CH463 Thera’s Perspective

In that second, Thera registered shock in the demon’s eyes, an inability to understand just what it had experienced that left it unable to grasp that it should even be feeling pain at first before it screamed and reached back, pulling the offending object out and crushing it in its hand.

“Hey, not cool,” She heard Ben call out. “That was a good quality knife too. The enchantments on it were intense. Well, not like I need to tell you that though, right?”

Just before it turned away from her, she was able to see the unbridled rage on its face before she was left looking at its back, letting her see the deep gouge that had been left. An ugly thing, almost rotten and burnt at the same time from the same weapon Ben had once dug into the body of a demigod. Causing so much damage in the seconds it took to be removed gave her a whole new appreciation for how his fight with Ather must have gone in the past, but there was a far greater problem now.

When it came to fights, Ben was the tools he made, but she didn’t think he had much on him at that moment. There was the knife he always carried that was now destroyed, along with his gun and a few bullets to go with it, but that was it. They had both expected her to be able to handle anything that immediately came up but what they had found already felt above their worst expectations.

He’d thrown the knife and guided it with his magic so he at least had a little distance but it was something that was closed in an instant, the demon before him before he could move and pulled its fist back to strike.

She expected him to die then and there, sacrificing himself so she could heal her wounds, but to the shock of both her and the invader in front of him, he actually dodged.

It was a sloppy thing, lacking both skill and finesse, but that didn’t matter as long as he avoided the hit, along with the next one, and the one that came after too. Each attempted strike was dodged in a way that looked more like wild flailing, his body destroying itself in every attempt it made to get away as it finally clicked how he was pulling it off.

Ben had once complained to her about his thought speed skill. It was handy for so much, but at a certain point, his body just couldn’t keep up with the speed he could think. Trying to make it had left him in need of a serious round of healing and he’d never given it a go again, at least not when thinking at his maximum potential, but that had to be what he was doing now. Each narrow miss came with a grunt of pain even without the strike connecting but each time it got closer as Ben reached the limits of his body.

She didn’t know how long he could keep it up and it drove her to work on her internal injuries all of the faster, pushing her magic to its limits while knowing his life was on the line until something strange happened. The demon stopped.

“You,” It spoke again, its rage turning its voice cold. “I’m not sure how you’ve been doing that, but it won’t work any longer.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” He sighed back before giving it a cocky grin. “Still though, gotta be pretty embarrassing for someone with low soul magic to only notice their mana’s being stolen right when they’re about to bottom out, don’t you think?”

She hadn’t thought it could get any angrier but Ben’s taunts seemed to have done the trick as she picked up the context of what they were saying. Ben had been stealing the monster’s mana, locking away its magic until it was able to regenerate enough to use again, meaning if she was going to attack, it had to be now.

Thera forced herself to her feet, feeling most of her wounds were healed enough that she was no longer in a life-threatening state and held forth her staff, her focus being split to keep her from falling but enough of it going to her spell for it to count as she brought forth spears of earth and launched them, only for them to be kicked away under the monster’s still impressive strength.

The demon looked at her for only a moment before turning, keeping its eyes on Ben. It hadn’t decided if he was the more dangerous one or not, but it was sure that it wanted him dead. A decision Thera had no intention of tolerating.

Since it still seemed to have plenty of strength, she went back to her last failed attack while its magic was still sealed, forcing weakness into the demon’s body through the two avenues she had and seeing an immediate effect this time compared to last. Each strike it tried to throw was slower. Still faster than anything she could do when it came to physical combat but enough to give them just a bit of room as Ben’s body slowly gave out under the building strain.

He kept ducking and weaving, by all accounts doing better than anyone had the right to expect of him with all of the real damage he’d received being self-inflicted, but it was clear it was building up. His moves were becoming even more awkward than before and she could see bruises forming around his neck, the only part of him that was exposed enough to tell but a clear sign the rest of him was going to be looking the same, breaking under the force of a mind so far beyond the body that held it.

She wanted to get her hands on him to heal him and kept trying different attacks to end things but each time they either missed or were blocked. Even trying to petrify it only led to seeing it expertly manipulate what little mana it still had to counteract the effect. She didn’t know how to weaken it further but it was still functioning too well despite the massive loss of power on so many fronts, it was destroying both chunks of earth and constructs of mana before they could do any severe damage. They were in a waiting game that it looked like it would win.

She didn’t know what had led him to it, maybe he was feeling desperate, but in a sudden move Ben threw himself to the side, trying to get around it to attack only for one of its blows to strike with enough force to throw him through the air, launching him past her and revealing just what he’d intended.

Getting hit had been intentional. As he flew past her for the briefest of seconds he connected, merging a part of his mind into hers to speed up her thoughts enough that he could think five words at her.

Mana examination and earth magic.

She didn’t know what she was expected to do with that first, the thought being too short and sudden but at least began using her mana examination on it and felt something click. Perhaps just enough of his intent had gotten through with that brief meeting of the minds or maybe she’d just grown used to the way he thought, but she knew how he was saying to end the fight and as horrific as it might have seemed she wasn’t going to disagree, she just needed it to get closer.

It seemed like a reasonable expectation to have of it, they were its targets, but as it looked at them, Ben broken and bleeding on the ground and Thera standing but still not in peak condition, it gave that same savage smile it had before as it looked away, focusing in the last of their little group. Verbum.

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Ben had done the bare minimum to keep the unconscious man safe, laying him under the cart for whatever protection that would provide but not enough to stop the determined demon who just wanted to get back at them. It wanted to take a kill for itself and Thera couldn’t meaningfully stop it.

No.

There was one thing she could do, it was just a matter of how deep the effect would be. Without hesitating, she took off her brace, letting loose the full force of her charm while at the same time directing it like she would any spell, bringing the monster’s eyes right back to her.

She didn’t get the maddening or near mind control-like effects that came from most people, instead getting the same thing she could expect of many of the monsters she would hunt. Their hunger, fully directed at her as it saw a meal to sink its teeth into while Thera prepared her spell, flooding the world with her mana in anticipation of it getting close enough, watching their distance shrink in a heartbeat as she did exactly what Ben had been recommending. She used her mana examination to look at the creature on a deeper level, finding the voids in its body that any living being could expect to have, and with her earth magic, she filled them.

Every empty space she could find, stomach and lungs and organs she couldn’t begin to name were filled with iron in an instant as the mana snapped into place, forming atoms and lumping together into a solid mass that couldn’t be removed with its martial skills or any magic it possessed and it knew it.

She could see the hunger in its eyes turn to panic as it struggled to breathe, its mouth and throat filled with iron that went all the way down, making it so it couldn’t even properly move its body to get at her despite only being a couple feet out of reach.

Perhaps panicking was the right choice for it. If it stayed calm it might have saved just a bit of the air already coursing through it. By giving in to its fear it let itself die just a little faster, granting it the release of what she’d just inflicted upon it.

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