The Strongest Spellblade

“You didn’t expect that to actually work?” the demon asked as it took a step forward while carefully scanning everything. “You were the one to injure Lazarus. Did you kill him and Mandaeism,” the demon casually asked me with a rumbling voice.

“Perhaps, do you truly care,” I replied without hesitation and the demon nodded. I considered lying, but that would remove any chance of resolving this through dialogue.

“Then you are strong enough to threaten me, even if you appear incredibly weak,” the demon said. It had taken ‘perhaps’ as a ‘yes’.

“Perhaps I do. But we have no quarrel, just leave us alone,” I said.

“No. I will consume you and your companions. Attack,” the demon said. Several ice spiders rose up out of the snow and advanced towards me. I reached into my spatial pouch and began pulling out Mana cores, cutting them on my blade right before I threw them.

Explosions echoed out around me, killing the monsters the demon had brought along to assist in the battle. It didn’t move the entire time, merely observing. I couldn’t let it keep observing and coming up with counter measures.

The wave of monsters soon ended as the demon looked at me from a distance. Rushing at it was pointless with its higher stats. I would just be asking to be kited and the demon rushing at my teammates.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” the demon replied.

“I have bite,” I replied while bringing my sword up and tracing runes in the air with my Mana.

The demon rushed forward. I had been expecting it to do something like that. The runic circle was small for that very reason. A large burst of fire went towards the demon. It easily moved to the side and then kept rushing towards me.

The demon was fast and I had Ozy act at the last moment. Space solidified, slowing the demon down enough for me to block its fist. The force behind the blow, set me skidding across the icy rocks. My blade had left behind a small burn mark on the demon’s fist.

“Stone Shatter!”

Wild Tail acted, breaking up the ground underneath the demon. That made it easier for Ozy to turn the broken stone into a kind of sticky tar.

“Aura of Cold!”

The demon countered, freezing the tar. I moved in. The aura skill, biting deeply into me. I could feel my healing points decreasing from the skill combined with the environment.

“Lightning Beam! Lightning Beam! Vibration Blade.”

The demon was hit twice, its body locking up. I swung and cut partially through one of its massive legs, leaving behind a charred gash by its knee.

“Shatter Stone.”

Ozy kept his focus on keeping the demon in place as more tar formed. It had been greatly slowed by the aura skill, but the demon was distracted. It turned its head to look towards me.

Lanner unleashed several attacks from his wand, striking the demon. I pulled my wand out and attacked as well, piling up the damage.

“RAAAAWR!”

The demon ripped himself from the patch of ground, letting his aura skill drop as he quickly rolled away from his position. The demon was missing several chunks of flesh and was looking really beat up. I pulled out a metal plate and pushed a large chunk of my Mana into the runes.

I tossed the metal plate at the demon. It sliced through the frigid air. The demon had gotten back on its feet just as the metal plate arrived.

“Ward!”

There was a massive explosion, sending the demon stumbling backwards and breaking its spell skill.

“Lightning Beam! Lightning Beam!”

The demon was struck twice again. Ozy had flown around and slammed into the back of the demon while unleashing Empowered Toxic Breath. I was already rushing forwards and swung out with my blade again.

I left another deep burn into the demon’s arm. The demon stumbled backwards as Ozy flew around and used Petrifying Gaze. The demon closed his eyes and leapt backwards. I left a small cut on its waist, but it avoided the worst of the attack. The demon then turned and ran off.

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“Lightning Beam!”

The demon dodged to the side while running, my spell skill missed. It was too tough. We had dealt a lot of damage, but hadn’t been able to land a killing blow. Its stats had been too high.

Just as I thought about pursuing, the cold wind bit into me and I shivered heavily. The adrenaline of combat leaving me. I made my way back to my companions and we gathered inside an igloo again.

“That went well,” Wild Tail said. I shook my head. He was too naïve. The demon had survived and took quite a bit of damage. But it had survived and knew how we fought and several of our skills.

In comparison the demon hadn’t revealed that much. Only an aura skill and one defensive spell skill. “We need to put as much distance as possible between us and the demon as possible,” I replied.

“What? But it ran away,” Wild Tail said.

“And it will chase us once it recovers. We have a long way to go to reach the dungeon entrance. Even then it might pursue us,” I replied.

“We need to keep moving. We endure,” Lanner said tiredly. Wild Tail gave him an odd look.

“Time to dig deep. Let’s move,” I said as Ozy returned to hiding inside my clothing. While his Cold Resistance helped resist the weather, it was still incredibly brutal.

The fight had gone like I had expected. The demon wasn’t ready for all our unique skills, but overcame them with sheer stats. I estimated that the demon would take five to seven days to recover if it had Cold Absorption. Faster if it had some kind of supporting healing skill. It would recover enough to pursue us again, but being fully healed was another matter.

Or it could give up the pursuit, knowing that its fellow demons had perished and we could seriously hurt it. It would be concerned about what other skills we had if we had to fight again.

The burnt cut wounds should linger longer than normal and leave scars. I didn’t replace the Sun Amulet. I had been an idiot not using it combination with traveling. I just had to wave my sword as we walked to create some heat.

While it wasn’t much, it made the cold and the wind of the dark season slightly more bearable. That meant we were able to cover more distance every single day, before Lanner collapsed from exhaustion.

After cleaning off my blade, I also used it to stir the stew to heat it up more. Turning it from warm to scalding. The heat of the food helped quite a bit. While I didn’t like using my main weapon as a stew stick, I didn’t have anything else that could support the fire of the Sun Amulet.

Three days after the fight, my Danger Sense completely went away. I had us adjust our course slightly to the side by about ten degrees. If the demon pursued our original course, I was hoping it would be lost.

Seven days after the fight, my Danger Sense increased slightly and then went back down. It appeared that we had managed to escape the demon.

“I think we lost the demon unless it has stealth skills. Or it gave up,” I said.

“You think it gave up?” Lanner asked.

“Maybe. It is hard to say. A demon doesn’t think like a human. And the first one pursued us for a long time. This one was stronger, but it also appeared to be smarter. It could realize pursuing us wasn’t worthwhile. Do you know anything about what demons do?” I asked Wild Tail.

“Not really. We hide from them, but that is it. The settlements are protected by a ward of some kind. But even that isn’t perfect. I can’t say much beyond that,” he said.

“Unfortunate, but understandable,” I replied while slowly waving my sword in the igloo, keeping us warm.

“At least we can warm up again. Makes things bearable,” Lanner said.

“Sorry, I didn’t think to use my sword as a heater and stew stick before,” I replied with an eye roll.

“Well the dark season is ending. We got a couple of minutes of real light yesterday,” Wild Tail said.

“Then we can travel quicker. We need to get to the dungeon and get away from this place as quickly as possible,” I said. There were no arguments about our plan of action.

Seventeen days after the fight, I saw a ruined settlement resting in a valley as we crossed another ridge. The dungeon entrance was much further.

“An old beastkin settlement from one of the lost clans,” Wild Tail said as we looked down at it.

“Would there be anything useful?” I asked.

“Maybe? We would have to check. And the demon isn’t pursuing us?” he asked. I had spent one rest period looking out the back of our igloo that was perched on a mountain, seeing if there was anything pursuing us.

I hadn’t seen a demon, or anything else. But I still felt uneasy. Nothing from Danger Sense, but it was more of a gut feeling.

It was likely that the demon had given up pursuing us. Thinking it wasn’t worth the hassle, or it had other commitments. But I had thought that of the first demon and it had somehow managed to find us in the dungeon.

This settlement looked like it had been abandoned for a very long time. “You don’t know of this place?” I asked Wild Tail.

“No. But there are stories. Searching all these mountains and being this far from the Fox clan’s settlement is foolishness. I am sure some beastkin found this place, but they are no more. You can see several buildings are in the process of being disassembled and scavenged for their metal,” he pointed out. It appeared the work had been abandoned long ago.

“We stick together and check the main areas only. No need to check the outlying buildings. If there is anything of value, it will be in the main smelter,” I said.

“Are we staying here for a while?” Lanner asked.

“Just one night and then we move on first thing tomorrow,” I said. That was the most I was willing to risk. And the retreating beastkin and demons had left nothing of value in the Fox clan settlement. I suspected it would be much the same here.

If beastkin had been disassembling the metal buildings, there was nothing left of value to scavenge. They had probably thoroughly scoured the entire settlement before going to the metal that made up the buildings.

We would rest up for a day and then keep traveling. At our current pace it would take another twenty to thirty days to reach the dungeon entrance. A long time, but there was no helping it.

I had considered trying another ritual and using the monsters that had come out of the flames to try a follow up ritual. But that would have been stupid. Poorly done rituals were incredibly wild. Getting in close was also a huge risk. The ritual could have latched onto my Mana. And items used in a ritual had a conceptual weight added to them, making future rituals riskier.

No, it was best to keep traveling over the surface, rather than trying to make a dungeon entrance.