Chapter 709 Runes of the Nine Circles, Part 2

Eisen looked at Satel, this monstrous Devil that grew in size, approximately to twice what they were before, after devouring that lesser version of Cerberus. The old man ground his teeth as he flapped his wings and flew at the Devil, trying to slash at him, but on top of growing in size, Satel grew in strength.

They defended against Eisen"s attack by blatantly pus.h.i.+ng him out of the way before the old man was able to hit them with his sword. Satel hat sharp claws that were pressed into Eisen"s flesh, ready to rip him apart while the Devil simply wore a broad grin on their face.

Instead of running away, Satel was now actively running away, since they now actually had the power for it. Eisen and Satel clashed for a while, until a couple more minutes pa.s.sed. The gap was the same length as the other two inbetween the "Runes of the Nine Circles", as Satel started to cast the next one directly after inflicting a heavy wound upon Eisen that the old man had to heal if he didn"t want to die.

He quickly drank some potions, while Satel spoke.

"Runes of the Nine Circles, Greed." The runes in front of Satel lit up and dissipated, floating up into the sky. Eisen immediately realized what was going to happen, and soon he was able to even see it. While they were fighting before, Satel had trapped the old man in this large s.p.a.ce without an exit, and now, an enormous boulder was dropping down toward him from the sky.

Satel was able to rush through a wall instantly, but Eisen knew that he wouldn"t be able to melt the ice walls if Satel was directly taking control of them. He had seen this happen before while Satel was running away from him through the ice-maze.

So, there was only one thing that Eisen could really do. He increased his size to the largest that was absolutely possible for him as quickly as he could, even summoning his Elemental Spirit and his Mana Doubles in their transformed, demonic state.

Eisen and the other figures that were all gathered around the lower end of this place were getting ready to stop the boulder through any means possible. And the first thing that they all did while Eisen poured literal gallons of Mana Potions down his throat, was to push high-power flames directly toward the boulder to forcefully slow it down.

It went to the point where the boulder started lightly glowing, having heated up that much. Immediately afterward, the real Eisen jumped up until he reached the boulder that had been slowed down considerably already, flapping his wings as hard as he could to make sure he could further slow the boulder down. The doubles quickly followed, after one of them threw the shrunken-down Elemental Spirit at the boulder while the Spirit was holding a certain item over its head.

Once it reached the underside of the boulder, it pressed the item into it, and since the rock was slightly softer after heating up like that, this autonomous drill burrowed through there and soon reached the center.

What Eisen wanted to achieve through this wasn"t to catch the boulder. That would be impossible even by him, since he wouldn"t even be able to hold it up at all.

All that he wanted to do was to buy some time by slowing it down as much as possible, something that Eisen actually achieved instead. He didn"t need long, just a little bit for everything to take effect. And just before the ground came dangerously close, Eisen could hear the boulder cracking up. Eisen found the first crack and immediately shrunk down, flying through there and dodging the different parts of the boulder as it split up and changed its form.

Soon, Eisen was flying above there as the ice surface of Cocytus cracked into pieces and the huge rock ma.s.s just stood there. Eisen had turned it into a Golem using a Golem Core that was given a predetermined shape.

It was just a simple humanoid figure, but that was all that it needed to be. Luckily, its hands were the part that was still hot, and Eisen could immediately command it to help him destroy the ice wall that was keeping Eisen from Satel.

The old man of course used magic to create more flames, together with the mana doubles that he re-summed after they were just crushed under the sheer weight of the rock Golem. Now that they didn"t have to worry about being literally crushed, they could properly fight against Satel"s control of the ice, and they managed to break it into pieces to get to Satel. The only issue was that the Golem couldn"t follow behind, although Eisen hoped that wouldn"t be an issue as he continued to fight against the Devil that was running away from him now.

The old man ran after Satel, until he didn"t run anymore. They were flying, rus.h.i.+ng through this ice maze, until the Devil finally stopped in his track and pushed their claws through Eisen, using his own momentum. Or so they thought, because instead, Eisen had one of his doubles fly directly in front of him. Since, while in the Draconic Demon King form, it was surprisingly hard to differentiate between Eisen and his doubles, it was enough to trick Satel while they were fighting in this high-pressure scenario.

And after one of the doubles disappeared after taking overwhelming damage, Eisen cut through the dissipating magic and cut into Satel"s upper body.

Finally, Eisen was able to inflict a really bad wound on them, and as Satel was pushed back they created another new wall of ice and started casting the next spell, since it was about time for it. Eisen melted the ice while Satel melted the ice down to get through.

And somehow, Eisen had a really bad feeling about this one. After Gluttony, the next circle was Wrath. Until now, Satel made use of the things that Eisen had to directly face. The seven sins, the maze, cerberus, the boulder, and now... it would most likely be the river styx. That was the only thing that Eisen had to really face in that realm. He would be happy if it was only that the monsters in the ice came to live to try and drag him under, but he already knew that this wouldn"t be happening.

Soon, Eisen heard Satel"s voice through the wall of ice, "Runes of the nine circles, Wrath.", and the next moment, the old man could see something s.h.i.+mmer through the walls of ice while the echoing sound of something flooding this huge s.p.a.ce filled his ears.

"Of course that was going to be it..." Eisen muttered with a wry smile as he continued to destroy the ice wall as quickly as possible. He was barely able to get through to the other side and block it off with a wall created from his magic, but if he hadn"t been able to do that, he would now be once more swimming in that disgusting, slimy sludge.

Seeing that Satel used this chance to keep running away while the sludge made its way through the maze to reach Eisen here as well, the old man used this chance to get out the item that would give him fresh air while he was underwater, quickly pressing it into his mouth just in case the styx-sludge would reach him before he got away.

And then, he proceeded to immediately follow after Satel again, trying to find them to continue fighting them. And of course, Eisen knew that Satel wouldn"t voluntarily let themselves be covered in the styx sludge either, so being near them might help him not have to swim around in that again.

But even if he did, Eisen might be abel to get the upper hand considering that he had to very recently go through this. And knowing Satel, thesy never attempted this in the first place. Although... maybe Eisen didn"t know Satel at all, so he couldn"t really say that kind of thing even to himself like this and really believe this.

Soon, Eisen caught up and managed to once more cut into Satel while chasing them. Seemingly, the Devil was trying to get to a safe place themselves, but Eisen managed to cut through their wings and had them fall to the ground.

At this point, the old man could hear the waves coming from all directions, and it would most likely be too late for him either way. So instead of trying to keep running away, he held Satel down, once more with the help of his mana doubles and some magic, and figured he should instead make use of the styx-sludge to build up his own advantage.

Eisen managed to hold Satel down until the sludge hit them from all sides, burying them in the liquid. Due to the sheer force of the sludge, Eisen was pushed away from Satel for a moment, while the Devil started actually casting the next spell here while submerged. At least that"s what Eisen figured after seeing faint red lines through the sludge. It was about time he cast the next spell as well anyway.

Bubbles moved up to the surface that seemed just so out of reach as Satel was suddenly being pushed up on a huge ice tower that was suddenly created. The sludge started to heat up due to walls of flame randomly appearing within it. It seemed like the ice of Cocytus would slowly melt due to this, but Satel didn"t care. Their only goal was to kill Eisen, at any cost whatsoever. They probably didn"t even know if they would survive or not, so they went all out without a care for the aftermath.

And Eisen would be gone after this anyway, and there was no reason for him to really care about the state of h.e.l.l too much. He swam after Satel to reach the top of the tower, that was pus.h.i.+ng Satel all the way to the surface of this seemingly infinitely deep sludge. But of course, it wasn"t really infinitely deep, that in itself would be impossible. Satel would never be able to summon that sort of ma.s.s.

So of course there had to be a surface at some point, that Eisen also wanted to reach.

It took a good while, but Eisen was able to reach the surface and fly up as the sludge dripped off his body, and Satel was standing on top of the ice tower with walls of flames surrounding them.

Eisen landed on the flat ice surface while Satel prepared to fight the old man again, waiting for the spell"s "cooldown" to end.