Chapter seventy-eight - Let's do not do it again

In Hell, Malphas, The great President of Hell, with his forty subordinate legions, waited patiently, he was excited, sitting on his ornate throne in his castle, a group of lesser demons played music while some demons with humanoid appearance and beautiful toned bodies, male and female, danced sensually, their bodies were covered in few clothes and they didn't seem to care, Malphas held the chalice in his hand and a beautiful succubus with her breasts nudes came to him and filled his goblet with a bubbling red liquid, which the demon drank in one gulp.

Malphas reached out and grabbed the succubus' breast, who laughed like a teenager in love, running away from the demon and running towards the corridors, pausing to look back as if she expected the crow to follow her, Malphas got up and started to follow the succubus, while laughing, enjoying the silly game of hunting, he 'ran' towards her slowly as he dropped the goblet, other demons watched their sire run after the succubus and made jokes, yelling at her to run faster.

Malphas got close enough and grabbed an edge of the cloth that was wrapped around the demon woman's hip, making her spin like a ballerina, the succubus chuckled sensually, not caring that she was completely naked, she ran again, waiting to be chased.

The demon began chasing the beautiful succubus again, running through the strange gardens of his castle, the demon woman came to a large circular bed filled with pillows and lay down sensually, her hips outstretched and her 'jewels' showing, a small drop of a shiny liquid ran down between her thighs which aroused a huge fire in the raven demon, the crow chased her, ripping off his clothes in the process, he approached the bed ready for action when a sharp pain rose in his chest.

The pain was like a sharp twinge in the raven demon's chest, strong enough to make him fall to the ground on his knees, he screamed like a wounded animal, startling the little succubus and drawing the attention of all his servants, the pain didn't stopped only in a twinge, Malphas felt his whole body burning as if he had plunged directly into a pool of hellfire, even from a distance he could feel half of his soul being destroyed and as a consequence his body went through the greatest pain that he had already felt it in his whole profane life.

Some of black feathers fell from his body as the demon writhed and screamed, clutching his chest tightly, his purple mana burst violently as he weakened at a visible speed, scaring the other demons trying to help his lord as he was dragged by that horrible pain.

When the pain finally passed his body was in a weak and deplorable state, the succubus and another of his servants helped him up and put him to the bed, without understanding what had happened to him, Malphas' only thought was: 'What the hell happened to the other half of my soul?'

***

"Holy sh*t, this is getting out of hand!" Locke stated worriedly.

'You need to control this thing!' Tia yelled at Locke through the mindlink.

"I am trying!" Locke replied. "I swear to God I'm trying! It's not answering! It just keeps growing!"

The mana Locke had released, his 'ultimate attack', had fulfilled its role and destroyed the demonic avatar, but now the highly condensed black mana had lost control and was violently devouring everything around it.

As soon as Malphas' avatar was defeated the demon's territory was torn apart and swallowed up into the dark singularity, Locke found himself back in the room where he had faced Matthias, he could feel the ex-priest had escaped, but this was the smallest of his concerns.

The mana singularity continued to grow and devour everything around him like a hungry animal, now destroying the secondary dimension, tearing it apart the same way it did with the demon territory, Locke could feel the mana mass destroying everything and knew that it wouldn't stop anytime soon, the problem was, what would happen if this destructive mana made it to the real world?

'Locke, this stuff is getting crazy! It's destroying all things around! Can't you cancel or disperse this?' Tia questioned worriedly.

"I…I don't even understand what's going on! I thought it was just going to explode or something like that! Damn, what's wrong with my mana? It wasn't like that in training!" Locke responded worriedly, the dimension he was in shattered and was devoured and he found himself falling into another smaller dimension, full of the apparitions he had faced earlier.

It didn't even take a second for these apparitions to be swallowed up into the mass of violent black mana and to be destroyed just as the secondary dimension they were in, at the rate they were, soon that mana would have devoured all dimensions inside the building and would be free on earth, the thought of that violent and uncontrolled mass of mana loose in his home dimension made Locke shiver.

"Damn, I need to fix this thing!" Locke screamed, his mind was racing as he tried to find a solution, he still felt a connection to the mana mass but at the same time he felt like he didn't have any control over it anymore, it was like a part of himself was running wild and out of control, he felt that the best way to resolve this was to get the reins back.

With no choices, Locke jumped into the middle of the rising singularity, his body sank into the middle of the black mana, the mana didn't hurt or resist him, but accepted it as if waiting for this moment, even before Locke took any action he felt the mana run back into his body, invading his mana circuit and filling it up completely.

'What'a f*ck?' was Locke's only thought, the mana was rushing back to him but he wasn't in control, instead he felt the mana even more violent outside than before, it was like that black mana was a living creature with their own emotions, a destructive and belligerent child, who loved to break things around as a way to get pleasure.

To his surprise the amount of mana was at least double the total mana he had released previously, and he could feel his mana circuit expand and increase at a visible speed while his own mana pool grew exponentially, the whole process it was very beneficial to Locke, who felt his mana becoming purer and stronger, the feeling was nice and comfortable and he almost lost himself in the process, letting the mana continue to devour and destroy everything.

'LOCKE! FOCUS!' Tia yelled, snapping Locke out of his stupor.

Locke came back to himself at the same moment, he could feel the mana continuing to devour the layers of secondary dimensions that made up the interior of the cultist building and he realized that he was getting closer and closer to going through them all and reaching the main dimension, fearing the result that his black mana would bring to the entire planet he began to force the mana to calm down.

The process was more difficult than he expected, the violent and destructive mana seemed eager to continue on its apocalyptic path, but he did his best to calm the black maelstrom and gain control of the process.

The dark singularity began to calm down and the speed at which it dragged and consumed the dimensional pieces diminished and Locke began to push the mana back into himself.

The process become painful, unlike before when the mana came in on its own and slowly expanded its mana channels, bringing everything in at once was practically breaking the channels and ripping the container, although both recovering quickly still caused extreme pain to Locke.

Eventually the black mana sphere became barely larger than Locke's body, with one last effort he pulled everything inside and dropped to his knees on the floor of one of the last remaining secondary dimensions in the building, the entrance hall.

'Locke! Locke! Are you okay?" Tia asked worriedly.

Locke opened his mouth and let out a small moan of pain, his body ached like he'd run a million marathons, his mana channels and pool were bigger than ever and he felt the quality of his mana had increased and become more dense, but the only thing he could answer was: "Let's do not do it again..."

"Dude, thank goodness you managed to control your mana, if it had crossed out of the building…" Tia exclaimed, pausing on the last sentence, visibly worried about the possible consequences.

"Let's just... Let's just seal this attack, no more using all the mana at once until I have full control over it..." Locke replied, he was glad he had managed to control the whole thing in the end but he was still worried, what if he had tested it on Earth? How much collateral damage would this cause? "Tia, what the hell happened? Why did my mana... act this way?"

"I... I was in doubt before, but now I'm sure, your mana acted this way because of your attribute..." The fairy replied in a slightly guilty tone.

"So... what is my attribute?"