Demon Lord: Erotic Adventure in Another World

Chapter 879: The Beast Awakens

Chains rattled as both Kraken Slayers adjusted their aim.

The first weapon groaned violently. Its barrel shook from side to side while purple runes struggled to remain lit across the damaged shaft.

The second looked stable, but black blood from the abyssal beasts still stained several of its mana circuits.

Alan stood beneath the weapons, reinforcing the firing platforms with his divine barrier despite the blood soaking one sleeve.

"Logan!" he shouted. "The upper brace is failing!"

"I know!"

Leviathan’s wound began to close.

Asmodeus saw the flesh shifting beneath him.

"Fire now!"

Logan slammed both levers.

The first Kraken Slayer failed.

Its mana rings flashed out of sequence, and the energy inside the shaft collapsed backwards. The weapon released a horrible metallic shriek before the rear support exploded, throwing engineers across the platform as the harpoon remained trapped inside the barrel.

"No!" Logan roared.

The second Kraken Slayer fired.

BOOOOOOM!

The harpoon launched into the storm.

But the blood coating its lower circuit ignited at the moment of release.

The barrel jerked sideways.

Asmodeus’s golden eyes widened.

The massive harpoon missed Leviathan’s open wound and instead shot toward him.

"Asmodeus!" Velvet screamed.

He twisted in midair.

The projectile passed so close that its serrated edge sliced through one of his sharp blood wings. The shockwave spun him across the sky as the harpoon continued past, vanishing into the storm behind him.

For a moment, everyone fell silent.

Asmodeus steadied himself, staring at the severed half of his wing as blood regenerated along its broken edge.

Then he slowly turned toward the distant fortress.

"Logan..."

Even across the ocean, the dwarf seemed to feel his gaze.

"...That one wasn’t my fault, Laddie!"

Asmodeus stared at him from across the raging ocean, while the regenerated edge of his blood wing sharpened with a wet hiss. The sudden danger caught him off guard that he couldn’t help but complain over their telepathic communication.

"You nearly shot me through the chest."

"I said it wasn’t my fault!"

Velvet flew alongside him, one hand covering her mouth as her shoulders trembled.

"Are you laughing?"

"No."

"You are."

"I thought the great Abyssal Sovereign would be harder to hit."

Asmodeus narrowed his golden eyes.

"I dodged it."

"R-Really? Are you sure...?" Velvet’s grin made him want to punch her, yet somehow he also found the cute smirk on her lips irresistible.

"Focus."

The behemoth’s countless eyes closed at once.

’What the hell is it going to do now?’

Though powerful, Asmodeus didn’t think this battle would be difficult. The damage to Grigor’s coast and land might set him back a lot of gold and effort, but that was all. He didn’t lose many knights or men so far.

Its enormous body sank several metres beneath the ocean, dragging the surrounding water down with it. The sudden pull exposed sections of seabed around its sides, leaving black reefs, broken ships and ancient bones visible beneath the storm.

"Holy shit!" He said with a wide, twitching grin.

"A-Asmodeus?!"

Nerim’s voice echoed in his head, laced with obvious worry.

[Your Majesty, get away from the surface!]

Asmodeus looked down.

The sea around Leviathan began to rotate; at first, it wasn’t fast, but... the speed kept increasing with each passing second.

The ancient beast’s island-sized body twisted beneath the water, creating a vortex vast enough to drag entire waves toward its centre. Ships ripped free from the remaining docks. Their chains snapped, hulls grinding against stone before they vanished into the spiralling black water.

Brando shouted through his device.

"Abandon the lower port! Everyone behind the main barrier!"

Alan raised both hands.

His pale barrier expanded along the coast just as Leviathan surged upward.

The ocean rose with it.

A wall of water climbed into the sky, towering over the fortress and swallowing the lightning above. Within its dark surface, thousands of transformed eye-beasts twisted through the waves, claws scraping against one another as they waited to be thrown toward the land.

"Tsunami!" one of the sailors screamed.

Asmodeus turned toward the coast.

The wave was too wide for the barriers.

Even if Alan stopped its centre, both sides would sweep around the fortress and bury the land behind it.

His black sclera darkened further.

"Velvet, take everyone above the wall."

"What are you doing?"

"Making a path."

She saw the look in his eyes and immediately turned.

"Valkyries, climb! Levia, support Alan! Vinea, burn anything that reaches the stone!"

Levia descended toward the fortress with her damaged shield raised. Dark lightning spread around her body before linking with Alan’s barrier, reinforcing the golden surface with a web of black-purple energy.

Vinea landed atop the coastal wall.

Balmung stabbed into the stone between her feet.

Molten light spread through the battlements, turning the surface beneath the Demon Knights into glowing black rock. Her horns burned hotter as fire poured along the sea-facing edge of the fortress.

"Come on, ugly bastards," she muttered. "Try climbing now."

Erika and Ciela gathered the Valkyries above the wall, forming several layered rows, their weapons aimed at the creatures trapped in the incoming wave.

Asmodeus remained alone before it.

The tsunami filled his vision.

Water, beasts and wreckage climbed higher than the cliffs, carrying enough force to erase the port and everything built behind it.

His sharp blood wings stretched to their full span.

The blood scattered across the battlefield answered him.

Black fluid from the abyssal beasts rose from the ocean. Crimson blood from wounded soldiers lifted from the walls. Even the blood pouring from Leviathan’s open wound trembled and pulled free.

It gathered around Axiom.

The halberd’s edge became a thin red line beneath the storm.

Asmodeus drew it back.

’If I can’t stop the entire ocean...’

His muscles tightened.

"Then I will do my fucking best to try!"

He swung.

A crimson arc crossed the world.

The tsunami split down the centre.

For several miles, the wall of water opened into two towering halves. The cut travelled through the wave, the vortex and the ocean beneath, carving a dry ravine across the sea as the severed water thundered past Asmodeus on both sides.

The divided tsunami crashed against the coast away from the fortress.

Entire sections of land disappeared beneath the impact. Trees, abandoned structures and cliffs were swallowed, yet the main wall remained standing inside the path Asmodeus had opened.

The beasts carried within the wave were thrown into the sky.

"Now!" Velvet roared.

The Valkyries fired without hesitation.

Thousands of radiant attacks descended together. Lances of light pierced wet wings. Magical bullets tore through swollen bodies. Spears wrapped in wind and lightning crossed the storm, pinning the creatures against one another before detonating.

Ciela released an arrow larger than her body.

It separated into hundreds of green streaks, each one bending through the air to find a different target.

Erika followed the paths they opened.

Her figure flickered between the falling beasts as her blade removed heads, limbs and wings in flashes too fast for most eyes to follow.

Vinea pulled Balmung from the wall.

The demonic holy sword erupted in molten-gold fire as she swept it upward. A burning crescent consumed the creatures that escaped the Valkyries, reducing their pale flesh to black ash before they could touch the battlements.

The divided ocean crashed back together behind Asmodeus.

He remained hovering above the collapsing ravine, silvery-white hair whipping around his darker face while droplets of blood orbited his wings.

Velvet appeared beside him again.

"Showing off."

"Was that not the correct response?"

"It was extremely correct," her voluptuous body leaned against his arm, spreading a smooth, comforting warmth before she whispered, "and extremely sexy." However, when she glanced back at the continent, her lips trembled. She glanced toward the flooded land on either side of the fortress. "Maybe a little excessive."

"Well...."

A deep clicking noise leaked from the ocean, interrupting him.

Leviathan’s eyes reopened.

But their arrangement had changed.

The countless pale orbs no longer covered its body without protection. Layers of black flesh folded over them like eyelids of armour, leaving only narrow slits through which dark purple light gathered.

Flesh twisted around the ravine before forming overlapping plates, each one glossy and thick enough to resemble sections of a fortress wall.

The remnants of Asmodeus’s blood flames left dark burn marks across them, but the Behemoth continued to change until the injured sections vanished beneath a hard shell.

"It adapted to the attack."

Asmodeus watched the armour finish forming.

"This is going to be a pain in the ass..." Velvet complained before pointing at the massive creature. "Isn’t it a lot smaller now though?"

"Are you crazy? Look beneath the waterline..."

Leviathan’s body rose higher.

What they had mistaken for its full size had merely been the portion resting above the ocean. More of the Behemoth emerged from beneath the waves: immense fins lined with hooked bones, crooked limbs hidden beneath its mass, and ridges of flesh packed with mouths that opened and closed around rows of translucent teeth.

The storm changed with it.

Lightning curved toward Leviathan instead of the sea.

Clouds spiralled above its body, forming a black crown as the beast finally lifted its head from the water.

Millions of eyes focused on Asmodeus.

"GURAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Its roar was so powerful it evaporated the rain.

All of a sudden, its armoured slits flashed.

Asmodeus raised Axiom, expecting another barrage, but the beams did not fire toward the fortress; instead, they swept sideways.

Thousands of narrow lines crossed the sky in a moving lattice.

"Shit, break formation! Spread apart!" Asmodeus shouted.

He couldn’t believe his eyes; the beams were hunting the Valkyire in the air, like a pack of bloodthirsty wolves.

The Valkyries scattered seconds before the lattice reached them.

Beams crossed at shifting angles, closing escape routes as Leviathan’s eyes tracked each individual movement. Several knights tried to climb, only for the light to curve upward. Others dove and found another row waiting beneath them.

Velvet rotated her halberd and smashed through two beams.

A third sliced across her shoulder scales.

"They’re following the eyes!" Asmodeus answered. "Destroy the slits before they adjust!"

He vanished in a burst of blood.

The lattice converged on his position, but he teleported again before it closed. Red afterimages spread across the storm as Leviathan’s eyes struggled to follow his movements.

Asmodeus appeared above its armoured back.

Axiom descended.

The halberd struck one of the black plates, splitting it down the centre. The impact travelled through Leviathan’s body, forcing the surrounding eyes to close as a crater opened beneath Asmodeus’s feet.

Before the flesh could trap him, his six blood wings tore outward.

Their sharp edges shredded the armour around him.

Velvet crashed down beside him with enough force to drive both scaled feet into another plate. Lavender fire covered her halberd as she stabbed into the exposed slit beneath.

An entire cluster of eyes burst.

Leviathan convulsed.

Vinea landed on its side moments later.

Balmung carved through the beast’s armour, leaving molten scars that refused to close. She dragged the holy blade behind her as she ran, opening a burning path for Erika and Ciela.

Levia remained above them.

Her cracked shield absorbed a cluster of tracking beams while dark lightning gathered around its rim.

"Move!"

She released everything.

A pillar of black lightning struck the molten path Vinea had created. The Behemoth’s armour exploded upward, throwing shattered plates, black blood and ruined eyes across the ocean.

The Valkyries descended into the opening.

Their weapons glowed as hundreds of attacks pierced the soft flesh beneath Leviathan’s adapted shell.

The beast roared again.

One of its crooked limbs erupted from the sea.

It resembled the arm of some ancient corpse, long enough to bridge the distance between Leviathan and the fortress. Blade-like claws swept through the storm toward the attacking women.

Asmodeus appeared in front of them and caught the largest claw against Axiom. The collision crushed the ocean beneath him into a circular crater. His muscles tightened, yet his body moved no farther than several metres.

Leviathan pushed with the force of a falling island.

Asmodeus’s golden eyes burned brighter as his body exploded with a strange heat, his excitement growing with each change.

"I’ll admit that you’re damn strong."

The sharp wings behind him drove forward.

"...But not enough for me to submit!"

He twisted Axiom, slicing the blade along the fleshy joints around the claw, before cleaving through them.

Two claws dropped into the ocean as Asmodeus hovered in the air.

’This is dangerous... I’m getting tired....’

It may have seemed they had the advantage, but his aura began to fluctuate, his muscles convulsing in painful spasms as he neared his limits... and yet the beast was still growing ever stronger.