Monstergirl Quest Book Three

by Darknight, C. S.

  Well, I’d never gone to prison, but it turned out his advice would come in handy anyway.

  The horde came to a stop merely fifty yards from where I stood as the Seraph General landed in front of them. He raised one bloody fist and the horde halted behind him. His dragon snarled, smoke curling up from its nostrils, and he offered me a haughty smile.

  “Greetings Gamelord,” the Seraph General said. “We’ve come here today to bless you and your people on behalf of the Emperor.”

  “Yeah, I have other plans about that,” I said. “Why don’t you hop off that overgrown lizard and settle this with me, one-on-one?”

  The haughty seraph laughed. I could see at once that he had no intention of agreeing to my terms. That didn’t mean he wasn’t powerful though. Even from a distance, I could see that he was far bigger and far stronger than any of the other seraphs.

  “Now why would I do that?” the seraph said.

  “There’s honor in a duel,” I said. “Not much honor in sending an army after a bunch of refugees and wounded soldiers, though.”

  “The Emperor has agreed to help me and my fellow seraphs cleanse this land, Earthman,” the Seraph General said. “And we’ll start with you. But no, my Earth-born friend, I won’t be –”

  I shot my hand to the hilt of Ciara’s Wrath and acted as if I were going to charge. The Seraph General yelped in fear, tugged the reins upon his dragon, and in response the dragon roared and breathed a wall of fire toward me.

  Good.

  I raised the Soulguard and effortlessly absorbed the dragonfire. The Seraph General’s face coiled in terror as he watched the gouts of fire swirl right into the Soulguard. The moment the fire had cleared, right before the Seraph General could order his golden dragon to fly off, I snatched the massive beast by the throat with my TK magic.

  Then, I squeezed.

  The dragon didn’t so much as whimper. It fell dead immediately, with the Seraph General falling hard into the dirt. I combined an intense ball of lightning magic with the dragonfire still contained in the Soulguard. As the Seraph General struggled to get to his feet, I teleported myself right in front of him.

  “Cleanse this, motherfucker,” I said, then hit him with a massively powerful uppercut with the Soulguard.

  Upon impact, there was a blinding flare of dragonfire and lighting. The Seraph General’s head popped right off his shoulders and flew into the horde behind him.

  The force of my combined magical explosion knocked back the front-facing soldiers of the horde. A gasp of fear and hesitation rippled through their ranks when they came to the realization that the most powerful creature among them had just been struck dead.

  I smiled at the horde. “Well? Are we going to do this, or what?”

  Then, the horde came at me.

  Though they’d lost their general, the other seraphs, along with the demon knights, promptly assumed leadership of the horde. As they roared toward me, I charged a massive fireball spell into the Soulguard, then let loose when they were still thirty yards out.

  The fireball exploded and knocked a massive divot into their forward forces. Next, I tapped into my green magic and caused jagged, sharp tree roots to burst up from the ground, further impeding their progress.

  Still, their massive numbers swarmed toward me quickly. I charged the Soulguard with as much lightning magic as I could, closed my fist tight, then slammed my fist into the ground.

  A wave of roiling lighting surged through the darkrealm horde, frying at least a hundred of them and damaging at least triple that number.

  Now, bursting out of the advance force, there was a hulking demon knight charging forward atop his undead horse. He had a one-handed demonic longsword in hand, roaring as he closed in on me.

  Good, good. Just what I wanted.

  I drew Ciara’s Wrath from my hip. Before, I’d have trouble matching a demon knight of this size in terms of sheer strength, but not anymore.

  As he attempted to ride me down, I swung Ciara’s Wrath in a wide arc. When he attempted to parry the blow with his own sword, my immense strength, along with the power of the blade’s enchantment, knocked him to the ground.

  He snarled in surprise, but I cut that short when I drove the sword into his chest.

  “Next,” I said, then charged the Soulguard again, because now the horde was upon me.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The darkrealm beasts had me surrounded, but that was just what I wanted. Though some were naturally heading south toward Woodkeep Village, most were focused on me, which would buy more time for my friends heading south.

  They came at me in packs of a dozen or more.

  And they died in packs of a dozen or more.

  Though I’d become exponentially faster and stronger than I was before I wielded the Mana Gem, I cast both a fortify speed and fortify strength spell. With my modified restoration powers, these two mere fortification spells made me just as fast and strong as I was when I pricked myself with the Fang of Aegis Winterhollow and became a vampire lord.

  A monstrous minotaur charged me, and the fucker was nearly twelve-feet tall with horns nearly as long as that. I easily sidestepped the beast then thrust the tip of Ciara’s Wrath through his skull.

  A small army of ghouls tried taking me from behind. I whirled around, Soulguard charged and ready, and blew them straight back to hell with a combination of fire and lighting magic.

  All around me, there was a seething cauldron of the undead, of creatures from the darkest corners of the universe. Some tentacle nightmare tried clawing at my throat, but never got the chance, because I blasted its lone, lifeless bloodshot eyeball with a spear forged with ice magic.

  A squad of a half-dozen demon knights tried their luck next. With my bolstered illusion powers, I had no problem creating my own small army of seraphs to fight them off.

  I was hacking and slashing and casting spells at a dizzying rate, but my increased mana levels and improved fatigue meant that I wasn’t even the least bit exhausted.

  However, I was still itching to try out the raw powers from the Mana Gem. It was just a matter of waiting for enough of these assholes to surround me.

  Once I was satisfied with the number of darkrealm creatures trying to overwhelm me, I tapped into the intense power with the Mana Gem.

  I pulled up the spell I’d been dying to try out.

  CIARA’S BLESSING

  EFFECT: +500 DAMAGE TO DARKREALM CREATURES WITHIN 100 YARD RADIUS

  GAIA CHARGE: -1000

  I chuckled to myself, because these assholes had no idea what was about to hit them.

  “FUCK YOU!” I screamed and the multicolored fire exploded from my fist.

  A wall of pure mana wrath blew out in a large circle around me. The lesser and mid-level enemies were promptly vaporized. Many demon knights were rocked with mortal damage, falling helplessly off their horses, their arms and legs shattered.

  Two seraphs that had tried creeping up behind me were knocked unconscious by the blast, and I only needed to stab them each through the heart to finish the job.

  For a moment, everything was peaceful.

  As the dust settled, I saw that I’d either floored, killed, or outright vaporized every single creature within a hundred yards of where I stood, creating a literal eye of the hurricane in the middle of their devastated forces.

  I looked at the gauge for the Mana Gem’s charge.

  MANA CHARGE: 100/1000

  Sweet. It had already recharged by ten percent, more than enough to keep the constant effect modifiers going. In exchange for temporarily emptying out the gem’s charge, I’d killed or wounded several thousand darkrealm beasts.

  Unfortunately, there were far more than that rushing toward me to replace them.

  DARKWOOD AMBER LONGSWORD OF CIARA’S WRATH

  WEIGHT: 6 LBS

  DURABILITY: 750/4000

  ENCHANTMENT: 2500/8000

  Using my boosted enchantment abilities then combining them with my telekinesis pow
ers, I not only recharged the sword, but repaired it, as well. I checked the Mana Gem again.

  MANA GEM

  MANA CHARGE: 450/1000

  I grinned. It would only be a few more minutes before the Mana Gem was back to full charge. Then, I could unleash Ciara’s Blessing on these assholes again.

  I looked behind me. Ignacious and his men were mopping up the creatures that had ignored me. They let out a cheer when they saw me acknowledging them.

  I turned back to the horde, fifty yards out now. Well, I was getting bored waiting for them, so I started off toward them at a run.

  Screaming at the top of my lungs, I hurled spell after spell at the coming horde. I blasted the flesh from their bones with fire magic. I froze a legion of them with my intensified ice magic. I sent a blindingly bright ball of lightning right into their center mass, electrocuting a hundred or more.

  This time, I noticed the seraphs and demon knights hanging back while their underlings came at me from all sides, quickly encircling me. I figured out their plan easily enough.

  They were going to sit back, out of reach of my next blast of Ciara’s Blessing, then bum rush me while the gem was recharging.

  Well, I had better ideas. Seeing as how a few dozen seraphs and demon knights were far more dangerous than a horde of lesser enemies, I decided to give those assholes a little surprise.

  I stood my ground for the moment, tearing into their troops with destruction spells. I waited, waited, waited, until the horde was just a few yards out. I glanced over at the seraphs and demon knights, saw them smiling to each other, figuring that I’d fallen for their trap.

  Then, the moment before I would have cast Ciara’s Blessing, I simply teleported away.

  The seraphs and demon knights shrieked in fear as I reappeared in front of them. Just at that moment, the Mana Gem had finished recharging.

  “Hey guys,” I said, then cast the spell all over again.

  Just under fifty seraphs and demon knights were either killed instantly or rendered defenseless, along with the throngs of undead that were still bearing down on me. Having cleared the field yet again, I quickly went up and down their wounded numbers, slashing seraph throats and piercing demonic hearts.

  From where I stood, the darkrealm hordes seemed vast, almost truly endless, and the hellfire veil behind them only served to remind me that more were on the way. However, it was then that I noticed something different about the veil. At first, I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me.

  Though the veil had been a fiery, almost bloody shade of red, I thought I saw cracks of white in it, like chipped paint or slightly busted plaster or a crack in a windshield. When I first saw it, those cracks were so subtle that they were almost too small to make out.

  Then the veil rippled. The cracks grew in number. A warm gust of wind shot over the world, as if the hellfire was taking one last dying breath. The darkrealm horde even forgot about me for the moment, as all the creatures turned back to look at the commotion.

  Suddenly, the morning sunlight creeping over the horizon burst through the veil, then I remembered what Ciara had told me.

  The Emperor had only siphoned enough magic from Ciara to open the doorways to the darkrealms. He must have needed more magic to keep it open. Only, when he went to drain it from Ciara like a fucking vampire, he found that she was gone, that her cell was empty.

  It was like a light at the end of the tunnel. Though I was still staring down one-hundred or possibly two-hundred thousand darkrealm creatures, I could at least be relieved that there wouldn’t be any more coming.

  However, just when I thought the darkrealm hordes were going to charge me again, they all halted.

  The world seemed silent for a moment. Suddenly, a buzzing, electric sort of wind gusted over the land. All at once, the darkrealm hordes dropped to their knees in reverence.

  I wasn’t surprised when the Emperor appeared in front of me. He was scowling, obviously enraged because he’d just learned that Ciara was gone. He stared at me with hateful eyes, clenching his armored fist, the one that was covered by his bootleg Soulguard.

  “Give her back,” he spat. “I can sense that she’s near, Earthman.”

  Ah, so he didn’t know that Ciara was now trapped in the Mana Gem. I was going to use this to my advantage.

  I stared right back into his hateful gaze. “No chance,” I said.

  His lips slipped into a cutting, hateful grin. “When you took the others from the lich lords, I merely took that as a sign that you were a capable warrior,” he said. “In fact, I almost came to admire you, even if you are just a mortal.”

  “You can keep your admiration, scumbag,” I said.

  He waved me off. “Then, when you slayed the Necromancer, I was almost happy about it,” the Emperor said. “You saved me the tiny bit of effort I would have needed to kill that glorified ghoul by my own hand. And then you killed Therena, the closest thing I ever had to a daughter.”

  “So, your idea of having a daughter is plucking a homeless girl from the streets, then torturing her and turning her into a monster for a thousand years?” I asked.

  He grunted. “Actually, it was closer to two-thousand years, but never mind that,” he said. “The fact is, Earthman, as annoying as those slights were, I almost found them to be entertaining. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had a worthy opponent.”

  As he spoke, I recharged Ciara’s Wrath, then channeled as much destruction magic as I could into the Soulguard. “Then let me show you how worthy I really am,” I said.

  He scowled again, ignoring my challenge. “Those petty slights are in the past,” the Emperor said. His eyes began to crackle with magic. “But the Mananymph is mine, Earthman. Give her back or face the consequences.”

  “She was never yours,” I said. “And she isn’t mine to give away.”

  He shifted his hateful, crackling eyes down toward the Soulguard. His mouth tightened into a thin line when he saw the Mana Gem. “So, she escaped my prison to help you find a new Gaia Gem,” he said. “By now you must know that no mere Gaia Gem is enough to slay me, Earthman. None of Gaia’s baubles in existence is powerful enough to defeat me.”

  I suppressed a smile, because he was exactly right…or had been. The other Gaia Gems and Gaia Stones were certainly not powerful enough to kill the Emperor.

  But the Mana Gem was.

  “Give Ciara back to me now,” the Emperor said. “If you do, I’ll allow some of your allies to live. Give her back to me, and when I eventually imprison the other Mananymphs, I’ll give them some semblance of comfort. But Earthman, if you refuse to give her back to me, I’ll slaughter everyone you seek to protect. I’ll rip the essence from each of your beloved Mananymphs then kill them very, very slowly.”

  “You talk a lot,” I said.

  “Earthman, you’ll find that—”

  I cut him off with a blast of combined elemental magic. The Emperor shouted in pain as the roiling ball of ice, flame, and lightning struck him in the chest. The blow knocked him off his feet and he went down hard into the dirt.

  But that was just my opening volley.

  I rushed him, powering the Soulguard with the raw power of the Mana Gem. Just as the Emperor was clawing up to his hands and knees, I crunched my armored fist against the side of his head.

  The multicolored rainbow blast from the Mana Gem knocked the Emperor twenty yards into the air. The blast even caught me, knocking me back several feet.

  CRITICAL STRIKE!

  GAIA CHARGE: 800/1000

  The Mana Gem had plenty of charge left. I hurled myself toward the Emperor. By then, he was staggering on his feet, shocked when he realized his nose was leaking blood.

  With the Soulguard charged again, I drove my fist into his stomach and the impact exploded with yet another rainbow blast. This time, though, I held the Emperor by the scruff of his robe, wanting to keep him close. The Emperor grunted, doubled over, and spit blood into the soil.

  CRITICAL STRIKE!
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  Behind him, the darkrealm creatures wailed in terror.

  GAIA CHARGE: 600/1000

  He staggered backward, eyes rolling in his sockets as he reeled from my attack, and I decided that it was time for the killing blow.

  I shut my eyes tight, reaching deep into the Mana Gem’s power supply, and the rainbow light shot out of the Soulguard as the enchanted gauntlet trembled from the rush of the Mana Gem’s magic.

  In my Second Sight, I glanced at my Gaia strength stat.

  GAIA STRENGTH: 700/1000

  I said a little prayer under my breath, hoping that it was enough for what I wanted to do next.

  I grabbed the Emperor by his neck. With my armored fingers around his throat, his neck almost felt brittle in my grip.

  He wheezed and clawed at the Soulguard, but I held him tight.

  “God, I’ve been dying to do this,” I said.

  I squeezed my fingers tighter around his throat. As the magic roiled all around us, creating a blinding, multicolored shimmer, I lifted the Emperor from his feet.

  “Ack!” he grunted.

  I was screaming as the power ripped through me, but I kept my grip on his neck tight, then brought him down in a choke-slam.

  The ground shuddered from the impact. The darkrealm beasts were blown backward. Trees were uprooted and a long, jagged crack split across the ground. Great plumes of dust and debris kicked up, leaving both me and the Emperor covered in thick blankets of dust.

  GAIA CHARGE: 0/1000

  GAIA STRENGTH -100/1000

  I was woozy, barely able to remain on my feet, but somehow I did. I squeezed the Emperor’s neck and, as the dust cleared, I looked down, expecting to see his corpse.

  Instead, he was smiling.

  As blood dribbled over his lips, his eyes nevertheless crackled with magic all over again.