After discussing the plan I personally toured the entire ship, handing out individual orders to the troops based on their wisdom stat, ordering those with low ones to take shelter below deck the moment we entered the demons territory. The last thing I needed was for them to succumb to psychological effects like terror.
I wasn't able to get to everyone, but I did get to most of them.
"FORWARD OFF THE STARBOARD BOW!"
Even without the admirals yelling, I could feel it. It was like every nerve in my body was being stretched until they felt like fire. It flew up into the air without so much as moving the water an inch, the boat staying calm as it stared down at us. A massive floating head with no face and swaying tendrils coming out from behind it. "So then… What's your name, demon…"
It didn't utter a single word as everyone around me rushed to aim the ballista and reposition the ships. After a moment, it slowly turned away to the frozen northern wastes across the bay. 'Well… Seems like as good a time as any…' "FIRE!"
'It's mutated almost beyond recognition, but it's just a giant ball of flesh… So if we dig into it enough, we are bound to find the parts we're looking for…'
Several of the bolts bounced off; only those fired from the dwarven-made giant ballista pierced it. The nets flew over its body but simply phased through it the moment we started trying to pull it down. 'Fairy dust…'
A massive black hole suddenly appeared behind it, sucking everything towards the center, but with the bolts remaining inside of it even as it phased through the nets, there seemed to be at least some hope.
"HOLD ON!"
A massive barrier appeared around the black hole, and the ships jerked back as they settled, Hara draining so much mana I could visibly see it flooding into the air. "Vive!" I shouted, and we both leapt towards it, slashing it as best we could and cutting massive gashes into its flesh with sark magic, but it was to no avail. Vive caught and teleported me back to the deck. But it acted like it had been bitten by a mosquito and didn't notice. The gashes healed before I so much as issued another command. As if it was an afterthought, its tendrils grew and wrapped around, pulling out the bolts and dropping them into the sea.
"Any better ideas?" My brother asked.
"Plenty left to try…" I said nervously. "Use those special arrows of yours." 'Honestly, at this point, I'm just buying time… Rafi… Get here soon please…'
"I suppose it's time to see if I upgraded my bow for nothing…"
'Upgraded?' I watched as he pulled his bow out in front and knocked an arrow I had only ever seen him use once before. It had multiple razor blades that deployed and spun like drills, turning everything hit into a gory mess of severed senew. His bow itself had become reinforced with metal braces and parts from dwarven ballista. 'Unreal…'
As he loosed the arrow, the string resonated like a gong, silencing the air for a brief moment before the arrows began to carve through the demons' flesh, leaving massive holes. "That's enough for now," I said, raising a hand. 'It will become untargetable again soon…' "Vive."
"What? What! What do you want me to do this time?"
I imbued my sword with as much dark magic as I could, but in doing so my body heated up like fire and my eyes turned red, my soul nearly being overwhelmed by the dragon's force until my skin became hard and rough. "Just get me up there."
She quickly ran over and nervously touched me, teleporting me a short distance right next to the large hole in its side where I jabbed my sword, thrusting with dark magic and piercing through until a black light beamed out the other end like a flash of combusted hydrogen. I only had a single moment where I could see its insides clearly, but that was more than enough to examine it thoroughly since I could stop time.
'The general anatomy isn't entirely unrecognizable… Its insides still resemble a Kraken to an extent. Variation must be from the fact that all demons are originally human. So if that's the case, then that's its original heart, and down there is a large artery that must lead out from the primary heart… I can't see its brain, which means it's most likely over in that region… Ok, I think we can work with this.'
As I resumed and felt the wind rush past me, my own terror somehow mixed with the dragon's euphoria of being in the sky, and by the time I ended up warping back onto the ship's deck, I was trembling from it, my soul slowly piecing itself back together. "I have the target locations. Load the Black Arrows!"
After firing another wave, they began to listen, the giant blob still seeming almost like it hadn't even noticed us. After casually dispelling the black hole it had made, I suddenly felt an intense pressure. It was so great that the deck cracked under my brother's feet, and even one of the masts broke, falling into the sea. As I looked around, hardly able to stay standing, I saw everyone was affected, not just me. Just to withstand it, their bodies' blood pressure had to rise until they began to bleed from the eyes and nose.
'Gravity magic…'
The overwhelming force leveled many of the soldiers, it was one of the few times I was glad I wasn't big, making me lighter. 'What are the odds… If that's your game then I'll just have to cancel it out with an inverse effect.'
Forcing my soul into the spell so as not to waste mana, I created my own area of reverse gravity so that it would feel at least bearable… For anyone near me. It was the best I could do, but it was enough. Calling everyone to stay close, we started to get moving again, and after grabbing a ballista, I let loose an arrow strong enough to pierce a dragon's hide, only for it to phaze right through the monster. The moment it went untargetable, the gravity effect lifted. I canceled mine as well after we started to lift into the air. 'Things are getting more interesting…'
6 black holes opened up all around us, tearing the ship in every direction. "FIRE!" I shouted, and again the spells all canceled as it phased through the bolts, slowly sinking under the waves before opening them again.
Before I knew it, the ship became struck by an impact that nearly tipped the boat on its side. 'And now we're on a timer…'
"We're taking on water!"
It suddenly jumped over the deck like a whale spreading its tendrils like a web and obliterating the masts, striking holes into the floorboards and throwing men overboard as it dragged its limbs like a net. I slashed one off entirely, but like previous times, it regrew in an instant as the rest shrank back down to size.
A brief moment of calm let us get our footing as it slowly turned, and I could have sworn it looked right at me… My whole body started to feel like it was being torn apart from the inside; this time, no one else, just me. My blood began to burn as if it were flowing backward, and my whole body went limp. On instinct, the only thing I could do was fade into the abyss, and sure enough, I began to recover upon switching dimensions. 'If it's a demon… Then it's probably doing something similar… Since the planes overlap, the magic would only affect the plane it's in at the moment, right? Is this its trick?'
I shifted back and coughed up blood from what I could only assume were severe internal injuries. I couldn't fully explain why I was alive, or what even happened to me for that matter, but considering I also started growing scales here and there, I figured I had Mr Dragon to thank for it.
When I arrived back on the deck, I observed a scene I could only describe as utter chaos. Splinters and gore flew through the air, and every strike powderized bones and turned blood sprays to vapor trails. Magic tore away at us like the ship itself was being drawn and quartered. Hara wasn't even standing but still putting up barriers here and there, saving a surprising number of people, all things considered. The other admirals and generals shot at it with everything they had, but they only bought us seconds of time as they forced it to cease its attacks.
Only seconds after coming back, I already felt as though I was about to die again. 'If it can phase its body to the abyss but leave its consciousness behind, then maybe I can too. Then I can use that same technique to hit it even when the others can't, right?'
I created another burst of dark magic and pierced through its primary heart, taking out half of it and instantly noticing it healed slower, if only for a moment before it repaired the heart itself. 'And now.' Warping into the abyss, I swung my sword again, landing in the black nothingness and feeling it surround me. 'It didn't work… But… It still felt like I was cutting through something… Am I just imagining it?'
I quickly phazed back, and sure enough, it was regrowing a large tendrill I must have severed. 'So even if it's visible here… Its actual body is invisible in the other plane… I really hate this…' "Man the Ballista and wait for my signal!"
Wispy blue lines started to appear before me as I finally began to read its movements, understanding the situation completely. From all the times we had carved holes into it's flesh I knew exactly where each target I needed to destroy was located, with that in mind I began traversing the rubble of the broken masts of the port side of the ship, dancing on massive beams that carried me over the water like planks while I fought it. Every time it phazed out, I would switch to the abyss, creating a copy of it in my mind by using my predictions of its movements and making sure I wasn't phasing back in over the open ocean the same way.
'I can't cut deep enough, it's too huge! Furthermore, I can't signal them to fire while I'm in the abyss, and it phazes in and out too fast!' Gore started to fill the sea from its severed tendrils that it flung at me in desperation upon realizing I could counter its magic, but after some time, I phazed back in, and the beam I had thought was there… Suddenly, it wasn't anymore; another one had fallen and taken it out, and my focus was solely on the monster and what it was doing. It wasn't something I saw coming.
"SIYA!" Vive's voice cracked as she jumped overboard and grabbed onto me before we both sank into the water and began to sink under the weight of our armor. Even if we were not sinking… I'm not sure she didn't know how to swim any more than I did.
I took one look at the panic in her eyes and figured as much, taking us both to the abyss and holding onto her tightly, sense she didn't know how to ground herself. Letting go of my own grounding we began to sink until I activated it again, rubberbanding like I had in my fight against Ghoul before phasing back out of the abyss and appearing right on top of the monster falling straight through it as it phased out in a panic.
When I let go of Vive she huddled herself up and vomited… It wasn't until we were both recovered from the whiplash we finally noticed that there was a bried respite. Sova's ship had finally arrived, drawing it's attention with volleys of fire.
A scream so deep it was barely audible ripped the water as far as the eye could see before it grew its tendrils and rolled forward, slamming them into the deck, splitting it in half before the crushing wave of gravity came back and flattened us. 'My soul is tired… It doesn't even want to move anymore… I'm essentially running out of dark magic…'