Alexander raised his spear, gravity mana gathering around its tip.
"Pin them!"
Several demons attempting to leap toward Elion were suddenly slamd into the ground as though invisible mountains had dropped onto their backs. Their limbs cracked and their bodies flattened against the dirt.
The retainers and soldiers seized the opportunity imdiately, arrows and spells raining down to finish them off.
Elion noticed the support and smirked.
"Good job, prince!"
Alexander, far away on the wall, sohow felt insulted by the tone in Elion’s voice.
’Why is he calling prince all of a sudden!?’
The demon caster finally released its spell.
A sphere of black mana shot forward, twisting the air around it as it tore toward Elion. The stone bridge beneath his feet began to crack before the attack even reached him.
Elion raised Kurogoroshi, and for a mont, the blade humd vigorously, and then he swung it, seamlessly connecting with the black spell, splitting it into two halves.
The two halves flew past him and exploded behind him, tearing massive craters into the ground on either side of the stone bridge.
The demon caster froze.
Elion’s eyes glead.
"Do you realise now that youn made a bad choice coming here?"
He vanished from the bridge with a burst of speed, appearing before the caster in an instant. The demon tried to retreat, attempting to raise another barrier, and, funny enough, it also tried to scream, but Kurogoroshi had already descended upon it.
Shk.
Kurogoroshi ford a single cut from the demon’s shoulder to the hip.
The demon staggered backward, staring down at its own body as if it could not understand what had happened. Then it fell apart, collapsing into two separate halves as dark blood spilled across the grass.
The mont the caster died, the pressure controlling the demon group weakened. The creatures beca wild and disorganised again. So tried to keep charging. Others hesitated. A few turned back toward the forest.
’So the weaker ones alone are not as intelligent as their more powerful counterparts?’
Kurogoroshi pulsed in Elion’s hand as abyssal Hunger stirred.
The battlefield around him seed to exhale death, and thin streams of dark energy drifted subtly toward the blade before sinking into its edge. Elion felt it a mont later, a slow restoration of stamina and vitality, faint but steady, like cold water poured into a dry throat.
His smile faded slightly.
’This thing really is dangerous.’
But that thought lasted only a second. A massive roar thundered from within the forest, and the fleeing demons froze.
They parted down the middle, as sothing larger stepped out between the trees. Elion turned his gaze toward it.
A demon twice the size of the others erged from the darkness, dragging a massive, jagged axe behind it. Its body was covered in scars, crude armour, and thick plates of blackened bone. Two curved horns rose from its skull, and one of its eyes had been gouged out long ago, leaving only a burning red glow in the other.
It looked at the dead caster, before turning its malevolent gaze at Elion, then it smiled.
"Hero..."
The voice was guttural and heavy.
The soldiers on the wall quieted.
Alexander’s face darkened. "That one is powerful."
Elion rolled his shoulders lightly.
The demon raised its axe.
"Kill... hero..."
The remaining demons roared, their fear turning into frenzy once more.
Elion sighed.
"See?" he called back toward Alexander without looking away from the demon. "This is why I said the road wouldn’t be boring."
Alexander shouted back, "Nobody asked you to be right!"
Elion laughed. He lowered his stance, Kurogoroshi angled at his side, crimson ripples sliding along its edge.
The large demon charged, and the ground shook beneath every step as Elion charged to et it.
The distance between them vanished in seconds.
The demon moved like a collapsing tower, every step cracking the earth beneath its feet, the jagged axe dragging behind it and carving a long wound through the ground before it suddenly lifted the weapon with terrifying speed.
Elion’s eyes narrowed.
’A heavy weapon, and a wide swing, that’s too much force to block directly.’
Kurogoroshi humd in his hand, almost as if agreeing.
The demon roared as the axe ca down.
Boooom!
Elion twisted aside at the last second.
The axe struck the stone bridge instead, shattering a large section of it into fragnts and sending broken chunks of rock spinning through the air. The force of the blow rippled outward, and even the soldiers standing along the wall felt the impact beneath their boots.
Elion landed lightly on a floating slab of broken stone before kicking off it.
His body shot forward.
Kurogoroshi flashed.
Shk!
The blade carved across the demon’s ribs.
Black blood sprayed, but the cut was shallower than Elion expected.
’Thick bones beneath the skin,’ he thought, already ducking beneath the demon’s counter-swing.
The axe whistled over his head, carrying enough force to tear through a mounted beast whole if it landed.
Elion’s feet touched the ground again, and he instantly pushed his mana into the earth. The ground beneath the demon’s rear foot softened into mud for a brief second before hardening again like stone, trapping its leg in place.
The demon snarled and pulled.
Crack!
The stone prison shattered almost imdiately, but that was all the ti Elion needed. He stepped in close, too close for the axe to swing properly.
Kurogoroshi moved like a streak of black lightning, cutting once across the demon’s thigh, once across the wrist holding the axe, and once across the lower abdon.
Three clean strikes, making three wounds that refused to close. The demon bellowed in rage and slamd its free fist down.
Elion leaned back, the fist grazing past his chest by a hair’s breadth before smashing into the ground and sending dirt and broken stone upward. He used the recoil of that impact to step onto the demon’s forearm, running along it for two quick steps before launching himself toward its face.
The demon’s single red eye widened.
Elion grinned.
"Too slow."
Kurogoroshi thrust forward.
The demon jerked its head to the side just in ti, and the blade pierced through one of its horns instead.
Shk!
The horn split cleanly.
Half of it spun through the air before crashing into the ground with a heavy thud.
The entire battlefield seed to pause for a fraction of a second.
Then the demon went berserk.
"Human!"
Its roar shook the air.
A wave of dark mana exploded outward from its body, forcing Elion back midair.
He crossed his arms in front of himself as the pressure hit him, but this ti, the familiar suffocating weight barely settled on his chest before Kurogoroshi pulsed.
Heaven Defiance.
The pressure cracked around him like glass.
Elion landed in a crouch, sliding back a few tres, his boots carving twin lines through the dirt.
"Oh?"
He slowly stood upright, rotating his wrist.
"That’s very useful."
The demon’s aura grew thicker.
The blackened bone plates across its body shifted and expanded, crawling over its skin like armour being ford in real ti. Its muscles swelled, veins pulsing with dark red light, and the remaining demons behind it began howling as if the sight alone had filled them with confidence.
Alexander’s voice rang out from the wall.
"Elion! Its strength is rising!"
"I can see that!" Elion shouted back.
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