Kapitel 49: Spawn of the Tsuchigumo

Even though they had narrowed their search area, the industrial district spanned over fifty square miles. So, with her meager task force of forty knights, finding the demon was a daunting task, especially if the pendant could not narrow the location further. She divided the force into groups of five so that they had enough firepower to stall for the others should any group encounter the Tsuchigumo.

The pendant acted as she had feared, indecisive at leading her group. They turned a corner into a busy street bustling with large trucks hauling products away. She raised an eyebrow, watching the pendant randomly become erratic, switching back and forth in many directions. She swept her gaze on the surrounding factories, hoping to discern a reason for its behavior.

"I think it is picking up multiple spawn," Peter noted, vigilant as well.

"Then that means the Tsuchigumo would've had to splice its blood with its spawn," she said, shaking her head with frustration. "You might be right. I wouldn't put it past being that cautious, based on how calculated its moves seem."

Her heart sank at the prospect of being back to square one. There was no telling how many spawn the Tsuchigumo spliced its blood with. The pendant's usefulness dwindled with each passing second. Chasing spawn around was akin to hunting scouting bees far away from their nest, while the mother bee hid in a secure location. Nevertheless, her unsettled mood dispersed somewhat when the pendant steadied, then swung away as if a powerful magnet happened to pass nearby. Persia knew that sign for what it was.

Something powerful is close. Too powerful to be a spawn.

She spun around, expecting the demon to pounce on her only to spot another typical truck passing by.

A truck?

Eyes widening, she burst into a full sprint after the truck, her three knights and Peter rushing in behind. Ice darts formed around her, which she released at the truck, decimating the tires supporting its trailer. The naked tire frames, stripped of their thread, smashed into the tarmac. Streams of golden sparks erupted from the harsh clash, yet the truck pushed on, with no signs of slowing.

She jumped and clung onto the back of its trailer, then climbed to the top. The truck skidded on the road, sliding and pitching uncontrollably. Devoid of traction, its trailer slid over to the opposing lane, where an unsuspecting sedan approached. Catching herself from tipping over, she pointed her arm at the road between the oncoming sedan and the swerving trailer she stood upon. There, an ice ramp sprang up. On the sedan's side, she shaped the end of the ramp into a tunnel for the car to pass through and slow down. The truck's trailer slid up the ramp, over the sedan, and smashed into the tarmac, toppling into a violent roll. She had already backflipped off the truck while it was in midair and planted her feet on the edge of the ramp.

Peter and the knights reached her by the time the commotion had settled. By her signal, they approached the overturned truck, weapons drawn. Hundreds of her ice darts floated in the air, primed to be released at any moment.

It was quiet around the truck at first. Further down the road, a squad of knights moved to close off the road. No one was to pass anymore until they deemed it safe and free of spawn.

When they encircled the truck, her keen hearing, amplified by the armor's microphones, picked up signs of movement in the driver's cabin. The knights seemed to pick it up as well, pointing their guns at the cabin as its door opened. Out came a hand that clasped onto the door frame, pulling an injured man out. In great pain, the driver flinched when he saw them.

"The fuck is wrong with you people, huh?" he bellowed. "What do you have to say for yourselves? You almost had me killed! I'm gonna fucking sue you all! Now leave me alone and piss off."

One knight became remorseful, lowering her gun. The others looked at her for orders. Persia directed a disappointed gaze at the remorseful knight, electing to reprimand the knight about the improper manner in which she handled standard demonic extermination protocol. For instance, never lower your guard when facing a demonic threat, no matter the circumstances.

The truck driver, now seated on the capsized cabin, seemed to nurse a broken leg. So she decided to find out just how broken it was. At half speed, she launched a dart at his leg. Without visually observing the dart, the man instinctively shifted his broken leg, all grimaces of pain gone from his face, replaced with the blank exterior of an animated corpse.

A moment of silence passed between them as the man realized his mistake. A second later, his body was blasted with holes from holy rifle fire.

With no time for respite, the draw door at the back of the trailer opened and from it, an army of almost fifty spawn emerged with blood lusted growls. Sounds of rifle fire erupted as the knights rushed to contain the demonic spawn with their blessed bullets. Coupled with her floating darts, they made short work of the spawn. Only one managed to reach Peter, who tackled it to the ground and put a point-blank bullet in its skull.

"Shit! This mission is turning out to be a cluster fuck," Peter remarked, swearing for the first time in years.

She could only nod in agreement. Afterward, they inspected the trailer, finding no other stragglers left behind. Peter hopped into the trailer to read the name of the company printed on the side in green lettering. It was already apparent that the Tsuchigumo had infiltrated wherever the truck came from.

"Sterling Food Corporation," he said.

Before she could speak, a white streak circled them and the truck then stopped beside her.

"Seems you guys made the same discovery," Lightflare said. "Follow me. I know this company's location. You won't believe what is happening."

She broke into a jog after Lightflare, who decided against using his super speed. "I highly doubt that. But this city is ripe with surprises, so we will see."

"True." Lightflare agreed. "The past few years are unlike anything I've ever seen. There are hundreds of them there. I couldn't get too close because two large demons were circling above."

As they drew closer to their destination, the pendant pulled her toward a low and wide concrete building spanning hundreds of meters at the end of the street.

"It seems the action has started." Lightflare pointed up at the flying demons.

Above the factory, the flying demons were diving one at a time and soaring back up with spawn, dead in their jaws.

They are fighting?

With an ice blast, she burst the gate of the factory open. The dock at the side of the building harbored spawn hastily loading themselves into the trailer of trucks. The sudden crashing clatter of the dislodged gates alerted them. They stopped, then hissed and roared, dropping to their fours as they charged.

At the moment, Lightflare was running amongst them. However, in the next, he became a blur as streaks of flashing white light engulfed the charging spawn and immobilized whole swaths of them. Wherever Lightflare passed, a spawn lay on the ground with broken legs. That made it easy for the knights to dispatch the animated corpses.

Things looking in their favor, Persia held back and surveyed the compound. Earlier, she had already made a call to all knights in the district to rendezvous at her location. Her interest lay in the flying demons further back, who fought with the spawn. An action which still bewildered her.

She bolted around the ongoing spawn extermination, then ran the length of the main building. Above, one of the demons swooped again into a hole presumably in the roof of the building, and emerged from another hole at a wall further ahead with many spawn in its grasp. It soared higher and let go of the spawn to drop to their deaths.

Closer now, she finally identified the flying demons to be archnazubs, a more powerful variant of the nazubs from the infernal massacre, six years ago. They were about five times larger than their smaller counterparts, with the strength and ferocity to match.

A shower of crunchy, wet splattering hit her ears from all directions as the falling spawn slammed into the pavement and exploded into deformed body parts. Just ahead, from a door below the hole in the wall the second archnazub just used to exit the building, many spawn were streaming out. She swirled a frost tornado carrying thousands of ice darts and set it loose on the escaping spawn. Then, not bothering to watch the carnage, she formed a massive ice ramp and used that to punch another hole in the wall. As the tornado ran havoc on any spawn foolish enough to venture outside, she climbed up the ramp and entered the building.

It turned out to be a slaughterhouse that greeted her eyes. Only instead of livestock like cows and pigs, human corpses hung in rows from hooks fastened to the ceilings. Now most of the corpses lay strewn on the ground, along with droves of destroyed equipment as an effect of the attacking archnazubs. A grouping of spawn attempted dodging out of the way of an archnazub's dive. However, the spawn proved too slow for the massive demon, who snatched many of them and flew up through the escape hole.

She almost marveled at the archnazubs because they had nailed their strategy down to perfection, using their flight to great effect. The spawn were sitting ducks with no avenue to launch any counterattacks. So now, she was caught in a dilemma with no obvious answer for the first time in a long while. Her options boiled down to eliminating the spawn, thereby aiding the archnazubs; or going after the flying demons and, in turn, helping the spawn. There was also a possibility both the archnazubs and spawn dropped their feud and targeted her.

Lightflare appeared by her side, at the peak of the ramp. "What should we do about these guys? We are finished with the spawn at the entrance. Your knights entered the building through the shipping dock and are clearing the spawn on their way over."

"I know," she said. "Peter already gave me a status update."

The archnazubs performed another round of dives. That gave her an idea.

"I'll stay here and watch the demons whittle their numbers down," she said. "At the opportune time, I'll kill the rest. Your job is to circle the premises and kill any spawn vying to escape."

Lightflare laughed nervously. "Eh, I'll disable them. Killing isn't really my thing."

"For one moment in your fleeting life, can you do the right thing? If it will assuage your guilt, a spawn is a lost cause, merely a husk that carries out orders, so it is already dead. Just put an end to its misery."

With a dejected look, Lightflare vanished, a light trail left in his wake.

She turned back to the ensuing battle. Based on the layout of the building, coupled with the number of spawn they had encountered, she estimated that about 700 spawn were holding up here. 700 mortals who the demon snatched right under their noses with little fanfare. The danger levels of the Tsuchigumo just kept climbing in her estimation. It was brutishly proficient in all avenues, be it battle tactics, physical power, covert operations, and magical mastery, with no regard for human life. And every superhuman it got its hands on made it more powerful. She shuddered at the prospect of going against the demon. Perhaps she would need reinforcements from The Vatican again.

Thirty minutes later of constant observation on her part, Peter and a contingent of knights emerged from the next room in armor baptized in blood, spotting dents and claw marks. Most of them wielded melee weapons for close-quarter combat in addition to their holy rifles. Some spawn spotted them entering, turning and hissing. Peter pointed his gun at them and let it rip with holy fire.

For Persia, it finally was the opportune time to join the battle, so she jumped down from the tall ramp, landed with only a slight bend of the knees, then charged into the last cluster of cornered spawn.

The spawn saw her and roared with their usual wide jaws, but a sea of ice projectiles chopped them down in droves, the sheen of blood coating the air. Any spawn in her path that survived the initial attack fully froze over in ice prisons as an effect of her blistering aura when she whipped by. Her interest lay in the archnazubs now. The demon, performing another dive with no spawn in sight, pivoted her way. However, after watching it in action for an hour, she was prepared and summoned ice tendrils that sprang from the ground and curved around the demon to trap it. The archnazub roared, straining against the tendrils which cracked and splintered under the immense pressure. All she had to do to rectify the situation was to summon more tendrils that wrapped around the school bus-sized demon.

The archnazub eyed her with vitriol, its jaws barred open in a low, rumbling growl, each jagged tooth the size of her hand. She, too, glared at it, long projectiles forming behind her which she would use to end its demonic existence.

"Watch out!" Peter shouted from across the room.

The second archnazub appeared through the hole in a flash and smashed into the first one. The ice tendrils shattered upon impact, freeing the enraged demon as they both turned to her.

Aid me in battle, Eternal Master. She willed a silent prayer.

They rushed her from different angles. She set loose her projectiles into one, not bothering to assess the damage done as the other swatted her with its clawed hand, which sent her flying into a collapsed cluster of steel prep tables. Her armor protected her from its claws and most of the blunt force from her fall. Still, the wind had been knocked out of her lungs, her whole body burning with pain. Such was the strength of powerful demons that one hit was enough to stun her. Peter, along with the knights, had encircled one archnazub, which left the other one closing the distance towards her.

She pulled herself to her knees and then placed her palm flat on the ground. Nothing happened immediately, but that was by design to draw the demon in. When the distance between them dropped below a few meters, ice pikes, ten meters long, erupted below the archnazub and impaled its vulnerable underside. The demon wailed with unbearable pain. It even managed to break the pikes, but the damage was already done, its body still impaled by the ice pikes. Its strength rapidly diminished, the archnazub dropped to the ground, twitching and leaking pools of blood.

She got to her feet and strutted toward it, an ice spear forming in her grasp. It still glowered at her with hate prominent in its eyes. That was until she stabbed her spear through its eye and punctured its brain, silencing it forever.

Across the room, the other archnazub cried for the last time as it, too, succumbed to the throes of death.

"Thank you, my ever-silent partner," she said, turning to the Eye of Arixxer. "What would I ever do without you?"

The artifact, as usual, remained silent while floating by her side as always.