Another projectile missed her by an inch, turning the concrete into a moonscape.
The sparks and the dust were no problem.
But every impact came with a thunder that could have shattered her eardrums.
Then, that same oppressive silence. Not even an echo.
It was driving her nuts.
"I'll admit, you have balls," Lilith yelled into the darkness. "Get it? Ballsy? Because you're—"
Rather than an answer, one more steel ball whooshed through the air, but this one didn't even come close. Did he throw it without looking, or was his accuracy not as great as his strength?
"What? If you don't like the joke, come and tell me. But interrupting me like that is kinda rude."
Too bad, she couldn't even guess where he was sniping from.
As if every ball came from a different direction.
And when she tried to run towards them, she'd find nothing but darkness and dead ends.
No clues, either. Other than the impacts, the silence and the darkness were absolute.
And, of course, the stench also wasn't getting any better.
She was blind and deaf, and her little magical radar picked up signals that made no sense.
For one, there were way too many of them.
Most of them far, some at arm's length, and yet she still couldn't see anything.
If the last thing that pesky angel said wasn't about blowing up the city above or wasting mana—
But of course, right when she felt like setting even the water on fire, she had to hold back.
"Okay, I'll count to ten, and if you're not here by then—"
Lilith let her voice trail off.
Then what? Would she count to twenty?
Not exactly threatening. And the fact that her voice didn't echo made her question if anyone even heard her taunt. Because if not, what's the point? This game sucked.
It had to be The Controller's doing.
This was way too sophisticated for a brute throwing balls at people—
One zooming straight towards her face again.
It wasn't that hard to sidestep, but she had to be careful.
The same way it ignored Gabrielle's time manipulation, it flew past any space she bent to her will, too. She also considered knocking one away, but, well—
Forget the pain. If she had to heal a broken fist, it'd be one massive waste of mana for sure.
And guessing from what it did to the solid walls—
The crack of concrete and the echo-less impact were all familiar by now.
"Okay, let's say I counted, then," she yelled again. "And now it's my turn."
She whipped out a lightning bolt, aimed at the closest mana-signal dead ahead.
Nothing crazy, she only used the ambient charge so that someone else wouldn't do the same against her. But she hit nothing.
Wasn't that more or less where the last throw came from?
One measly thunderclap, a flicker of light, and the charges dissipated.
"What are these things, then?" she muttered to herself, getting annoyed. "Imps? Traps? At least let me light something on fire, you hear? It doesn't even have to be important, ugh."
By the end, she was shouting. Again.
She was this close to losing her cool.
Did this thing count as illusion magic?
But rather than seeing or hearing things, she actually didn't.
Nothing. Nada. None of her senses worked. And for someone doing this to a greater demon?
Hats off to them.
The next ball was on its way, coming from behind now.
It bypassed her barrier as if it weren't even there, but without it, she wouldn't have noticed it in the first place. So she kept pushing the outer layer further—and out of the blue, she felt it.
Finally.
Right as she ducked below the previous trajectory, the invisible shield bumped something.
Or rather, someone bumped into her defensive membrane.
"Please don't be Gabrielle," she grunted, ready to release another bolt in that direction.
A proper one this time.
And while she still didn't hit a thing, seeing the arch deflect was already a good sign.
"Gotcha," she smirked, leaping forward.
Her next spell generated a strong wind, but it was blowing towards her, not away. Her prey must have been less than ten or fifteen paces from her. That would keep it in place.
It only took a second to reach it, and thank the spirits, it wasn't the angel after all.
Unfortunately, not Ballsy, either.
But a child. A monster.
An imp with an eerie grin in the darkness, its body swelling fast, and—
BOOM.
The explosion rattled the whole sewers.
Had she teleported away a moment later, the blast would have knocked her into the sludge.
But unlike those enigmatic balls, a plain old fireball was not immune to her abilities.
"So you're both aiming for me now, huh?" she complained to the darkness, trying her best to sound casual. "Does that mean you've already beaten the angel? That'd be sad."
Imagine putting so much effort into making her life miserable, then someone comes and—
Oh. Someone was, in fact, coming.
Like, a lot more people approached fast.
If imps even counted as one.
"Well, Gabby said I can't blow up the city, but said nothing about letting others do it."
Before the children-looking beasts surrounded her, another ball whizzed past her ears.
It was lucky she didn't have to dodge that, because she couldn't, even if she wanted to.
"Okay, that's it," she said, digging in her heels. "Game over."
And the amount of mana she released at once must have been the most wasteful thing she'd done this year. Especially considering it didn't obliterate the entire sewers and the city above.
But it caused an ugly flood, then froze everyone and everything in it.
Not in time, in actual ice. Or, to be exact, in the frozen sewage.
"And I'm not even sorry," she yelled, summoning a strong enough light to chase away the artificial dark. "That's more like it. That was quite the haul."
A dozen imps flailed, encased up to their ankles, but that wasn't it.
Ballsy froze, eyes glowing red thirty paces away, gathering momentum.
The fact that he couldn't move, unlike the imps, spoke volumes about his lack of mana.
"I was about to ask how many more of those balls you had," Lilith said with a smirk. She took her time, the frozen sludge crunching beneath her feet. "But I guess it doesn't matter now."
She kept her distance from the child-shaped monsters, dispelling each as she went.
But The Controller avoided her net.
"How's it feel to miss every single throw?" she asked the frozen Ballsy instead. "Max power, zero accuracy," she teased, letting the ice thaw once she got close enough.
Even without her covering him in that mess, this human did not look healthy at all.
If he were even one.
The red eyes and the dry, snow-white skin suggested something else, but—
This was Earth, so what else could it be?
When the sludgy ice finally broke on his face, he'd also gasped for air as any other human would. An ugly one, for sure, but—
"Kill me now, demoness," Ballsy wheezed. "But know that you won't leave this place alive."
What? He wasn't even mute?!
"How about no?" she said with a smirk, summoning a length of rope. "Hands together where I can see 'em. And if you tell me now where your friend is, I'll let you both live a little longer."
The only response was a glare, but oh, well.
She had only started to enjoy this place.