With pain gripping him, he shoved the feeling to a distant corner of his mind to instead focus on what he could see around him, he and the rest having been deposited in the heart of a dense forest, with Hentath’s thoughts telling him that at least they hadn’t been brought far. A handful of kilometers from the village at most, but still a devastating separation from the safety he’d wanted for them, with trouble not ending there.
“Ben, your leg!” Delair screamed, his student seeing him on the ground like the rest of them yet not just there from the fall. He had been the last to come through, rushing in when he clearly hadn’t been wanted, and with the portal closing around him as he went, separating the two conjoined spaces, everything below his left knee had been left on the other side.
“Ignore it,” he told her, materializing a tight wrap around the stump to keep the blood loss down before creating a prosthetic to stand on as he forced himself up. “Is anyone else injured?”
A look around showed that while some wounds they’d already received had worsened, the siren missing a limb of her own was bleeding more heavily, being the worst of all among them, it still wasn’t to the point that none of them would be able to manage, leaving options he hadn’t expected to get as he reached out around him with his soul, finding no demons within his range.
Yet, at least.
“Alright, everyone who can, get moving. The village is just southwest of us. When it gets a bit clearer, I’ll see about speeding up our progress.”
With how dense the woods were, he didn’t want to fly them through it yet, wanting at least a few minutes for his mana to regenerate while at the same time keeping an eye out for any traps. They had been brought out there, yet he could see no immediate risk for it, leaving only the question of why.
If whatever demon’s doing this saw them as weaker options than me then the goal may have just been to get them away from me and to start picking them off after so the fact that I got here too might be throwing a wrench in that plan, he considered. If not though, then I’m not sure what the delay is. Doesn’t seem like this is a trap to get me away from the village by tricking me into following them, but I still lack information. Information and a leg. Fucking hell, when am I going to finally get pain resistance?
As things were, the way he handled pain wasn’t so much resisting it as it was compartmentalizing, a fraction of his mind spent screaming and agonizing about it in his head, even if what was relegated to it wasn’t even a percent of a percent of his totality. Still, the ultimate goal was to one day be able to properly resist the effects of the injuries he’d gain instead of just push them away and that eventual success just couldn’t come fast enough, all while he forced himself to ignore that he might never get that one precious skill.
That was a long worn out concern by that point though, the majority of himself was focused on the real priority of everyone else’s safety as he worked, examining their thoughts and the world around them through their senses, using all he held as well to keep track of anything that could go wrong. Every noise, every rustling leaf, every breeze was all being processed in his head while he took stock of the forest around them in preparation for whatever would come and finally got it as a portal opened up above their heads and demons poured out, bringing screams to some in his group that he ignored. Only seven of them, the demons were dead before they hit the ground, ripped to pieces from the wrath of his magic and harmlessly tossed to the side.
“Keep going,” he told them, making sure he sounded confident. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect all of you, so ignore anything else and just focus on moving.”
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It had barely been two minutes but the amount of mana he could generate in that time left him feeling more comfortable for whatever they would face ahead as three more portals opened, all of the demons that came through them ending up slaughtered with the same ruthless efficiency as before, letting Ben feel hopeful for just a moment. He could handle any first-tier demons; there was nothing threatening about them by that point, and now that he knew something might try to whisk the rest of the group away from him, he was more on guard for it. That was a threat within his skill level, and it continued to feel like it would remain so until a moment later as, all around them, new portals opened and new demons rushed out.
Fuck.
They came in a torrent, spilling out all around him, both within and beyond the range of his soul, leaving them in the center of that flood but that wasn’t yet superior to him as the swarm died under his power, with bullets firing at an endless rate, ripping through swaths of them with the force each shot held, or else finishing them with the strength of his soul and mind, anything in range of connect getting linked to for just long enough to let them experience the full force of his brain, letting bodies pile up around him the entire way.
But this is undeniably too much. Between this and what I’d seen in the village, all with no signs of slowing down, more than a thousand must have been sent out by now with more still coming. Is it even possible for a group this size to have gone unnoticed, or is this a gathering of multiple separate groups brought together under the power of a single leader? And still with no sign of the contender doing this, just how much mana must it have to manage something like this? Other demon contenders I’ve seen were at that level for more than one skill, maybe it’s also on the edge of godhood for mana enhancement or something? Too little information, I need this thing to come out.
Though with the power it was displaying, getting it to do so seemed unlikely. Why would it come to fight itself when it could force the weaker demons under it to take the brunt of his power? There was clearly no need to put itself in any danger when Ben was already proving himself to be a threat, if the demon was as powerful as he expected, better for it to try to wear him down with numbers and if its forces fell too low, to eventually give up and leave to find more swarms for it to conquer.
Which means that at this point, I might be waiting for this thing to decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth, he admitted, blocking an attack with a metal plate from one of the demons that had managed to fire off an ice spell before he’d had the chance to kill it. But it can’t keep this up forever. I just need to hold out.
“Everyone but the kids, eyes open and each of you look out in a different direction if you want to get through this,” he ordered. “I know it’s scary, but trust me, if you want to help, that’s how to do it.”
Most of them were able to do as he said; the three siren guards having the combat experience to not be put off from seeing something like that and the dryads having enough faith in him to listen despite their fears. Mirrian alone couldn’t make herself look, but he wasn’t going to fault her when he was already blaming himself for her being there in the first place, and as it was, he was getting enough of a view. Nothing was going to slip through his watch as he continued to kill his way through the beasts, the growing wall of bodies enough of a sign that, despite everything, he was succeeding. With no more strenuous spells beyond the materialization he was already so used to, he was managing his mana for whatever would come next as the minutes wore on until all at once, something changed.
Not closing the portals it had already created, Ben’s mana sense screamed at him that a spell was being cast all around him, leaving the impression that the demon was going to try to teleport him away and he tried to anchor himself to keep such a thing from happening, lest those he was protecting were left to fend for themselves, but that wasn’t what happened.
No, while he was doing his best to ensure he’d remain in place, a different spell effect was activated as dozens of the same portal effect he’d been seeing activated through him, bisecting his neck, skull, and brain. Harmlessly at first, right until the portals moved.
Sliding mere millimeters apart, the spells were deactivated, leaving each piece in its new position in space as, much like his leg before, his head was irreversibly separated, hundreds of pieces of it left to fall to the ground along with the rest of his body while the horrified dryads and sirens could only watch on.
Alright, losing a head’s a lot harder to walk away from than that time he lost a heart. This time you definitely die, Ben! Someone else can be the protagonist now, cast your vote below on who you think it should be!
