Damian shot through the air, going straight for the Shadecaster — but the Shadecaster was not blind either. He could see him coming and had sent thousands of flying Emperor-rank monsters his way to block the charge. It would have been a problem if it was last week’s Damian, but to him now, it was just an annoying nuisance.
Damian once again activated his two racial abilities. The invisible box filled with mana had long been used up as he killed Legendary after Legendary-class black pigmen. Admittedly, these were not exactly like the natural, powerful Legendary-class beasts or monsters with high intelligence — this was more like a forced evolution with barely half the strength, even compared to that Red Demon Damian had fought against. But still, they were nothing to scoff at for normal people.
The whole sky seemed to fall down with an enormous sound of thunder, descending and burning every monster in its path. Damian tore through the dense numbers of flying monsters with a bright orange and gold hellfire straight in front of him — turning everything living into ashes.
Shadecaster, seeing him charge through without any problem, finally got up from the padded throne and frustratingly boarded the back of a massive flying monster that was equally as big as the backs of the Legendary black pigmen. This monster, too, had a smaller saddle and all the fancy things. A flying Legendary? Compared to the less than 3–4 million flying black pigmen evolutions, the land-based ones were ten times that number. Still, they barely had giant Legendary monsters in two digits. A flying one was a rare thing indeed!
Damian activated his multiple laser spells when the hellfire ended and kept flying at full speed, chasing after the monster taking Shadecaster high into the air. The thousands of monsters were constantly blocking Damian’s vision, and he couldn’t just take one jump in a wormhole to reach the guy. Damian gave enough mana to power the wormhole spell to open directly beside Shadecaster, but the nature of the wormhole spell was such that when the first obstacle came in the path, the spell stopped working there.
Damian released dark flames from both his feet and hands, boosting his speed twofold — activating another runic circle that conjured hundreds of giant, 20-meter wind blades rotating like a grinder all around him, keeping him in the center — creating a sharp death machine that cut all and any flying black ones caught in it into pieces.
In minutes, Damian caught up to Shadecaster and immediately fired another charged-up beam of hellfire straight at him. Suddenly, a giant wave of pitch-dark liquid came out of Shadecaster and transformed into a solid defensive wall mid-air. Damian’s eyes widened in shock when the thing actually managed to block his beam of hellfire with only a few cracks in its solid structure.
The black lines going all around Shadecaster’s face seemed to lose their blackness slightly, becoming more greyish. It was just a slight change in shade, though; without his transcendent eyes, Damian wouldn’t even have noticed it.
The weird esper ability of the Demon Lord.
Damian did not stop to care much about it, and simply opened a massive wormhole in the path of the flying monster carrying Shadecaster. When the monster was halfway in, with Shadecaster on its back, Damian forcefully canceled the spell, cutting the monster in two. However, once again, covered in a dark, dense sphere, Shadecaster managed to save himself.
Damian quickly used another wormhole and a waygate combo to kick the massive sphere into the shimmering waygate. Going inside behind the guy — he could have just left the guy in the lava zone, but who knew? The unknown Demon Lord’s abilities just might open up some kind of portal to send him back or not. He had to be done with the guy.
But.. Where was he?
There was no trace of Shadecaster anywhere. Damian’s mana sense could not detect the guy at all. There was no way in hell Shadecaster was that fast. It had to be some kind of skill.
Damian opened another waygate and flew out of it beside airborne Sam, who was striking lightning bolts. Damian extended his mana sense — no trace of Shadecaster. The black army, too, had lost its precise coordination and was back to charging like maniacs with only blood and rage on their minds. The giants were blocked once again by dense numbers, but they were only slowed down, crushing all the monsters beneath their feet even if it injured them and made their feet bleed.
“What happened?” Sam asked, in a buzzing, distorted voice.
“Shadecaster got away..” Damian replied.
“Too many are going through.. The city won’t be able to hold them,” said Sam, controlling his lightning to strike down a whole group of flying monsters.
Damian, too, activated his black lightning and chained two dozen lightning spells to widen the 60-meter shock zone to over 500 meters.
“I sent tools. They are defending from inside the shrine, it’s still manageable..” he replied.
“What now?”
Damian opened a waygate and went in. Keeping it stable, he came back in a minute. Only now, he was holding Bloodedge with a solid mana hand.
“Do it,” Damian said simply.
Bloodedge did not bother protesting at all and immediately commanded the 5 million remaining black pigmen army — the ones that had helped the pigmen warriors in construction — to leave their standby mode and attack. The black army could not be trusted, which was why they were placed in caged ice walls on the other side of the giant ice wall.
Damian had a clear vision of both them and the battlefield, being high above. Opening a few dozen wormholes to connect the two places was no big deal. Damian let the controlled black pigmen fall from a bit of a height — it wouldn’t damage them too much, but the ground army also wouldn’t be able to reach them either.
Damian expected them to change sides and obey the higher-ranked Shadecaster or the origin of the dark power — the Demon Lord himself — but it seemed like they were in the clear, as the two identical armies started fighting each other, even bringing others focused on charging toward the wall into the brawl.