“We leave eight alive this time, got it.” Stepping forward and glancing at the largest creature present, the Veb’lema, Benny decided that would be his target.
“Got it; what about the big guy?” Charging up Dark Mana into her spear, Selene asked without breaking eye contact with the bloodthirsty Veb’lema.
“Stronger foes first; the blue goatman should be the first one we bring down,” Benny stated as he scanned the demons clustering together under the watchful eye of the black-skinned Ogodoth, who stood proudly.
“Keep on your toes; that black one seems to be some kind of leader race. If you notice, it has the physical characteristics of a Begraz, Ollmarug, and Vir’eth. From what I remember, Big Bro told us that if a creature has multiple of the same physical traits as another race, then it is a progenitor.” Benny stated while tilting his head to the side and circling behind a pillar so he could get a clearer view of the Demonoids.
“Yeah, it’s basic biology. The parent species will pass down specific physical traits over time, so it isn’t too much of a leap to say that the Ogothingy is some origin species that gave birth over thousands of years to the other variants.” Following Benny, Selene kept glancing between the massive Veb’lema and the Ogodoth.
“I see; regardless of their origin, we need to take out the two Tier-2s first. Then we can scatter their formation. We can stall out the timer a bit if we leave nine alive, but all we are doing is making it harder on ourselves. It would be one thing to handle four or five crippled creatures, but nine is too much. Which one do you want, big blue or the pretentious small one?” As he spoke, Benny calmly drummed his fingers on the hilt of his Estoc.
“You can have big blue; I already fought one. If it were in the wild or an Egress, I’d want to fight it since I would have a chance to get its weapon. But here, there is no point, I already got the experience of fighting one of them previously, but you haven’t.” Abruptly kicking off the ground, Selene shifted into a cloud of black particles and surged forward toward the Ogodoth, leaving Benny alone.
Not wanting to be shown up, Benny rushed forward toward the tall and bulky Veb’lema. Racing through the pillars, using them to hide his approach, Benny didn’t run on a straight path and instead slowly worked his way around behind the blue goat demon.
However, as if expecting this, the Veb’lema’s glimmering sapphire eyes followed his movement without turning its head or upper body. It was only when Benny was within four meters and readying to launch his first attack that it began to move, as opposed to the other 19 creatures who were focused on the strange black cloud passing through them like a breeze.
Vanishing in a burst of lightning, the Veb’lema instantly appeared in front of Benny, catching him off guard, and kicked him with its cloven-hooved foot. CLANG
But instead of hitting the fleshy body, the demon’s leg only connected with Benny’s Aspis before catapulting the boy through a pillar and into a second, where his momentum was finally stopped.
Clicking his tongue and extricating himself from the body-shaped crater on the pillar, Benny raised his shield just in time to block a heavy downward strike from the creature’s massive cleaver-style greatsword, forcing him down to one knee with gritted teeth.
‘Ow, this guy’s build is STR/AGI, and to top it off, he’s got a Lightning Affinity, which it’s using to increase its movement speed.’ Pushing up with all his might, Benny deflected the four hundred-plus kilo sword up and sidestepped before returning the favor by slamming his Estoc into the creature’s exposed ribcage, flinging it through not one but three pillars.
As Benny rolled his stiff left shoulder, he followed the airborne demon, eventually catching up after it crashed through the third pillar. However, as he arrived, the demon spun, twisted at an unnatural angle, righted itself, and skidded on the stone floor.
Dragging up its weapon, shooting sparks from the collision of metal and stone, it stabbed at Benny again, who deflected the attack off his shield. He didn’t account for the force behind the attack, so being forced to turn his body to absorb the strike, Benny could not counter-attack before a massive fist rammed into his body, taking him off his feet and making him spit blood.
Benny began trading blows with the demon by landing on the ground and executing a backward somersault, allowing him to quickly jump back to his feet.
As Benny was locked in fast-paced combat with the demon, Selene was in the process of toying with the entire horde. Since she had previously fought the weaker version of the Veb’lema, she was well aware of how quick and powerful the creature was. Not wanting her teammate to be distracted by the other 19 creatures, Selene took it upon herself to distract them.
With her [Void Shift] active, Selene continuously passed through the group, causing panic and confusion with each flyby. No matter how often the Ogodoth grunted or growled, it couldn’t seem to regain control of the other 18 lower lifeforms it was supposedly in charge of.
Losing its temper, the Ogodoth’s muscles swelled as it channeled a strange garnet, and platinum-colored Mana haze around its body, giving Selene a feeling of dread as she witnessed the changes it was undergoing.
‘What the fuck is that, Mana….’ She thought as she rushed away from the Ogodoth, rising toward the ceiling to get a better vantage point. Reassembling her body and stabbing her spear into the top of a pillar, Selene stood high above the confused and scared horde, watching vigilantly as the Ogodoth grew to a size nearly as big as the Veb’lema.
‘What the fuck is that thing. Blood red and platinum Mana, I don’t know what particle that is, but it’s freaking me the fuck out; when I was close, I could feel my control over the Dark particles in my Codex get anxious.’ Placing her hand on her chest and feeling how rapidly her heart was pounding, Selene narrowed her eyes and tried to analyze the Ogodoth.
‘Manifesting visible Mana is something only high-stage Affinity users can do. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, but my bitch of a mother from hell is Tier-5, not early Tier-2. Fuck, I should have paid better attention in class.’ Extending her arm, Selene fired a thin thread of Dark Mana down from above, which connected with the head of a Begraz.
Unfortunately, when she tried to yank the creature up into the air, Selene lost complete control over the Mana-constructed thread. She watched in confusion as the Dark Mana suddenly became visible and was absorbed by the hazy Aura surrounding the Ogodoth.
A wide, sharp-toothed smile spread across the creature’s face as it noticed its power growing, and it rolled its eyes upward toward where Selene was standing on her spear.
“What the fuc….”
BOOOOOOOMMMM
Her sentence was cut off by a loud explosion rocking her body as if a bomb had detonated right against her chest. The force of this explosion tore apart the scalemail chest piece and rocketed her through the air like a rag doll.
“AAHHH!” Selene screamed as blood spurted from her chest and mouth while she flew several dozen meters through the air.
She had no idea what had just transpired and how lucky she was not to be instantly blown to pieces. The instant her thread was absorbed by the Ogodoth and his strange Affinity, a contrasting thread had been created in place of her Dark Mana one, replacing it with particles under the creature’s control, which the demon used as a makeshift bomb to injure the girl.
Across the room, in the heat of battle, Benny’s head whipped to the side as he heard the loud explosion and subsequent scream from Selene. He immediately disengaged from his opponent, jumped into the air, and, using the pillars as foot holds, raced over to catch the injured girl before she could hit the ground.
Touching down lightly, Benny noticed the huge gaping wound in her chest and went into action, retrieving two health potions. One which he poured directly on the injury, and the second he poured into Selene’s mouth.
It took a couple of seconds, but soon Selene’s wound was only a scar instead of exposed to the world, and her eyes fluttered slightly as she regained consciousness and stared up at Benny in fear.
“What happened, Sel? How the hell did you end up like this.” He had been so caught up in his battle with the blue goatman demon that he couldn’t monitor her situation. Unlike Cynrik, who could watch the entire battlefield by splitting his attention, Benny would quickly lose his concentration on his opponent if he tried. Because of this, he missed the explosion or even the fact that the Ogodoth was now nearly as big as the Veb’lema.
“I…I don’t know,” Selene tapped on Benny’s arm, indicating that he could release her, and snapped her head toward the cackling demons across the room.
“The black one suddenly got huge, and when I tried to kidnap one of the little red demons, my Mana went out of control; next thing I know, that bastard was grinning at me like I was a fool, and then BOOM!” Patting her chest and realizing her cleavage was exposed, she quickly covered up herself and started pumping Mana into the scalemail.
One of the key reasons she had purchased the armor was that it had a repair function that only required a fraction of her Mana to fix it up in a pinch.
It took only five or six seconds for the armor to knit itself back together again, allowing Selene to uncross her arms while looking over at Benny. The boy standing beside her was heavily inspecting the bulky Ogodoth Demon as it organized the horde and moved out in their direction.
“You take the blue guy. I’ll go handle their leader.” Benny said as he watched the swirling multicolored Aura surrounding the Ogodoth.
“Huh? I thought you wanted to fight the big guy.” She stared at the blue demon making his way across the room without arguing, instead speaking with confusion in her voice.
“Whatever that Element is, it didn’t interact well with your Dark Mana, we don’t know how it will with my Water Particles, but the difference is, I don’t rely heavily on my Affinity to fight as you do. Although we don’t know why or how it was able to explode your Mana, the fact that it can is proof alone that you can’t square up with the Ogodoth anymore. Leave it to me; I will figure something out.” Speaking with authority, Benny began walking to greet the horde of demons and their leader.
Watching the younger boy walk into battle, the image of her boyfriend and Brance overlapped with Benny in Selene’s eyes, making her smile.
“That kid is turning into a little juggernaut just like the brothers. Right, let’s go kick that overgrown smurfs ass.” Smacking her cheeks and pulling a different spear from her inventory since the last one was still embedded in the pillar, Selene took off in a brisk jog to fight the Veb’lema.
-This series is exclusively published on WebNovel if you are reading it anywhere else…You Wrong, Fam. PS Check out the discord, https://discord.gg/dcxKNJEMwg-