He focused through his energy affinity, the one that let him see and sense the flow of power in everything around him. He cycled demonic energy to his eyes, sharpening his vision until every detail of the clearing snapped into focus. Then he flooded them with death, layering that cold perception over the scene. Finally he pulled his oracle aspect forward, that fragment of himself that could trace threads of consequence and outcome. He watched everything in close detail, intent on not missing a single thing.
Rhea had spotted its level from a distance. Level 26. Perfect.
He reached through his connection to Fenrir and ordered the wolf to create two illusions. Two holographic decoys shaped exactly like himself, identical in every way but made of pure, shimmering energy. They flickered into existence beside him, perfect copies that moved when he moved, breathed when he breathed.
“Let’s go,” he hissed through the rustling leaves.
David, his two illusionary duplicates, and his thralls then silently charged at the warlock while Rhea held back at the tree line with her javelins ready.
The pack spotted them.
David's forces dispersed into a staggered, multi-angle advance, spreading out to hit the enemy from different angles. The werebeasts charged to meet them, massive and bristling with weapons. Cinder and the hob raced ahead of David, tearing into the pack, creating a gap for him to push straight through toward the floating wolf in the tattered robe. He could have used invisibility to make the approach even cleaner, but that would have exposed the capability to Rhea. Invisibility was one trick he still had no desire to share with her. Even now, with everything they'd been through, that stayed his alone.
For this battle? His plan would be efficient and brutal. Disruption came before body count. While the hob and Cinder fought the werebeasts, while Rhea fired javelin after javelin into the pack from her hidden position, his sole focus was the level 29 warlock floating above the chaos. That thing could throw bolts that would fog your mind mid-swing or lightning that would cook you where you stood. It was the largest threat in the clearing by a wide margin. He didn't have a healer for the others. If one of his people took a hit that scrambled their brain or stopped their heart, that was it. No second chances. So his priority was taking that old wolf out of the equation as fast as possible. Hyper efficiency.
He concentrated. A large, jagged spear of pure black fire formed in the air behind him, so dense with power it seemed to chill the air around it. Cold fire. Pure death. The two illusionary copies of himself, through Fenrir's magic, conjured identical copies of the death-flame spear, floating behind them as well. Three Davids, six spears, all charging at the floating warlock while chaos erupted below.
The warlock lazily pointed one gnarled finger. Dark and fiery spirits shot from its hand, streaking toward David and his two illusionary copies. One spirit slammed into the leftmost illusion. The decoy flickered and dissolved into motes of fading light. The other illusion veered hard, the spirit passing through empty air where its chest had been a moment before.
David's selective reinforcement sent him rocketing forward. His cursed smoky spear came up and sliced through the curses aimed at his real body. They split apart, unraveling into dissipating energy and screams from voices with too many mouths.
The warlock's hand twitched, trying to send those spirits into the bodies of the dead werebeasts scattered across the clearing. The dead would rise and the spirits would possess them. David was already moving. His spear punched through the nearest corpse before its eyes could flicker open. Cut off limbs. Another thrust through a third chest. A fourth skull, a fifth, a sixth—he worked through them in a fluid sequence, putting down every dead thing within reach before the spirits could find a home. The bodies jerked once and went still again.
The warlock's lazy expression shifted. A flicker of annoyance crossed its weathered wolf features.
David reached through the tether to Fenrir.
Almost immediately, the two false David illusions vanished. A sphere of absolute black, pitch and total, encased the warlock's entire body. The wolf floated there, trapped inside nothing it could see through.
David, this close, saw everything. His layered vision pierced the illusionary dark like it wasn't there. He watched the warlock's head swivel, confused, searching. With a thought, he launched the fiery spear of pure death at center mass, intent on grounding the thing permanently.
A chaotic burst of demonic energy exploded from the warlock. Fiery, ropy things thrashed out in every direction, things that looked like they belonged in a lightless trench, all slick movement and wrong angles. They whipped through Fenrir's blinding sphere and shattered it from the inside. The black illusion dissolved into shreds of fading light just before David's spear reached its target.
The warlock veered out of the air. The spear passed through empty space where its chest had been.
David sent a second spear rocketing after it, then a third. The first forced the creature to twist hard. The second clipped its robes. The third drove it low, down toward the ground where the fighting still raged.
Another sigil erupted from the warlock. This one was different, an insanely fine and intricate manipulation of demonic energy, threads of power woven so tight they looked solid. But this time the warlock did something strange. It reached out with one hand and levitated a bound stagfiend toward itself. The creature was still alive, still thrashing against whatever held it in place. The warlock summoned a sigil of demonic energy and pressed it against the stagfiend's chest. The creature's heart burst from its ribcage in a spray of dark blood. David saw a massive surge of energy and life force rush from the heart into the sigil, a thick stream of stolen vitality feeding directly into the ritual.
Not good. That's a lot of juice going somewhere I won't like.
Tentacles rose from the ground at his feet. Thick and wrong, covered in slick textures that seemed to shift when he looked at them, moving with a hungry, searching purpose. Curse spirits shot at him from the warlock's position. These were nothing like the last ones. These were supercharged, bloated with stolen power, dense and fast, trailing wakes of crackling energy that scorched the ground beneath them. The tentacles were massive, tree-sized, thrashing and slamming down. The curses hunted.
That's exactly where I won't like.
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David raised a massive wall of demonic fire. He pulled a full fifth of his total energy reserves and pushed it out in a wide, roaring arc. The flames climbed high and burned hot, green and black mingling, creating a barrier between himself and the worst of what was coming. The first spirits hit it and screamed. More kept coming.
His battle sense hit him. He jumped without thinking. A tentacle punched through the space where he'd been standing, thick as a tree trunk. He landed and kept moving, frantically dodging, slicing at the spirits with his cursed spear. They came at him fast, too many, too strong. He cut one down and another was already there.
Too many. Too fast.
A mental order from Fenrir hit him. Split. Multiple illusionary copies of himself burst into existence, fanning out in different directions, each one moving like the real thing. The real David was hidden among them. He kept moving, evading the massive tree-sized tentacles that slammed down where copies had been, evading the cursed spirits that tore through the illusions one by one looking for him.
Keep moving. Keep low. Keep alive.
David used the illusions and his abilities to race toward the warlock. He cut down spirits and curses as he went, sliced through them, kept dodging the tentacles that slammed down where he'd just been.
His Battle Sense showed him how and where maximum suffering existed, an insistent tugging at his sleeve, full of malice and sadistic mirth, showing him exactly where to strike each curse spirit, to make the chorus of fading voices wail in a painful note that he almost swore the twisted skill enjoyed.
Duck. Swing. Reinforce. Lunge.
Step by step. Copy by copy. Closer. The warlock was right there. He could see it now, hovering, focused on him. He wasn't stopping.
A javelin rocketed from behind and smashed into the warlock's shield, shattering it as he reached the creature.
Nice shot, Rhea.
Perfect timing.
Finally he was close. Close enough to swing. The creature summoned three large sigils angled at his chest. Right as David was before the creature, he yelled,
"NOW."
Cinder leaped into the air from somewhere behind. David hammered into the space where the shield had been with flaming spears and fireballs. He filled his magic field with an aura of death, pushing it into the area around the warlock to give it a taste of its own debilitating medicine. He swung his cursed spear. The warlock unleashed attacks that would have left him weak and fading, spirits and curses designed to drain and cripple. He saw them coming—and his spear cut through them, the blade severing each one before they could touch him. His Battle Sense almost enraged as his selective reinforcement shifted and demonic energy surged. His muscles swelled visibly. The spear’s curse empowered his every motion. He felt strong. Stronger than he’d ever felt.
He filled the cursed weapon with demonic energy and stabbed. At the same time, he swung the heretics shackle fragment, wrapping it around the warlock as the creature tried to rise into the air and create distance. The shackle bit into its body. The warlock turned, desperate.
The creature was surprisingly as strong as him—even with reinforcement. In that moment David saw what it would do. It would use the fact that he had to stand in one place to hold the soul binding chains. It would keep him still by summoning tentacles to ensnare him. If he let go of the shackles, the warlock would be free. If he held on, he would find himself trapped.
Then, just as he had planned, Cinder came crashing down from above.
A loud crack sounded as something within the creature broke. Its arm. David's demon savaged it, basically fucking it up with punches, excessive and delivered with sadistic glee. But she didn't kill it. Not yet. With the heretic shackle wrapped around its limb, draining its energy steadily, David watched the warlock summon a single feeble shield. The thing sputtered into existence and fractured on its own, dissolving before it could fully form.
His deathless demoness stood six and a half feet tall, towering and scaled, with claws that could shred through armor. Cinder wielded a greatsword made of bone that could cut through almost anything. She used selective reinforcement to make herself a monster, which she already was—savage, bloodthirsty, craving suffering and death and murder and barbarism and cruelty. She was a zealot for David, her perceived god, and she performed sadistic combat rituals in his honor. Right now she was beating one of those rituals into the warlock's broken body.
Half of the remaining creatures saw their leader being savaged and fled into the trees. The rest attacked, including the possessed corpses still burning with whatever kept them moving. The hob reacted instantly, his blade meeting the first wave. David's spear swung, finding throats and chests. Rhea's javelins rained down from her position with pinpoint accuracy, each one punching through fur and flesh and burning dead things.
Cinder did not stop pummeling the creature the whole time. Her fists rose and fell, rose and fell, each impact sending shockwaves through the warlock's form.
The demon suddenly stopped. Her fist hung in the air, mid-swing, and she withdrew, stepping back. Good. At the rate she’d going, he’d have flunked the semester before it even started. The warlock hung in the shackles, beaten and bruised, its energy draining steadily into David through the binding. It could barely hold itself upright.
David asked Cinder to stand back. He placed a foot on the beaten creature's chest, pinning it to the ground.
He looked at the hob across the clearing, watching it cut down another werebeast with that precise, efficient style it had. The thing was useful in a fight. Skilled and experienced, a weapon he could point at a problem and watch the problem go away.
But he'd learned everything he could from it. Not fully mastered its techniques, not yet, but he had the basics down and knew what mastery looked like when he saw it. The sword forms, the footwork, the way it positioned itself in a fight. Good enough.
He looked back at the warlock crumpled under his foot. The sigils. The tentacles. The curses. The way it manipulated demonic energy into patterns so fine and intricate they looked solid. That was real magic. That was power he could use. Compared to what he could learn from that broken thing at his feet, the hob's combat style was an apple sitting next to a whole orchard.
He reached through the tether to Cinder.
Cinder already stood behind the elite warrior. She was all too happy to oblige. Gleeful even. His stalwart demon stepped forward and drove the tip of her bone greatsword through the hob's back, the blade erupting from its chest in a spray of dark blood. The hob's sword clattered to the ground. Its mouth opened but no sound came out.
Then Cinder grabbed both its shoulders with her free hand, claws digging deep into flesh.
She reinforced her arms, the muscles swelling, and then she tore. Upward and outward. The body split at the torso, the two halves separating with a wet, tearing sound that carried across the clearing. Blood and organs and viscera spilled out in a steaming rush, looping intestines sliding free, chunks of things David couldn't identify splattering onto the ground. Cinder held both pieces up, one in each hand, arms extended like an offering. Blood trailed down her scaled arms in thick ropes, pooling at her elbows before dripping onto the corpses below.
David stared. For a second, maybe two. His face didn't move.
He shook his head. "Was that really necessary?" he muttered.
Then he shook his head again. Demons.
As Rhea moved cautiously in the distance to join him, David then turned his attention to the warlock.
It was a big wolf standing on two legs, old, wearing robes that had markers and badges sewn into them like a record of things it had done. The age was obvious in the grey muzzle and the clouded eyes. He hoped that meant experience, and experience meant knowledge, and knowledge meant power he could take.
Its breathing was shallow, barely moving its chest. The heretic shackle bound its soul and its energy, draining both into David at a steady, invisible trickle. He had yet to see a werebeast speak. It was likely this one couldn't, but it didn't matter. Sigils. Magic. Real demonic magic. The method. The theory. Any other spells it knew. Spirits. Curses. Lightning that made creatures lose their minds and attack anything moving. Tentacles the size of trees that came up from the ground, slick and wrong, covered in textures that slid around like they were alive under the skin, moving in ways that had nothing to do with muscles or bones, flowing like they followed rules that didn't exist here.
David wanted it all.
He pressed his palm flat against the old warlock’s chest and activated the thrall skill, binding the creature as his new demonic magic teacher.