-Warning! Lesser Nephilim tagged; Foe-

  -Indena tagged; Friendly-

  -Amanda tagged; Friendly-

  The nephilim swarmed around us, blocking any chance of escape from either end of the ramp we were on… Unless we wanted to jump down onto the factory floor…

  “We’re going down!”

  -Combat Mode; Active!-

  My combat mode gave me the strength to snatch up Indena and Amanda and fly us off the edge of the cliff. I dove us down toward the ground, using the fog to mask our path.

  “Hey!” Indena announced over the wind. “Why aren’t we fighting those guys?!”

  “Not there!” I argued. “They have an advantage. The best place to fight would be down here!”

  If we could avoid fighting at all, that was the best case scenario. But those nephilim could fly, and they were hot on our tail.

  Indena made a few excited sounds as I weaved around chimney and pillars, and Amanda was suspiciously silent the whole ride until I touched us down on the ground. She fell back to her knees and looked up at me with a mix of confusion and utter horror, like she was just so lost and broken.

  “Amanda, I don’t know what the demons were making you see, but we need you to focus on giving us buffs!” I commanded.

  She just kept looking at me, not responding. Her lips quivered a few times like she was going to speak, but then she turned her head downward and covered her face.

  “Shrimp, she’s probably getting pretty messed up by the demon domain,” Indena concluded.

  “Yeah, probably.”

  It affected everyone differently, but it seemed to be doing a number on her mind.

  Just to help her out, I re-cast the stardust aura spell on her and Indena. It should have been protecting her from the demon's domain, but it seemed like the darkness all around wore it out much faster then it should have.

  “He’s dead…” Amanda mumbled. “The angel killed a man…”

  “Darn it…” I snapped my finger.

  I expected her condition to improve when I cast the spell, but she was still just a mess. The darkness must have already done its mental damage and confused her.

  “She might be out for a while,” Indena lent her a shoulder to help her walk around. “She said she saw you kill someone. A person, not a demon.”

  That had to have been a scary sight, especially if I was the one who did it in her eyes. But she needed to understand that it wasn’t any worse than a horror movie, since that didn’t actually happen. She needed to realize that, at least until we could get her to safety.

  Now that we were down in the quarry mine, I had a better look at all the buildings around us. Each of them had an assortment of organic looking machines that were spitting up hot lava from their cores. With a quick scan of some sheet of metal that was cooling, I discovered it was definitely holy steel, but a very impure form of it.

  “This stuff isn’t strong at all…” I noted, running back out of the building to share my discovery.

  *Swoosh!*

  One of the nephilim flew by on his wings, swiping at me with a pickaxe. I held up the sheet of holy steel I was holding for cover, but he pierced right through it!

  “Crud! Holy steel tools!?” In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense to make that. They'd definitely last a long time.

  *Swoosh!*

  Another came grazing by, this one aimed at Indena and Amanda, but thankfully missed.

  “We’re sitting ducks if we can’t see where they're coming from!” Indena ducked to evade another swipe.

  This fog had to go. But clearing it out wasn’t going to be simple. I tried to do it with stardust, and that wasn’t enough. All the fog just came right back in place.

  “Can you superheat the ground and cause the air to rise again?” I asked Indena, hoping it would push up all the fog.

  “Not inside a cave,” Indena replied. “No idea what that’ll do here on that scale.”

  That was a good point. I’d already warned her to be careful about fire down here, and that warning still counted.

  “Wait!” Indena’s eyes widened. “You have wind magic now, yeah?”

  “Well, yeah?” I nodded. “But…”

  I caught on quickly to what she was about to ask, and I figured it would work. I’d send out a gust of wind to clear away all the fog. There was one big problem though… I was scared to use it.

  The last time I used wind magic, it blew out my eardrums. I’d been so bad with it that I actually really hurt myself. What if I did worse next time, or hurt someone else in the process?

  “Come on!” Indena encouraged me. “Use your wind magic to clear the fog! Then we can see where those guys are coming from and blast them.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  More demons came swiping down at us, some getting so low that they scraped the ground with claws and pickaxes. If I didn’t do something, we’d be raked up like a pile of fall leaves!

  “I have to try!” I shouted, raising out my arms and channeling emerald energy through my whole body. My heart, eyes and hair turned bright green as mana energy gathered around me. “Everyone, hold onto something!”

  Indena carried Amanda behind a broken wall and went low to the ground. Once they were safe, I knew it was time to act.

  *FWOOSH!*

  The energy that was around me unleashed in a massive windy repulse. A burst of air ripped across the whole cave chamber and pushed all of the fog to the edges. It was slowly coming back around, but we had plenty of visibility for now to see the enemies flying in from above.

  In the moments it took me to recover, I jumped around to evade the enemies diving in. Now that their cover was blown, they were coming down in greater numbers.

  “Eat this!”

  Twirling my spear, I batted at any that came close. The bladed edge of my weapon cut through them easily, turning them into dust.

  My body twitched at how overworked it was. I almost fell over because of it, but I continued to focus on swiping at the oncoming enemies.

  One was on the fast track to getting a good hit on me. There wasn't any time to move.

  *BOOM!*

  But a fireball hit the demon, blasting him off course and landing him in a pile of ancient metal ore.

  “Nice!” I shouted to Indena, throwing her a thumbs up.

  “Get over here!” Indena waved me along, gesturing to a ruined building. “We can funnel them in!”

  That building offered a little bit of cover with a roof, but that was going to go a long way. Suddenly the demons had a harder time reaching us there.

  Doors sat on both ends of the building, so Indena covered one while I was on the other. Enemies were flooding both sides, trying to step through, but my spear kept them from getting inside.

  “Keep it up!” I told Indena.

  Her stardust aura was waning quickly the longer the fight was going on. But when I went to recast it for her, I heard the sound of dozens of coins striking the ground.

  “What the heck?!” I turned and saw Indena on the floor, gathering up a bunch of money. One of the nephilim was holding a purse and had emptied it out next to her.

  “Holy crap!” Indena had a wide smile on her face, stuffing those coins in her pockets gleefully. “Look at all this cash! I’ll be freaking rich.”

  Since when did she care about being rich? Even Amanda in her conflicted state shared a look of confusion with me.

  “Indena, cut that out!” I shouted. “You’re letting the demons in!”

  “Shut up!” Indena barked. “I’m getting rich over here. I bet we can use this money to fix all our problems with demons.”

  That rationalization was horrendous, but she just couldn’t stop. To ensure she was stuck like a dog eating up table scraps, another nephilim came over and dumped out a second purse's worth of money.

  “Darn it!” I shouted.

  This had to be part of the demon's domain. Back in the city she was acting weird while looking for Pier tokens, and so were the people when they noticed I found the blue pearl. No doubt we were dealing with a demon of greed.

  “The Curse of Avarice…” I concluded.

  She’d been affected by this domain's curse. Now an affinity icon on her virtual nametag appeared, showing what looked like a dollar sign. She was hooked in, and needed my help getting out.

  Before I could do anything, the nephilim made their way in from her side and were after me.

  The first wave of nephilim stumbled forward, barely keeping their footing with those long legs. With holy steel pickaxes and other tools, they swung at me.

  My stardust spear clashed with their makeshift weapons. It took the full force of my strength to shove them away and slash at any offenders.

  I sprung toward where Indena was, flipping with fire and kicking any enemies out of my path.

  “Curse curse, go away! Don’t come back another day!”

  I announced an incantation for Curse Heal and blast the light energy into Indena. Not a moment too soon she rose up and punched out the two demons dropping coins on her.

  “Jerks!” she growled. “I hate money!” She threw all the coins out of her pockets to lose the extra weight.

  “Help me out!” I shouted, casting Stardust Aura on her again and getting back into the fight.

  My spear quickly clashed again with their tools and shadow claws, sending sparks of stardust and hot metal chips all over.

  Indena was inspired by the sparks and captured them with her magic, willing them through the air and sending them into the faces of the demons. The stardust dealt a huge amount of light damage to the shadow flesh of the demons, and the weak heat from the metal was just icing on the pain cake.

  A nephilim's giant drill suddenly locked tight on my spear. His strength increased as he pressed forward with his spiraling weapon, overpowering me quickly.

  To my side were other nephilim, approaching to claw and strike with their own mining weapons.

  I slipped down and spun on one foot, sweeping my foot across their own and tripping any close to me. Three of them fell, including the one with the drill. He tried to attack while falling, but he hit my dress. The tip of the holy steel drill gave my Eighth Star chest plate a nasty scratch down the side.

  “I just got this thing, jerk! Yah!” I angrily continued to swing my spear at any of the approaching nephilim, using the downed demons to block the reinforcements from reaching me. My spear had great reach, prodding demons within a few meters, turning them into dust.

  I twirled it once and cut across the bad guys on the floor, making sure they wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

  Darn it… The battle was taking a lot out of me, and I was already pushing myself past my limits. It felt like my strength was dropping by the second, while the demons were just getting stronger.

  “Amanda, please!” I shouted. “We need you!”

  If she could give us a strength buff, I was sure I could deal with these guys quickly! I just needed to get a little bit of an edge to finish this.

  “Please, believe me!” I shouted. “I know things look bad from your perspective, but you need to trust what I’m telling you!”

  Her existential crisis visibly increased, causing her to place both her hands over her face and shake her head in denial.

  “I can’t watch!” she shouted. “You’ve killed so many people here! You must be evil!”

  “No I haven’t!” I shouted back. “That’s what the darkness wants you to see. It’s showing you things that aren’t happening.”

  There didn’t seem to be much I could do at this point other than pray she would see the truth. If the darkness made me out to be some murderer, even though I was protecting her from these demons…even though I’d shown her what they looked like not long ago, then it was almost completely out of my hands.

  I had faith though. Deep down, I knew she could overcome the darkness and see reality. That faith kept me fighting, protecting her and Indena, and all of humanity. Even if every single last human hated me and called me evil, I’d still fight for them to the end… To my very last breath.

  “Amanda!” I shouted. “I know you can believe me! I know you can see the truth! No matter what, I’ll keep fighting until you do. I promise, I’ll keep you all safe and be your guiding star!”

  Tears dropped down her face as my words entered her heart. The queen was a fighter, and she wasn’t going to let the darkness win her over so easily.

  “I…” A conclusion was about to come from her mouth, and I hoped with all my soul that it was going to be in our favour. Otherwise, this factory would be our tomb.

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