BXBX NOVEL Chapter 118: Escaping.
He didn't sense anything there but mass amounts of disgustingly rich demonic energy on par with and above what Sitri had possessed, there were thousands of them like her occupying Hāl; demon-gods of varying levels of power, and then there was one who he could faintly sense.
A power so frightening it made his eye twitch when the thought of confronting it came into his mind, but Sol negated the thought and threw it to the side, Ikaris was there, and likely Dina as well, his fear turned to worry as he thought about them, and then that worry rapidly turned into wrath when he thought of the possibility of them being harmed.
[Preparations are complete] the system stated after he had stopped at the edge of Zola-Prime's manasphere and taken a deep breath.
[Flame magic: stream]
"I will absolutely murder any bastard who even dared to lay their eyes on my woman." Sol grit his teeth as fire erupted from the souls of his feet like a thruster, sending him sailing through the weightless vaccum and gaining mass amounts of speed per second to the point where his aerodynamic armour started rattling even though there was no airflow
His wings vanished as he stiffened himself to increase the output of flames.
[You are reaching dangerous levels of speed where your body might be unable to handle]
"I can handle it." Sol responded.
[Your body might be in critical danger if you do not tred carefully, Master.]
"Then do something about it and stop trying to limit me, I want more speed, the sooner I get there the better!"
[You are a stubborn man, I will calculate countermeasures]
The system commented and Sol almost scoffed under his armour.
"Since when did the system start talking back and acting all snarky?"
[For your information, I am a thinking functioning being of omni-reverence, you will do well to respect my power, all I lack is a body]
The system spoke directly into his head again, unlike the windows, whenever it did this he would hear the voice of a woman.
"Stop being moody."
[...]
[Calculations complete, Demonic mana is still at 100%, Divine mana is 100%, Arkadian mana after killing the demon-god is 100M, you have plenty of power to spare]
"What about that taboo I committed when I fought Sitri, you were all bent up about not being able to punish me for it weren't you?" Sol asked, and the system went quiet for a while before responding.
[I am relatively young, all that I know is what is available, some things are beyond my knowledge for varying reasons including loss of culture and the vanishings of civilizations which passed knowledge orally, so you must believe me when I say, it was my intention to punish you, but the title of [Godslayer] would not let me, rather it directly prevented me from doing anything]
"Godslayer had such an ability?" Sol asked, but as he thought about it he realised that the every title, even [path] had some purpose, but the appearance of [Godslayer] was sudden, it did not come with any manual, nor did anyone ever try to refute it, instead they had all been more interested in fighting him.
Some like Dr'ul, Sorath and S'mael the god of destruction were overly enthusiastic about his title, but Ikaris was very tight-lipped about it, or rather she never once addressed it.
[I know nothing of it, there are no records or cases in Arkadian history of [Godslayer] being mentioned even once, not by the mortals nor by the gods] the system answered in voice again and then sighed. [I would also like to know more of this title that has restrictions that not even I can bypass]
"Let's not think about that for now though, I want to lessen the time it takes to get to Hāl faster by any means necessary."
[Understood]
***
"The demons value us?" Ikaris asked, staring at the young goddess who had volunteered to help her escape. "Why?"
"It is unclear, but they hardly let us die, here we are no stronger than humans, and yet they are so careful to maintain us, we do not reproduce and we do not have many other uses than being slaves, yet they still treat us far better than any other species whether that be here or on Zola-Prime-"
"Zola-what?" Dina was facing the wall on the opposite side of the entrance with her hand on the wall. "Is that some kind of continent or country here?"
"No, Zola-Prime is another celestial body that exists in tandem with Hāl, which is where we are." The old goddess had finally stepped out of her cell when the halls became choked with the other gods.
"Ikaris was it?" She gestured, walking through the crowds and standing before her, she was a foot taller, but skinny in comparison to most of the others, and her hair was grey, she was beyond just old, now that they were face to face and the goddess could observe Ikaris she felt a sense of seniority from her presence.
read-only-on-MvLeMpYr
"You are... a Primordial, one of the first Three." She stated, and Ikaris's eyes widened at how easily she had figured it out when none of the others seemed to even notice, not even from Arkadia where Dr'ul was the eldest and most powerful.
"You are strange."
"I am an eccentric." Ikaris smiled up at her taking her hand and then embracing her in a tight hug. "Divine Heal"
"I do not know the horrors you have been through, and I do not want to, I do not want to know nor do I want to be touched by another, the only man worthy of my body is my master, to be seen by another is a disrespect to him." Ikaris sighed as she felt the Goddess's flesh grow warm and felt her body regaining the lost weight.
"Ikaris how much mana did you just use?" Dina looked around at her when she sensed a drastic drop in her mana, but found most of the other gods and goddesses on their knees staring up at Ikaris and the other goddess who slightly glowed. "It's now or never, Ikaris, the path before is nothing but rock for miles."
"What is your name?" Ikaris looked back at the goddess with her hands on the smooth wall.
"I am Gadriel." She replied, and then gestured to the young goddess who was with her. "This is my much younger sister, Gabriell."
"It is a pleasure to meet you two, a pleasure and a tragedy that we met in such a horrible place." Ikaris closed her eyes.
"Destruction: Dismantle" She chanted and the wall before her crackled like dry paint and began falling apart.
"It's going to be hard to defend against anyone when we're protecting this many isn't it?" Dina asked, staring at the collapsed entrance of the dungeon.
"Like I said, as long as it is not a demon-god we will manage." Ikaris continued casting the "dismantle" technique holding up her other hand to create a torch using minimal flame magic while the others started following her inside.
"We can figure out a better plan when we make it out, I'm pretty sure because of these seals the demons can't sense us any better than they would be able to sense a human without mana.
"To think a god would save us after getting dragged here, it speaks of your achievements-"
"I have no praise-worthy feats though." Ikaris admitted whilst focused on carving a path using a minimal amount of her mana.
"Are you kidding me, you've been killing demons have you forgotten that no other god has ever done that?" Dina countered and the following erupted in gasps.
"How?" Gabriell asked.
"The same way I am still able to use magic despite my divinity being sealed." Ikaris replied. "In the end, I never reached the scale of power needed to defeat a demon-god, so it is not praise-worthy, I failed my initial goal."
"Ha, look at you being humble-" Dina was in the middle of chuckling when an explosion at the end of their artificial cave alerted everyone.
"Guards?" Ikaris asked, keeping her gaze ahead and slightly speeding up the process, but she froze in horror when she felt a familiar presence emerge behind her, like a phantom the feeling crept across her skin and hugged her when she felt the stare burrowing into the back of her head. "Dina, prepare Pulsar now!" She snapped just before she heard the familiar shrill voice of the demon-god; Sitri.
"Ikaris!!"