Andrew didn't need telling twice—he vaulted over the wreckage of the collapsed wall, his boots crunching on shattered masonry. Chase lay sprawled in the courtyard, coughing up blood as hellfire flickered weakly around his claws. The demon slowly began walking towards him, its elongated shadow swallowing the moonlight whole.
Chase was slipping in and out of consciousness.
His ears rung and everything hurt. 'Ive been fighting too long…come on idiot body get up!'
He barely managed to roll over slowly passing out,try as he might to stay awake.
The demon didn't slow its approach—each step deliberate, claws clicking against cobblestones like a metronome counting down Chase's last moments. Its elongated shadow swallowed Chase whole, the stench of rotting mana thick enough to make his eyes water.
Just then, a yellow stone was thrown at him, attempting to seal him. Chase gave a smug look, before his consciousness completely faded.
Andrew made a bunch of blood weapons, spears swords, anything to keep chass from getting torn to bits. 'Im usually never tired. Blood magic is efficient if i use blood that isn't mine. My eyes feel so heavy.'
If…when they made it out of this, they were due for a vacation.
Andrew's vision swam as he hurled another blood-forged spear—this one hitting its mark with a wet *thunk* in the demon's shoulder. The creature didn't even blink. It simply reached up and pulled the weapon free, tossing it aside like a splinter. He then forced his way through the stones magic, destroying it with his hand.
*In Chases spirit sea*
Darkness. Then—a pinprick of crimson light. Chase gasped as consciousness returned in jagged fragments. He awoke to a face he liked to see "hello jasmine."
The spirit-woman floated above him, her form shimmering with restrained power. Her lips—normally curled in some teasing remark—were pressed thin. "You're dying out there," she murmured, fingers brushing his forehead. The touch sent phantom warmth through his veins.
Chase coughed, tasting copper. "Tell me something new." Her mood seemed to sour even more as she replied pointing to the mana cage in the back "That monster wants to help."
Vantriel pressed against its prison bars, its burning eyes locked onto Chase. "The enemy of my enemy," it hissed, clawed fingers flexing. "Let me out, boy. Or watch your friends' entrails decorate that courtyard."
Chase weighed the pros and cons. His brows furrowed. "Are things really this hopeless?"
Jasmine's form flickered with agitation. "Your friends are minutes from death, and you're debating *morals*?"
"It depends on how long that thing has control over my body. If that monster doesn't do it, this one sure will. Only difference is ill get to watch firsthand."
Vantriel laughed—a sound like grinding bones. "Clever boy. You think *I* would waste this vessel?" Its claws scraped the bars. "One hour. Then the cage reseals."
"I think you like seeing me miserable. 20 minutes max." But Vantriel still kept pushing "you dont have much time left boy."A smile appears on his face. "Bargain correctly or you could lose your friends as well as your life. 30 minutes."
Walking over to vantriel, Chase shook his hand.
"If i wake up and my friends are not there Ill kill us both." Vantriel laughed.
"Don't worry. Not only will i keep them alive, but ill throw in a little gift as well." With that, the mana cage crumbled, and Vantriel walked out.
He gave jasmine a smug glare before flying above chases spirit sea, into his consciousness.
Chase's body arched off the cobblestones with a sickening crack as vantriel took control—bones realigning, flesh knitting beneath redding skin. His eyes snapped open, twin pools of liquid obsidian swallowing the whites whole. Andrew staggered back as Chase—*no, not Chase anymore*—rose with unnatural grace, limbs elongating like pulled taffy, only for extra muscle to follow.
"Thirty minutes," the demon crooned through Chase's ruined vocal cords, voice layered with vantriel's guttural growl. It flexed talons now blackened with condensed hellfire and licked Chase's blood from its lips. "Now…where is the person who caused all this destruction.?"
The demon used an advanced version of mana sense. He could see a ball of mana that was purple and bigger than anyone else's inside of the estate. It quickly took the shape of a large demon fighting a mage.
"There you are."
Inside the estate, Donny was about to head outside to help chase, but he knew andrew couldn't take that thing alone. Chase wouldn't die from something like that.
Shiva was still in there fighting the brute. She was fast, but brute wasn't slow either.
As vantriel stepped inside, The skin sculpter turned around. he was holding donny by the throat.
"So you've unlocked something new. Can it save you, or your friends for that matter?"
Vantriel pondered for a moment. "Of coarse. its why you haven't noticed your arm was missing."
Looking at the arm he was just holding up Donny with, he saw that he was behind andrew, catching his breath. His arm was cut and half burned already. "Huh?"
In the skin sculpters mind, as he looked at vantriel,
He knew about the appearance change, the thought it was an evolution. Looking at the absurd level of confidence and that malicious grin, something else had to be at play. "Somethings wrong!"
The demon began burning up all his mana, launching tendrils and a small sea of elongated arms. They all crashed into vantriel at once.
That terrifying display of power shook the estate, threatening to bring it down.
Andrew just stared at it the entire scenario, mildly scared at this point. "Is that even chase?"
"Take that, no fledgling can hope to beat me. TRY HARDER IN YOUR NEXT LIFE!" The skin sculpter gloated with labored breath. Just as the demon was about to take his attention back to the remaining humans, a voice sounded from atop his head.
"That was quite the nasty display. Truly an insult to my eyes. Its like the visionary version of eating gruel. Probably worse."
Vantriel crouched atop the demon's skull like a grotesque crown, his elongated fingers digging into its forehead like meat hooks. The skin sculptor froze—not from pain, but from the sheer impossibility of the act. "I hit you!"
"Did you?" Vantriel's voice dripped with mock concern. He tapped the demon's temple, and the estate's ruined ceiling shimmered—revealing the truth. The tendrils had never touched him. The skin sculptor had been thrashing at an illusion while Vantriel strolled past without care.
Jumping off of his head, Vantriel put his guard up.
"Cmon, fisticuffs put your hands up!"
The skin sculptor swung wildly, his fists distorting the air with every punch—yet Vantriel weaved between them like smoke, his grin widening with each near-miss. "Left. Right. Left again—oh, predictable." He caught the demon's wrist mid-swing, his claws sinking into flesh with a wet *schlick*. "My turn."
Keeping his grip on the demons wrist, vantriel began punching with his left hand, knocking the wind out of the demon.
Shiva watched, frozen, as vantriel's fist blurred—each impact cratering the skin sculptor's torso with sickening wet thuds. Ribs splintered inward like rotten timber, ichor spraying in rhythmic arcs across the ruined estate walls. The demon gagged, its remaining arm flailing uselessly as vantriel adjusted his grip—then *twisted*. Tendons snapped like over-tuned harp strings, the skin sculptor's forearm detaching with a grotesque pop.
Andrew retched as vantriel tossed the severed limb aside. It landed near Donny's boots, fingers still twitching. "It's definitely not him, but what can we do about it?"
The skin sculptor staggered back, black bile bubbling from its mouth. Its remaining fingers curled—not in defiance, but in some grotesque approximation of prayer. Vantriel tilted Chase's head, examining the gesture with detached curiosity. "Pleading? To *me*?" His laughter echoed unnaturally, like stones grinding in a hollow chest. "You should've picked better prey."
Vantriel charged a ball of superheated hellfire raising it above his head. Yet it never came down.
"What?" Noticing he wasn't dead yet, the demon began running as fast as he could.
"I should still have time left. Did that brat trick me?"
Noticing the demon running, Andrew didn't even attempt following after seeing shiva fail to keep up.
Shiva's breath came ragged as she watched the skin sculptor's mangled form crash through the estate's eastern wall, vanishing into the night. Her fingers tightened around her sword hilt—half-expecting vantriel to give chase. Instead, he simply stood there, watching the gaping hole with an eerie stillness.
Then Chase's body convulsed.
Vantriel's smirk twisted into a rictus of pain as black veins spiderwebbed across Chase's stolen skin. His borrowed fingers clawed at his own throat, drawing ribbons of blood. "You—!" The demon's snarl fractured mid-word, Chase's voice bleeding through. "Twenty-seven minutes… you *liar*."
Jasmine's spectral form flickered into existence behind Vantriel's shuddering body, her hands plunged wrist-deep into his back. "Time's up," she hissed, yanking her arms free with a sound like tearing parchment. Vantriel screamed—a raw, guttural thing—as his essence unraveled in oily tendrils, sucked violently back into the spirit sea's depths.
Chase collapsed forward, vomiting black bile onto the cracked cobblestones. His fingers dug into the gaps between stones as his spine arched unnaturally, tendons snapping back into place with audible pops. "Fucking—*hurk*—dramatic bastard," he wheezed, spitting out a tooth.
Damian was stomping on the brute before coming over to chases location. Picking him up, he shook his head. "You look like shit, and I've never been happier to see ya."
Andrew limped over, his makeshift blood-bandages already dissolving into rust-colored puddles. "What the hell was *that*?" he rasped, gesturing vaguely at Chase's twitching limbs. "You turned into a discount nightmare and tore that thing apart like wet paper."
Chase spat another mouthful of brackish fluid. "Temporary possession. Thirty-minute warranty." His grin was all teeth—some still streaked with vantriel's residual corruption.
Shiva looked to the entire team with shock. 3 demons and one human. What kind of trouble would they get into? Technically it was her job to report them to the holy church, but without them the town simply wouldn't exist. As donny walked up, he sighed.
"Don't ask." Though in his mind, he was not that fine. 'I have to get stronger. If i dont ill be useless to the team. The guy who occasionally sneak attacks people.'
Chase coughed, the remnants of vantriel's corruption still burning like acid in his throat. His fingers twitched—human again, though the nails were blackened and cracked. Around them, the estate groaned, its shattered walls barely standing. The stench of melted stone and demonic bile hung thick in the air.
"We should get out of here."
Chase's voice was rough, the words scraping his throat raw. The estate groaned again—a deep, splintering sound—as plaster dust rained from the ceiling. Shiva didn't argue. She grabbed Donny's shoulder, steering him toward the gaping hole where the eastern wall used to be. Damian hauled Chase upright, his grip unyielding despite the blood slicking both their arms.
Andrew limped ahead, his boots crunching on shattered glass. "Granary's still standing," he muttered, squinting through the smoke. "Harold better have those civilians locked down tight." His blood-whip flickered weakly in his grip, more rust than crimson now.