Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

Chapter 259: It’s Almost Over

Back inside the battlefield, Spectra started to feel a dreadful wave flowing through her body. It started as a tremor in her left hand. Her fingers were twitching, making it difficult for her to conjure Gloomfire as easily.

She felt her channels shaking within her, but she refused to soften her approach. Instead, she forced them open with a growl and pushed more Gloom through them.

The energy lit her up and she kept fighting, but the glitch continued to spread.

A muscle in her thigh spasmed, throwing her off balance mid-swing. The Hellstaff’s glow stuttered. Inside her, the network of channels were now beginning to overheat, the Gloom running through them no longer a smooth current but a churning, frothing torrent that eroded its own banks.

"What is happening to her?" Thor asked.

"I warned her about this," Lancet said. "Using Gloom like this, going all out in Demon mode was going to strain on her heavily. That kind of power is way too much for her to control."

"But she’s a Demoness," Kestrel questioned. "Isn’t she? She should be alright."

"She’s still human. Even though she can use Gloom to morph herself, she’s fundamentally still a human and humans weren’t built to contain this much Gloom."

"So how did she do it before?"

Lancet narrowed his eyes. "Baphomet," he said.

Everyone glanced at him.

"That’s why I told her she couldn’t do it without him. As a Demon Lord, Baphomet was strong enough to empower her to tank any amount of Gloom."

Baphomet had been Spectra’s buffer, her capacitor, the dark heart that regulated the flood.

"Right now, without him, she was a reservoir with no dam."

Inside the battle field, this began to show even more.

Spectra’s vision fractured. For a split second she saw double—the battlefield and something else, a dark place with no ground and no sky. She blinked and it was gone, but her heart was beating wrong, a syncopated rhythm that sent pain lancing through her ribs.

She pulled another soul, but the effort nearly dropped her to her knees. The Gloom in her system was not just power anymore; it was poison, turning on its host as she ran out of the constitutional strength to contain it.

Channels that should have held were leaking, thin wisps of red smoke bleeding from her pores. Her horn-light flickered. One of her wings sagged, the membrane tearing further under its own weight.

Around her, her army was thinning. Many of her Demons were fading, their connection to her faltering as her control wavered. A Winged Demon dissolved mid-dive, scattering into red embers. The blade-armed humanoids, half of them gone, fought on with the silent dedication of the dying.

But it was enough. It was almost enough.

Most of the Purgatory Demons were shattered and their numbers reduced to scattered knots of resistance. All their relentless savagery had finally been blunted by attrition. The spectral souls she had claimed still rampaged among them, tearing at their former comrades.

Even though her power was failing her, at least the battle was coming to an end. It was all nearly over.

The Gloom clouds were still thick and there was still a good number of Purgatory Demons so the Heroines stayed back and waited, obeying Lancet’s order to trust in each other’s competence.

Spectra’s Demons kept attacking and killing the Purgatory Demons, even while they took reduced in numbers.

Spectra herself hovered unsteadily, her wings beating out of rhythm, her chest heaving. She was still the most dangerous thing on the field, but now it was the danger of a wounded god.

Immense but finite.

Lancet took a deep breath of relief. ’Just hold on a bit, Spectra. It’s almost over.’

"Ngaahh!" Spectra slashed the head of one with her claws. "Arghh!" She engulfed another in Gloomfire.

’That’s it. Just keep fighting. The battle’s already won, just kee—’

ROOOOAAAARRRR!

Everyone suddenly froze. They had all heard that roar. Lancet looked around the battlefield to see if any of the Purgatory Demons had made the sound but none of the remaining creatures there seemed capable to let out such a terrifying, heart rumbling echo.

It had come from farther away, a deep, guttural bellow that rolled across the plain like a storm front. It was a voice of command, a voice of war, a voice that promised nothing but battle and death.

Spectra dropped the lifeless demon she held in her hand and her head lifted slowly. Her exhausted eyes focused on the distant rise beyond the battlefield.

Lancet scurried to the left and climbed up a small stone building to look over the battlefield. The Heroines slightly lifted themselves into the air as well to see.

And what they all saw was a new army coming.

They crested the rise in a black tide, these were normal Demons — Tainted, Fallen and Descending ranks, all that was left of Deathrock’s invasion garrison — and they were legion.

Over the course of Lancet’s infiltration, they must have united and held back as a reserve, a final wave. A last stand.

The Demon Lords’ truce had indeed been a lie, layer upon layer of deception, and now the last card was being played.

At their head, towering above the rest, came the Demon Commander.

Its body was a fortress of scarred crimson muscle and black iron plate. Curved horns, thick as a man’s torso, swept back from a skull that looked hewn from volcanic rock.

In both hands it carried a greataxe whose blade was the colour of drying blood, its edge serrated with what might have been the teeth of something primordial. Its eyes burned with a fury. It might not have the madness of Purgatory, but the malice it possessed made it even more dangerous.

It raised the axe and bellowed again, and the army behind him answered with a cry that shook the ground.

Spectra, hovering over the field of the dead and dying, her own form threatening to come apart at the seams, looked at the new threat. Her fingers tightened on the Hellstaff. The fluttering Gloom inside her screamed for release. Her human heart screamed for rest.

Neither would get what they wanted.

On the rise Lancet quickly scrambled down the building and drew the Guillotine.

This was not over. This was merely the second verse.