Author's Note: Apologies for last week. I hope that this chapter Clarifies everything that my edit didn't. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy
Wrath: Demons born of great rage and acts of violence.
It is said that rage destroys the soul, to be more accurate it consumes it. Willingly giving into anger until it replaces all other feelings is how this demon is born. Training their rage and sharpening it like a blade until everyone of their thoughts are anger and hatred. Once such a being has died the endless flames of their rage wreaths the body in an eternal primordial flame and crafts a Monstrous new body from the primordial flame of their own hatred.
Their constant burning rage has done nothing to dull their skills as warriors, and in fact Inferno's constant and endless battles have only further honed their martial skills as they wield weapons forged from said primordial flame and the constant unending hammer of battle. If witnessed on the field of battle the only hope is to kill them before they can kill you.
Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons
The second boss wasn't an eldritch horror. It was worse. The creature was wreathed in flames, giving off the appearance of a lion with a mane of fire, it's body a mass of dense corded muscles with burning plates of metal like it was fresh out of the forge, but it was shaped like a centaur and worst yet, armed with a round shield and a spear.
The beast was a fighter, Marie will give him that much, he had the reflexes to use his shield to block and parry their attacks, even when they all came after him at the same time, he had a unlimited supply of spears seemingly conjuring them from thin air and hurling them at the boys when they tried to fight at range before blowing them up, and was equally willing to stab into them and swing the weapon at close range as well. On top of that the bastard was huge and fast, at least as big as the mech armour Blackmore used in the duel if not bigger, and fast enough to cross the distance of this place six or seven times. It would be one thing if they could get him to slam into a wall as Marie has seen in countless games but not only was he fast, he was agile too, and knew the exact size of this room like the back of his hand.
Even if they got lucky and landed a shot on it's face mid-charge with bullets or magic he would just pounce off of the wall with his front legs and resume his rampage. What the hell is with these bosses!? Why the hell are these things in a stupid optional dungeon!?
"Have at you!"
Brad prepared another fire lance again, the boss blocked with his arm over his face, and thus didn't see when Brad raised up a length of stone and tripping the lion centaur up and falling flat on his face. The Boys acted on that immediately. Brad summoned more shackles of stone, Jilk produced water and held it over the head of the beast trying to both drown it and extinguish the flames, Chris, Greg and Julius moved in and started to hack apart the demon. With Six limbs and the strength of a full sized armour the beast broke free of Brad's crude restraints, this was shaping up to be a very long fight.
Once I awoke and my world was whole.
Once I awoke and my world was shattered.
Once I awoke and my world was on fire.
Once I awoke and my world was whole...
Scrawl written across the walls in Ancient Text inside of Castle Bartfort in Yamatai
Angelica admitted that the mansion did have a certain level of appeal to it, even with the hole in the roof that Leon presumably went through when he was knocked out of the area. The walls were made from beams of Katsura wood with clear growth lines adding to the carvings of dragons done into the material, spread between the walls was thin sheets of paper, lined with dozens of magic circles the exact type escaping Angelica, so it wasn't fire magic at the very least. The roof was composed of thousands of red-clay tiles lined on top of one another, their quality high but near as Angelica could tell added nothing aesthetically unlike the carved wood and magic circle pattern. When Questioned about it Tamamo explained that Yamatai use to suffer from frequent fires and quakes, to the point that rather than being built to last each building was designed to be entirely disposable and easy to rebuild fast and dirty, when Olivia questioned if Yamatai was safe Tamamo replied that 'Yamatai had left those concerns behind long ago.'
"This is as far as I can go." Tamamo stated as she stopped outside of the stairs of the estate and assumed a seiza position. "I have to guard this place from outside to make sure he doesn't leave."
"Your Drunkard?" Angelica had a bad feeling about this, getting worse as in lieu of answering the fox woman instead started drawing magic circles in the air, and what was even worse than that was that the carvings and magic circles in the paper walls reacted. "Leon." Angelica kept her voice even as she spoke, watching as Leon led the three of them into the mansion. "Why can't she enter the mansion?"
"When you go through the trouble of preparing a jail cell, do you then leave the keys inside?" Leon asked in turn, and then Olivia was visibly getting scared, but then she forced herself to calm down with her magic, and was preparing barriers just in case. "Before you ask. He destroyed a country during a temper tantrum, and he might've destroyed more if we didn't shove him in here first." Leon observed the room. The outside was nice but the inside was a mess of dimly lit corridors and scrawl written across the walls of the mansion in Ancient Text. "Lea! I know that you're here you bastard!" Leon pulled Alastor out of the void of space, the sheath quickly popping into the familiar sword and shield combo. "You didn't hit me that hard!"
The Entire mansion shook, the wooden floors making an ungodly squealing sound as something was dragged forward.
"Angie, Livia get behind me this is gonna get ugly." The floor thud again as the Squealing stopped, Leon was already prepared to use both his weapon and his entire body to shield the girls from this bastard's hit. Soon a huge metal studded club was swung through the air out of the darkness-
"THAT'S ENOUGH!" The Room suddenly lit up. Angelica had prepared several spears of fire, each of them aimed at the figure in the dark.
Tall. Taller than Leon, taller than any human being Angelica knew and several demons. He had the appearance of a dishevelled middle aged man with the cartilage of his ears being dragged down and drawn out by a set of ear piercings. That however was not his most noticeable features. Standing before them was a giant, black eyed Leon his body frozen mid swing with his giant weapon. With another loud thud the giant club was standing on its flat head on the ground while the man who wielded it bent over at the hip in an unnatural way in order to look Angelica strait into the eyes.
"So it's gonna be one of those days eh?" 'Lea' stated before he abruptly righted himself. Suddenly the entire giant, and the hallway he was standing in, was soaked through with water before it abruptly evaporated. Unlike when Leon did that with Stephanie on the other hand Lea didn't even look phased by the impromptu bath. "And what was that for?"
"The Smell." Leon replied bluntly as he tossed the Rusalka out through the hole in the roof. "Are you going to let us talk while they fix the roof or are you going to hit us again?"
"You have something that belongs to me." The giant spoke matter of factly.
"Or, and hear me out here, you can not drink yourself to death while holding up here in your own private hell and make something of your life again!" Leon snapped with a side of sarcasm. "That is absolutely something you can do!"
"Do you want me to hit you again?" Lea loomed over Leon with a glare. "You wanna see if we can clear the island this time?"
"I don't know who raised you, you filthy barbarian." Angelica cut between the two again, knowing that somehow her presence had stopped Lea and using that to her full advantage. "Where I come from if you have guests over you offer to serve them tea and snacks."
'Who the frack invited you here?'
"By all means!" Instead of saying what he was thinking though Lea instead led them deeper into his cage. "Welcome to my lovely abode!"
In a few short moments Lea had prepared green tea and rice cakes for his 'guests.' He at least kept the place cleaner than the rest of the mansion, though he made a show of pointing the spout of the pot to Leon. Having apparently finished serving his guests the great lug made a show of leaning over and landing on the ground like a great oak falling over and producing a loud crash as he landed.
"I have a question." Angelica stated as she held her tea in her hands and sipped on it.
"I'm not gonna tell you which Kingdom I want to destroy." Lea stated bluntly.
"As terrifying as the notion of the Blackmores deciding that an entire Kingdom deserves to be wiped from the face of the void that's not what I want to know." Angelica stated she put her bamboo cup down. "I have already propositioned my friend over there, and he refused." Angelica stated indicating Leon. "Speaking to you was supposed to make us understand why we were rejected."
"By propositioned you mean...?" Angelica and Olivia both gave a light blush.
"Both of you? The frack man what's wrong with you!?" Lea asked turning his attention to Leon.
"You know damn well what is wrong here curled up in your little hovel and wasting your life away." Leon stated bluntly. "Oh so you're on that are you?" A look of realisation donned on Lea's features.
"Too much of a coward to fess up? Or has big daddy Rodin forbidden any of you to talk about it?" By the sounds of things they had just walked in on something much bigger than what they had initially realised. "Then let me be blunt." Lea abruptly pulled out a pocket watch. "This is a Umbran Watch. So long as we keep killing angels it will keep us alive." Both girls looked on stunned by what they were seeing. "So what do you think? Do you wanna turn old and wrinkly while this guy keeps his young and youthful appearance? Or are you going to ask him to stop killing angels and give up his power so that he can age gracefully with you two? Or maybe you'll become the type of perverts that like keeping a young and handsome guy around!?"
"That's enough!"
"Course there's always the option of asking him to take the cowards way out!" Lea punctuated his point by putting two of his fingers into his mouth in the style of a finger gun.
"I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH!" Angelica's eyes were glowing as she stood up and snarled her words out.
"Oh oh no!" Lea snapped and suddenly the room was bathed in the pressure from his magical power. "You jumped into this mess of your own accord!" Lea slammed his hand into the floor and pushed himself up. "Now you get to sleep in the bed you made until I am finished with you, you bi-!" Alastor abruptly leaned into Lea's throat, a clear threat from Leon. "Do it!" Lea actually looked like he would enjoy his head being parted from his neck. "DO IT!"
"Tamamo said that speaking to you would make us believe Leon-kun's reasoning!" Olivia decided to steer this train wreck in progress away from the multi car pile up that had already occurred. "While I do agree that the reasons presented sound unreal so far I don't believe them."
"Ha ha ha ha!" Lea abruptly burst out into laughter at the statement that Olivia just carelessly tossed out. Lea went to a nearby drawer and abruptly ripped it out, turning it over and dumping out the contents onto the tea table before he grabbed Leon into a head lock and dragged him away somewhere else. "We'll let you two sort through that!" Lea raised his hand into the air, several crashes echoed out before the club he was carrying around with him flew through the wall and back into his hand before he and Leon walked out of the room.
"What just happened?" Olivia asked sounding confused. Olivia and Angelica paid the two a few more moments of thought before they started to sort through the contents of the junk-drawer though Angelica soon found something that made her jaw drop. It was something she had seen before, or a version of it. A painting almost exactly like it hanged in the castle's entry room, in lieu of that this one looked like a Alzeran picture, or more accurately something that was taken via a lost item, a picture of the founding families and the Saintess, except that in this picture there were seven figures including the Saintess, and a man who looked suspiciously like Leon, or like Lea.
"What in Saint's name...!?"
If the Royal Airship is Holfort's worst kept secret, then its last pilot was its best.
The stories told of Holfort's founders say that five Adventurers accompanied the Saintess, but there were six. Lea Bartfort was a man of humble means and origins, a soldier in Rochelle's army and candidate in its so-called Holy Knight program. The Details of that horror story is a subject for the Fifth game, but needless to say Lea had no interest in participating, and so escaped with his lover Ann, the woman who would be known as the Saintess. Together with five other men from different nations, Holfort, Marmoria, Arclight, Seburg and Field Ann and Lea were able to survive the brutal life of the pre-Kingdom Holfort continent.
As explained through the Warlock Route Lea and Ann were the ones to pilot the ship and used Ann's innate brainwashing power to seize control over the collection of warring small and insignificant islands and countries that would become the Kingdom of Holfort. Unfortunately Ann's power of mind control was more potent than anyone had anticipated, when she and her lover returned to their base of operations they weren't greeted by their allies they had fought and shed blood alongside of but rather five Yandere's who had their affections for Ann artificially pumped up to the point of insanity. Things promptly went into a downward spiral from there.
Excerpt from Diary 1
Angelica had been put through the ringer, even Livia had a horrified look on her features once she had the implications made known to her. The two girls had no other choice but to follow the Blackmores deeper into the estate for answers.
"You expect us to believe that you're some five hundred year old adventurer and also the secret sixth founder of the Holfort Kingdom!?" Angelica snapped as if the very notion went against everything she knew and believed in, and in fact did.
"This is the bed you made!" Lea used his club to leverage a trap door open and started to walk down it. "And you aren't going anywhere until you see through everything it has to offer!" And then Lea went down the Trap door and the three students followed.
"Even if we do believe that you're as old as you say you are then what happened?" Angelica had her entire worldview challenged by a single sheet of paper, as much as she would like to toss it into a fire she needed to invalidate its existence even more, to that end she had to prove Lea wrong. "It's not the six founding families for a reason!"
"I bloody died that's what happened!" Lea snapped without any trace of humour. "Me and Ann took a cruise around a few islands on a good will tour, and when we got back your 'Founding Families' put a bunch of weapons through my guts and chucked my body off the continent!" Now the older Warlock was just talking nonsense, even as he led them to a large round stone monument. "And yet you're here, something that would be impossible if you were human and what happened to you happened." Angelica stated having seemingly confirmed Lea's madness.
"Yes." Yet Lea proceeded to say something even more mad. "It would." Lea walked through the stone slab like it was some kind of door instead of a massive block of rock. "What is...?" Olivia felt an ominous dread. A feeling of terror that told her that she shouldn't be here. She saw the words above the stone slab, she couldn't read the language, and yet the words burned into her mind. "Abandon all Hope, ye who enter here..."
"Olivia?" Angelica went to Olivia's side as she stared off into the abyss, desperately hoping that the abyss wasn't staring back at her. "Olivia!?" Leon waved something under Olivia's nose and she suddenly snapped to attention, breathing deeply.
"Yeah you're not going in there." Leon stated as he led the girls away.
"What is that!?" Angelica snapped angrily at Leon.
"A gateway to Inferno." Leon stated as if it was obvious. "Difficult for most humans, but for a Demon it's just a doorway back home." Angelica's and Olivia's faces widened in horror. "Let's say I do love you." Leon paused and corrected himself. "Both of you. Let's say I spend the rest of your life with you, lets say you're even prepared to spend the rest of my life with me. So what?" Leon shrugged his shoulders. "You love me now but does that hold true when the only parts left of me are the worst parts of me?" Leon had to deal with these questions his entire life. "Are you prepared for what I'm going to do to you for when I've lived so long, taken so much shit, that that is the only thing left of me?" Lea's malicious laughter echoed throughout the cavern as if some point had just been proven, having returned from where he came from.
"Hopefully you'll treat them better than the way I treated Ann." Lea let out a laugh as he leaned on his weapon.
"Ann!?" The saintess Ann? "What did you do to her!?" Angelica stepped forward, completely believing this ancient monster now that Leon's words made everything he said make sense.
"I tore her soul from her chest." Lea stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I ripped it to pieces and I put them where no one will find her, denying her both a afterlife and reincarnation in the process." Suddenly the floating spears of Flame Angelica had been using as a light source all slammed into Lea at once. "Then I found the sons of whores that killed me and I did the same to them, they're down here if you wanna see them!" Lea hadn't had a scratch on him, his malicious Satan like air about him hadn't even been disturbed even as Angelica had unloaded the rest of her spears of fire against the demonic man. "Oh you wanna fight do yah!?" Without Angelica's fire the cavern had gone dark, pitch black. Two red orbs appeared in the darkness, the glowing eyes of a demon. With a rush of air the entire island rumbled, Leon blocked the hit to the best of his ability but there was only so much that he could do. Instead a new light source engulfed the cavern as a giant of a man with bright red skin and a crown of horns walked into view, the tiger print loincloth his only trace of modesty.
Shuten Douji: The First and most violent of the Three Great Yokai of Yamatai.
The son of a woman who died giving birth to him, Shuten had no family and no one to care for him but the monks of his hometown. Shunned as someone who had committed the ultimate taboo of killing a parent The monster that would become known as Shuten Douji, the Little Drunkard, instead acted as a demon in return drinking the Sake that had been prepared for the river deity and terrorising the town. One Day Shuten made a mask from a tree that had been used for hangings in the village and slicked his hair into horns with honey, it is said that Shuten rampaged for seven days straight before he realised that his mask had fused into his face and he had mutated into the first of the Human born Yokai, a Ferocious Oni.
Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons
"I am a dead thing!" Livia shot up a barrier to protect herself and Angie. "Shaped like a dead thing!" With a mighty punch the demon shattered the barrier with a single blow. "Made out of a dead thing!" Angelica fired a stream of fire into the monster's face trying to blind it. "I was born to suffer and bring suffering in return!" With a wave of his arm the demon brushed aside the flames. "I am a curse on the Holfort Kingdom! And I will not die until it has been destroyed!" And abruptly the entire thing ended, the red skinned creature disappearing into light and replaced by a familiar devil. "Be sure to let your King know that I'm coming for him." Lea cracked his neck as he swung his club around to land on his shoulder again. "I want the entire wretched blood line quaking in fear the whole way over." With a loud crash Lea was suddenly pinned to the ground, a blue winged demon with crescent shaped horns, silver Gilgamesh armour and lightning arcing around his body having pinned him in place. Leon was getting tired of being sucker punched today.
"Screw you!" The second Demon growled as he turned back to Leon, the Alastor pinning Lea in place. "I am getting sick and tired of putting up with you! The only ones who need a 'wellness' check after this trip is us!" Leon snapped as he stood up to leave, limping away even as Olivia tried to heal him. "We're leaving!"
"There is some unfinished business here we need to deal with first." Angelica already had a spear of fire ready to go off. "I'm not one for leaving the enemies of Holfort in one piece."
"Don't bother." Leon stated letting out a tired sigh. "Do you think we haven't tried killing this lunatic before?"
"Explain." Angelica demanded, a hair trigger away from unleashing her attack. "We have killed him before, but every time the bastard dies he comes back again, reincarnating with a different name and a different face but keeping all of his past memories intact." Leon looked at Lea with disgust as he pulled himself out of the ground. "Before, when he actually listened to what my parents had to say and wasn't drinking himself to death, it was an asset, and now he's a liability." The Blackmores didn't want to get caught up in a pointless war because their cousin has decided to be a suicidal monster about this one point. "Come on. Let's try to enjoy the rest of our vacation." Saying that Leon turned around to leave, even Angelica dismissed her spell to leave.
"Oi." All three students turned around to face Lea one last time. "Come back here when you're all married and have a bunch of kids and brag about how good your life is to my corpse."
Having received but chosen to ignore that order the three students chose to leave the broken miserable creature to wallow in his own waste. Leon had taken a beating from Lea, even if he tried not to show it. Shuten Douji had produced one of the most hideously powerful devil arms in the entire Blackmore clan's arsenal, the barrier that Leon had been repeatedly smashed through had a powerful curse on it so that anyone who did break it would be weakened and have their natural healing power severely suppressed, furthermore it was designed for someone much stronger than he was and he had been hit with it twice on top of his limiter that he didn't have the means to remove without Umbra.
If Leon had dedicated his entire vacation time to expelling the curses and healing his body he would have been in peak physical condition when he left the Island, and the mess that followed might have been different. But both he and his healer were on vacation, and so he instead dedicated his time to personal enjoyment.
This has gotten ridiculous.
The Third Boss was some kind of giant beetle like demon with blades of lightning coming out of it's arms, just looking at it you knew for a fact how strong and powerful it was but that wasn't even the worst of it, the bastard turns into lightning to move around. A Demon three quarters the height of an armour and just as wide, wielding lightning blades could move as fast as lightning and couldn't even be hit while moving. If this thing didn't drop a weapon Marie would eat the Saint's staff. Then again they also weren't giving it a chance either, after puncturing a hole through the boss door Jilk flooded the room with water at the Rusalka's suggestion. The lightning split the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, flammable gasses, which the Rusalka then set on fire, scorching the lungs and other insides of the lightning demon until it dropped dead. To the surprise of no one no weapon was left behind, just a bottle of potion.
"It seems like it produces enhanced speed." Chris reported after a cursory examination of the bottle. Great, two more to clear after this, and then five on their way out. Marie was selling those potions for every penny they were worth.
"Anyone else getting freaked by this?" Greg asked as he looked between his companions concerned. "So far we've had a mage with Wind, Earth and Fire magic." Greg indicated Brad. "A spear user with fire magic." Then himself. "And now we have a sword swinging monster with lightning magic." And finally Chris. "If the next two monsters we fight are a water spitting gun fighter or an earth wielding sword and board guy..."
"Then we'll have our proverbial matches for myself or Jilk." Julius stated as the situation was not lost on him either. "I do not know if this is mere coincidence or something more going on." Julius for once said something that made sense.
"Something else doesn't make sense is how tough these bastards are." Jilk stated as he waved around the guidebook from the Guild on various different dungeon monsters. "Look at what it says about this one."
Blitz: A specially bred demonic soldier.
A Blitz is the end result of a combination of selective breeding, carefully cultivated mutations, infusions of raw lightning magic and relentless abuse to make them develop their thick shells. The end result is a ferocious monster as physically strong as ten men, durable as a tank with the power to manipulate and move through lightning. If there is a weakness it's that it's blind, if deployed it will not leave the area until it knows for certain that everything in the area is dead or until it has been killed instead.
Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons
Each of the boss demons they fought so far is classified by the Guild as a mid-tier threat, somewhere between foot soldiers and your average boss monster, but displaying a level of competency and skill that is a step above others of it's kind, as if they've been trapped down here and fighting for gods know how long honing their abilities. If this wasn't the only place that they could reliable gain access to a steady supply of Experience in months then they wouldn't be here taking this abuse either.
"Well our concerns are moot." Julius stated bluntly.
"It's either forward or backwards gentlemen." Marie had already hardened her resolve, she was going to clear this dungeon and then she was going to enjoy her vacation in her spiritual homeland!
Angelica and Olivia in the mean time spent the trip visiting the various sights of Yamatai while trying their damnedest to forget the nightmare monster that was Lea and sleeping at a non-love hotel owned/managed by Tamamo and buying souvenirs.
"Are they supposed to be pendants?" Angelica asked as she looked at a short chain with a bejeweled heart hanging on the end of it.
"Are we supposed to get the string or chain separately?" Looking at the items Olivia could tell that they were magical, but she wasn't familiar with the magic circle in use, she's never seen the engravings or enchantments before.
"They're belly piercings." Both girls went pale at that, Angelica dropping the one she was examining on the table. "You can think of them as being equipped with an anti-contraceptive magic but that isn't the primary purpose." Tamamo was smiling at the girls as Olivia blushed adorably. "Its main purpose is to accumulate and concentrate magical power in the body of a future mother for the purpose of creating a baby with strong magical power."
"I know I'm going to regret asking this." Angelica stated as she took a deep breath as she asked her next question. "When you say 'Contraceptive...'"
"Sex obviously." Tamamo stated as if it was obvious. "Your partner provides you with his magical power through sex which is concentrated into your body. This offers you a temporary power boost as a side effect in the form of concentrated magical energy but you'll spend that when you cast magic, when the jewel turns a rainbow colour it means you're ready to conceive." Angelica began rubbing her head as she processed the situation while rubbing on the side of her head.
"Is this you wishing us good luck?" Angelica asked as she looked at the demoness who was smirking deviously at them. "Our Young Master is very important to us. Take care of him please."
"You keep calling him 'young master.'" A term that normally would only be reserved for the young heir of a household, which made sense to call him when he was at the compound or his territory, but out here? In an entirely different country? "Who is he to you people?"
"To us Demons?" Tamamo stated and Angelica saw something, something that scared her. Malice, or the feeling that someone knew something that you didn't and it was going to cost you deeply. "He is the most important human who has ever lived, so take good care of him for us. Your good people, it'd be a shame to have to eat your souls." With that haunting remark left, the school trip had ended.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Giants.
RedRat8: Tamamo was talking about Lea and Ann.
Chronos0305: Nioh is a great place to pick up demons to use. Glad we cleared it up.
NoonStar99: Apologies for having failed to make that clear. Tamamo was talking about Lea, the man who sucker punched Leon across Yamatai.
Dakota Bruder: I'm mostly taking advantage of the fact that Nintendo have shoved so much cross over material into Bayonetta that I'm naturally encouraged to make more crossovers. Lusachia is a sub species of the Baphomet Clan, appearing in the fifth Devil May Cry Game in the latter half of the game.