With no valid destination circle, Ashtoreth’s [Runic Warp] had a large margin of inaccuracy. This meant that they had to aim for the air high above the city lest she be dumped below ground, and this meant that she tumbled into the air above a large body of and some bridges moments after the spell finished.

  Before her lay Manhattan. Smoke seemed to rise from many of the streets and a few windows, and screams drifted up from the city to mingle with the sound of honking horns. Multiple massive pillars of red light marked the dimensional rifts, each of them dispensing swarms of infernals.

  “Wow,” Ashtoreth said as a nearby tower’s windows were shattered by a blast of orange fire. “They must have hit hard; this place fell to chaos pretty fast.”

  She glamoured herself a shirt that said I ? NY and then began to fly toward the city.

  “Are you sure that’s all because of the apocalypse?” Dazel said.

  “Doesn’t matter!” she said, flying toward the nearest rift. “All right, Dazel, are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “For your first task!” she said.

  He groaned.

  “Go get me some french fries!” she said.

  “...What?”

  She flew lower to the city street so that she could launch several volleys of hellfire javelins into the enemies on the ground and in the air, incinerating dozens of them instantly. “Get me some fries,” she said. “Should be easy enough.”

  “You’re actually serious.”

  “Uh-huh! We’ve only got so much time, here, Dazel—chop chop!”

  Her attention was diverted a moment later as she flew over an intersection and saw down the streets to either of side of her. Floating in the air between the buildings, she saw a huge creature that seemed to be made of bulbous spheres, tentacles, and plates of bone.

  {Demonic Leviathan — Level 72 Boss}

  “Look at that!” Ashtoreth said, turning on her path to bring herself closer and put herself above it. “They must have worked pretty hard to push that one through so fast!”

  “That’s a real warbreed,” he said. “They must have… I don’t know, built it with a flesh fusion spell.”

  “Uh-huh!” Ashtoreth said, getting close enough to convert her scythe into a cloud of fire that she formed into her cannon.

  With her [Dexterity], it was no trouble at all to bring the cannon round and take a near-perfect aim at the creatures head. “Buh-bye now!” she said.

  Rammstein had only gotten stronger as she leveled, and when she fired the weapon, the burst of fire that flashed from its muzzle was as bright as a lightning strike. A shockwave blasted at the air around her, and the windows of several nearby towers cracked.

  Her shot burned its way through the air, and a barrier appeared as it was about to strike the leviathan’s bony head. It was composed of several white hexagonal panes, and they flashed red and shattered without deterring the shot in the slightest.

  A moment later the leviathan’s head burst into mist, and then its body erupted into an enormous cloud of hellfire.

  Ashtoreth quickly switched back to her scythe, then gathered the hellfire as [Bloodfire] by swiping the casting focus through the air. The rushing flames disappeared in an instant, and the sound of the spreading fire was replaced by the screams of fearful people below.

  “Is it weird that humans scream every time something explodes?” she asked. “Because you’d think they’d be more accepting of the things they don’t like exploding. That was a big win for them.”

  “Are you maybe a little worried that there was anyone else in the ongoing path of that shot?” Dazel asked.

  Ashtoreth blinked. She thought about it, then smiled as she beat her wings and began to fly toward the nearest rift. “If there was, it’ll still math out.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen: the good archfiend.”

  “Well excuse me, Mister Judgemental,” Ashtoreth said. “But in moral domains, incompetence is immorality. And if you can’t operate in moral grey areas, then you’re not competent enough to wage war, and thus immoral.”

  “So what you’re saying is, it’s immoral not to kill at least a few civilians.”

  “Go get me some french fries.” She pointed with her scythe. “There’s a shop right down there. Authentic New York french fries, Dazel.”

  “That’s a cheap fast food chain that can be found anywhere and just happens to be named ‘New York Fries.’”

  “That’s the thing that makes it authentic!” Ashtoreth said. “Now hurry, then meet back up with me by the rift!”

  “Ugh, fine.” He dove down into the city.

  She sped toward the rift again, now only a few seconds from reaching it. As she did, she held out her hand to examine the ring that Dazel had given her.

  [Ring of Cosmic Communication]

  This ring allows you to communicate across interplanar boundaries when using the [Telepathy] spell.

  Anyone with [Magic] could manipulate mana to do things like form simple spells and create enchantments, but with system-granted abilities to assist them, it usually took much more time, energy, and assistance in the form of runes and a casting focus.

  Ashtoreth had eaten plenty of spellcasters and used [Blood Aptitude] to steal their knowledge of magic and enchantments, but she’d never learned anything that suggested Dazel could hide a function of the ring in its description.

  Now she looked at the structure of the rather simple enchantment which created it and saw that it hadn’t changed. She’d examined it many times before, but she wanted to see if some hidden feature of the ring had only activated when they reached Earth.

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  She found nothing.

  She reached the first dimensional rift a moment later, continuing her bombardment of the most dangerous-looking enemies as she flew.

  She spotted a leviathan several blocks away, pulled out her cannon, and dispatched it before absorbing most of her hellfire with her scythe.

  Then a flare of red light caught her eye, and she spun to see that another distant leviathan was launching a beam of blindingly bright red energy at her.

  She could have dodged the beam, but then it would wind up somewhere in the city behind her, probably burning out several floors of buildings, or even collapsing one.

  She held her cannon with one hand, putting the other on her hip and glaring at the leviathan with an intense look of disapproval as the red energy washed over her, pushing her back through the air several feet and singing her hair and eyebrows.

  “You guys remind me of a golem I met once,” she said as she leveled her cannon at the creature and fired, the sound of her shot ringing out through the city around her.

  The leviathan burst into hellfire a moment later, though it was too far for her to absorb the flames.

  She pulled out her scythe, incinerated some choice infernals to cause some favorable chain reactions, then created another focused bead of Hellfire that she ran along the seam of the rift to dispel the magic that held it open, taking her high into the air.

  The rifts were one-way, so she couldn’t just jump into one. Instead, she had to use [Runic Warp] to move herself to the offending bastion.

  They needed one of the rifts for Dazel to determine the position of the interplanar bastion they’d be warping to, and the larger it was, the easier it would be to trace. More than one rift in close proximity to one another would actually cause a bit of interference with his spell, making it take up to ten times longer.

  Hence, the most efficient approach was for Ashtoreth to seal all but one of the rifts before they traced the bastion in question.

  When she finished sealing the rift, she absorbed the hellfire she’d created, then flew toward the place where she’d killed her last leviathan, launching more hellfire javelins as she went. She reached it in a couple of seconds, absorbing the hellfire that coated the street and the surrounding buildings with a swipe of her scythe. People were immune to her hellfire, but the city wasn’t.

  Dazel joined her as she shot through the air toward the next rift. “Like four people tried to kill me while I got this,” he said, passing her a bucket of french fries.

  Ashtoreth grinned as she saw the bucket. “Dazel!” she said. “You even put ketchup on them for me! That was really considerate.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Just like me, you know? Abrasive exterior, but really softhearted.”

  Ashtoreth narrow her eyes at him as they approached the next rift and she launched dozens more javelins into the city below. “Did you steal these from someone?”

  “Uh, no. They were left unattended.”

  She passed the fry bucket from her hand to her tail so that she could eat while she wielded her scythe one-handed, launching another volley of javelins as she stuffed four fries into her mouth.

  “Huh,” she said, chewing. “They’re so… weird. Kind of powdery, but creamy because of the oil I guess. Salty and sugary from the ketchup.”

  “Is this really the time to be a tourist?” Dazel asked.

  “I’m still working,” Ashtoreth said, descending through the air as she rained fire on those below. “Will you get me some street meat while I close this?”

  “What?”

  “A hot dog, Dazel. Get me a hot dog from one of those cute little food stands. There’s one there—see? Skip the bun.”

  He sighed. “Do you want to maybe finish that guy before you ascend?”

  She looked over to see a hulking devil over twelve feet tall screaming in agony and writhing around on the ground as her flames consumed him, sustaining themselves by applying her [Energy Drain].

  {Commander Graxius — Level 65 Boss}

  “It’s taking care of itself, looks like,” she said. “Going up!”

  She conjured a bead of hellfire once more, running it up along the seam in reality to close the rift, then using her high vantage point to search for more leviathans as she planned the course she’d take to the next rift.

  She stuffed another handful of fries into her mouth, then frowned at the bucket as if it were a painting she didn’t understand. “These are awful!” she said, laughing delightedly.

  “Well maybe this will be better,” Dazel said, appearing beside her with a hot dog in his hands.

  “Street meat!” she said, grabbing it and taking a bite as she dove back toward the city and conjured her cannon. “You’d think we’d have thought of these!” she said through a mouthful of meat.

  “Hot dogs?”

  “It’s a tube filled with suspiciously-sourced meats.”

  “It’s cooked.”

  “We wouldn’t cook ours, naturally. But I bet Hell could make great hot dogs.” She swallowed her bite of the hot dog, then swallowed the rest of it with one quick gulp. “Say, that wasn’t bad!”

  She killed another leviathan, then rushed to the next rift.

  “So am I done with the errands?” Dazel asked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said, recognizing that they were only seconds away from needing him. “I’d love some popcorn, but I don’t think you’d be able to get it fast.”

  “Popcorn? Haven’t you learned you don’t like human food yet.”

  “But don’t you just want to push your hand into a bag of popcorn and feel around?” she asked. “It’s so strange!”

  Dazel sighed.

  “It’s fluffy, but it sounds crispy! I want some.”

  She landed next to the rift, incinerating another boss in a full suit of black armor as she did so, then sealed it within a few moments.

  Soon she was headed toward the last rift and looking down at the city with a sober expression. “Well, I guess it’s about time to say goodbye to New York.” She hung her head. “Even though it’s only been like, two minutes.”

  “Cheer up,” said Dazel. “You can always return when you’re monarch. You can even visit the parts that aren’t just Manhattan.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Those exist!”

  “You can catch a movie at the cinema and buy five bags of popcorn.”

  “It’ll be great!”

  “They’ll forgive you for any collateral damage you caused.”

  “Which probably isn’t a lot,” Ashtoreth said, diving to land on the ground beside the rift. “After all—” she gasped, her head snapping to one side. “—Look at the doggy! It’s so cute.”

  A golden retriever was running by them, dragging a bloody leash behind it.

  Dazel made a disparaging sound.

  “Come on,” she said. “I want to save it. We could take it with us.”

  “We’re prioritizing, remember?” Dazel asked. “You don’t want to potentially miss saving actual people just to save a dog, do you?”

  Ashtoreth craned her head as the dog ran further out of sight. “Yes,” she said. “Definitely.”

  “What do you mean, yes?”

  “Even if it’s ultimately wrong morally, I think still have dog-friendly instincts,” she said. “Ones that value them more than humans on an emotional level. I mean, did you see that scruffy floofer doofer as it ran for its life?”

  Dazel sighed.

  She emblazoned a few hellfire runes on the ground around Dazel, then conjured a huge wall of flames beyond those in order to protect him.

  “I’m going to kill anything that looks important while I search for more leviathans,” she said. “Let me know if you need a save.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  Ashtoreth leapt into the air next to portal, sending out more homing javelins every second as she rose to search the city.

  It wouldn’t be long now that they could assault their first bastion.