Chapter 91: Holding the Line

Chapter 91: Chapter 91: Holding the Line

CRACK.

Azgalor swung his greatsword into the dome a second time.

The hit was so heavy that the shockwave came through the shield. Awakeners on top of the wall were thrown off their feet. Two of them would have gone over the railing if the people next to them hadn’t grabbed their arms.

The cracks in the Aegis Wards spread wider. Long, glowing lines ran out across the sky in every direction, branching and splitting as they went.

[CRITICAL WARNING: Aegis Wards Structural Integrity at 45%.]

"He’s going to break it!" Aris shouted over the comms. For the first time all morning, she sounded scared. "Three more hits and the whole city is open!"

Donald stared through the cracked blue. He pulled up his interface.

[Current Balance: 350,000 Credits]

[Aegis Wards Emergency Repair (S-Rank): 4,000,000 Credits] 𝐟𝑟ⅇ

Not even close.

If he let Azgalor keep swinging, the shield would break, and thirty-five thousand demons would walk straight into Genesis City.

"You can’t buy your way out of a fistfight," Evelyn said. She was standing next to him on the wall, watching the Demon King. Her hands were empty, but holy fire was already burning around her fists. "We have to go out there and stop him from swinging."

"Sylvia," Donald said. "You still have tons of void-steel in your shadow. Can you drop it on him?"

Sylvia shook her head. "He’s Level 100. His body is denser than the steel. If I drop a pallet on him, the pallet breaks, not him." Her violet eyes narrowed. "We have to actually hurt him first, or he’ll just keep hitting the shield and ignore us."

Donald nodded. He turned his head to the black cat on his shoulder.

"Nyx," he said quietly. "We’re going for the jackpot. Don’t hold back."

Nyx let out a sharp meow. Her small black wings opened, and she launched off his shoulder, straight out through the blue barrier.

"Aris. Open the gate."

A section of the Aegis Wards dissolved in front of them.

Donald stepped off the wall and dropped fifty feet into the wasteland. Evelyn dove right beside him with her wings tucked in. Sylvia sank into the shadow of the wall and slid down the face of it to the dirt.

Out in front of the shield, Azgalor raised his greatsword for the third hit.

Nyx got there first.

Her body turned completely black, and she shot into the center of the Demon King’s chest. She didn’t hit his armor. She went through it, and came back out the other side a second later.

Azgalor gasped. The fire in his eyes went wide.

For the first time, the Demon King stumbled. His swing went off course, missed the shield entirely, and buried the greatsword in the dirt.

[Familiar (Nyx) engaged target: Azgalor, The Iron Sovereign (Level 102)]

[Skill Triggered: Phantasmal Siphon]

[CRITICAL SUCCESS]

[Nyx has stolen: +60 Strength, +50 Speed, +50 Mana, +40 Stamina]

Donald landed just as the stolen stats hit his body.

It wasn’t like the adrenaline he usually felt when Nyx stole something. This burned. His Level 24 body couldn’t hold the power of a Level 102 Demon King. The veins in his arms and neck pushed up against his skin and started to glow a faint purple.

[Strength: 85 → 145]

[Speed: 85 → 135]

[Mana: 86 → 136]

[WARNING: Host Body Overload. Physical Stats exceed vessel capacity. Severe tissue damage imminent.]

Donald clenched his teeth and tasted blood.

With 145 Strength, he felt like he could pick up the TIG tower. But he could also feel the muscles in his legs tearing, one small fiber at a time, just from standing up.

"I’m on a timer!" he shouted.

Azgalor pulled his sword out of the dirt. He looked down at his own chest, then at the black cat circling back to Donald, and he understood what had just been taken from him.

He roared. Then he spun and swung the greatsword in a flat arc at Donald’s waist, hard enough to cut him in half.

Donald didn’t dodge.

He activated [Valuation Eye] and looked at the incoming blade.

[Item: Sovereign’s Edge (Demon King’s Weapon)]

[Durability: Near-Infinite]

[Structural Note: Flat of blade is 1.2 inches thick at the center. Edge is unbreakable. Flat is not reinforced.]

With 135 Speed, he had time to read all of that. Then he stepped into the swing, inside the reach of the edge, and raised his left arm.

The Abyssal Impact Pile Bunker whined as it pulled in his boosted Mana. All 136 points of it went into the chamber.

He punched the flat of the blade.

"Deposit!"

He pulled the trigger.

KABOOM.

Blue lightning and red hellfire exploded out of the gauntlet at point-blank range. With Donald’s 145 Strength behind the punch, the force of it was enormous.

The greatsword was knocked straight up off its path. The shockwave threw every demon within fifty yards onto its back.

And Azgalor, holding the sword, was pulled half a step off balance by his own weapon. His boots ground into the glass.

"Now, Evie!" Donald dropped to one knee. His left arm was shaking, and the gauntlet’s piston was glowing red.

Evelyn was already in the air.

She didn’t have a sword, so she didn’t fight like a swordswoman. She pulled all of her S-Rank holy fire into her right leg until it burned white. Then she folded her wings and dropped.

She drove her heel into the center of Azgalor’s chest, in the exact spot Nyx had gone through.

The holy fire burst on impact. The black armor hissed, then cracked in a long line across the chest plate. Azgalor grunted and took three heavy steps back.

Evelyn kicked off his chest, flipped backward, and landed on her feet.

"Sylvia!"

Sylvia came up out of the shadow directly behind the Demon King.

She went for the sword first. She put her hand on the blade and tried to pull it into her inventory, the same way she had taken the Golem’s pillar.

[Error: Target item is soul-bound to a Level 100+ owner. Storage denied.]

Sylvia clicked her tongue. "Worth a try."

So she opened her inventory above his head instead.

"Special delivery."

It wasn’t a pallet of steel this time. It was the heavy iron desk she had taken out of his own vault.

The desk came down on top of Azgalor’s helm with a loud CLANG and broke into pieces. It didn’t hurt him. But he was already off balance from the punch and the kick, and the weight of it landing on his head made him stagger sideways.

On the wall, the Awakeners started cheering again, louder than before. Their Guild Master and his two top fighters were pushing a Demon King backward.

Donald didn’t cheer. He forced himself up onto his feet. His legs were shaking under him.

Azgalor straightened slowly. Pieces of his own desk slid off his shoulders and fell in the dirt. The holy fire on his chest plate flickered and went out. The crack Evelyn had made was still there, but it wasn’t deep.

He wasn’t hurt.

He was insulted.

He looked at the three of them, one at a time. The fire in his eyes narrowed.

"You think you are fighting a dungeon boss," Azgalor said. His voice was low, and it carried across the entire battlefield. "You think you can win with tricks and stolen magic."

He planted the tip of his greatsword in the ground.

He didn’t cast anything. He just let out the rest of his aura. All of it this time.

The sky over Genesis City went black.

It didn’t get darker. It went black, all at once, the clouds and the light gone in the same second. The only light left was the blue of the cracked shield and the fire in Azgalor’s eyes.

Then the weight came down.

Evelyn dropped to one knee. Her wings flickered, the holy fire on them shrinking down to nothing. Sylvia let out a sharp gasp and sank all the way into her shadow, because staying above the ground would have broken her bones.

Even Donald, with 145 Strength, felt his knees bend.

[WARNING: Dimensional Domain Expanded.]

[Domain: The Iron Sovereign’s Court]

[Effect: All hostile entities lose 50% of Speed and Mana. Healing is disabled.]

[Speed: 135 → 67]

[Mana: 136 → 68]

"I am Azgalor," the Demon King said, pulling his sword back out of the dirt. Dark void energy came up along the blade, and the area around it went darker than the sky. "And I am going to execute you in front of your city."

Donald wiped a line of blood from under his nose.

He already knew [Hostile Takeover] wouldn’t work here. He checked anyway.

[Target: The Iron Sovereign’s Court]

[Appraisal Failed. A Domain is not a spell. It is the owner’s existence. It cannot be purchased.]

He looked back at the wall. Then at Evelyn, who was still trying to get up off her knee.

"Evie," he said quietly over the comms. "We can’t beat him inside his own Domain. Not like this."

"We can’t go back either." Evelyn pushed one foot flat on the ground, then the other. Her whole body was shaking, but she stood. "If we go back inside, he breaks the shield. So we hold the line. Right here."

Donald looked down at his gauntlet. The piston was still red-hot. The chamber gauge read 68 out of 136. Half a charge.

Enough for one more overcharge.

He smiled behind his gold mask. It wasn’t a happy smile.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s hold the line."