurling her spear at the closest elk-like wretch.

The force of the spear hitting the demon sent it flying off its feet as it practically flipped heels over head, slamming into the ground. Jadis couldn’t tell if the blow had killed the demon or not, but that was besides the point. Before the wretch had even finished hitting the ground, Syd had whipped around and scooped Aila up, tossing her over her shoulder as all three of Jadis spun forward and sprinted into overdrive.

A cry of alarm from Aila alerted Jadis to the danger of her move as she rapidly weaved out of the way. Several of the wretches had responded in kind, hurling their own spears as the fleeing girls. At least one tried something like the projectile vomit technique she’d seen used before, but it was more like the flamethrower variety that had gotten Ludwas and not the longer-range puke bullet the boar had used earlier. Grass sizzled as the stinking mess melted the ground but was far too slow to catch Jadis.

Another rock the size of a dog went flying past Jay, but the more distance Jadis put between her selves and the demons, the less accurate the grundwyrm’s attacks were. She was, however, still forced to split off, Jay running more to the left while Syd and Dys ran to the right.

The wretches did not split up, all nine of them continuing their chase after Dys and Syd. The grundwyrm was also following the two, but the stone beast wasn’t able to keep up and was falling behind.

“Sorry, I’m going to need your staff,” Syd told Aila as she carried her. “As soon as we stop.”

“Stop?” Aila called out in panic, bouncing around on Syd’s shoulder. “Why are we stopping!?”

“We’re here to hunt demons, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

Aila’s words were cut off by a yelp as another rock crashed to the ground at Syd’s heels.

“We aren’t letting these fucking bastards live,” Dys shouted as they ran. “And that grundwyrm is worth a lot of experience!”

“Shit!” Aila screamed, jostled as Syd dodged to one side as a smaller rock flew past her. “If we’re stopping, go that way!” Aila pointed to her left, Syd’s right.

A hill with the sloped side facing them was there, the cliff side edge barely visible to one side.

“Go around the base! Break line of sight with the grundwyrm!” Aila commanded.

“Got it!” Dys and Syd shouted back in unison.

As the two sprinted away with Aila, demons trailing behind, Jay ran further to the left, then slowed and doubled back. Seeing the demon Syd had speared struggling behind the pack, giant spear still lodged in its chest, Jay charged at it.

A sickly green glow suffused the wounded wretch as Jay neared, arcane symbols floating briefly around it. With a sudden burst of speed, it rushed at Jay, a translucent yellowish-green globe of something floating behind it.

Jay’s hammer smashed into the side of the wretch with a mighty crack, its arm and shoulder breaking as the demon toppled to the side in a heap. Before she could follow up on the attack, the floating globe caught up with her and the demon and shone brighter for just a split second.

“Fuck that doesn’t look good,” Jay started to say, but only got about as far as “Fuck—” when the globe exploded in a burst of rancid stench and vapor.

Pain seared Jay’s eyes and lungs as the noxious gas attacked her, eating away at her health pool. She couldn’t suppress the cough that wracked her body as tears nearly blinded her, her eyes watering from the burning fumes.

A noise at her feet reminded her of the imminent danger she was in and Jay stepped back barely in time to dodge a swipe from the not yet dead wretch on the ground. It squealed hideously as it struggled after her, trying to kill her even in its dying moments.

“Fuck you too!” Jay shouted around a cough as she finished the demon off with a mallet blow to the head.

Ripping Syd’s still intact spear from the dead wretch’s chest, Jay started chasing after her other selves, a throbbing pain in her head that wasn’t coming from the noxious gas attack starting to make it hard for her to focus.

Dys and Syd were also feeling the migraine-like ache as they rounded the sharp edge of the hill cliff, several hundred yards between them and Jay now. This was nearing the limit of the feasible distance she could handle being apart from her selves. As they rounded the edge of the cliff, Syd tossed Aila off her shoulder.

Aila had no issue landing on her feet with all the grace of a cat, instantly tossing her staff at Syd for her to use.

As the first eager wretch rounded the corner, Dys swung her maul with full force from right to left, smashing the body of the attacking demon between iron head and stone wall. At the same time, a second spear-wielding demon appeared, stabbing violently at Dys.

Syd parried the blow with a slap from Aila’s quarterstaff. Her timing wasn’t perfect and the spear still scraped against Dys’ side, but the bladed head didn’t quite slice through her leather armor. Syd had just enough time to swing back at the wretch, knocking its elk-like head back and away, giving Dys the opportunity to reverse her own swing and trigger a mirrored strike against the wretch.

Gore splattered across the ground as the second wretch’s arm ripped clear from its shoulder from the attack. The wretch did not die, though it did crash to the ground in a squealing heap. Jadis had no time to finish it off as the rest of the demon pack rounded the corner and tried to swarm her.

Once again backpedaling, Dys and Syd swung back at the seven remaining uninjured wretches as they continued their assault. Unfortunately, without a weapon made for her height, Syd lacked the reach advantage Dys had, but the wretches had no spears left, now only attacking with swords and axes. Jadis wasn’t sure how long it would take the grundwyrm to round the corner of the cliff, but she planned to do as much damage to the wretches as she possibly could before it arrived.

From behind Dys and Syd, a small object whizzed through the air, striking one of the wretches trying to circle to the right in the side of the head.

Aila was keeping back and out of the way but had scooped up several stones and had begun hurling them at the demon possessed animals. Jadis wasn’t sure how much damage the rocks could be doing, but Aila was surprisingly accurate, hitting with each throw. The tossed stones were a distraction if nothing else, one Jadis was quick to take advantage of.

As one stone hit and caused a wretch turn and scream in her direction, Syd lunged forward and attempted to put the end of the quarterstaff through the demon’s eye. She missed the eye, but the staff punched solidly into the porcine wretch’s throat, causing it to stumble and fall back.

By that point, having given ground the whole time, they were reaching the end of the cliff side and Jadis could see the giant stony lizard rounding the far corner. The cliff to their left was only about thirty feet high and getting shorter as they continued to back away. As Dys, Syd, and Aila gave more ground and the wretches chased, Jay struck.

Having gone round the other way to meet her other selves as they circled the hill, Jay partially cut across the top of the hill. As the pack passed below, Jay leapt from above, landing behind the demons.

Jadis knew Oros wasn’t a video game and, while it had a stats and leveling system, should not be treated as one. Still, she couldn’t help but take some inspiration from a game she’d played more than a few times. As Jay fell from above, she brought her mallet down one-handed on the hindmost wretch, the one Syd had poked hard in the neck.

The demon’s skull caved into its chest from the force of the overhead blow, instantly killing it.

As several of the demons whirled to face Jay, Dys struck, knocking one, then another down with rapid back and forth swings of her maul. Syd followed up by tossing the quarterstaff like a spear into one of the distracted demons, putting enough force into it for the blunt end to at least partially penetrate the flesh of the creature’s back.

At the same time, Jay tossed the spear she’d retrieved to Syd who caught it with the same sure ease as one would toss a ball between one’s own hands.

With spear, maul, and mallet swinging, Jadis laid into the diminished demon force, striking blows in conjunction with her selves over the course of several seconds, crippling or outright killing several more of the wretches.

“Dodge!” Aila screamed from behind and Jadis didn’t hesitate, all three of her juking to either the left or the right.

A boulder slammed into the ground where Jay had been standing a moment before, rolling forward and crushing one of the wounded wretches like an over-ripened tomato.

Jadis had thought three sets of eyes were more than enough to cover all avenues of attack, but Aila was showing her worth, keeping constant watch on the huge stone demon making its way closer on eight stubby legs.

“Thanks!” all three of Jadis shouted out as they continued the fight, crushing another wretch with maul and mallet. Only three more of the pig-like demons remained standing but with another rock crashing to the ground inches away from Syd, Jadis decided to move.

Grabbing Aila under one arm, Dys dashed around the side of the hill, heading for the more open, sloped side. Jay and Syd followed behind, the three mobile demons chasing after. As they turned the corner and moved into the open space, one of the demons tried to cut them off by hurling its axe at them. Surprised by the move, Jay didn’t dodge out of the way in time, the blade burying itself a few inches into her leather-padded chest and striking her chest bone.

“Fuck!” Jay cried out, the blow striking harder than she would have liked.

Taking the opening, Syd lunged forward at the now weaponless wretch, skewering its head with her spear before tossing its now lifeless body to the side and into the feet of the two remaining wretches, causing them to slow and stumble.

Ripping the axe from her chest, Jay reversed it and hurled it back at the wretches. The handle bounced uselessly off of one of the impeded demons, but it was enough to trigger Mirrored Strikes for Syd as her spear exploded through the creature’s chest, killing it.

The last demon fell as Dys charged from the side a moment later, sans Aila, sweeping her maul in a low swing through its legs, breaking at least one of them. The wretch only had a second to squeal in pain before Jay’s mallet came down on its head, silencing it forever.

“Shit, I’m bleeding a lot,” Jay growled out, one hand going to the open wound in the center of her chest.

The grundwyrm could still be heard coming, catching up to their side of the hill. Thinking fast, Jay switched weapons with Syd, then moved to join Aila where she was waiting a few yards away, a stone still in hand and ready to be thrown.

“Got anything to stop the bleeding?” Jay asked, already pulling her leather chest piece off.

“Yes,” Aila said simply, dropping the rocks and pulling her backpack around, rummaging inside for a few seconds before pulling out a small copper jar with a lid.

As Jay bared her chest and Aila began smearing a thick bluish salve into the wound between her breasts, Dys and Syd raced up the slope and to the edge of the cliff, looking down on the stone wyrm as it plodded along, intent on catching its quarry.

“If it worked the first time…” the two said as the demon passed thirty feet below.

Both leapt off the cliff at the same time, hammer and maul aiming for the rear half of the grundwyrm. Their plunging attacks struck true and the effects were explosive. Not only did the tail of the boulder-based demon break off, the fourth and rearmost pair of legs did as well, Jadis’ double blow causing the demon’s back to break apart into bits where her attacks landed.

The attack did not kill the grundwyrm and Dys and Syd were forced to quickly scramble away as the stone beast tried to whirl and crush them, but it did neutralize its ranged tail attack. As the now unbalanced grundwyrm gave chase, the two of Jadis ran back the way they had come, leading the demon back around the hill.

As they ran, they passed by four of the wretches that had not died, their several injuries wounding and incapacitating them, but not killing them. Jadis didn’t stop to finish them off, an idea flitting through her mind that she decided to act on, or she would act on as soon as the stone demon was dead.

In the time it took the pursuing wyrm to chase Dys and Syd around the hill in one long lap, Aila had slathered enough of the poultice into Jay’s wound to stop the bleeding. Wrapping her chest in bandages Aila also provided, Jay quickly got her chest armor back on and was ready and waiting as Dys and Syd kited the stone monster around.

Leaving the large spear in Aila’s hands, Jay dashed forward with a large rock in hand. With three of her now surrounding the smaller, partially diminished grundwyrm, with her far greater speed and Mirrored Strikes, it was only a matter of time before the beast was falling apart, stone head and legs breaking off and collapsing into pieces.

In the end, Jadis peeled the rocky exterior of the demon apart, exposing a hollow in roughly the middle of the wyrm’s body containing a wriggling mass of tentacles with a large yellow eye in the center.

“Hey, Blue! Get over here and finish this thing off!”

Startled into action by Dys’ command, Aila rushed over, clutching the spear that towered several feet over her head. With only a tiny pause, she lowered the spear point and jammed it into the writhing mess of dark purple demon.  It took a few tries, but eventually the tentacles ceased squirming and a system message displayed across Jadis’ vision.

“Well fuck, that was a hell of a fight,” Jay panted, dropping the rock she no longer needed.

“I leveled,” Aila whispered, hands letting go of the spear. “I can’t believe it. I—I actually leveled.”

“Nice!” Syd grinned, slapping the shorter woman on the shoulder, sending her stumbling a bit. “Congratulations!”

“Good work,” Jay smiled at Aila, patting her a little more gently on the other shoulder.

“Don’t relax just yet, though,” Dys warned, yanking the spear from the grundwyrm demon core and putting the shaft back in Aila’s hands. “We still have four more twisted wretches to finish off.”

“Huh?” Aila looked up dumbly at Dys, clearly still trying to process the whirlwind fight.

Putting a hand on her back, Dys guided the redhead back towards the cliff side of the hill as Jay and Syd followed along. “There are four more still alive, crippled. Pretty sure you’ll get more experience if you participate with a killing blow.”

“Not exactly sporting,” Syd shrugged, “but they’re demons and trying to kill us, so fuck ‘em.”

Using her mallet and maul to hold the wounded wretches down, Jadis let Aila finish the remaining demons off. Without being in the heat of battle, Jadis almost felt sorry for the basically helpless creatures, until one of them tried to projectile vomit acid at Aila, forcing Dys to slam her foot down on its mouth to prevent it.

“Shit, I think that burned my foot,” Dys complained, trying to wipe her bare foot off in the grass.

“At least you didn’t get an axe to the chest,” Jay groused, putting one hand over the cut piece of leather, red bandages just barely showing through. “Plus, I got gassed by one of those fuckers. A burnt toe is not that big of a deal.”

“I feel fine,” Syd piped up. Indeed, she had suffered nearly no injuries at all.

A laugh interrupted Jadis’ self-directed complaints. Aila leaned against the spear in her hand, a genuine smile on her face as little bursts of incredulous laughter bubbled up from her core.

“I have to say,” Aila commented between fits of giggles, “you three are the most chaotic team of demon hunters I’ve ever seen in action.”

Jay grinned, brushing white hair out of her still stinging eyes. “Effective though, right?”

“Absolutely,” Aila agreed.

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