Chapter 3 - Meat and Greet

(Another week, another chapter)  

I exhaled loudly, slamming my foot down on the massively armored demon’s detached head.  Removing that hadn’t killed him though, it turned out demons viewed their heads as more optional than one might expect. Still, if you did enough damage a demon would perish, in his case I suspected the gaping hole in his chest is what did him in.

“Are you going to help, Big Dog?” I growled.

“That’s a whole can of worms you don’t want to open,” said Shart, who was currently hiding in my mind space.  He might have even been right.

“You are supposed to be in charge of these hellions,” I groused as a poisoned barb flashed past my face.  I dodged it, of course, but they were far closer to my skin than I liked.

“I’m in charge of demons on Ordinal, this is Jersey,” said Shart.  “Are you getting tired?  Need old Shart to pull you out of the fire?”

I didn’t actually need his help.

“Anyone else?” I bellowed.

Another scythe armed succubus dashed towards me, her bladed armed coated with some sort of poison I’d rather not get on myself.  I Blinked away as she struck, reappearing behind her already moving my heel down in a powerful ax kick that I further augmented.

· Powerful Badger’s Hind Kick:  Using the strength of a badger’s hind legs, you know how to deliver a blow capable of breaching most magical defenses.

o Augmented with Powerful Blow: Base damage doubled.

o Augmented with Knockdown Blow: Base Knock Back distance doubled.

o Augmented with Badger’s Rage: Base Damage increased by 3-12

I could do over 90 points of damage with a single kick.  That was enough to literally tear a normal human in half with plenty of damage to spare.  The demon’s head merely smashed into her chest.  She glared at me from her own bellybutton.

After tearing several apart I’d learned their organs were wildly different than anything I’d seen on a living creature.  Plus, the succubus lacked the equivalent of female equipment, with that section of their bodies containing what might be politely described as a built-in dumpster for such products.  They also had a second mouth in a terrible spot.

“We don’t keep our brains in our heads, that alone is proof that evolution is a stupid way to make an animal” said Shart as the succubus slashed at me with her claws.  At least the bite wouldn’t’ work with her head smashed into her chest cavity, those bites were designed to painfully remove flesh.

Two more demons tried to sneak up behind me.  They failed as I twisted around in a Ryu style hurricane kick landing three hits on both of them before my leg slammed into another demon’s chest and stopped.

The Incubus glared at me.  While succubus were thin, curvy and looked like feminine killing machines, incubus’ were stocky, well muscled killing machines. They were no more male than the succubus were female, they just aligned more with a ‘traditional’ male body type.

Which is to say that he was much larger and more muscular.

“Again, not a ‘he’,” said Shart.

“Not helping,” I said, giving the massive demon space.

He also had a sword, one of those glowing fiery ones that they drew in the fantasy novels about hell.  I dodged under his first slash only to take a hoof to the chest which sent me flying into another demon.  I jammed my elbow under her ‘neck’ and flipped.

She went flying into another group of creatures while I managed to get my feet back on the ground the instant before the Incubus got back into his weapon’s range.  I dodged three more rapid attacks even as the massive demon erupted into flames, complete with fiery wings and tail.

The tail snapped towards me the same moment the demon executed a powerful blow.  I dodged the sword, but his tail grabbed my ankle and the next moment I was 20 logs away buried face down in stone and rusty metal.  He tried to move me again, and I refused.

· Mitigate successful: You have prevented yourself from being moved.

The Incubus snarled and launched himself high into the air on his fiery wings, planning on bringing his sword down in my chest.  I was going through my options when Badgelor snatched the demon out of the air and they both went down in a heap.

Then it was massive glowing claws, burning teeth, and unbreakable hide vs whatever the demon had.  Surprisingly the incubus managed to actually toss Badgelor off, after a few horrible seconds.

Badgelor spit out the demon’s arm and walked over to me.  The demon general snarled, causing the small army of demons at his back to roar in unison.  We’d thinned their numbers, and Badgelor had killed the house sized one, but there were still plenty.  More than plenty.

Badgelor stared the general down, “You still taste like shite.”

“Badgelor, welcome back,” nodded the demon.  “You know we respawn, so this is all pointless, you aren’t getting past us, again.”

“That’s what you said the last time,” grinned the war badger.

“This time will be different,” stated the general through gritted teeth.

“That’s what you said the time before that,” continued Badgelor.

We’d been fighting with the demons for the better part of an hour now.  While it was tremendous for experience points, it wasn’t really doing much for the goal of actually getting into the Shadowlands, or whatever the nefarious realm of the shadows was called.  That was where Jarra’s soul had been sent, and I was going to try to recover whatever was left of it.

The problem was that Badgelor was a War Badger, and they liked to fight.  That was literally all Badgelor had going for him at the moment, so I’d been willing to just fight with demons for a time.  Unfortunately, they kept bringing out more demons who were more upset with me, because they were the same demons.

“They can respawn?” I asked Shart.

The demon paused his current project, which I imagined was demonic sudoku and glanced out my eyes for a moment.  The fact that Shart physically existed in my ‘mindspace’ when he wasn’t out and about was disturbing, but at this point I was used to it.

“Okay Dum Dum, I’ve been reading your memories to try to figure out how to explain this and I think I got it,” said Shart, clearing his throat.  “Your soul is like a pog’rum.”

“Program?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s what I said, anyway, that pog’rum is capable of making your body work.  That is really what you are, and the meat robutt that you are just follows its commands.”

“Robot,” I said.

“You are lying, no human is going to lose an opportunity to put butt in a word,” said Shart.

“Point,” I agreed.

“Mortal souls are stuck into one body, that’s what makes them mortals.  Demon souls aren’t.  So, when you kill a demon, they just go back and pick out a new body.”

“Could you?” I asked.

“No, Jim,” said Shart.  “I’m an elder demon, I’m never allowed to leave this particular body.”  There was a world of pain behind those words.  Given that seemed to be a basic part of ‘demonhood’ I realized being stuck in a single body was probably a special hell for Shart.

“Fine, so when I kill these demons, they just go back to their spawn point and keep coming back,” I said.

“You finally get it,” exhaled Shart.

“I call hax,” I grumbled checking out my experience point log and groaning.  The last batch of demons were nearly all respawns and the system considered that as me fighting the same monster twice. In short, the number of experience points I’d been given was reduced.

· You have earned 82 experience points since your last check. You are max level, all XP are banked. Due to your Great General perk, Shared Lessons, all of your banked experience points are being shared.

Skill points were significantly better because those were rated on the life and death scale, but still the risk reward ratio out here was becoming decidedly thin.

“And another thing, your sword is stupid,” said Badgelor, kicking the weapon back to the demon.

“My mother made this for me,” growled the general.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“You don’t think we have mothers,” said Shart.  “They aren’t as important as uncle-dads of course.”

“Okay, do you have an uncle-dad?” I asked.

“Of course! What kind of question is that! My uncle-dad is a demonic lawyer named Jason,” said Shart.

“How is your uncle-dad, Jason?”

“No idea, guys a dick,” stated Shart.

I was going to have an aneurysm here.

I glanced at the demon’s name and cringed.  I hated this place. The high general of the demon army finally noticed me and grinned, exposing a maw full of burning teeth.

“We will tear through your army of demons if we must, Ben,” I declared.  The demonic general in charge of the elite army responsible for protecting Jersey, a massive twelve-foot hoofed monstrosity that was straight out of nightmares, glared down at me with burning eyes.

“There is no way you get past me.  My life is entirely in service to the System.  I will die a million deaths before I let you get to the dungeon,” said Ben, a fresh arm exploding out of the hole where his old arm used to be as he picked up his sword.  It erupted in even more flames as a volcano erupted behind him.

“If that is where the passage to the Shadow Realm is, not even Megatron could stop me,” I declared.

Ben paused before turning to one of the nearby demons, “I don’t get that one.”

“Checking,” said a succubus.  “He’s a villain in the sacred texts, loses a lot, has a lieutenant called HarScream.”

“Why would a human protect a scream,” asked another demon.

“Mortals suck so much,” groaned the third, eyeing the two of us.  She sighed.  “Let's go die again.”

Ben nodded, saluting with his burning blade, “I will stop your incursion.  I am the shield of the dungeon, nothing will ever let you get into the great vault where the dual crystals remain! I shall… wait did you say Shadow Realm?”

“Yes,” I replied.

Ben looked over at the succubus again and she just shrugged.  “He’s just making up words at this point!”

“Shart, what’s the entrance to the shadow realm called down here?” I asked.

“Well, it's a massive disgusting, decaying wound in Jersey that drags the whole place down,” said Shart.

I sighed, “I’m trying to get to Newark.”