All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 338: Soul Searching

The hit sent me rocketing down and into the side of a mountain. Far above, the black suit of the Demon Lord slowly vanished from view as the dust cloud billowed around me and blocked its view. My System Diagnostic skill disconnected briefly as I lost line of sight. Undeterred, I picked myself out of the crater and zipped out of the top of the caldera of the volcano I had just dug a 0.563 kilometer tunnel through to reengage in the sky. A few seconds later, the skill resumed its work and continued processing.

We had been trading blows for some time now, and to be perfectly honest, I was outmatched in power. I was slightly faster and seemed to have more tricks up my sleeve than my opponent. The demon also wasn't really taking this as seriously as I was, which gave me an advantage, but one that I didn't think would last. Still, I was fairly certain the demon lord was just playing with me for whatever reason. I was struggling to make any real measurable progress.

Any damage I inflicted with my Holy Water, Divine Sword, or anything along those lines healed up in under 0.492 seconds. And those were my best options. If I tried something like my sanitation lamp, it healed as fast as I could do damage. Whatever regeneration I'd seen with the Lieutenants paled in comparison to this. My processors had yet to spit out any possible approach that might change things, either. Hence why I had to wait on a System Diagnostic.

A group of shadowy tendrils lashed through the air. I angled myself, adjusting my thrusters to soften the impact. Still, the strike sent me hurtling toward the ground.

Environmental damage was pretty nonthreatening to both of us at this point. The incredible levels I had gotten recently had completely reforged my exoskeleton and my plastic shell might as well have been made from titanium. Well, that wasn't quite accurate either. My shell's actual properties were about a thousand times stronger than even that. Whatever material it had become was really something to behold. So smashing through rock had about the same effect as smashing through a pillow or a wall made of feathers.

No, the only time we ever managed to hurt each other was with direct hits. Even then, it was difficult to find leverage to do so.

So, with the magical energies that I could imbue some of my skills with to overcharge them or it could do the same with whatever demonic power it had. This resulted in most of the fight being about gaining position to inflict damage. Right as I regained altitude and we clashed again, the System Diagnostics skill pinged and alerted me to its initial findings. Excitedly, I processed the results in near-instantaneous fractions of a second. But my processor fans whirred in distress as the results came back.

There were weak points, all right. But none of them were weak enough to make use of. According to the diagnostics, its head was slightly more vulnerable than its talons, but I had figured that out myself. I didn't need a skill to realize that.

A full-body overlay coated the Demon Lord, coloring it based on its relative vulnerability. Everywhere was the same solid solid gray that indicated an ineffective target. There was no shiny red area for me to attack. There was only the slightest tinge of pink around his eyes. And so far, I haven't had any luck in getting those obvious weak points to stay damaged, either.

The rest of the report didn't help lift my spirits. When analyzing its abilities, I found that it had five major attacks, each of which I had already categorized myself. The Diagnostic did fill in some of the gaps regarding edge cases and varied uses for them, which was helpful.

Its defensive capabilities were on par with my own, and its regeneration was even better, as I'd observed. If anything, I hadn't expected us to be this similar, seeing that it was several levels higher than me. The only thing that was surprising was the classification of the Demon Lord.

According to my skill, it was a support type, kind of like me. It heavily buffed all of its minions and underlings in the same way that I had a positive effect on my followers. Except, its own abilities in that area were far more extreme. I couldn't tell if that was some side effect of hitting level 100, or just an innate ability from the demon. However, this was extremely worrying. It meant that even though I was stalling it. I was leaving my allies down below to fight with much stronger opponents than I'd intended.

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The longer this went on, the more likely it became that extremely buffed Lieutenants or just waves and waves of demons that could summon endlessly would overrun my allies. No, a stalemate was a loss for me. I had no doubt that my friends would hold their own for now. But if its ability to summon endless demons wasn't impeded by my fighting with it… Well, they needed time to recharge, too.

An arc of dark energy scythed toward me. I cut through it with my Divine Sword, charging at the Demon Lord as I zigzagged around its other attacks.

Again, I examined the demon Lord through my soul sight. Within its body I spotted the perfectly polished red orb that might as well have been made of diamond. It would have been pretty, if not for the strangely ominous glow that emanated from it. As much as I tried to clean it or shatter it, nothing happened. It was like all of the spiky red, angry ones I had seen through. The demon's souls were just small particles of dust magnified to a million times their size. Maybe a small chip off of this soul?

The soul wasn't registering as a weak point, that was for sure. But something seemed different about it. This one didn't have the same jagged spikes or irregular surface as all the other demons. Nor did it have the same white glow of the humans here. It seemed oddly alien.

To be fair, it was a different color, so that was a perfectly understandable assumption. And while I had mostly avoided messing with people's souls in my day-to-day life, I had spent a decent amount of time cleaning them whenever Beatrice asked for my help in holding a service for her church. It was rather satisfying to help regularly remove the small amount of black filth that accumulated on my followers who wished it. I always asked for permission nowadays, which a lot of people gave. Still, the years of practice had given me a certain familiarity with how souls worked. And this one was definitely different.

It wasn't different in the way the demons were. It wasn't broken or embedding itself in another or anything like that. Instead, it simply felt like it didn't belong in this body. As if the soul was a square patch of beige in an ivory white carpet. Like some rather inexpert handyman had cut away what was supposed to be there and put in something new without knowing or caring that it didn't fit its surroundings.

Shifting my perspective slightly, I noticed the perfectly round orb also had a different texture. There were no small protrusions as I'd gotten used to. It was perfectly smooth, but didn't quite settle seamlessly into the body like it should have. There was a small gap between the soul and the hard-to-conceptualize hole that served as its housing.

I decided to take a chance. Using my skill, I managed to grab onto the soul, taking advantage of the gap to counteract its slipperiness. I had no real means of damaging it still, but it was interesting.

As I blocked another slash with my sword the Lieutenant nimbly leaned back, avoiding my counter slice towards its eyes. But only half my core was working on that. The other half was examining this oddity. I didn't have any guarantee that it would lead to any discrete advantage, but it was the only real lead I had.

As I spun the soul in its imperfect casing of reality, I felt my system diagnostic skill kick in again. My processers nearly stuttered with surprise. Maybe there was there a weakness here? The Demon Lord gave no indication that it could feel me messing around with it on the soul plane. Perhaps it didn't notice. Perhaps it didn't care. Either one could be perfectly reasonable from its point of view, as no doubt it thought it was invulnerable in this case.

A small part of reality around the soul space highlighted in my overlay. Rather than the weakness-indicating red though, it began to glow a bright green. It was a color that the System Diagnostics had never shown me before. Even as I parsed through the details of its response, I didn't understand. It wasn't a weakness per se, and it didn't really help me understand a general system of movements and parts. But it was undeniably important.

It was a connection to a whole. A whole other entity that was so vast I couldn't grasp it. As I closely examined the spot that was highlighted, my soul sight couldn't find anything different. Puzzled, I took on a more defensive approach to the fight as I flipped through all the different variations of sensory equipment. Nothing stood out anywhere, not in optical or microscopic or anywhere in the entire light spectrum. Nothing. But I knew there was something there.

Finally, I reached out with the last thing I could think of. I used Void Manipulation. But this time, I didn't use the skill to expand my dustbin as I had so many times before. Instead, I tried to manipulate that green spot itself.

I felt something shift. It was a small shift, one that resisted my manipulation. But even that was enough for me to gain better insight. It appeared that this little spot in reality was somehow pouring energy into the demon world.

Huh? Was this him recharging magic from the world? Quickly, I introspected and looked at my own soul. The glowing golden orb appeared fuzzy on the sides, perfectly matching the fuzziness of reality. I had no way of slipping around or moving it the way I could with the demon's. Mine was too snugly fitting with reality, even when I tried to target that, too with Void Manipulation.

But I did notice similarly that there was a connection from the soul to reality. Energy flowed through that connection, not just from one point, but every part of the soul. Interesting. Was this how my batteries and energy recharged? If so, could I use this?