ACT 6: CHAPTER 34: MASTER AND DISCIPLE TAG TEAM

“Ha ha ha ha ha! I’m good at aerial battles too! Time to die!” He slashed at me and Urzottle with his claws.

“Gah!”

I just barely managed to knock the strike aside with my blade, but Urzottle was sent tumbling and lost his balance.

I clung onto the fur on Urzottle’s back with all I had using the hand not holding my sword. I would fall into the abyss below Cocytus if I got thrown off now. Urzottle moved, trying to put distance between us and Lucifer for a moment, but Lucifer pursued, closing any distance.

“How was that? How ’bout this? And this?!”

Lucifer slashed with his left hand. I scrambled to parry it, but Lucifer immediately followed up with another strike with his right hand.

While I was doing everything I could to block the ­attacks, I eventually lost my balance entirely, and the claw I meant to defend against tore deep into my chest, flinging me from Urzottle’s back at the same time.

“Agh!!!”

Things are going dark…

If Lucifer had really been trying to kill me with that series of attacks, he could have. He was just playing with me.

“Kanata!” Lunaire screamed, and it was thanks to that cry that I managed to pull myself back to consciousness.

“Awooooo!”

I reached toward that howl and was able to touch Urzottle. It seemed that he came over right next to me. I dragged myself back onto his back.

“Hah, you’re not half-bad,” said Lucifer. “There’s not too many people out there as strong as you. But I’m still stronger! I’ll show you that in the end, no matter how far you go, you’re still just a puppet on a stage!”

Lucifer rushed toward me. I hadn’t fully gotten myself back on balance yet, but I still had to stop the powerful claw strike from Lucifer with my sword.

I can’t find a way to get a counterattack in!

Lucifer’s flurry of blows was powerful, fast, and sly. He was trying to throw me off balance and play with me.

He also kept driving me back away from Lunaire, meaning she couldn’t really step in to help. He was skillfully avoiding a two-on-one style fight.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Taking on a pair of lovers…I hit the jackpot! Listen up, Lunaire! I’m gonna toy with you once I pummel your man to death and you’re all raging with revenge!”

Lucifer stretched out his purply-red tongue and let out a crude laugh.

The moment he did, a vein throbbed in Lunaire’s temple and the glare from her mismatched eyes bore into Lucifer. She sped up. Before she’d been unable to catch up with us, but now her kick landed squarely into Lucifer’s stomach.

“Oof!” He went flying backward. “Ha ha ha! What?! You’re actually kind of fast when you’re really trying! You’re a simple girl, aren’t ya? You fall apart the moment your man gets—”

“Gravity Bomb.”

Lunaire’s follow-up spell went off before Lucifer fully righted himself again.

The second the black light expanded, it caught onto Lucifer and rapidly imploded. Lucifer tried to scurry away, but the gravity had a hold of him and wouldn’t let him escape.

“Tsk, that’s an annoying spell! God…dammit!” Lucifer used pure force to escape the black light, but he wasn’t able to avoid it entirely. His left arm bent awkwardly and shattered into pieces.

“Gaaaaaaah!” he shrieked.

“Kanata, is your chest all right?” asked Lunaire as she flew over to me.

A magic circle appeared and the wound on my chest closed in mere moments—Lunaire’s spell, Retrograde. It reversed the flow of time, completely recovering any wound or defect. ᚱἁΝŐ𝔟Ë𝘴

I smiled slightly. There was something nostalgic about that spell to me.

“Kanata…?” asked Lunaire.

“Uh, sorry. I was just thinking how we haven’t fought together since I left Cocytus. I know it’s not the situation for it, but it brings back memories and…sort of makes me happy.” And it’d been a long time since Lunaire cast Retrograde on me. “I can’t just be holding you back. This isn’t the same as back then, I graduated from your training. I didn’t get off to a great start in this fight, but let me stand beside you now. It’s been a long time since I’ve fought someone at a higher level than me, but it’s not the first time.”

Lunaire gave me a blank stare of amazement for a ­moment, but it quickly turned into a smile. “Yes, please do. This enemy looks to be just a little beyond me, if I’m on my own. And you are my approved disciple. I’m counting on you.”

“Don’t get cocky…” said Lucifer. “A wound like this isn’t anything to me.” He pressed hard on his left elbow with his right arm.

His left arm spasmed and jerked, then the forearm that had just been torn to pieces regrew, returning to normal in a matter of moments.

“You might be undead, but you’re still just a fake ­human! I’m way tougher than the two of you! An arm or two ain’t nothin’! I let my guard down a tiny bit, but now play time’s over! I’m seriously gonna destroy you!”

He came at us. Lunaire and I exchanged a quick look, and then we flew to opposite sides to flank him.

“You think you’re tricky!” he cried.

I swung my sword at his claws from the left side. I was only dealing with one of his hands, but I still had to put everything I had into my attacks just to handle it, considering my level. Even so, if I could keep even just one of his hands tied up, then Lunaire should be able to land a decisive blow.

She went into hand-to-hand combat with him. Though he boasted the much larger size, she kept moving to slip into his blind spots where she would crack him in the hips and back with sharp kicks. He couldn’t fully handle her movements while I was distracting him.

“Tsk, dumbasses! Don’t think this improv coordination’s going to work well for you forever!” shouted Lucifer as he lashed out with both claws in a twirling strike. When he did, I slipped from right to left, avoiding the claws. Lunaire moved the opposite, from left to right, and she evaded as well, leaving Lucifer defenseless as both his arms stretched out and struck nothing but air.

“Huh…?”

For a brief moment, Lucifer lost sight of both me and Lunaire. I used that moment to slash his abdomen, and Lunaire smashed his head with a kick at the same time.

“Ack?! You pieces of trash! How dare you?! I’m higher-level! How can these garbage enemies do this?!”

Our attacks seemed to do a lot of damage. Lucifer did look like he was in pain as he cradled his head and retreated from us.

Unfortunately for him, our coordination wasn’t just improvisation. I couldn’t fight to my fullest earlier because I’d felt so overwhelmed by him, but once I really thought about it, I realized that Lunaire and I had fought demons more powerful than me more than just once or twice. That’s what we’d done every time in the Cursed Mirror of the Warped Realm.

We were completely in control of the pace of this fight.

I formed a magic circle and fired off a spell at Lucifer.

“Fire Magic Level 20: Apocalypse!”

A red dragon raced through the air and tried to clamp its jaws onto Lucifer. Lunaire used space-time magic to teleport to my side and avoid the spell.

“…Hate relying on the damn staff, but guess I got no choice. You small fry are just a little bit annoying,” said Lucifer as he raised his staff. Just as a magic circle appeared in front of him, my Apocalypse dragon vanished. “That’s enough for now. None of your little tricks or cooperation are gonna work on me anymore, not one bit. I’m gonna crush you with the sheer difference between our abilities.”

…That’s the same staff ability that Satan used.

BLACK STAFF OF THE APOCALYPSE

VALUE CLASS: Godly

A staff that confirms the wielder as the rightful King of Cocytus and provides the necessary power to rule the dungeon. All monsters sealed in Cocytus will submit to the wielder’s sovereignty.

The staff assists with the casting of godly fire spells above level 20 and creates an anti-magic barrier around the wielder.

The staff’s size scales to the size of the user.

It created an anti-magic barrier… That was the power of the Black Staff of the Apocalypse, the symbol of the ruler of Cocytus which Lucifer must have stolen from Satan.

When Satan used that barrier, he didn’t have enough magic for it to fully cancel out my spell, and that left me with the impression that the power wasn’t all that great, but there was just too large a difference in power between users now.

In terms of levels, Lucifer was higher than both me and Lunaire. We would definitely lose out in a fight of pure power if we tried to hit him with the amount of magic we had and the spells we could output with it. Lucifer having a barrier that canceled out all spells without question was an incredibly difficult thing to deal with.

“Can’t believe pathetic humans made me use the Black Staff. That seriously pisses me off,” said Lucifer.

It was actually absurd that he could completely nullify all lower-level spells. Our only option was to use the fact that we outnumbered him to overwhelm him, but since we couldn’t use magic, Lucifer could just fire wicked spells at us while we couldn’t do anything back.

And when I’d thought that far, a smile naturally formed on my face.

“Kanata…?” asked Lunaire, looking at me with confusion.

“What’s so funny, you otherworld ass?!” shouted Lucifer as he glared at me.

“Well…when I really thought about it, I realized we’ve fought against demons with anti-magic abilities before, in the Cursed Mirror,” I said. And sure, Lucifer was a higher level than the demons in the Cursed Mirror…and he was intelligent—but I still had Lunaire by my side. I had no intentions of losing to a guy like this.

“I am the oldest, greatest demon, created directly by the higher beings to rule over Locklore… I am nothing like those pathetic things! Don’t you dare lump me in with those filthy bugs who just happened to come into existence from the gaps in space-time because of the higher beings’ screw-ups!”

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My first CN project, why waifu though? Well, coz the main heroine's job is buying soy sauce till the end of act 1

New Project:

Harem, Hero, Demon King, Seven Deadly Sin, Seven Virtue, Sacred Beast, Sword and Magic, Dystopian Future, DESTINY PROJECT HAD IT REALIZED!, Dungeon, Dragon, 72 Demons, Reincarnations

More and Cheaper(10/$10) Advance Chapter :

(~’.’)~Archive to my old Projects in Ko-Fi~(‘.’~)