Chapter 860: Arnold Demorian
As the girls finished washing and walked into the bath, they stopped at the door and stared inside, "Really?" Alice blinked.
"Really," Asmo replied, staring back at her. "Suprised?"
"Old me-nya!" Selena gasped, "And the bath's lady-nya!" She rushed toward the water.
"You smell of death," Gracie stared at Grace.
"Ladies, I'm the devil of liquor, drunkards, wine, and vegetation. Baccus. Nice to meet you all," She waved her hand to them, "Cain scouted me for the cause,"
"Why could a drinking devil even do that?" Alice stared at her.
"Alcohol can be both a poison and relaxing tool for exhausted mortal, but I say it's more filth and evil than something good. I can draw the good parts for us and our troops while using the bad parts on our enemies. If I could get the goddess of agriculture to give me a bit of freedom to move in her domain, I'll grow countless vineyards and drip wine on the battlefields,"
"Do we need a reason to have a good drink?" Sofia stared at Alice, "This should be Cain's heaven, and what heaven is there that doesn't have the best drinks?"
"See? Sofia here understands," Bacchus giggled, "I even made the wine of the gods for dwarven and the elvish gods,"
"But-nya," Selena turned toward Ereshkigal, "Who is she? She smells like Alice's rot magic-nya,"
"Hoi! She doesn't smell like rot," Gracie smacked Selena on the head, "Her magic is similar. It's not a smell but magic. The fact you sense it with your nose doesn't make it a smell."
"About that..." Ereshkigal looked away, "I might be... your mother..."
Alice stared at her, frozen for a second, "What?"
****
Back in the mortal world, a massive lump of flesh landed beside the human kingdom of ruris. The people of Hage's village cried, seeing a black crack appear in the sky with blood and guts falling on the peak of the mountain they lived beside.
The blood boiled at an extreme temperature, burning the forest as it flowed like viscous lava. "What's that?!" The village's guard screamed, "A monster attack! A monster attack! Evacuate the village at once!"
"We should close the gate and defend the walls!" A man screamed from behind the village's wooden wall.
"It's a flood of red stuff! I can see the trees catching fire. Our wall would burn as quickly!" The guard rushed down the tower and ran as fast as he could until he reached the middle of the village, screaming with each step for the people to start getting the hell out of their houses.
He jumped over a fence and reached the alarm tower, "Man! If it's monsters we should defend," The tower's guard growled at him.
"Out of the way!" He slapped the guard away and ran up the stairs, short of breath.
He reached the Alarm room and tried to open the door, but it was closed. "Fuck this!" He growled kicking the door open, and rushed inside to ring the alarm bell.
DING! DONG! BANG! BANG!
"Everyone! Run for your lives. A monster flood is upon us!" He screamed his lungs out, smacking the living hell out of the large bronze bell with a steel mace.
"The hell is that!" He could hear the other guards at the gate scream, and he rushed to stare out of the tower, seeing smoke and fire gushing out where the forest started.
"I told them," He looked down the tower's window, seeing it built of stones with cracks between each brick and another. "Time to try the training," He went out of the window and climbed down, jumping to the roof of a nearby building. CRACK! The tiles broke beneath his steel boots, "Jimmy! Sorry for the roof," He shouted.
A woman looked out of the house's window, "You bastard thief, we're in an emergency...wait, Arnold?"
"No time, pack and run in seconds if you can, or you'll die, burned to death," He ran, jumping from one roof to another as he shouted, "Run away! Monster attack, the village is under attack!"
As he reached the last roof before the gate, he lunged down into a stack of hay that was used to feed the horses, crawling out of it almost immediately, "How is the gate holding?"
"Demorian, you bastard! Where did you go?" The guard's head captain shouted back at him.
"To ring the alarm. What's the situation outside?"
"Go back to the barracks and wait in the guard's prison until we deal with this! You ignored orders and didn't wait for me to make a decision whether to ring the alarm or not," The captain shouted, swinging his arm and pointing at the barracks.
Arnold grunted, "You..." He looked around and his eyes landed on the wall, at its side they had some barrels to store water, some for arrows, and some for weapons. "That's it," He rushed to the barrels, climbed over them, and jumped onto the wall.
The captain growled, pulling his sword out, "Ignoring orders again? I'll cut you where you stand if that's what you want,"
Arnold looked at the forest, seeing several of the guards getting slaughtered by a horde of goblins, ghouls, and strange mutated animals. "Tens are dying?" His face turned red and veins bulged on his forehead.
"Die!" The captain swung his sword toward Arnold's neck.
CRACK! Arnold extended his arm, grabbing the captain by the neck, "You didn't call for the alarm, acted slow, and now you've sent tens of soldiers to their deaths instead of ordering them to fortify the wall and help the citizen escape?"
"Shut up,"
"It's a losing battle against such a strange flood. We can't even hope to kill goblins without studying their behavior and poison. What makes you think we can win against a strange thing like that red flood?" Arnold glared at him, clenching his hand tighter on the commander's neck.
"You don't tell me my job," The commander growled, "Know your place, soldier..."
"Is that so?" Arnold threw the captain off the wall onto the battlefield, "Let's see what can you do. You tied it with your hands so open it with your teeth,"
As the captain turned around, a horde of goblins rushed at him swinging their swords in a frenzy. They as well are running from the flood, and the village wall blocks their path.
GAAAAAAAAAA! The captain screamed as the goblins cut him to pieces, running over his mauled corpse.
Arnold looked around with a worried face, finally spotting a zweihander. "That's it," He threw his long sword away and lifted the great sword.
With the greatsword resting on his shoulder, Arnold jumped down, "Everyone, retreat behind the wall!" He screamed at the soldiers fighting, "This isn't a fight we can win," He stomped forward, seeing a horde of goblins rush toward him. He growled, swinging the zweihander horizontally, cutting seven of them in half.
CRACK!
The other guards turned back as they heard steel clashes with bones, "Arnold?"
"It's Demorian, where did you go?" Another cried.
"To ring the alarm, we can't defend against this, go behind the walls and help the villagers evacuate," Arnold shouted, rushing into the monsters and swinging his zweihander again, cutting three goblins and a ghoul in one hit.
The goblins stopped their rush, staring at the massive man blocking their path, "Retreat!" Arnold shouted, lifting the zweihander and taking a stance, "You shall not pass!"
"GWAAAAAAAAAA!" A ghoul screamed, lunging at Arnold swinging a claw.
"AAAAA!" Arnold shouted, swinging the zweihander down and cutting the monster in half.
The guards looked at him and then turned toward the gate, running as fast as they could. "Arnold! Rush back the moment we open the gate, don't waste time!" One of them screamed as he scrambled to climb the wall with the help of other soldiers, the captain had locked them out to fight to death.
CRACK! CRACK! CLANG! Arnold swung the zweihander left and right, cutting hordes of monsters. A goblin manages to stab him in the shoulder, poisoning him.
He growled, feeling his arms numb as his vision blurred. From his ears, he could only hear the grunts of monsters as if he were drowning in water.
CLANG! Arnold blocked a swing from a ghoul's claw and cut him in half, kicking a goblin away before swinging the zweihander and cutting even more of the monsters.
After a few seconds, the poison was taking a heavy tool on his body, and then a ghoul managed to hit him with a heavy swing, cutting him across the back.
The red blood finally gushed from between the trees, flooding toward Arnold. He lifted his zweihander and tried to block it, he could barely what was in front of him at that point due to the poison and thought it was another monster.
From the blood, large intestine-like tentacles lunged forth and tied Arnold, pulling him into the forest and deep into the boiling blood. "What a fine man," A twisted, deformed monster in the vague shape of a woman giggled, pulling Arnold toward herself with the tentacles inside a large empty room she built with corpses in the forest.
SPLAT! The wall of the room shattered and two golden eyes glared down, "You're right, he's a man." Chad stared down at them.