Devil's Apocalypse

Kasdeya immediately recognized the familiar feeling of traveling through space, but this time it felt much less stable. Not even the destabilised portal, which dumped her in the lava strewn wasteland, was as awful as the current experience and Kasdeya was constantly funnelling her mana due to an instinctual knowledge that, if she didn't try her damndest to control her passage, the end would be less than desirable.

Desperately trying to think of a solution to her predicament, Kasdeya latched onto the residual echoes left behind by the spatial fluctuation, letting it draw her to its source.

Then, in the distance, she felt, more than saw, a tunnel so to speak, stretching through the unfettered void she was stuck in. A tunnel with both a beginning and end within a fixed dimension, much more favourable than her current circumstance, so, letting the echo guide her, she moved towards this passage.

Arriving at its shimmering edge, she was pulled along with the echo, firmly attracted to whatever was being transported through this gateway, but her mana was still draining at an exorbitant rate and, if not for her religious charging of the battery attached to her front, she would have long ago fallen unconscious.

Thinking that the current situation was quite undesirable, Kasdeya knew that she needed a stabilised passage out of this emptiness as she severely lacked the power to sustain herself here, so, raising a clawed hand laced with mana, she ripped into the side of the tunnel.

There was an immediate reaction as tremors arched out from the passage, its integrity taking a serious blow, but Kasdeya spared it no mind as she tore open a gap and made eye contact with a wide eyed demon travelling within.

Not quite knowing how to respond to this awkward situation, Kasdeya simply gave the imp a manic grin before tearing her way into the passage, watching in delight as fear flashed across the face of the intimidated demon.

As soon as she fully entered, the gap she tore tried to repair itself but, perhaps because of the existence of a second presence in what should have been a transmission of one demon, the integrity of the tunnel started to rapidly degrade.

Possibly also feeling the degradation of the tunnel, the demon's fear became even more apparent and it tried to raise a retaliation against Kasdeya but, unlike Kasdeya, it could not move freely within this space, and had the appearance of one trying to move through a dense liquid.

Responding to the attempt at an attack, Kasdeya moved towards the demon much faster than it could possibly hope to defend, and its fate was meted out with a fist slammed into its ċhėst, pushing it back into the boundaries of the tunnel. Before the demon could move itself away from the perilous edge, Kasdeya was once again in front of it and slammed it against the boundary, accompanied by a pulse of mana which, combined with the already degrading passage, shattered the wall and sent the demon plummeting into the abyss.

Now as the sole occupant of the gateway, Kasdeya let her body be pulled along by the natural current as she started trying to regain some mana. Since the occupancy problem was solved through the forceful eviction of the previous tenant, the instability was resolved and the tunnel was no longer at risk of shattering so Kasdeya laid back and enjoyed the rest of the quick journey.

———————

The Directors Aid watched in confusion as a group of men, tasked with manning one of the summoning circles, had passed out one by one onto the floor.

Apparently something had happened mid summoning to greatly affect the integrity of the passage, making the summoners faint due to the added stress and subsequent mana exhaustion.

Now a new group had taken their place, each of them wearing a worried expression as they completed the summoning and the group watched in apprehension as to what would step through the gate.

This organisation had only recently begun the mass summoning and no errors had appeared until this point but now there was quite a large anomaly and, with no knowledge about what could possibly affect a demon summoning, the Aid was called over to lead due to the current absence of the Director.

Luckily, whatever difficulty had arisen seemed to have solved itself, as the summoning was now proceeding as was normal, but the Aid couldn't shake the feeling that something had gone wrong.

After another minute of apprehensive silence, the carved formation on the floor, the knowledge of its creation having been supplied by the Director, started to shine much brighter and a familiar black orb appeared in the centre of the array before tearing open a spatial channel which held the appearance of a black void suċkɨnġ in light.

Gazing at the expanding void, the witnesses unconsciously held their breath, then gasped at what came out.

Race: ???]

There was no way to describe the look on the Aids face apart from total and utter confusion. What appeared wasn't a demon as expected, nor was it some beast from the void. It was… something else.

It stood a bit shorter than the director himself and was covered in a thick, matted fur with two arcing horns protruding from its head. It was impossible to tell where the limbs began and the torso ended due to all the fur blending together and it had a slightly curved back. On its arms and ċhėst, it seemed to have some sort of hard material acting as possible armour, though whether the armour was part of the creature or added as an accessory for defence was unknown.

In the short time that passed, the monster seemed to also be evaluating the people present, which reminded the Aid of his current circumstance. Since the creature seemed to possess intelligence, it could be deemed to reason that it could communicate. However, the Aid decided that he must choose his words carefully. He had enquired to the Director in the past about anything which might interfere with the summonings, and the director had stated that very few creatures possessed that capability. Not even the Demon Lords or their Angelic counterparts could freely tamper with spatial corridors once a summoning had begun, leading the director to ȧssume that this strange monkey-like creature had power equivalent to a Lord.

"Greetings, esteemed Monkey Lord. I was not expecting this visit." The Aid spoke, communicating in the Demon's tongue under the hope that the Monkey Lord understood him since it was the only otherworldly language he knew.

"...."