Chapter 2333: Thoughts&Prayers

Devils are the masters of curses; they are the ones born with them and who have spent centuries studying and mastering them. No one should match a devil when it comes to curses, and then there is Doma.

Asmodeus backed away as Doma’s darkness rushed toward her. Her rot curse won’t help here since they are just mere mental images, and she can’t even pull too much power, or she’ll hurt the priestess. Doma must’ve picked this place to fight her, fully knowing those limitations.

Why were they even fighting? That was right; Doma wants knowledge that no one should know. That’s why Asmodeus, Alice Furberg, must stop her in her tracks.

"You... act a lot like Lilia." Alice lifted her hand, and with a single flick, she grabbed Doma’s darkness and halted her advancement on the spot. The entire space shook, and Doma gasped, feeling the entire landscape of the priestess’s mind shift.

Asmodeus was more dangerous than Doma had ever expected. "You’re changing the rules of your own curse." Doma tried to back away with a large leap, but before she could get far, Asmodeus clocked her in the face with a solid punch that sent her flying.

"My true Name is Alice Furberg, and I’m the holy devil wielding the rot curse. I can use divine magic to heal wounds and cursed magic to cause those wounds to fester and rot, and all of my power is fueled directly from Amaterasu’s divine magic." She started walking around Doma with a passive face, and her eyes started changing color. One of them burned red like a bloody eclipse, and the other flashed with golden divine magic like a bright sun.

"I can freely merge curses and divine magic, but I rarely do that because it wastes a lot of energy. And since I’m mostly a support, I’m not that good at direct fights, but I’m quite adaptable since I’ve trained with countless crazed fighters like Tiamat or Maharaja." As Alice explained her power, Doma frowned.

"Explaining your power might make you stronger, but it won’t help against me." She stood, and her entire body burned with darkness. "Do you really think you can face me in a battle like this inside a living being?" Doma was right, as she was the one most used to living like this, as she had existed as a free soul for centuries.

Alice looked at her. "If you think my rot curse and divine magic can’t reach you here, you’re wrong." A black knuckle duster appeared on her left fist, and a golden one on her right fist. "The black one rots the mind and deals psychic damage, and the golden one eases the mind and deals holy damage directly to the soul of cursed beings like you."

Alice lifted her fists and kissed them. "I call them Thoughts&Prayers."

Alice disappeared, and Doma quickly lifted her arms and blocked the coming strike, feeling the cursed magic shaking her mind and cracking a path into her inner consciousness. She felt sluggish, slow, and exhausted just from blocking one strike from the Thoughts knuckle duster.

She smiled, dodged the Prayers knuckle duster, and tackled Alice with her shoulder. "I already expected that this fight wouldn’t be easy, Queen of the Hells!" Her eyes were already burning pink as her clairvoyance kicked in, and she could already see Alice’s moves better than any Seer could ever hope to.

For a moment there, the fight turned into a pure physical exchange as the two swung at each other at exponentially increasing speed and power. Doma tried to study Alice’s curse and find a counter for it, and Alice was doing the same, trying to figure out how Doma worked and whether there was a way to safely remove her from the Priestess’s mind.

The Priestess who stood at the side and watched couldn’t believe her eyes. A mortal soul was facing the Queen of hell, and the two are looking to be nearly equal in power, at least for now. How did things come to this? How could a mere elvish woman who was born in the mortal world with nothing master witchcraft and curses to such a level that regular devils cannot even begin to match her?

But then, Alice finally landed a second hit, hitting Doma square in the guts with both fists and sent her flying back. "You’re getting slower!" Alice shouted with a smile, and when Doma hit the ground, she stood up with an evil grin on her face. "Ah... this hurt. Am I right, lovely priestess?"

Alice immediately stared back and saw the priestess bleeding on the ground, gasping and on the verge of death. "What? We didn’t damage anything..." She cried, and Doma giggled. "How heartless, you damaged me. I’m linked to her mind, so hurting me means hurting her as well."

She healed herself and extended a hand forward. "I’m like a knife stuck in someone’s chest: pull me out, and they’ll bleed to death; keep me in, and I’ll deal even more damage. Pick your poison, Queen of Hell."

Alice smiled. "Really, what a lovely trick." She bled from the nose, and then the Priestess sat up, gasping. "What? What happened!?" She looked at herself, and all of the mental damage dealt to her soul had faded away.

Doma frowned. "Huh, since she is your faithful cultist, you took over the wounds of her soul. This won’t change much; it’ll only mean that the more you hurt me, the more you’ll get hurt." She engulfed her fists with black mist that blocked divine magic. "Do you think that will end up nicely for you?"

Alice took a stance as well. "Well, I’m confident that I’m more durable than you are." She smiled. "I’m alone the most durable single creature in the whole universe." She lifted her hand and stabbed herself in the chest, pulling her own beating heart out.

Doma gasped as blood gushed out of her mouth, and her eyes opened wide, feeling the same pain as she looked at Alice’s smile. "You bitch!"

Alice threw her heart aside. "Curses always work both ways. How does it feel to have your heart ripped out?" Alice giggled with blood gushing out of her mouth. "I guess it hurts a lot. You’re someone who didn’t have a body in a long time and had forgotten how pain felt."

She rushed forward and threw a fist directly at Doma’s face, only to have her attack deflected aside and countered. "Back away! This fight is about to get risky. I’ll make sure you stay alive, so don’t worry about anything."

Hearing Alice, the Priestess turned around and rushed into the darkness, quickly fading away from view. She was horrified, as she had never seen such a fight before. Those two were operating on a whole other dimension where curses aren’t just powers that they have, but tools that could be shaped and formed to their own desires.

At this rate, the Priestess didn’t know who would win, and so she wanted to contact the other Asmodeus and ask her for help. She was certain that Doma had put some safeguards in place to make sure no one interrupted the fight, but if Alice was distracting her, she might be able to pull a fast one on her.

But as she ran into the darkness, she suddenly hit something solid, which wasn’t supposed to happen. This was her inner mind, and this darkness was her own thoughts, so she shouldn’t be interrupted by them. She gasped for air, rubbed her face, and reached into the darkness with her hand.

She couldn’t see, but she felt something large in front of her. Feeling its shape, it was weird, thick, huge, cold, hard, and wider than her own body. "What’s this?" She mumbled, and then decided to clear her mind and try to inspect her own thoughts. For a moment, she thought this was a barrier that Doma set up.

But when the Priestess cleared her thoughts and looked forward, she found her hands caressing Arad’s thighs as he stood there in the darkness watching the fight. She didn’t even need to guess; the sheer difference in the density of presence made it clear that this was the real Arad, not a fake one like what Doma pulled, and the pressure itself was insane. It felt closer to when she stood in front of a raking Lucifer, a presence so ancient, cold, and oppressive that it made hell itself feel like a heaven.