Chapter 26: Orderly Chaos

About a quarter of a mile away from the battlefield, a small Dimensional Gate opened up. Three seconds later Carl stepped out, looking around. He quickly poked his hand back through, motioning for everyone to follow, then stepped aside.

Blindfire was the first one through the gate, with Uutyk following close behind. Following behind them were Cordelia and Shizuka. It took a moment later, but Virgil later stepped through as well.

'OK Atreya, we're through.' Carl told the Female Mage as he closed the gate. He was about to ask where to start, when the loud sound of splintering wood caught everyone's attention. The group of six turned to where they'd heard it coming from, only to see two figures shoot up out of the ship that was beached.

Immediately, Blindfire's three eyes went to work, identifying the two figures.

"Well, we found the Desco Unit, and I think that twin-toned thing is right behind her." He pointed with his actual hand.

"And there goes Mr. Nelius!" Carl pointed out the third figure going up after them.

"And here comes trouble!" Virgil brought his Baal Sword up as one of the Holy-Absorbing Beasts noticed them, and rushed in to attack.

"Ahh, finally, some action!" Uutyk withdrew his double-bladed spear and charged towards the beast, a manic grin upon his face.

Nelius, having heard something damage the boat, looked over to see Epsilon shoot skyward, Revenant hot on her heels. Quickly bringing Maximov to bear as he chopped through another sprouted limb, he morphed his wings into jets and shot up after them.

Epsilon was having a rough time of it. From the two blows she'd taken, her body was in desparate need of repair, the Usatako itself flashing messages through her mind.

'I know, I know!' Trying to ignore the warnings and pain, she quickly broke off her ascent, trying to put distance between herself and Revenant. Sparing a glance behind herself, she saw Revenant uncomfortably close to catching her.

"You're mine now-" The ressurected Demon Lord didn't get a chance to finish that statement, as a fist landed squarely into his chin, knocking him upwards and off-course.

"Epsilon, head back and find Mita! I got this!" Nelius quickly told the Desco Unit, and she complied, hovering off.

"Who the-" Revenant's only answer to his cut-off question was another fist aimed towards his face. Quickly blocking, he then got sight of his new opponent. "You..."

"Yes, me." Nelius floated in front of Revenant, buying Epsilon time to find Mita and get fixed up. He dismissed his coat, mainly to allow a greater range of mobility for this battle. "I don't really care who or what you are, you're not getting your hands on Epsilon."

"I certainly hope you put up a better fight."

Back inside the boat, Kurosugi surveyed the battle. So far, her pets were easily mowing down the monsterwomen. She watched with an unbridled glee as two of her pets entangled several monsterwomen, only to squeeze the life out of them.

'Yet how did Epsilon come back online? No matter...' Reaching over, she reactivated the remote, turning on the scanner. Epsilon's signal was moving far away, towards where the Yoshitsuna was buried. 'Let's remedy that.' Working the portable machine, she made to force Epsilon to return to the battle, but something was interfering with the command. 'What the- command refused! I built your sorry ass, you will listen to me!' Furious, she began entering the commands back in- while Epsilon refused the commands, they did have the effect of slowing the Desco Unit down.

The splintering of wood caught her ears, and Kurosugi looked over in time to see a pair of monsterwomen thrown through the hull of the ship. One of her pets skittered through, grabbing and strangling them- until a flash of red cut through its tendrils, soon identified as Uutyk.

"C'mon, you were talking all that good shit a moment ago-?" Feeling something watching him, he looked away from the beast for a moment, locking eyes with Kurosugi.

Kurosugi froze- she hadn't seen this demon at the prior town; how many others were there that she had no idea of? This was yet another wrench in her plans.

Without warning, Uutyk leapt for Kurosugi, spear poised to kill. In response, she blasted another section of the ship away, letting her draw the Berserker to a more open area. Once through, she shot at him, but with the speed he possessed, Uutyk deflected a few shots, intentionally getting into the path of the others and allowing them to damage him and spill a little blood. His grin intensified; the Berserkers of Sanvino drew plenty of power from being damaged in battle.

As Uutyk swung his dual-bladed spear to attack, Kurosugi was forced to use the gauntleted-portion of her weapon to block the seemingly endless swings. However, one of the attacks caught the remote, slicing it in half and rendering it useless.

In the midst of Uutyk's chase, Virgil and Blindfire had teamed up with the monsterwomen to take on two of the beasts- Virgil's Baal Sword was being put to good use as it sliced through the tendrils, letting the monsters he was working alongside get in to attack. Blindfire, on the other hand, had generated a small saber of Star energy from the cannon on his arm, and was following Virgil's example.

The beasts were easily capable of tanking the damage inflicted- in fact, it seemed as though they were healing the damage faster than it could be inflicted.

However, counting the one knocked through the ship, only three of the beasts could be seen- where did the other three disappear off to?

Shockwaves rippled through the air, tearing up the battlefield as Nelius and Revenant fought it out.

Revenant was a formidable character; thanks to the souls he'd absorbed, his stamina seemed limitless as he traded blows. His hands became sharp claws, intending to slice his opponent to bits.

Nelius wasn't one to be outdone, though; his wings hardened to the consistency of stone, deflecting the claws as he lashed out in retaliation, shifting one wing from a shield to a blade, sharpening it as he brought it down from his right, intending to rake it across his opponent's chest.

The ressurected Demon Lord brought his own wings forward, using two to block. Nelius capitialized on this by rocketing forward and throwing a punch at where Revenant hadn't been protecting- his face.

"If that is how you wish to play, so be it!" Letting himself tilt backwards, Revenant sped up, using the momentum to land a foot squarely in Nelius' gut, sending the Incubus upwards.

Nelius threw a hand forward, raining down a few blasts of Wind magic; in response, Revenant commanded a pillar of earth to rise and bend over, taking the damage in his stead.

'That's new..' Undeterred by this, Nelius shot downward, punching through the pillar to get at the ressurected Demon Lord.

Revenant seemed more interested in something else, and quickly shot off, leaving Nelius behind.

'He's headed for- oh no you don't!' Nelius shifted his wings into jets, and blasted off after the ressurected Demon Lord.

With something resembling relief as the strange pressure in the back of her mind dropped off, Epsilon found the cavern housing the Yoshitsuna Warship, and landed, nearly dropping to her knees. It didn't take long for Farris, who'd seen the Desco Unit incoming, to reach her.

"Systems are damaged.. auto-repair is already at its limit-"

"Say no more." The Beast Tamer quickly scooped Epsilon into her arms, running back to the ship- at least she would have, had not one of the beasts burrowed upward, intent on devouring the two.

Farris quickly side-stepped the attack, but found herself on the defensive- with her arms full carrying Epsilon, it would prove difficult to draw her weapon. Thankfully, two blasts of Star magic followed by an explosive shell diverted attention away from her.

Carl wasted no time in stalling the monster by using Omega Ice to root its legs to the ground. Cordelia followed up with a shell down its throat, hopefully damaging the insides.

"Huh, who the-"

"Hi!" The Gunslinger seemed abnormally cheery for the circumstances. "Wish we could've met at a better time, but we're the cavalry!"

"Picked a hell of a time to show up."

"Well, we had to make certain the gates would work-" She halted her sentence to fire another round down the creature's throat, "-and we also had to figure out who'd participate in the rumble." The beast made to extend tendrils to ensnare the Gunslinger, but something abnormally fast planted daggers into its body at various points, faster than the beast could track.

"Carl, let this thing have it!" Shizuka shouted, and at once the Green Skull let loose an Omega Star, the spell travelling through the pointed daggers and through the beast's body, shocking it.

As Epsilon looked at the beast, which was already regaining its bearings, her scanners went to work, picking up multiple human signatures within it.

"I sense three humanoid signatures with distinct holy power inside that creature." Wincing slightly as her auto-repair strained to heal up the damage inflicted by Revenant, she went to continue to speak. "Removal of them may hinder its ability to fight."

"Had a feeling it'd come down to that." Carl grimaced. When the creature turned towards Farris and Epsilon, he quickly cast Giga Wind, tossing the beast skyward. "Underside's armored, so slicing it open like the other ones is a no-go."

"Had a thought, invert the process." Cordelia spoke up.

"Huh?"

"Damage it from inside, like how I've been using my ammo."

"I like that thought." Mita appeared from the cavern, Brutus and Zio with her. "Whoa, what happened to Epsilon?"

"Dunno, but I'm taking her to the ship." Farris ran into the cavern- well, that's what she was planning to do. Instead, Revenant appeared right in front of the Beast Tamer, and it was thanks to the quick intervention of Zio's Barrier that neither Beast Tamer nor Desco Unit got run through by one of his claws.

"Give me that-" Revenant was once again cut off, this time by Nelius dive-planting his foot in the side of Revenant's face and driving the ressurected Demon Lord to the ground. The Netherworld Incubus flipped away from the landing, and soon after Revenant got to his feet. "You are rapidly becoming an annoyance."

"Wouldn't be a proper demon if I didn't wreck someone's day." Nelius challenged.

Within the Demon Lord's Castle Town, tensions were running high.

News had already come back that Kurosugi and Revenant had landed, and with only three of the holy-draining creatures, already a good deal of the Demon Lord's army was wiped out. Already preparations were being made to send reinforcements.

However, doubts were beginning to spread among the populace- very little information had been gleamed about the one brought back to Lescatie, and now there were even more powerful ones out causing this kind of damage.

The once jovial attitude of the city was now replaced with a heavy ambiance of anticipation. The shops had been closed, the avenues now being regularly patrolled by several combat-capable monsterwomen and their husbands, both on foot and in the sky.

Several members of the Sabbath were out on patrol as well, having repurposed an old magic found left over in the Demon Lord's Library.

The Demon Lord's Libarary was part historical texts, part magical texts. Here, generations of old Demon Lords had left behind their knowledge of monster-kind and other magics. It was regularly believed that it was thanks to certain information from a tome here that the current reigning Demon Lord had enacted her current plan to merge humanity and monsters together.

The spell the Sabbath members were using was a repurposed Earthquake magic- in this case, instead of causing the earth-splitting tremors to drop enemies into the bowels of the planet, they were using the magic to detect any incoming tremors, remembering that the earlier versions of these creatures had burrowed underground before.

They'd made certain to space out around the city, just enough to widen their detection range and have some slight overlap to cover up any potential blind spots.

Having been sent by Deruella to assist, Heather had her Sabbath Branch on detection detail as well. If things ended up getting far out of hand, Deruella had her other top enforcers on call, having told them to get prepared.

"All's quiet over here." One witch reported. "This kind of silence is something I'll never get used to."

"Tell me about it." Another witch replied.

"Huh, this is weird. There's nobody patrolling, but I'm getting the same kind of tremor as someone walking by. No way it-" Her report was cut off by a scream and a wet crunch. Already several patrolling guards were racing to where the scream originated from.

The reporting witch had a look of complete and utter horror upon her face- sadly, it was only her head that had survived the attack, lying face-up on the ground, a pool of blood forming at the severed neck. Needless to say, this stealthy kill had the patrols on alert; how did one of them get into the city without detection?

Sadly, things would only get worse as a side of the Demon Lord's Castle erupted into a light show of destruction, a beam composed of unimaginable holy power searing through the stone and causing a collapse, burying those present under tons of stone.

Not wanting to take chances, Heather contacted with Deruella and requested the reinforcements that had been promised.

"Sturdy little creeps, ain't they?" Blindfire joked as he blasted the creature at point-blank range, knocking it backwards a little.

"This is getting us nowhere." Virgil groused as he sliced through more of the tendrils. "If these creatures are affected by our offense-" He brought the Baal Sword around to deflect an attack, "-they're shaking off the damage faster than we can inflict it."

"Y'mean like the Wood Golems found in Veldime?"

"Precisely. We need to remove their power sources- likely some blessed humans."

"I'm all ears, V-man. If there's a way to crack their hides open, I'd love to hear it about now."

"A crack..." The Male Samurai got an idea. "That might be what we need. Everyone, focus your attacks where Blindfire hits."

The Rifle Demon charged up a blast and fired, striking the creature on its side, leaving behind a gaping wound that was quickly starting to heal up. Virgil made to capitialize on this idea by ramming his Baal Sword into the wound, disrupting the attempted recovery as he put all his strength into tearing the sword upwards and through the creature's hide.

The holy-draining abomination gave a screech of pain as the two Netherworldians tore into its side, and it formed more tendrils to push them away so it could heal up. What it hadn't counted on was several of the monsterwomen, mainly some unarmed ones like Harpies and Slimes, putting themselves in the tendrils' way to open up an attack path. Blindfire made sure to take advantage of this by putting his cannon point-blank to the creature's wound and firing once more.

The blast seared through several layers of inner muscle tissue and bone, but what it uncovered was a mass of oddly-colored flesh, pulsating and draining off holy power from what was inside it.

"I figured as much." Hoping that he had aimed correctly, he plunged his sword into the flesh mass, piercing it and revealing a human stuck within as he tore it open. Hastily, one of the monsterwomen reached in to grab the human and pull him or her out.

The as of yet unnamed creature gave a sharp roar of pain as it felt its innards being torn out. With the flesh sac no longer housing the empowered human, it could feel its strength slipping away. Acrid purple smoke began to rise from its body, its skin losing its odd mixing of colors. It began physically shrinking, the tendrils drying up and crumbling to dust.

"NOW!" Plunging his weapon into the still-gaping wound, Virgil ran the blade vertically through it, slicing though the innards with little difficulty. Following his lead were a few armed monsterwomen, doing the same but from the other end of the wound.

The creature got one final desperate scream before the other two sacs were cut open and their humans dragged out. With its power gone and heavily leaking fluids, the creature gave one final twitch before falling over. Almost immediately the monsterwomen backed away while Blindfire gave one final shot to the being, mainly as an incase measure.

"One down..." Virgil turned to the boat, sighting the other one being fought by another monsterwoman group. The other one he'd noticed had been slammed into the ship, yet went silent.

Still, he motioned for the other monsterwomen to follow his lead and repeat the tactic.

Within the Demon Lord's Castle, rampant collateral damage was the order of the day.

Through the will of some malevolent being, likely Revenant, the last of the holy-draining creatures had managed to make it into the castle, and was now giving the Demon Lord's Guard the fight of their collective lives.

It had already been bad enough that one got in... what was making matters worse was the fact that this thing could use holy power offensively, not only creating a aura around itself that made the troops very uneasy about approaching, it was also capable of firing off beams of pure holy power.

They could be stealthy, they could use what they ran on as an offensive source...

They could think.

"Ugh... this abomination doesn't know when to give up." Akasha was already having a bad enough day- being thrown from her mansion, her reinforcement being defeated, her nemesis practically camping right outside, and now this. She quickly dove to the side as a shot of holy power disinitgrated where she'd been standing a moment ago.

A hail of arrows bounced off its hide, some sinking in as it turned to regard the annoyance. More arrows landed in what would be considered its face, but it ignored the little pricks as it fired another volley of holy shots at the monsterwomen, killing several and forcing the rest to scatter.

Even with the new reinforcements coming from Deruella's Kingdom, this creature would take nothing short of a miracle to finally take down.

Kurosugi found herself at the end of her limit.

Though she'd managed to keep a step ahead of Uutyk, her gauntlet-guns were running out of power, and the Brute Warrior of Sanvino seemed relentlessly unlimited in his stamina as he chased the evil twin of Asagiri. Even with the glancing and decisive shots she landed, he almost seemed to draw increasing power from the injuries.

Currently, the two had gone out the other side of the boat, and were circling back around to the other side of the hill where the Yoshitsuna was buried. Unbeknownst to either of them, Nelius and Revenant were having it out again, while the others, led by Cordelia and Mita, tried to take out the other beast. Hot on their tail was the other beast.

Kurosugi had managed to get some distance away while Uutyk focused on the trailing creature. She made it to the hill top... in time to fall backwards, avoiding a blast of magic that nearly clipped her face.

"The hell was that?!" Catching her breath, she peered over, and was nearly blown to bits as another magical shot detonated right next to where she was sitting, sending her flying to the side.

Further down at the cavern entrance, the holy-absorbing creature was giving Cordelia and Mita quite the amount of trouble- even with the explosive shells thrown down its throat, it seemed more than capable of healing the damage faster than it could be inflicted. Shizuka was keeping its attention thanks to her incredible speed while Carl and Zio pooled their knowledge to keep it held down.

Nelius and Revenant rapidly ascended into the skies, trading blows at speeds most couldn't follow. Very briefly, one could see Revenant blocking an axe strike from Nelius. A few seconds later, Nelius was on the defensive as Revenant tried to simply cleave him in half, the Netherworld Incubus using a hardened wing to block the claw strike.

So focused on the battle was Kurosugi, that she hadn't been keeping tabs on Uutyk's fight against the other holy-eater. She got that update a little behind schedule as a blast of holy magic whizzed right by her.

"YOU DUMBASS! HIT HIM, NOT ME!" Unfortunately for Kurosugi, her hastily shouted command came with one dire consequence- she had turned her attention to the holy-eating monster, thus taking her eyes off the battle in the sky. The creature's misaimed blast had made Revenant toss his prepared shot of magical energy off his intended mark as he dodged backwards to avoid the blast.

Given that the shot was thrown at an angle not anticipated, Nelius was forced to deflect the shot in a different direction. He'd been intending to send it skyward, but now sent it downward...

...right onto Kurosugi.

The evil Asagi didn't even get a chance to scream as she was obliterated in the blast.

"Damn... I wanted to kill her." Uutyk grumbled. He turned and focused back on the other holy-eater.

"!" Revenant looked downward, realizing that Kurosugi had been killed by his shot. He turned his eyeless gaze to Nelius, who looked similiarly surprised that the deflected shot had hit her. 'I have no further business here. This distraction has gone on too long.'

Without warning, he dropped violently to the ground, and within an instant struck Farris hard enough to make her drop Epsilon before being flung into the side of the hill. He closed his hand around the recovering Desco Unit's neck as he re-ascended out of everyone's spell reach, a mouth filled with sharp teeth forming from the strange black-and-whiteness of his head, the skin literally ripping apart.

'Should've done this from the start!' He held the strangled Desco Unit up, mouth open wide as he prepared to eat Epsilon. She was facing away from him, the lone yellow eye on the tentacled mass housing the Usatako Unit looking back at him, almost as if realizing her eventual fate.

What he hadn't taken into consideration was a jet-winged Incubus tearing up the sky towards him.

In the next few seconds, Epsilon was shoved aside, Revenant's teeth clamping down on something much different - Nelius' left arm.

Chapter 26: Complete