Low-Fantasy Occultist Isekai

Using [Air Step] to dodge the demonic rodent's charge forced Nick to quickly readjust lest he crash into the stone wall.

I need to practice fighting in enclosed spaces. A battlefield is a luxury I shouldn't always expect to have.

An angry screech echoed as the creature sailed past him, its claws digging into the floor with almost no resistance.

Despite its genuinely horrifying appearance, one could be forgiven for dismissing it on account of its size, but Nick knew better. [Empyrean Intuition] told him exactly how dangerous this thing was, and he had no plans to let it live any longer than absolutely necessary.

It was, essentially, a wound on the World. A walking, breathing pustule that constantly scratched at the fabric of reality with its mere presence, threatening to one day grow strong enough to bring everything crashing down.

In its current form, it could not truly be called threatening, no more than a hobgoblin. But even beyond its malicious intent, the three-eyed rat had a destabilizing effect that meant most spells simply couldn't affect it.

Nick was briefly reminded of his frantic attempts to keep the demon in Inari's temple away from them, and he knew that while he might be able to overpower the creature with elemental magic by expending a great deal of mana, that wasn't the right approach.

"Let's see how you like this," he grunted as the creature prepared to attack again, shedding miasma like fur and cloaking the floor around it in thick, poisonous-looking mist.

Unlike that time months ago, Nick now had a new weapon in his arsenal. He took all the disgust, all the anger, and the bubbling well of primordial fear at something that just shouldn't be, and crafted a [Spiritual Hurricane] with them.

The demonic creature seemed to sense that something was different about this attack, and it screeched, the noise echoing oddly, distorting the air and bouncing off the walls in unnatural ways.

Mist bubbled up, forming a protective shell around its body, and Nick knew that if his attack failed, he'd face an even more dangerous fiend, as its fur sloughed off in patches, revealing pulsing darkness beneath.

Fortunately, he didn't need to worry because, just as souls could be affected by spiritual magic when most spells couldn't interact with them, demons could be too. At least low-ranking ones, since they still had physical bodies and emotions, no matter how corrupt they were.

The full force of his anger crushed the rodent, obliterating everything that made it.

The spell howled for several seconds as Nick kept feeding it mana, even as he felt his reserves quickly drain. The miniature hurricane captured the dark mist the demon had released, forcing it to contend against the power of his emotions, and it finally broke down under the continuous assault.

Only then did Nick let the spell fade, and he staggered back, feeling more exhausted than he had expected.

Still, the results were clear. Where once there had been a three-eyed rat, now only a crater in the stone floor remained. Not even blood or fur was left. Everything had been wiped out under his command, as he refused to let that abomination remain in the physical world.