D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2150: Chapter 2150 Great Burning Walls of Fire

— Kat —

The girls managed to clear away the fire. Eventually. For Furen it was quite hot and somewhat uncomfortable, but between Kat and Lily they’d managed to make a path through the goop for her. It was still burning as they made their way further down the hall and Kat could only hope this sort of tactic wouldn’t be quite so common. The hallway didn’t continually sprout more golems as they left the room behind so the hope was that they’d cleared out a good deal of them in this section. Still, it begged the question “What is the plan if we find more of those? I can fight them no problem.

“Like, not sure what they’re exactly meant to do other than die. They seem to have sort of sharp legs but like… they didn’t do any damage to me when I sliced into them. The real issue is the fire. I… I’m not sure I CAN kill them without leaving a mess. Lily can, I’m sure, but that’s going to be mana intensive… I don’t know about you personally?”

“I can do some very basic spells,” admitted Furen. “I have a bit of fire affinity… and I don’t know how useful that is here. I wouldn’t call myself a mage for a reason. I know a basic flamethrower attack and the barebones for controlling fire afterwards…”

Kat saw the clear gap in the conversation and took it. “And you can’t control the fire that comes out of them?”

Furen shook her head. “No not at all. I don’t know if it’s because the fire is too hot, or because I’ve never tried to practice that sort of thing… but no I can’t, and my worry is that if I try to blast one of them they’ll just explode anyway sending that liquid all over the place in an even worse manner then Kat shooting them.”

Lily couldn’t help but ask, even transforming to do so. “Why not practice your magic? That seems super useful and strong?”

Furen shrugged. “For all that a lot of people like to say that mages can Rank up faster I’ve never believed it to be. It takes a special someone and I always hated my magic lessons. Getting the runes to stick in my mind was a pain, forcing my mana into a full sigil always felt nearly impossible and I was never that interested in magic. I can do plenty of awesome things without it… and it just seemed like it would take too much time.”

“You’re an elf!” hissed Lily.

“Yes and that should already tell you just how annoying a process this was for me. Even the absolute basics that I barely have down? They took me about ten years of near daily practice,” grumbled Furen.

Lily just stared at her for a few moments, rooted in place until Kat yanked Lily a long by wrapping Lily up with her tail. Even then, Lily wasn’t really ’walking’ for a few more steps, she was just being dragged along the floor. [I… I can hardly imagine that. How can anyone be so bad at magic?]

*Some people can’t even DO magic. In fact, a lot of people can’t.*

[I mean… I guess but I just never expected for it to be possible to have someone with the theoretical talent for magic but in practice still have basically none. I mean… spells aren’t that hard right? Am I secretly a genius?]

*I don’t know it’s all that much of a secret, you’ve always like to learn and you research things for fun. You can be a bit… lacking in attention when it comes to the obvious sometimes and you’re quite shy but your brain has never been in question. Though in this case, I wonder if she’s got an affinity that isn’t quite fire?*

[Wait what do you mean?]

*Well you know your affinity, and that it’s paper, shadows, and space. Remember those darkness spells you tried to learn and how much more awkward it was?*

[Yeah… and ok I think I see where you’re going with this. You’re saying that the reason she’s struggling so much is because she doesn’t actually have fire as an affinity. Hmmm… yeah it’s possible. This is a small community and they might not know of too many of the exotic affinities. The person testing her might’ve just not known? Depends how often she talks about it. Still… what affinity could she even have?]

*I’m not saying it’s certain. I suppose it is entirely possible that there’s some mystical aspect to magic that means you can still be incompatible with the runes or whatever. Though… yeah I’m not sure what affinity she could have either? I’d guess it’s not ’Light’ because I feel as though other people could guess that one.*

[So… what a ’Heat’ mage or something?]

*Yeah maybe? I’m not sure if that’s obscure enough to be hard to manage… but I guess if nobody knows any runes or spells for a true heat mage that could be the reason?*

[Hmmm… something to think on I guess. Not sure we can really help much here…]

*Yeah I don’t think so.*

Before the mental conversation could get any more in depth, the pair cut it off because they heard something from to the right. A few steps further forward and they’d come to an intersection. Kat unwound her tail from around Lily’s waist and signalled for Furen to wait where she was. Kat glanced around the corner and found what was making the sound. One of the golems, but it was on the ground and missing a leg. Another seemed to have snapped in half and the pieces of both were off to the side.

“There’s another golem up here but it’s mostly destroyed… could’ve landed badly perhaps? It hasn’t exploded… do we want to go that way?” Kat asked.

Lily took a few careful steps forward and looked for an answer as to what the corridor lead to… but the plaque she could see looked to have rusted away. There was some faint imprints on it that might have been letters but whatever they said, Lily couldn’t read them. “The signs busted… Furen do you think it’s likely we need to go this way?”

“Um… probably not?” Furen offered uncertainly. “I mean… there’s only one core, I think, so why would it be down this mostly random offshoot?”

Kat nodded, that made sense. Kat gave Lily a mental poke to keep watch on that side of the hall while she checked the other. Kat glanced down the other hall… and it was similarly useless. The plaque was rusted over and this one looked the same, just without the broken golem blocking the way. “No idea. So, we’re skipping these two paths?”

Furen nodded, “I say we keep going until we hit a dead end or something that would indicate a power source, such as some sort of reinforced door to separate it from the rest of the facility,”

“Alright then…” Kat said slowly as she turned back to the main corridor and glanced across the ceiling, looking for any signs of the golem. The bright side, was that she didn’t see any sign of them. The issue with that, was that after taking a few steps forward the group crossed some sort of invisible threshold and the ceiling opened a bunch of little doors.

Kat sent a mental command to Lily, asking her to get Furen out of the way as Kat started to combat the new swarm of golems. Kat tried to focus on tearing them apart. Her ideas about their lack of sharpness proved true as Kat ripped the legs off them and cast them off to the side. The problem with that… was that the rest of the bod was just as fragile. As the first few hit the walls and floor they still shattered.

*Shit. What am I meant to do? I can’t take the time to slowly lower these things to the ground, there’s too many. Lily can you like… get them in a net or something?*

[Yes!] Kat tried catching a few more with her new plan while Lily sent forth a large net of shadows to prevent them crashing into the floor. This was fine… for all of a few seconds before a set of golems crashed into one another. They exploded of course and the resulting fire spread to the rest of them, setting off a chain reaction.

*Dammit. Get Furen away from the blaze then.* Kat continued to fight in the thick of things. The golems did seem to need a little more than just some fire around to set alight. They didn’t simply explode on contact with the floor… when they landed properly anyway. Even diving into the fire didn’t seem to be quite enough. At the same time, anything more than that would set them off. A nearby explosion, a strike or two from Kat. They were just so damn fragile that it felt like nothing would keep them from exploding. It made their lacking construction in other ways make sense. It didn’t matter if their legs could slice through only the weakest attackers when they could explode.