Maou Razonica
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Chapter 85: A Warm and Peaceful Forest.
🕑 Added 2024-07-08 14:50:37 +0000 UTCDOCS: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KFwgNRdW3tvOY0ViCC-nKoE-AtnF2dKAbV64hgPDy0Q/edit?usp=drive_link
As promised, christmas came early. New chapter here today.
Also, there's this one detail I forgot to add in Chapter 82. No need to go back, it's one word. But the infernal fire must be distinct from regular fire. So here you go.
My eyes glimmered in delight as I stared at the flickering sickly bright orange fire and the erratic dark-purple energy.
Now enjoy this chapter!
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A few days later, Moonwash led me by the hand to the Harvester Home, and I followed happily. Once inside, she showed me an armor set, my armor set, all polished and scaled up to my new size.
“You’ve adjusted it for me?” I asked as I shrugged off my cloak.
“More than that,” Moonwash replied. “Check it out.”
Suitably interested, I touched the armor. I felt the metal, and it seemed to produce a different sort of ringing sound as I worked my nails over it. I lifted a gauntlet which I found to be heavier, but that wasn’t a surprise since it was bigger. Something still felt off though, so I tested its weight for a few minutes. It was a difficult process because I had gotten much stronger recently, but I eventually concluded that the gauntlet was indeed significantly heavier. Much more so than the increase in size would suggest. A subsequent knock on the breastplate confirmed that it absolutely made a different sound than what it did before.
“Moonwash, is this… full mythril or something?”
“It is.”
“Where’d you even get enough? There are a few deposits, but the motherlode is in the mountains that we just can’t reach.”
“I just sold some things, and then Granuel got the material for me.”
“Sold some things? Moonwash, you don’t have to lose your stuff for me.”
“What are you talking about? I’m an artist, I create things, and it’s only natural that I sell them. I’ve done it many times before. That armor is a gift I made for you.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry. And thank you!”
“You’re very welcome.”
I tried the dark armor on after that, and noticed a major change in the design of the helmet. Moonwash helped me work through the clasps and belts, ending up with me looking like an even more imposing demonic knight, and with my hooves fully out. There was a separate pair of boots that I could wear to hide them later, but I was sure they’d be just as annoying as before.
I looked at myself in the mirror and nodded satisfaction. “Thanks. The new helmet design looks violent. I love it.”
“Oh, it’s not finished yet,” Moonwash said.
“Oh. So, do you still have to reforge it…?” It looked fine enough to me.
“No. It’s something else. Stay still.”
“Yes, Maam.” I grinned mirthfully, and sat ramrod straight in front of the mirror.
Moonwash took out a box containing some clay-like substance, and then she began sticking it onto the parts where metal and horn met. It only took a few minutes for me to realize what she was doing. I almost teared up right there, but I waited for her to finish before I blurted out, “You’ve made it so that it looks like the horns are part of the helmet!?”
“I hope so. If you're even asking then is the attempt not good enough?”
“No, no. It is. They totally look like they're glued to the metal.” I twisted my head this way and that, admiring how my horns appeared to be a part of the whole ensemble. I coaxed the mana out of my blood, and then floated both elements into my palm. The infernal magic blazed brighter than normal fire, and took on a slightly more sickly hue. The wrath produce the smokey energy that I knew was just ready to fuck things up. The constraints of the helmet did still affect the efficiency of my casting, but only to a negligible amount. This creation was a success, and I could now put my horns on full display without the ugly crystal coverings. No one would be the wiser!
“Oh thank you Moonwash! Thank you thank you!”
I picked her up and twirled her around in a tight hug.
“Ow.”
“Ow?”
“The metal is digging into my skin.”
“Oh.” I continued to twirl her around. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No. It’s not actually painful. Continue.”
“Yay!”
~~~
“Haell, will you be fine?”
“Just call for us if you need help.”
My parents spoke as we arrived in a place far from home. There were no settlements nearby, and here I could fully unleash and test out my new build as a demon.
“I’ll be fine, Mom, Dad. And try not to interfere, okay? It’ll look… very worrying, but trust me in this process, please.”
I also looked past them at Elfrafim and Astan, and they both gave me a nod. My parents followed with their own assent shortly after, leaving me in an idyllic meadow.
I watched as gentle streaks of sunlight peeked out from the sky. The grass swayed along the refreshing breeze, and the faint and peaceful sounds of the forest sang into my ears.
The sight made me sick. It filled me with rage. I let go of the persistent grip I had on my emotions, and immediately I felt a dangerous rush through my blood. It pumped in and out of my hearts, and some cycled through my blood storage and out. My pupils dilated, and my gaze focused as I sought to enact my wrath. Purplish mana oozed out of me, and it deftly weaved through my sword. Magic flowed into the weapon, then back to my body.
The scenery blurred, the muscles in my hooves burned from the strain, and suddenly I was in front of a bushpider that had thought itself clever for being able to hide. Its eyes met my own, my prey suffered a moment of indecision, and it was one moment too many.
I screamed as I brandished my blade and tore through the beast’s skull and towards the rest of its torso. Blood and gore splattered, viscera spilled out, and the flesh was scrambled into unrecognizability. The infernal mana in my blood went crazy at the sight, it desperately wished to escape the confines of my body and go wild.
I allowed my wishes and activated the magic. The remains of my enemy were set alight in the blaze of fury, along with the nearby plantlife and even some insignificant insects. I grinned just a little, at the flickering beauty of the heat reflected through my eyes.
It did not quell my rage. My bloodthirst was not sated. I turned around and faced the rest of the forest with a stormy expression on my hidden face.
“ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”
I roared into the heavens. The enraged sound forced the remaining birds to fly away, and the tiny critters that scurried like insignificant bugs hastened their retreat.
My aura exploded out of me, my eyes strained from mana-infused fury. Some of my enemies dropped dead just from that simple display, and I sneered in disgust at their weakness. Others only fainted, and I didn’t bother to finish those that had frozen in fear, unable to move under the weight of my presence. Instead my gaze locked onto a horned rabbit larger than normal. It had flinched, it had frozen, but it had quickly shaken off the weight of all my intimidation effects.
My teeth gnashed against each other as I watched the creature merrily speed off into the distance. It had thought it could ignore me, it had thought it could escape, but I will prove here and now that it was wrong!
My wrath mana activated, and I flung myself towards my target. The blue animal reacted immediately, and a mass of water crashed towards me from all sides. I summoned my infernal flames, and they shone bright as my body continued to move beyond its normal limits. I’d found that if I only used my wrath mana internally and for my sword, then I could simultaneously use my infernal magic to its full potential.
The rabbit soon learned of this same fact as steam hissed and filled the air, and I burst through its attempt at defense with only a few insignificant scratches on my armor. The animal’s eyes widened, it began to swerve and try to change directions, but my hand was faster, and I yanked it back by horns. The monster squealed, it thrashed, but I gutted it anyway in front of all who dared to spectate. I screamed as spittle flew out of my mouth, and I wanted nothing more than to find and rip apart my next target. I felt the rage, I accepted the rage, and I enacted the rage. I will rampage until there is nothing left!
I discarded the rotting, dried, bleeding, and absolutely decimated corpse once I’d grown dissatisfied. I turned my fury towards the other animals of the forest, and then I proceeded to enact a total massacre. With a furious leap, I bisected a tiger. In a fit of cackling fury, I burned an entire herd of largess boars. There were flaming monkeys in retreat, but they did not escape me as I sent a wave of wrath magic their way. Their rotting bodies fell as grotesque and twisted corpses.
More. MORE! There is so much left! I moved my body, I reveled in the carnage, and I bathed in the blood of my enemies. My whole being ached as I pushed it to move ever faster, and I felt at the same time the healing energies of my regen heart mending what I had broken. The violence will continue, and I will desecrate all of existence!
I came across a bear, and I immediately slammed my full intimidation package upon its psyche, but my opponent froze for only a moment before charging right back at me.
We met in a clash of steel against claw. My weapon proved more durable, but the forces at play halted both of us in our tracks. It appeared that without my wrath mana, I was still slightly weaker in the physical sense.
But there was no need for a misplaced sense of fairness. I would not allow myself to lose to a mere bear. My wrath was my power and I fully unleashed it with a scream. My arms blurred with a sickening crunch, and the bear in turn lost an entire arm. It whimpered, it growled, it gave up. The monster tried to turn around and run but I did not allow it to escape. In a sequence that was almost nostalgic, I tore it apart from its rear, and worked my way up to the head.
The beast was long dead by the time I smeared its skull across the ground.
Not enough. Not nearly enough. NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.
With a furious leap I took to the air and unfurled my wings. There, in the distance, was a flock of large gray birds that were flying into the horizon. I stared at their departing backs as the rage built. My aura exploded out of me, but they were unaffected, likely too far and unable to perceive it. The impotence of my first attack infuriated me, and I poured all the rage into my eyes. Two drops of blood squeezed out of my tear ducts as the birds too began to drop. A few never recovered, falling all the way to the ground. Most only dipped a little, but quickly flapped their wings to regain altitude. Some showed no reaction at all.
Snarling, I gave chase because the air was my domain now too. With a flap of my wings, I surged forward. The speed at which I moved was insufficient, it was inferior to running on flat land, so I manifested my wrath magic and flapped harder. The scenery blurred, and my wings cracked and broke from the strain, for while it was possible to give my flight a further boost like this, my new wings were a lot less durable than my other limbs.
Still, I flew just as hard until I reached my prey. The divarls looked back at me and I knew that they could now feel the sheer difference between us and the futility of their struggle. My aura flared, my eyes followed, and I was pleased to see more of them fall to their deaths.
Two dared to fight back. They sped straight at me from two opposite directions, and then I manifested waves of infernal mana before they were fully in range and could interfere with things. The two birds were caught in the blaze, they were not able to escape in time, and how I loved their panicked screeches as they burned in their own flesh.
I grabbed one by the neck, and then gutted the level 20 creature entirely, crushing it under my wrathful grip. I let the pitiful corpse drop back to the ground, and then chased after the other one that was desperately trying to flee and extinguish the flames. My wrath magic enveloped it before it could succeed, and the creature’s body twisted as it burned.
Wrath mana may not be capable of some of the tricks menace magic could do, but it was still a far stronger option than the one that preceded it. More of it coalesced around me, and then I manifested waves of them towards the other birds who were prey. Most managed to dodge, others only partially, earning them some heavy injuries, but the particularly unlucky ones were betrayed by their own bodies as their bones pierced their own organs and muscles turned to bones to dust in turn.
The monsters began to flee in earnest. I frowned and gathered my magic into massive coherent bullets, but I barely managed to hit a few no matter how I shot at them. The divarls were too fast once they decided to take a dive, and they did not remain clustered together. In what felt like only moments, they had already scattered too far for me to find and destroy all of them.
Indignant, I slammed my sword against thin air, and then dove down towards the largest cluster of them that I could see. Another bullet of mana formed, but this time it was an infernal fireball. I let the projectile loose, and most of the birds predictably dodged like before. But even a few embers managed to turn some glancing blows into a good hit. The infernal sparks consumed their flesh and feathers, eventually growing into a full blaze. I knew that they would be able to extinguish it quickly, but they never had a chance as I arrived in their midst and began slashing them apart in midair.
Their bodies scattered into fine red mist. I laughed as their feathers turned to ash, and I raged at all those I could get my hands on to utterly dismember. What remained of what they once were rained down on the burning forest below.
A tree had been set aflame by my earlier attack, and that had since spread a little into the nearby plantlife. I grinned with a wild desire to burn even more, and start a fucking wildfire that would engulf the whole world. My infernal mana reacted very strongly to my intentions, and then it formed into large waves as I dove down to commit abhorrent acts of arson.
I landed, and the ground shuddered. The scenery around me was further scorched by the waves of sickly orange fire that followed. Trees were set aflame, grass was burned to ash, and those animals so stupid as to not recognize the danger burned along with them. My mind was filled with the image of hell as I’d known it for two whole lives, and I wielded my magic to bring about that concept into reality!
“AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAHHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!”
My laughter echoed in my ears, and a scream pounded into my head. I felt rage, I took joy, in the shrieks of those who were my victims. The animals ran away as I moved forward, setting even more of the forest alight.
My insides roiled as mana was torn out of my body and flooded out into the world. I dug deep into my extradimensional storage to replace what was spent, and I shoved inert blood back into it just as fast. My horns began to ache, and my head cried in agony, as I tried to see just how fucking far I could push my magic.
I had all the power here, I could still keep going, I could still RAGE!
It was hot. I was being cooked alive in my armor despite sparing some mana to keep the flames away, and it might’ve melted already had Moonwash not improved upon it. But that didn’t matter, for I was a demon and the evirons of hell would not deter me. I continued my slaughter, I ceased not my arson, and I screamed into the heavens a challenge to stop me from devastating its creations. Almost as if in response, the fires around me slowly started to die down. The trees were resisting somehow, or perhaps the forest itself was fighting back. Maybe the planet or whatever was in the center of it, regulating all its environments, was involved. Perhaps fire just behaved differently in this world, than it once did on Earth. I wasn’t sure what the truth was yet, but there was definitely some force preventing the landscapes of the world from simply burning down with all the fire-aligned creatures that roamed around it.
I took this as my cue to take a deep breath and calm the fuck down. I raged at how my work was being undone, I wanted to destroy all life and more in all the ways I had found, but I managed to hold back those impulses. Even my prodigious reserves of mana had to run out at some point, and while I could still keep going, I didn’t want to deplete my stores of infernal mana entirely.
That decision proved wise once I walked through the flames and exited into a clearing. Loud heavy footsteps could be heard from all the way to the other side, and soon the warsymbol made itself known.
The level 40 monster roared, and I roared back.
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AN:
I wrote this before the last chapter, and I was so ready to call this the hardest chapter I’ve written for this series. That’s no longer the case because romance is hell it seems, but I still found depicting wrath in combat to be very difficult.
I thought it would be easy, honestly. I thought it should at least be easier than menace. It’s just one very strong emotion, after all. But holy shit why is it harder? This makes no sense! AAAaaaAAaaAAaaAaAAaAA!
Depicting an emotion and the thousands of ways it manifests is harder than a bunch of evil thoughts. That’s the reason, I think. It's just weird because menace seemed far more complex, and I managed that just fine!
Comments
ZephanyZephZeph
Menace requires an Other to enact menace upon. It's a desire to get a reaction out of something else. Wrath can be internal, it can desire to be upon something outside or something inside. This is what makes wrath much more difficult, I'd say, is because wrath is much more general than menace.
