Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 64: Welcome to Hell. Nice Place you got Here.

A Devil dashed through the trees of a dense, dark forest. The nighttime light made it difficult to see, but he was still able to weave through the trees and obstacles scattered throughout the hilly landscape. He sprinted through, eager to find that place Aankin kept coming back from. He was coming from the same direction each time, so if the Devil just followed that same trajectory backwards, he’d find the place.

Part of him was annoyed that this dumbass was interfering with his plans, and the other part was furious that he had to go out of his way to protect those Humans after that Ripley Tenet woman threatened him to his face. The main thing those two parts of him agreed on was that he was angry. In his mood, he was eager to kill anything, not just Aankin.

And that wasn’t to mention the demotion he’d recently suffered. He had to admit that he’d thrown a bit of a temper tantrum about that, killing so many of the royal guards back in the throne room and acting so aggressively toward the king, but it’d all worked out in the end. Well, mostly. He sure would’ve liked to have some more powerful soldiers working on this job – then he wouldn’t have had to be chasing after this Aankin thing in the first place. He could’ve just sicced them after him.

But here he was, facing the consequences of his own actions.

Truthfully, he knew of many Demons that would seriously disapprove of him going out like this to fight Aankin. Just killing the intruder when he came to attack them was one thing, but now the Devil was actively seeking out a fight. As a Devil, he wasn’t supposed to be a fighter – that wasn’t what his race was meant for. So for him to go out and seek out a fight like this, it was borderline blasphemy.

But he wouldn’t think so. In a way, he was still technically fulfilling his management duties of the Arlan Nota case – just using a more hands-on approach. Besides, those stuck-up Demons that were above him didn’t know shit about his job, anyway. Who were they to judge his method of getting things done? If it accomplished the goal, it accomplished the goal. He was beginning to think that some of the rules and regulations put in place may not have been totally necessary.

His thoughts were interrupted by a branch thwipping him in the face. Stupid trees, he thought. Stupid nature, stupid Overworld, stupid fucking demotion. Stupid superiors dumping an entire divison’s worth of work onto a single Demon and expecting him to do it. Stupid underlings unable to pull their own weight. And stupid fucking Humans, making his already stressful job infinitely harder.

With hate in his heart and a scowl on his face, the Devil sprinted through the forest, glancing around for any sight of where Aankin might have been coming from. But as he was searching for Aankin, he found something just as interesting. He stopped in front of a set of imprints in the ground. Three pairs in total, for three people walking through the forest.

The Demons had long since collected all information they could find on Arlan Nota, and that included his footprints. They knew his foot size, his shoes, and his stride length. And, looking down at these prints now, the Devil recognized them immediately. Arlan Nota and his two companions had been here. And, judging by the direction they were headed, they’d been going in the exact direction the Devil had been – toward Aankin.

The Devil grinned. Not only would this help lead him to his Faerie opponent, but it was also an interesting addition of context. Just what was Arlan Nota doing over there? The Devil continued forward, now following the sets of footprints to his destination.

Within minutes, he found something – something that seemed exactly like he was looking for. A circular wooden palisade cropped up through the treeline and the Devil slowed to a stop. In front was a closed gate, guarded by nobody. In the dark night, he could see multicolored lights coming from inside the walls – blues and purples illuminated the area.

He walked up, examining the place from the outside. He didn’t hear anyone moving around or saying anything, so whoever dwelled inside must not have known he was there. That’d change soon.

He approached the log gates. There seemed to be a hand-crank that he could turn to open them. He rolled his eyes – who would ever need to use that? Rearing back, he closed his fist, and then struck. A devastating boom shook the land and the gates flew apart, scattering splinters everywhere.

The entire area bustled into motion, the sudden sound apparently waking up all the sleeping residents. There were primitive tents and huts dotting the pathetic village, out of which gross-looking monsters stumbled, blinking wearily and looking for whatever caused the explosion.

The Devil just rolled his eyes and shoved his way through. The diverse group of monsters quickly realized that he was the intruder, but they couldn’t really do anything about it. They certainly tried – they shouted at him in some language he didn’t understand, and when he didn’t react to that, tried to poke at him with spears and other toys, but he just kept walking.

He made such a scene on purpose. Whoever Aankin was, he clearly cared about his ‘home.’ And if he lived here, there was no way he’d let this go without appearing to at least see what happened. There was a big palace-looking thing in the middle of the village – maybe the Devil would go and check that place out to see if Aankin was hiding there.

But as he made his way over there, there was a stomping sound coming from the distance. He stopped and listened to the familiar sound.

“Oh?” the Devil asked. “Come to see me again?”

Aankin ran from a side-alley into the main street, glaring at the Devil. At least – the Devil assumed it was Aankin. He looked like a different person, once again, but still had those same base features. He was panting, obviously having sprinted here.

“Leave here, Demon!” Aankin shouted. “This is your last warning. I do not care if it takes my body dying a hundred times. I, Aankin the Stalwart, will strike you down!”

“Hm. So, you don’t consider it to be you dying, but rather your body,” the Devil muttered to himself. “And you got here pretty quickly, so you were probably already here when I broke in. I last killed you, when, fifteen minutes ago? So if you ‘regenerated’ immediately, you’d have already taken off into the forest to attack the bomb group again. But you were still here. Which means you already knew I was coming here – no, you’d have intercepted me in the forest. Maybe it takes you that much time to come back? It takes you about fifteen minutes? And why–”

The Devil was interrupted by the swing of a knife from Aankin, who had run up and attacked in a fury. The Devil leaned back to avoid it, and, when Aankin swung again in a follow-up attack, he raised his arm to block the blow.

“Man, you are eager. Think you’re gonna wear me down?” The Devil grabbed Aankin’s wrist and yanked him closer, grabbed his skull between his fingers, and slammed it against his knee.

You have struck Level 29 Faerie Champion for 3.71k damage using your leg.

You have slain Level 29 Faerie Champion.

The Devil kicked the corpse away from him, looking around at the fearful throng of Faeries surrounding him. They backed away.

“Now, where are you gonna come from this time?” he mused.

The Devil moved through the town, checking inside the various huts and tents for any sign of Aankin or how he might have been coming back. The people in the village had long since fled away from him, so most rooms he checked were completely empty. He slowly made his way toward that palace in the middle of the village, too. Aankin hadn’t come from that direction before, so the Devil didn’t think he came from there, but it was possible that Aankin had taken a deliberate detour to throw the Devil off.

As he searched, he heard the familiar footfalls of Aankin, and turned around to see the Faerie leaping toward him, another knife in hand. He dodged the strike, drew back his fist, and struck.

You have struck Level 29 Faerie Champion for 3.06k damage using your fist.

You have slain Level 29 Faerie Champion.

“Huh, so you came from that way again. About ten or fifteen minutes again, too.” He looked in the direction that Aankin had come from that time and the time before, and headed off, listening carefully for any more suspicious sounds. So far, Aankin was the only one that’d made any serious effort at killing the Devil, but who knew what else might have resided in here? Ideally, Aankin would be the strongest being in the whole village, but he had to be on-guard, just in case that was false.

Another ten minutes into his search, he finally found a building that looked a bit different from the others. This one was more decorated, like a place of worship, and it was located more closely to the palace than most of the other buildings. There were paintings lining the outer walls of this one, each depicting people fighting against each other, against animals, and even against nature – there were a few pictures of a person punching a boulder in half or kicking a tree down. It was much larger, too, taking up enough space to fit half a dozen of the normal buildings in its place.

The Devil opened this door. Inside was even weirder than the other buildings. Instead of the normally deserted interiors that he was used to, he found a mass of people that all looked suspiciously like the bodies Aankin always came in. They were all sitting on the wide, empty floor with their eyes closed, seemingly in some sort of meditative state. The room was packed, too; there were easily over a hundred of these motionless people in it. None of them reacted to his noisy entrance.

He looked over the group of people, brows furrowed. Was this related to Aankin’s ability to regenerate? As he watched, though, one of the men seemed to stir. He was closer to the front, so the Devil could get a good look at the previously-still man twitch. His eyes flicked around beneath his eyelids, and his hands randomly clasped and unclasped. His breathing quickened, and then his eyes suddenly opened with a spasm of movement.

The being took a deep breath, not yet noticing the Devil watching him. “Ugh, I hate going through that so soon after I’ve done it already.”

It looked like Aankin, acted like Aankin, and now the Devil could hear it sounded like Aankin. He smirked. “Hey bud. Nice place you got here.”

Aankin’s head snapped over at him, eyes wide. “Wha– you–” He glanced at the bodies surrounding him, and without further ado, charged at the Devil with a raging war-cry. He was obviously eager to chase the Devil away.

The Devil ran to meet him and Aankin raised his fist to slam it into the Devil. The Devil raised his fist at the same time, though, and slammed it into Aankin’s.

You have struck Level 29 Faerie Champion for 997 damage using your fist.

The Devil destroyed Aankin’s entire fist and arm, but the Faerie still survived. Blood splattered across the room, sprinkling across the faces of the still-unconscious others.

“So, these are your other bodies, huh?” the Devil asked. “This is how you kept coming back?”

“Fuck. You. Asshole.” Aankin clutched his mutilated arm, breathing heavily.

“Interesting choice of last words,” the Devil chuckled. “If I kill the rest of these bodies, you’re gone for good, right?”

Aankin just stared at the Devil.

“Well, I suppose you won’t answer me whether I’m right or wrong, will you? No matter. I’ll just have to find out the old-fashioned way.”

You have struck Level 29 Faerie Champion for 4.11k damage using your fist.

You have slain Level 29 Faerie Champion.

The Devil took a breath and looked around the room. If he wanted to kill Aankin for good, all he had to do was kill all of these things, presumably.

He reared back and hit one of the bodies.

You have struck Level 11 Champion Vessel for 4.11k damage using your fist.

You have slain Level 11 Champion Vessel.

It flew back, completely destroyed by his strike. Still, none of the others seemed to react. He looked across the wide room, packed full with the creatures. It would take some effort to kill them all, especially if he didn’t want Aankin to come back. And he was going to kill that nuisance.

“Well, time to get to work.”

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