Chapter 346: 346 - Eyes in the rubble
"I see..." he thought as he attently checked his status page, remembering for the first time the skills he"d absorbed but never used after the fight on the arena. He also noticed he was about to level up on many places, but decided it was not important.
"Noah! They are here!" He shook the thoughts away as he heard Maggie"s voice call him over, and left the back of the building towards where she and Carlos were standing by.
"Did anything good happen?" Lilith asked, as Noah left hurrying with a smile.
"Not good per se, but I"m about to level up a handful of skills... Can"t wait to see what kind if improvement it"ll allow. Also, I remembered of a skill I wasn"t using at all," Noah told her in thought, while still making his way. In the process, his gaze hardened, as a strange presence could be felt in the air. "Lilith, can you?" he asked, feeling the sense of oddity.
"Yeah... Feel"s like a fortress boss" presence. How come something like this be out here?" Lilith too felt pressured by the strange and nauseating aura, but the owner was nowhere to be seem.
"Where are they?" Noah asked, as he stood between Maggie and Carlos. He"d come thinking they were already on the spot, but the monsters were nowhere to be seen,despite the overwhelming presence.
"Over there," Maggie said while pointing in the distance, were ten more of the monsters mauled through the walls and interior of a convenience store.
What surprised Noah, though, was being able to see the convenience store, since at least two or three buildings should"ve been standing between them, all razed to the ground during the time the first monster attacked them by breaking through the side wall of the building.
"That"s really bad..." Noah thought, realizing the severity of this spill. Actually, he did not even believe this was a spill, having seen the existance of civilizations in the last few fortresses he went inside. "Could it be that the fortress boss and all monsters under him were banished through? No way that a fotress would experience such a thing as a stronger kind of monster taking over..."
"Noah, you"re having some really dangerous thoughts. You know that, right?" Lilith"s voice brought him back to reality, as the monsters slowly finshed chewing and turned to the nearest building, closing in on them slowly.
"We still have sometime," Carlos" voice called out from the side, making Noah turn, "Why don"t we unleash all the available imps?" he asked, looking at Noah in the eye.
"We have 63 up, but most have never gone to battle and will not be as useful. Also, won"t that be a problem for us?" he asked,thnkingabout his ident.i.ty.
"You don"t have that mask around?" Carlos asked, nervous, watching Noah shake his head negatively. "Don"t you have anything that can, I don"t know, make a copy of it from fire or whatever?!"
"Wha—I"m not a G.o.d, you know? That mask is an artifact... But maybe," Noah switched gears as he noticed something about a skill he was yet to use in such a way. "Make sure n.o.body is looking this way," he told Carlos, as he walked onto a hidden corner of the store, activating [Devil Form].
After a minute, he made his way back towards them, now with the appearance of a monster, on which he wasn"t sure how people would react.
"Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.t, you look ugly as h.e.l.l!" Carlos said, seeing Noah"s demonic form.
"Had I not seen you go there, I"d think you got killed and this was a monster," Maggie said while laughing, which made noah roll his eyes.
"Don"t get mad, at least they aren"t afraid of you," Lilith tried to comfort him, only annoying him further.
"Yeah, yeah... Ok. Now, let me test somethin," he said with a dry tone, as he used the skill,tryin to materialize the mask.
[Lucifer"s Artifact: Hannya Mask manifested. Manifestation will last 30 minutes.]
"Oh wow! It looked like there was lava around your face for a second!" Maggie said with an excited voice, which made Noah feel warm.
"Yeah, I managed to manifest it, guess it counts as belonging to lucifer too," he said while turning towards the people at the back, who couldn"t seem him at all since they were turned to each other... Until a kid turned his head towards him, scared. Noah waved at the boy to calm him down, and saw the kid nod with a wry smile, before turning towards his family.
"Even looking like a monster wearing a demon mask, you"re somehow still good with children. d.a.m.n, guess youwere meant to look ugly," Lilith provoked him, taking both"s minds away from the strange pressure they felt from the monster that couldn"t yet be seen.
"Do you also bite, or o you only spit venom while speaking?" Noah shot back at her with a normal voice,as heturned towards the monsters, making Maggie and Carlos look at him, confused. "It"s show time," Noah said, a dozen circles appearing around them, and all the available imps starting to appear from flames.
And a shrill scream could be heard behind them, as Al saw the monsters.
"Al, it"s ok. They are friendly," Noah told her whie turning back, letting her recognize his voice despite using the mask.
"Thank G.o.d!" the girl held her chest, breathing out a sigh of relief, "I thought we were all dead," she said, lookingat the powerful-looking imps.
Since there was not enough s.p.a.ce for the imps to sp.a.w.n at once, Noah did so in groups of 12, having the imps move out from the building towards the monsters" direction until all were down. As he did so, he called for the three imps he"d left behind at the car, which came teleporting, startling the s.h.i.t out off Carlos, as a fireball lit up right in front of him, the three imps coming through.
"d.a.m.n. Those things can do a lot," he said, as he stared down at the fire claws of another imp.
"Yeah, the stronger ones have nice skills. I need to train the rest to have them too," Noah said, as the last fire circle on the ground lit up, one line imp appearing and moving according to the imps he"d chosen to command, as his skill now allowed.
"To think they wold communicate this well with each other," Lilith said,watching the imp with [Healing Flames] yell at the rest, organizing them.
Noah had been patiently waiting for the monsters, but a m.u.f.fled scream of terror from Maggie, who had a hand over her mouth, made Noah turn towards the monsters, in time to see two of them rip a woman in half, before splitting her among them.
"d.a.m.n... I forgot there were more people"s lives at risk," he thought, regretting not having hurried, and turning to Carlos, "We should go, before more people die," he said, before the three of them started walking, an angry expression on Maggie"s face as she stared at the monsters.
And so, the army of Imps marched forward, with the three of them in the middle, and five imps left behind to protect thepeople at the place behind. As they walked through the debris, Noah"s eyes met with a pair of terrified ones from deep into the rumble, a person who as hiding, waiting for the nightmare to end, to go back to their life.
"Curse this fortress, and those who let it happen," Noah thought, increasing his and the imps" pace, the monsters noticing their presence.
"It"s going to start!" he yelled, as the monsters turned towards them at once, charging.
Noah held his blades tight, as the imps took a wider formation, waiting to surround the monsters. The lizard at front screeched loudly, before lounging at the imps. Two were bisected cleanly while trying to stop its claws, but the rest rushed selflessly. Noah took this chance to teleport above it, the edges of his daggers glowing with a golden light he"d taken during the fight against the Hyu, and slashing while he fell over the thing. The move ate away a chunk of his mana, but left two long cuts through the monster"s metallic skin.
Different to last time, Noah had gone in willing to spend his power, knowing that burning this thing would recover much of his mana.
"NOAH!" But Maggie"s yell warned him, Pyakugan screaming, as the monster"s tail swung in a weird angle Noah had thought impossible, and the tail with the hardness of a club and speed of a motorcycle flew against his head,leaving him only enough time to block, and be thrown away by the sheer weight behind the atack, flying into the razed building nearby.
"Noah!" he heard Maggie scream again, as a large fireball exploded against the monster, making it screech in pain, Noah still flying through the air.
"d.a.m.n it! Lilith!" He called out, refraining from using his wings.
"I"m on it!" The snake responed, a purple glow enveloping him, and bringing him to a safe stop.
"Lets show that s.h.i.t!" he said, unnaware of the people oggling him from the shadows of the razed building he was thrown into, as flames enveloped his daggers, and he teleported towards the monster into a ball of flames.
To the people in the building, a blessed with a mask, the same who had helpe last fortress spill, appeared to protect them from the monsters, being thrown into the building during the fight, and not stopping to even rest, before going to battle once again.
A video of his being decelerated by the purple light was shared by one of them, and, unkwown to Noah himself, the legend of the Masked Blessed grew even further.