AKA 2-01

A Kitsune’s Ascent 2-01

The Off Screen Demon Lord Arc the Authors Didn’t Know they Needed.

Bobby woke up at five a.m. to a red scar in the sky peeking through his window. Yawning, he shut off his alarm and stretched, hardly paying the formerly apocalyptic sign in the sky any mind. As far as he was concerned, if the Two Noodly brothers weren’t bringing about final Ramen, then he wasn’t concerned.

Bobby showered, sang to his tunes, and dressed. He frowned as he couldn’t find his hairbrush. Glancing around,  he noticed a window slightly out of position and checked it, looking out to see a catgirl on all fours with a gnome in her mouth. She waved and tossed his hairbrush upward.

Bobby caught it with a laugh, waving at the catgirl wearing a bright orange safety collar with a golden bell on it.

That was nice.

The gnomes never really went away, they’d found. Oh sure, that great big BBQ and campus wide party eating the little fungal fuckers had been great, but they were everywhere. The big scientist types at the Academy had found while you could get rid of the gnomes about anyway, their spores were another story, resistant to even extreme heat. Worse yet, their spores were in the ground, and new ones came about every so often.

Fortunately, Jaq’s gnome control service caught on, and people were expanding the idea across the city, across the country. Feral catgirls were really good about hunting them, but with a bit of adjustment exterminators could as well.

Trick was to not let gnome populations reach critical mass, or you get masses practically beating down doors to steal shoes.

Also, the lingering fear that the gnomes were sapient was thankfully wrong. They were mobile fungi. Collectively, maybe they had some smarts to them like a hive mind, but individually they were about the same intelligence as rats. See them falling for rat traps on occasion with peanut butter.

Which was nice. Bobby, after getting over the initial anger of a gnome stealing all his boxer trading cards from his childhood, had been a little worried he’d been eating sapients on his pizza, but nope. They were vegan friendly and could be bought at the supermarkets chopped up next to the shitake mushrooms.

Cleaned up, Bobby stretched, put on his running shoes, and went to meet with Zack for their morning run.

~~~~

“Zack!” Bobby shouted, waving at his friend in the park and unplugging his earphones. “How’s it going?” he breathed, air misting slightly. It was getting chilly out at this point, but he hardly felt it. He always seemed to be burning lately, so while everyone else bundled up, he kept to his T shirt and shorts.

“It’s going well!” she grinned, her tail and ears fluffier than usual and a new fluffy red jacket covering her body. Wait, was that her fur?

Bobby decided to not chase that line of inquiry. Some answers weren’t worth it. “Good to hear, good to hear. You ever hear back from that guy who got exposed to your fur? How in the black skillet did that even happen?”

“Apparently the Gnomes stole some of my fur I had brushed off and tossed out, and decided to put it in his house like little dust bunnies,” she snorted. “Well, he died, but he got better! Apparently the Gnomes felt bad or something, and used some weird resurrection ability to bring him back to life…”

“Gah, I almost feel bad now about eating those guys in omelets, but like, I found one almost stole my hairbrush this morning. Man, I thought ethics 101 would prepare me for this, but ‘fungal semi-sentient gnomes who steal pocket change’ was not on the curriculum,” Bobby laughed.

“Hehe~” Zack said, bouncing over and lining up beside Bobby with a silent step.

“Well, shall we?” Bobby said, patting Zack on the back. “What’s the wager this time?”

“If you beat me to the Gym, I have to pose for the advertising poster you wanted me to pose for. But if I win, you have to do it with Rae,” Zack said, lining up for a good start.

“I’m game, I got no shame over all this,” Bobby said, gesturing at himself. “My body is a temple.”

Bobby got into a running pose, while Zack mirrored him. “On three,” he said.

They tensed. “Three!” he said, skipping over the numbers.

Zack was wise to his trick, and she took off at the same time. Which was fair, as she’d done the same thing to him the day before.

~~~~

Wizard Tim was in a precarious situation.

The story was as old as time.

A new demon lord had risen in RivenTail, and he was a right asshole. As usual. They weren’t always assholes. But enough were.

It wasn’t a demon thing. Demons could be just fine people, in Tim’s experience. Met the best hairdresser via a demon meet up. Turned out, infernal gatherings were less ominous and more booty calls, which was an unfortunate mistake, but hey, it worked out. But their culture in their homeland did praise the strongest demons, and it sadly led to this situation again and again.

Tim blamed the first demon monarch’s cursed throne for the demon lord problem. Who the fuck sat in that and thought things would turn out okay?

But still. Back to the present situation.

The Grand Anti Demon Lord Alliance hadn’t done so well.

Oh sure, it started out with an army of brave and shining knights and an entire legion of adventurers. They’d had barbarians, they’d had clerics, stuck up sorcerers, asshole rangers, tricky rogues, and of course, bards.

The army? Yeah it didn’t last. Knights are great in the field, but if you blow up their ship with magic boom booms via flying gargoyle pyromancers and followed it up with mega sharks, it didn’t work out too well.

The adventurers? They did a bit better. The gargoyles tried the same trick, but Tim had a fire shield set up. The sorcerers helped. Kinda.

They landed in the demon realm past the Sea of No Return and just before the Resort of Everlasting Torment at the base of Mt. Doom. They had great cocoa and skiing, apparently. Tim would have liked to visit, but that was contingent on them winning, so they’d gone to the Fortress of Everlasting Night, the demon lord’s personal castle.

There was a ritual to this sort of thing. The forces of good would show up outside, give an ultimatum to appeal to the demon lord’s innate goodness, the demon lord would scoff and laugh, and blab la bla.

It’d been mock standard, but Tim had been concerned when the demon lord wasn’t a laughing maniac in black iron armor with a giant axe. He’d… been a dude.

That’s it. He had  dark red robes, a suitably grim skull staff, and a crown, well-combed black hair, gray eyes, but that was it. He’d just nodded at the taunts, and then offered the rogues jobs.

…

That was how they lost a fifth their number. Just like that, with a snap of his fingers. Thus began the dismantling of the adventurer army.

The fight past the gates went well, when the first serious challenge hit: the succubi.

The bards had promised they had it down, that they had put on their chastity belts and were ready to out seduce the succubi to the forces of good where they belong. No succubus, no matter how seductive, could ever out seduce a proper master bard.

…

Too bad all the succubi were bards. So, their advantage was moot and bye bye another fifth of the army and most of their ranged component.

That made things a bit rough, but fortunately the clerics were able to pick up the slack and drive the succubi away, but not before all the bards left too. The demon lord was going to be getting lots of musical recruits in the future.

The clerics really seemed to have it down, the Arch Pope even giving a rousing speech to raise spirits as they ventured further into the demon lord’s domain.

Unfortunately, that’s where they ran into the infamous and heretical Philosopher Greg.

He’d offered no resistance, merely asked to debate theology with the Arch Pope.

…

He fucking won.

Bye bye their supports.

At that point, the rangers were captured by the dark elves. How? They thought, the arrogant bastards, they could out do dark elves in a dimensional trap, a dark forest in the Twilight Realm they got sent to. Of course the rangers fucking failed, why wouldn’t they, and then the dark elves were being boosted with brand new husbands.

Tim didn’t begrudge them or their honeymoons, but seriously. He managed to get what was left of the adventurer army out of there with a mass tunneling portal breach, but that just left him, his bodyguard Tsukuyomi, the barbarians, and the sorcerers.

…

Tim was really tempted to leave the snooty sorcerers behind. But he was too much a goody two shoes, so they came with.

…

Tim really shouldn’t have bothered, because of course the sorcerers betrayed them.

It was really straight forward, too.

One looked at a grand demon seal, said, “We can open this. When it is open, rush through as our vanguard.”

The Barbarian chief agreed, they opened the gate, and the barbarians charged through with primal roars into a blood-filled realm of skulls and blood rain.

The sorcerers then sealed the portal, waved at Tim, and fucking left.

This left just Tim and Tsukuyomi.

“Welp, we’re right fucked,” Tim commented.

“I do believe you’re right, degozaru,” Tsukuyomi grinned. “But I at least want to taste his blood with my blade.”

“I would prefer an exchange of coin,” a voice spoke up behind them.

“How unfortunate, degozaimasu,” Tsukuyomi grinned. “For you!”

She rushed at him, her full explosive force on display as she readied her four-hit single-target instant death attack to immediately take him out of the fight…

Space twisted as the demon lord revealed his real tricks, manipulated space to be further away from Tsukuyomi’s attack. Of course, this just meant she redirected, following after as her attack bent casualty to always chase after its target’s heart.

The demon lord, casually twisting space to prevent an attack that usually killed people four times over in 0.05 seconds and was still going, asked, “Is she always this aggressive? I was going to offer dental too with the salary.”

“Yeah, she is. Hold right there, for a minute, would you?” Tim commented, tracing the dimensional array of spells the demon lord was using to keep the attack at bay and preparing a counter measure. Also, Tsukuyomi was still screaming. She’d even taken a breath, mid step, and resumed screaming.

“I don’t think I will,” the demon lord commented. “Goodbye,” he said.

“Shit!” Tim shouted, his analysis broken and brain hurting as the magic backlashed against him.

Then, space and time energies gathered around him, and he was thrown, far, far away in the most powerful portal spell Tim had ever seen.

Tim was spat out on a grassy patch, Tsukuyomi following shortly after to smash buried up to her waist in the ground, like she’d dived right in.

Tim winced. The demon lord must have been annoyed.

Still. Where were they?

Tim stood up, ignoring his surroundings and strange buildings in the distance to begin analyzing the spatial anomaly left from the portal.

“Shit, already at 23% integrity and closing. Come on, tracing, tracing,” he muttered, piecing together the planar coordinates from the traces. It was going to be a close thing, but—

He was bowled over, a shapely mass of a female kitsune in shorts falling on him at high speed while an oni nearby came to a stop.

Tim growled. “Keep your tits to yourself, woman!”

Alas it was too late. Concentration broken, the analysis collapsed, and the remains of the portal were gone.

He and Tsukuyomi were stuck in this realm.

Fuck.

~~~~

AN:

Kitsu: Welp, so we may have been inspired. And it may have been the right time to strike while the iron is hot.

It do be a good thing, and it was fucking awesome. But yeah, so here we go, and we got more of it done, which is fucking awesome.

HiddenMaster: Indeed! That whole retrospective on a failed campaign against the demon lord just rolled off right well and got that done in under an hour, heck yeah. The demon lord is also promising to be super fun as well.

Tim too. Tsukuyomi as well. We got a metric ton done in just one day with this, plus have stuff casually ready for next chapter too.

Now, as always, if you want to see us keep writing more wonderful words, please check out our supports below. We both have bills to pay, so every bit helps.

HiddenMaster’s Archive: https://hiddenmasterarchive.carrd.co/

Kitsu’s Foxxo Shrine: https://aikoakiyoshi.carrd.co/