38 Chapter 38

With the princesses clearly out of their depths I mentally sighed and clapped my hands to get Delta's attention who was shivering with barely restrained murderous intent and as her slitted eyes snapped to me at my clapping noise I spoke plainly. "Delta, go hunt." I said simply.

But that simple order caused Alpha and Beta who were beside me to hiss as the ground cratered under the wolf beastkin's feet as she then howled with bloodthirsty delight when she charged into the school's castle and within moments I heard a loud crashing noise as she slammed her greatsword through a wall to smash a hole into the building for her to enter more easily. "Beta, lead the long-range specialists atop the school and have them shoot anyone attempting to escape out of the line of students," I ordered and as Beta nodded I felt a hand grab my shoulder as I walked along the path of a couple of inches deep footprints Delta left in her charge into the school's property.

The hand that had grabbed my shoulder belonged to Alexia and I saw she was holding her hand on her sword while frowning at the school in front of us. "Wait... Iris and I should be the ones to lead as the princess of this nation we have this responsibility!" She said trying to obviously bring back the morale back to her shellshocked troops who were reeling from fighting literal demons.

In response I glanced at the three knights of her older sister's retinue that were literally huddled on the ground holding their heads and mumbling to themselves, maybe some kind of prayer to a goddess who wasn't in this world, or maybe their minds have simply abandoned them. But I just looked at the rest of the knights and saw less than half of them were combat-ready. "If your knights can stand up straight with their swords held steadily they are welcome to join... But we cannot wait for the weak to gather their courage." I said as I gently brushed off Alexia's hand while Alpha came closer so Alexia couldn't grab me again as I walked into the hole in the wall of the school that could probably allow a van to drive in comfortably.

Iris, was a charismatic leader with decent strength but her knights were freshly plucked from this very knight academy and were as fresh as they could be. They were all clearly unblooded anyway much different from my Shadow Garden girls. Although I didn't push them to kill all too much, there were massive infestations of bandits in the countryside that needed to be dealt with, to say nothing of the cult members that we needed to kill without mercy.

So, in the end, it ended up being just Iris and Alexia following us in, while they had the other knights set up perimeter and detain all the students in case they were cultists and thus a possible walking time bomb of a demon portal that would lead to the hell dimensions of the Deadric Realms. But as we walked through the school I blinked in surprise seeing someone I literally hadn't seen for a couple of years.

And they recognized me as well as they stomped their heeled feet on the ground shattering the marble floor as they struggled and almost threw off the arms of the Shadow Garden girls that were holding her still. "Jake, dammit! Stop them I wanna help you guys!" Claire Kageno roared with her impressive strength being enough to make four of the shadow garden members truly struggle to keep her still as they knew the girl well, seeing as our church and the training areas were a place the young noblewoman frequently visited and she was somewhat of a member... Sort of.

"Nope, you be good Claire, I don't want your mother to try to poison me or something!" I called back cheerily as I powerwalked away putting Claire's outraged screech of fury behind me as my smile died as I saw the corpse of a male student that looked like he got pasted into the ground by a meat mallet and seeing the icy remains of an Ice Atronach not far from the corpse, that may very well have been the case. "We need to hurry," I muttered as I pinged my terribly low mana across the world around me and I felt Delta already had smashed into a floor beneath us somehow.

"Alpha, open a path below us." I said not giving the princesses a moment to object as Alpha made a drill out of dense shadows that tore through the ground and within moments the drill fell through the ground and into the bottom level before a series of loud crashing noises rang out as the sounds of Delta and Zeta killing people rang out through the hole. "Stick together and if you hear voices in your head, don't accept any deals no matter what they promise," I warned them as I leaped into the hole Alpha had bored with her shadow manipulation.

With a wet slapping noise, I landed on the ground and instantly cringed as lit up by the large Oblivion portal that was clearly being powered by the large glowing stone skull of a screaming demonic visage that I think was supposed to be the Deadric Prince Vaermina.

And worst of all, it was clear how the cultists of Vaermina had made a stable portal to host the incoming tide of demons that Delta and Zeta were tearing through while Vaermina's artifact the Skull of Corruption was behind a magical barrier that Delta and Zeta couldn't get to. For without constant sacrifices and lifeforce being used to span a massive dimensional gap between the Deadric Realms and this world of the Eminence in Shadow, it would have been impossible to have such a stable portal.

So instead of using many sacrifices all the time, it was clear the cultists had used the depraved terrible flesh crafting knowledge Vaermina had in making golems to instead make their victims into a slurry and to mold their victim's very beings into the concrete that was used to make this hidden room so they were literally still alive and feeding off the ambient magical energy and whatever the cultists used to further care for their batteries.

As I stepped forward with Alpha and the princess's following me I heard what I feared as an old crone's guttural voice filled my ears like the feeling of a bug's chitinous feet climbing into my ear. "Boy... You have a short life to live, why don't you just come rest in my realm safely for eternity?" She hissed into my mind and I felt the gods within my soul watching all but eating popcorn as they awaited for my reaction.

And I did not shame them as I retorted. "If it was Mommy Meridia or Azura I would have said yes to a lap pillow nap for eternity but you ruined it, you fucking hag!" I snapped and she didn't like that at all...