For now, Damian just landed back down and launched his last spell that he was holding: a massive waygate back to Grace. He sensed she was not here and assumed her to be inside the pigmen city. He could sense her surroundings after the wormhole opened, and she was indeed near a lot of pigmen.
“Back to Earth?” Mindseer asked as Damian landed among them.
“No, to Grace,” Damian replied, then asked just to confirm, “She’s back in the city?”
Sam nodded. The guy was bloody all over—the wounds had healed but the clothes and the armor were covered in blood.
All other waygates were closed by Sariel and others. Amy went inside one of them though, to bring the ones who passed through back to the pigmen city—she wouldn’t be back for days due to the time difference.
Finally having some time, Damian breathed in and tried opening a waygate back to Vidalia. The Sun God was finally gone; would it work..? And.. it didn’t. The guy was telling the truth, it seemed—killed him for no reason. Well, he was already dying..
This meant the Sun God’s explanation of his waygate being against the dungeon rules had to be true too. The dungeon rules still applied to them, and he could not use waygate to reach Vidalia or anyone who was not on that level of the dungeon. Did he collect any ID on that level..? It felt like it had happened so long ago, he couldn’t even remember. Once he was done here, maybe he could try the waygate using all the monster IDs he had collected in his record books.
“What happened to them?” Evrin asked, looking at the six floating figures inside the colorful big spheres.
“Yeah, take them back too. They’re busy..” Damian replied, not going into the lengthy explanation—there were still things to do.
Heather bellowed orders of retreat and formed multiple lines toward the remnants of the pigmen army, all starting to go back to the city. They also sent Lucian and Einar, along with one of the pigmen transcendants—they were unconscious. Einar was somewhat fine but still heavily injured.
As everyone helped in getting the injured quickly through, Damian made another runic circle and using the gathered liquid mana and made a gigantic ice mountain—Lucian’s spell (modified)—to block the valley entrance.
The charge of the black army was interrupted as once again they had to break the ice mountain—this one was much bigger and thicker though. Damian had used over 500,000 points worth of mana to make it into hard condensed ice. That wouldn’t break as easily. Damian could already sense Bloodedge at the edge of the battle, going farther and farther from the battlefield riding atop a flying black monster. His troops were not turning back though.
With the ice mountain in place, Damian released the half-cracked air shield walls from around the army and quickly flew to the tunnels to seal them with the same ice spell, even going inside halfway and flying back from there. When he came back, all pigmen warriors had already gone through the wormhole—there were only 12–13 thousand of them left of whatever number it was before. The thousands of pigmen warrior dead bodies told him – there were many.
The Dreamlight was still there though, along with Heather, Mindseer, Elias, Sam, and all his friends. Damian landed near them, stopping two of his sacrium mana cubes; one was enough to keep all the generated liquid mana floating in the air.
“Will it hold them?” Heather asked, surprisingly in their language instead of the pigmen language.
“You can speak our language now?” Damian asked, surprised.
“She taught a few of us..” Heather replied, looking towards Mindseer.
“It’s strong but won’t hold for days,” Damian replied.
“What should we do?” Sariel asked, looking towards the giant pure hard ice wall.
“There are around 100,000 of them. I will handle them later,” Damian replied. “Go back, tell the king what happened, plan out your next step. I need to take care of someone..” Damian looked toward the Mindseer. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Elias asked, his young voice in contrast to all their deeper ones. Mindseer herself just nodded and walked near Damian.
“You are going after him?” Sam asked, understanding his intention.
Damian just nodded. Then he took out an empty mana container, filled it with his liquid mana, and joined the several mana threads from the waygate to the container, placing it beside the waygate. That should last for half a day at least—the waygate was already open; it would just give it enough juice to keep it stable. In case the pigmen warriors decided to come back with fresh troops to guard the valley.
Damian ruffled Elias’s hair with a smile and used the flying spell on himself and Mindseer, taking off into the air, going past the ice wall following behind Bloodedge.
Seeing thousands of black pigmen moving around like uncaged animals, even fighting amongst themselves and killing some off, Damian felt disgusted. The skill of this Demon Lord was the most sickening thing.
An Esper that steals life itself..
If the God of Chaos really let the guy become a fourth ranker.. What did that say about that god? Was he even around anymore? Damian had not seen any status of anyone having the Chaos God’s blessing. Didn’t mean the guy didn’t exist. For sure, the Nature Goddess, the Sun God, and even the Sea God were still alive in Vidalia’s world.
The question was.. Where were they?
Did they accept that other option of entering the divine realm? Or.. Had they chosen that elemental thing? The possibility of them choosing the elemental thing should be higher since they could still influence events in the physical world somehow—with the God of Chaos creating the Demon Lord, and all other gods having one or two such figures they favored in history. Best living example being Alex’s family.
The thing Damian could not understand the most was.. Why were they all cooperating? If more influence in the people meant more power.. The Sun God should have been the most powerful, but Dawnstar was on the brink of destruction by the Empire, and still, there was no sign of the guy’s support for his followers. The biggest Sun God temple was in Dawnstar capital and was filled with many powerful religious figures..
Well, he didn’t know everything yet. Who knew what might have happened while they were gone for such a long time?