Defiance of the Fall

So uh… I guess I am sorry about your friends . Do you understand my words? - Zac said with a coarse voice . He realized that those were essentially the first words he had spoken in weeks . In the beginning he had muttered and mumbled things to himself , but soon he had grown accustomed to the silence .

Zac didn’t know if it was because of what he said , but the demon snarled and desperately tried to get himself free from the vines . Zac sighed and brandished his hatchet , and with a grunt he slammed it straight next to the tied up demon . It produced a loud thud , and a small crater was formed . Had he swung just a decimeter to his right then one of Azzun’s leg would have been mutilated by now .

The demon immediately stilled , as it perhaps remembered the ending of his two companions thanks to the hatchet .

Do you understand my words? - Zac repeated . He wasn’t really expecting the demon to actually speak his language , but rather that the system provided some translation feature . Language would be a pretty large issue if the system connected endless amounts of worlds .

The demon simply stared at him , then suddenly closed his eyes .

Hello? - Zac prodded once again , unsure what the demon was planning . Suddenly Zac could sense how the cosmic energy in the surroundings started to move toward them , and the demon’s body started to shake .

Zac got a sinking feeling in his chest , and didn’t dare hesitate . He immediately swung his hatchet down on the skull of the demon , crushing it like he had done with the other two .

The body slumped down , and blood gushed out of his nose . Zac got a confirmation that the demon was dead from the influx of cosmic energy , but the uneasy feeling did not disappear . Suddenly the body started expanding , and Zac’s eyes went wide with alarm .

He barely managed to throw himself away and down on the ground , before the corpse exploded with a tremendous bang .

Zac slowly got up on his knees , disoriented and ears ringing . Somehow the demon seemed to have made the energy in his body go haywire and he actually had exploded like a bomb . The camp was in chaos , with the windows of the car having cracks all over , the closest had completely shattered . Things were thrown around haphazardly and there even was an indent on the exterior wall of the camper .

Luckily he had killed the demon in time , or he might have been able to gather even more energy and created a far more deadly explosion , wiping out both him and the camp .

These demons are going to be a pain . ’ Zac thought with a grimace while looking at the mess .

Chapter 24 - Class

Zac was slowly moving through the forest . Since the demon blew himself up he had been stealthily roving around the vicinity of the camp . The illusion array blocked sound to a certain degree , but he was afraid that the explosion would have bled through the protection and alerted other demons .

However , he had been moving around the camp in expanding circles for two hours now , and had seen no sight of any more of the demons . While he had been scouting he’d also taken the time to properly bury the two other demons . It wasn’t to properly honor the dead , but rather to avoid the bodies getting discovered .

Finally satisfied that he had caught a lucky break and still wasn’t found out , he returned to the camp .

He spent some time cleaning up the camp . Some of the loot from the demons unfortunately been destroyed by the explosion . He hadn’t expected his captive to go nuclear as soon as he woke up , so Zac had simply thrown the gear down in a pile not far from him .

The bags seemed to have contained some vials which Zac supposed were either healing tinctures or poisons . The bags where still whole , but the vials hade cracked . Inside was a mess of the different mixtures glass shards , and Zac certainly didn’t want to rummage through it now .

The male’s leather armor was ruined , but the female demon’s suit underneath seemed intact . But most important was the weapon that Azzun had been carrying .

It was a one handed battle axe . It was much longer than his hatchet , reaching roughly 80cm . The head was single-headed , but with a sharp spike sticking out on the other side , perhaps for balance . The edge itself was a half-moon over 30 cm long . Zac tried the edge with his thumb , and was surprised to see that he immediately started bleeding .

It was hard for a normal kitchen knife to cut his skin now without some effort , which showed just how deadly his new weapon was .

The handle was black and it appeared that it had some fractals carved onto them . However these fractals somehow seemed far more rudimentary compared to the ones on the array flags . Finally a strip of some unknown beast hide had been used to create a handle .

This clearly was a weapon for war , rather than a tool as his hatchet . If he had this thing during his fight with the Herald he might even have been able to kill it off with the initial charge .