89 The Mastermind Final Part

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(Aden's P.O.V)

The lion roared once more, this time in rage. 

I spared a look at Boy Wonder.

"Get to cover and don't intervene."

Surprisingly, he didn't try to argue back and not unlike Batman he disappeared into the shadows of the cave. I heard his signature laugh echo through the cavern and rolled my eyes.

"Well, it's just you and me, kitty cat. I promise you, I'll try to make this quick."

The taunt worked and the Lion jumped at me, claws and teeth aimed to eviscerate me into meat ribbons. That was if it's weight didn't crush me instead. I rolled under it and sprung up to a hand stand. I spun my legs around, creating a scythe of flames that arched towards the Lion. 

The beast in that same astonishing agility it had previously displayed, turned around and roared. The huge blast of sound sent an air wave that put out my flames. I brought the winds to my control and created two massive tornados that almost reached the ceiling of the cave. The whirlwinds boxed in the Lion, briefly hiding me from it's sight. I jumped up to the sky, falling towards it, both daggers held above my head.

The lion roared pushing away my tornadoes through sheer sound shockwaves but not unravelling them. It looked up too late just as I was bearing down upon it. Flames sprang up along the knives, leaving behind a flash as I brought them swinging down. I smiled when I felt them connect with the Lion's forehead. Then they cut through the creature's skull like a hot knife through butter. That was too easy, I frowned. 

My feet landed on the ground, cracking the Cave's floor with a dull thud. At the same time, the Lion dissolved into thousands of beetles made of shadows and pulled away to condense into it's former body. The Lion shook it's head. Two twin scars ran down from it's eyes to the mouth. Black blood dripped down the injuries caused by my knives. The look in its eyes was disbelief warring with animalistic rage.

"Human…" A deep voice rumbled from the Lion's mouth. The voice shook the cave due to how deep and menacing it was. I stayed cautious. This could be a ploy to attack me by making me lose focus and awareness of my surroundings.

"You are…not like the rest. Not like the other  meatbags." 

Saying that, it started walking around me slowly.

"And those knives…they are special. They hurt me. Nothing can hurt me except…holy power. Interesting."

I promised myself to get the priest something once I was done with the mission.

"I propose we come to an…agreement. Turn around and leave and in return, I'll give you endless power and riches beyond your wildest dreams."

It said. I listened intently while nodding along. 

A few seconds passed after it's statement and I looked at the creature in disappointment.

"That's it? That's all you got? Unlimited power and wealth?" I scratched my head feeling a bit weirded out by the whole situation.

"Dude, you can't give me something you don't have." It growled menacingly. Heedless to it's mounting anger I pushed on. "I mean, you live in a dark cave in the middle of nowhere. That doesn't exactly scream riches beyond my wildest dreams. Man…I expected more from you. Aren't demon's supposed to be masters at temptation…"

Mnemoth couldn't handle it anymore and roared. I fell into a stance, ready for his next attack. This time something was different. The feeling it gave off was menacing. The demon was going all out. 

"You will suffer for that insult, lowly human!"

A surge of shadows ran along the length of the whole cave covering everything and plunging us into darkness. I used my air sense, to locate Boy Wonder and pushed him out into the open mouth of the cave, away from the darkness encroaching closer. 

The last thing I saw dimly was Robin's iconic rainbow costume before the world grew dark. I heard skittering from all around me. The whole space was a mass of beetles and bugs heading towards me from all directions. 

"Feast your eyes upon my true demonic form and feel despair. You will die human…eaten till nothing of your existence remains on this plane…and then I will harvest your soul and torture it for eternity."

Mnemoth's voice rang out from everywhere. It was distorted and would have made anyone else shit their pants. Unfortunately for him, I have stood in the presence of Lucifer himself. Someone who could unravel all that I was. In comparison, Mnemoth's aura was…meh at best. 

I reached into my trench coat and brought out the bottle of holy water from the inner pocket. I held it up and flicked a light on top of my index finger. A quarter of it remained on the small bottle. I mentally sighed. Should've gotten a bigger container but oh well, hindsight is 20/20. 

"Give up boy. You have no hope of getting out of this alive. I, Mnemoth a demon lord of hell will devour you completely!"

My opponent said.

I snorted. 

"Demon lord? Oh please. Spare me the bullshit. Let's see just how deserving you are of that title."

I poured the holy water onto the palm of my hand, careful not to let any of it drip down. Now, the reason the holy water had such an adverse effect on demons was because of the touch of divine holy power contained in it. The essence of purity that dealt corrosion on the demons.

My idea was to either burn away the water completely. Separating it from the essence of holiness and then supercharge that energy with my own fire, which was aligned with the attribute of order. Or simply mix them and hope the divine essence was potent enough to not get too diluted when spread out across the massive attack I was planning.

It was an idea that had no science backing it. But if it worked, I would take down Mnemoth once and for all by targeting his full mass, without sparing anything. I didn't have any other way and I couldn't keep on slashing him apart with the daggers because he would simply dissolve into his true form and slip away. Damn, I wanted a cool dagger fight scene. 

A blaze appeared in my hands. As if sensing the danger about to befall him, the whole mass of bags slammed onto me, only to bounce back upon colliding with an air force shield that I kept around my body. Sparks of blue electric energy appeared on my palm as I burned away the water. It tried to recombine itself from the fusion of Hydrogen and oxygen but my flames burned hot enough to halt that process. I was careful… trying to get a feel for the holy essence in the water with my nascent energy sense. And fortunately…I could feel something. Something just out of reach…

"Stop! You have no idea what you're doing! You'll call down his wrath! You fool!"

Mnemoth's voice changed to a terrified squeak  and tried to get away from me. I absentmindedly constructed another barrier inside the cave that covered any spots the demon could escape through and then compressed it. The demon's full mass was now tightly held together in a massive ball of air and I was in the middle of it. The core.

He started pleading but I was too entranced by something. My eyes glowed as I looked at the pinprick of light floating on my palm. It was the size of a grain of rice and was shining the purest golden light I had ever seen. This…this was more than I bargained for…It would be wrong to use as a simple attack. But I don't have a choice. I wished I had another choice. As it was, my flames alone could not hope to defeat Mnemoth at his full power. Maybe of it was sections or pieces of him like when I burned the beetles that were controlling Masali, but in his full form…he was used to fire from hell.

Fuck it. I crossed my palm on the small light and then breathed in. My fire poured into my palm and coaxed the light to grow. To combine with my flame and bring divine retribution against this creature of darkness. I tried to mentally keep up with that line of thinking. And crazily enough it worked. I opened my palm and a white, beautiful and lazily burning flame appeared. Despite being so diluted, Mnemoth's screech of pain reached me as the nearest beetles were burned to nothing just from exposure to the White Flame's light.

I raised up a hand to the sky. The flame started rotating into the form of a ball of energy before exploding out into a voluminous tornado that covered my form. I brought my hands together. My right palm meeting my left fist and the flame grew larger. The air bubble on the outside pressed Mnemoth's full mass into the flames and the Demon's cries of mercies were drowned out… having been completely destroyed by my attack in one simple move. Holy cow.

When the flames ended, partly because it was getting too much for me too despite the fact that I had covered myself in the strongest layers of protection I could, I was surprised at what  met me. Most of the cave had melted into lava. Steam and ash covered the whole place. The steam of course, from the water that had evaporated. 

I looked around in shock. Damn, those holy flames had not been a joke. Hotter than anything, I had ever felt before. My trench coat was also smoking slightly. A prompt appeared at the top of my vision but I waved it away with a curious glint in my eyes. Due to the cave half melting down, it had revealed something. A red blinking light deeper inside it. Near the mouth of the underground river. 

I waved the ash and steam away, flying over to inspect what this new thing was. Getting over there, I was surprised to find a…pod of some sort. A machine built similar to a beetle. Was it a coincidence? Maybe. I touched the metal expecting it to be hot to the touch but was surprised when it felt cool instead. My touch elicited a response from the clearly alien technology before him.

A blue scanning light run over me from head to toe and a synthetic voice said,

"Carbon based life form detected. Hello?"

The red light from before changed to a light green one. It could talk. Meaning I was not dealing with ba simple machine at all. I looked around, carefully. No trace of Mnemoth or any other demon remained. Maybe this thing was unrelated to my mission.

"Hi. Welcome to…earth I guess. My name is Aden. What should I call you?"

The answer came in quickly.

"I am designated as Miner #0234. Pleasure to meet you, Aden."

The prompts at the edge of my vision were getting more urgent. That and I could feel the Team making it's way towards me. 

"We will have to cut this meeting short Miner. How about I lead you to somewhere else you can safely run diagnostic tests and recuperate? As you can see, this place is a battlefield."

I offered, hoping it wouldn't say no.

"Very well."

The Miner said and rose up, levitating in the air.  A boom tube appeared and it flew through. The boom tube had led it to an island far away from Sanctuary in the elemental dimension. I breathed out a sigh of relief at how smoothly that had gone. Miner was am unexpected find and I had a feeling, a very significant one. 

Back to more important matters, I enlarged the display box and was immediately hit by an urgent notification. I swept the rest of the notifications away and was left with a blinking text.

"Oh crap. This shit just went from a generous 30 to a hundred real quick."

I commented, hurrying out of the cave. Why? I had less than 5 minutes to stop the end of the world.

(Urgent Mission!!!)

(The Demon Mammon wants to use the access node of the Green and the souls of over a hundred humans to infect the world with a virus designed to turn the world into a hellish wasteland and the humans and creatures into demons subservient to him and him alone.)

Mission Objectives: 

Stop him at all costs!!

Save Swamp thing / Bec@$:;& Th-_##" Nfjhdd Cha@$"''  Fo&_#'  The Green.

Mission time limit: 5 minutes.

Mission Difficulty: Hellish.