Second Power.
A mirror that was too obscure for my purposes of looking at my face. I turn it this way and that, but it reflects nothing.
I’ve heard that the sword in the head of the demon rampaging in the distance is the one used to subdue demons, so perhaps this mirror is a holy relic that reveals their true nature.
In truth, the mirror’s purpose was of no consequence to me.
“‘Murder!”
“I was going to absorb it anyway, Mother.”
As I gazed into the mirror and silently prayed to the Mother of Corruption, a dark green light slowly emanated from the mirror, seeping into my body and into my mother’s hands. When the energy from the mirror ceased, I closed my eyes and settled inward.
[Divinity: 11723]
So a single sealed holy artifact contains ten thousand divine powers, just one power. I snapped my sinking mind back to reality.
I carefully removed my mother’s hand from my bosom.
“Mother, another seal has been broken. Can you tell me what has changed?”
“Murder!
I waited patiently for my mother’s words, knowing that she was just figuring it out. After all, my legs were crushed in the fall earlier, so there was nothing I could do but wait for them to regenerate.
After a few moments of waiting, my mother slowly handed me my will.
“Murder!
“What? Is that really it?”
“Murder!
My mother’s hand slipped from my grasp, her fingers twitching, and she crawled away from me. Then she fell to the floor with an effort and gave me her will.
“Murder!
I said as I crawled across the floor and picked up my mother’s hand, tucking it back into my arms.
“It’s certainly a good thing that you can send your will from a little further away than you used to, but—. Isn’t your achievement too meager for breaking the seal of a single holy object, no, it’s definitely meager. I’m very disappointed in this—.”
“Murder!
I smirked at the sound of my mother’s exasperation.
“At least you’ve increased the number of things you can say, that’s progress. You can even break up your words into single letters. This son is blinded by tears at his mother’s progress.”
“Murder!!!
The mother’s hands flailed wildly.
“Alright,” I said, “given the circumstances, I think it’s best that you stop teasing your mother here.”
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer.
“Mother of Corruption. I offer you the divinity of Ilman. Please grant me new powers.”
The level of divinity within me dropped rapidly, and new power flooded my body.
As the power flowed in, information about what it could do was imprinted on my brain.
“Murder…?
“Hmph. Not a bad power. Mother, it’s quite useful in the current situation.”
The new power I’d gained after sacrificing Ilman’s divinity this time was the ‘Gate of Corruption’.
The effect of this power was simple and powerful: upon activating it, a dark green metaphysical tattoo would appear over my entire body, amplifying my physical abilities beyond the scope of humanity.
However, unlike the Giant of Decay, this power was not merely beneficial to me; the cost of the Gate of Decay was as simple as the power itself: while I used it to amplify my physical abilities, I was slowly decaying from the inside out. By the time the rot had eaten me from the inside out, I would be incapacitated.
I smirked.
“One use of this, and you’ll be stuck in the gut until your innards regenerate, Mother.”
“Murder…
I patted my breast pocket to soothe her.
“Mother, you don’t have to feel sorry for me at all. Powers are something I wield because I want them, after all, and it’s always good to have a variety of means to wield them.”
Just then, the regeneration of the crushed leg ended.
– Gaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I slowly picked myself up and looked at the demon still rampaging in the distance.
“Now that I think about it, that’s very strange.”
“Murder?
It was strange, even strange, that the demon was still rampaging like a beast over there, even now that the priests who had drawn its ire were all dead.
The demon was not a beast that left everything to its own instincts.
Things had been moving too fast for me to think, but the brief respite I’d had while regenerating my crushed leg had given me a chance to analyze what had just happened.
By now, I had come to one conclusion.
“Mother.”
“Murdered?
“Maybe a little shaken. Hold on tight to your pockets.”
“Murder?!
***
A man in pure white priestly robes sprinted over the broken rubble. The dark green tattoos that covered his skin oozed a constant stream of corruption divinity.
With a vigor far beyond human strength, each time Marnak struck the earth, he became a line, closing the distance between him and the demon.
– Gaaaaaaaah!
The giant black crocodile instinctively realized that something was coming toward him, and its large eyes scanned its surroundings, searching for the source of this ominous feeling.
A tiny creature was running toward him.
The demon responded in a very simple way: he swung his massive tail with all the force it could muster at the offending creature. The enormous tail crushed everything it came in contact with as it hurtled toward the tiny creature.
Marnak remained calm. The muscles in his legs stretched to their limits, and as if waiting for it, he unleashed it. Marnak’s body soared into the air. The giant tail narrowly missed reaching him.
The black tail whizzed past him, right in front of his eyes. As if waiting, Marnak reached out and clung to the demon’s tail, then sprang to his feet and sprinted over its body toward its head.
The demon stretched out its front paws to scratch the creature as it sprinted across its back, but then it realized a fatal truth.
The crocodile couldn’t scratch its own back.
Faced with the limitations of its own anatomy, the devil chose another option. It decided to throw its massive body around once more. This nimble creature would be crushed to death by it, just like the metal lump that had hurt him so badly earlier, or so he thought.
Marnak’s black body tilted as he ran. But this, too, was to be expected. Without warning, Marnak leapt off the crocodile’s back and landed on the ground. A searing pain burned through his knees, but his power-amplified body cushioned the impact of the fall.
“Kulk.”
He coughed, splinters of rotting guts spewing out.
“This is going faster than I expected. I don’t think this is a power I’ll be able to use for long, Mother.”
There was no time to pause. A huge black shadow stretched across the land. Marnak sprinted through the rubble again, dodging the demon’s massive body as it rolled from behind.
The massive body tore down the streets of Guise without a trace.
Marnak ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, until the demon rose to its feet.
Marnak sprinted to the demon’s front feet and leaped to his feet. The priest’s flying hand touched the demon’s forefoot. He climbed up the demon’s bumpy hide with the ease of a monkey climbing a tree.
– Gaaaaaaaah!
No matter how hard he tried to tear it off, it wouldn’t come off, and that enraged the demon even more. Roaring, it tilted its massive body once more.
If once wasn’t enough, he would roll over and over again until it fell off.
Another tilt.
But Marnak, unlike Dara, did not leap from the demon’s body. His eyes, which had already reached the demon’s neck, caught a glimpse of the white sword embedded in its skull.
“Haaaaab!”
The Priest of Corruption skidded across the tilting floor, leaped up, and stretched out his hand. Marnak’s hand gripped the white blade roughly.
One more thrust from here and the demon would be dragged into my world.
But Marnak didn’t thrust it in. Instead, he pulled it roughly out of the demon’s skull.
“Get up!”
– Gaahhhhhhhhhh!
The giant black crocodile’s body collapsed. The chunks of black flesh that had fallen with Marnak became a soft cushion, absorbing the impact of the blow to Marnak’s body.
Once again, Marnak rose to his feet and dug through the mass of black flesh.
He smirked at the demon he’d finally found.
“Have you come to your senses?”
The demon squinted slightly out of one empty eyeball and smiled pleasantly.
“Running into a priest, I must admit, is a real blessing in disguise!”
***.
The demon loved conversation and enjoyed the exchange of spoken words.
It was a strange thing, though, that it could rage and rant without saying a word.
After carefully examining the demon’s condition, I came to one conclusion.
Something was forcibly suppressing the demon’s intellect.
The only thing on its massive body that didn’t belong to me was the white sword embedded in its crown, and the story was simple. That white sword was the shackles that held the demon’s intellect in check.
So instead of pushing it deeper, I pulled it out to awaken my demonic intellect.
The devil, who had lost one eye, both legs, and his left arm, lamented with tears in his eyes.
“It’s too much. It is indeed too much. Guise is a city I’ve spent the last forty years tending to, and to have it destroyed by my own hands.”
I crouched down beside the demon and took in the words. I was so sick to my stomach in the aftermath of the Gates of Corruption that I could barely stand.
“What’s torn down, builds back up, and what’s not to love about a victory and a tidy city block? Besides, if you look closely, the buildings on the outskirts are still pretty much intact.”
The demon chuckled.
“The priest is indeed right, and by the way, sadness is such an exciting emotion, because it makes my heart pound so hard! Hahahaha! But do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“It’s okay to ask.”
He turned to face me, his eye sockets missing their eyeballs, replaced with nothing but red flesh.
“Why did you help me?”
“You gave me two gold coins, didn’t you? When a man receives something, he should give back.”
I smirked.
“How’s that, two gold coins from me.”
The devil smirked back.
“You’re very full of it.”