Damian jolted out of his stupor, seeing the enormous fist closing in with each passing second. There was no time to weave any new spells — but Damian didn’t have to; his flesh itself was a weapon now. Damian instinctively powered on one of the five runic circles inscribed on his body. The golden shield materialized in seconds out of thin air, but to Damian’s eyes, it looked agonizingly slow compared to the enormous incoming fist.
Damian shot through the air, reaching the middle of the high ice wall inside the narrow valley where the punch was aimed. He severed all his mana threads from the “Mana Disperse System” and channeled a thick stream of liquid mana circling around him in a wave directly from his back, into his body, powering the golden shield more and more.
With each passing second, Damian endured the raw power coming and going from his body at an alarming rate, increasing the size of the shield with mana coursing through his veins.. But passing seconds were numbered. Before Damian could even make the shield half as big as the enormous fist — it was already before him.
The shield cracked under the weight in merely a fraction of a second after the massive impact. It barely did anything to stop it, breaking the speed of the punch a little — but the slow attack was still an attack. It landed squarely on Damian’s chest, slamming him into the ice wall behind him. The hard ice wall broke through without any resistance — Damian was buried deeper and deeper until finally the punch made it through the wall, coming out on the other side.
The massive ice wall was broken.
Then came the charge. As if all of the black army had suddenly become professionally trained units of soldiers, they marched in perfect cohesion, weapons raised high, and made their way straight towards the giant gap that had appeared in the otherwise intact ice wall.
After becoming a peak-level second ranker, Damian had barely recived any hit that he truly felt. With this one, it felt like he was once again back to his high school days — getting punched by big kids. It fucking hurt. Damian could feel hot pain radiating from multiple regions on his body, but he ignored them all, channeling his still-floating mana from the sacrium mana cubes into another runic inscription of the five; this one was placed on his right arm.
A healing spell runic circle. Damian felt some injuries healing, though he did not power it too much and just kept the critical parts functioning before stopping the healing. As a third ranker, he could take much more healing with the amount of energy his body produced, but Damian wanted to reserve that energy — something told him this was not going to be the only time.
Lying on his back, Damian channeled his mana into a third runic inscription on his body — placed on his right leg. Simple wormhole. He let himself fall into it and came out far above in the air.
The flying monsters seemed to have all abandoned their wall cannon targets and flew higher and higher, crossing the wall and inching closer to the city. The Demon Lord could give these bastards direct orders, and they were so precisely followed. Damian did not like this shitty ability at all.
The Demon Lord had simply retracted his hand and was just watching his army march forth. Broken out of their stupor, Sam, Lucian, and everyone had hurried over to the gap and were busy fighting against the marching army with all their strength — the rest of the pigmen were also running over to shoot from above.
Suddenly, Damian heard a faint hum of energy, and two thick lasers shot straight at the enormous dark-armored figure that had twice the height of a Legendary black pigman. The Demon Lord simply conjured a dark giant sword, once again pulling some dark, smoky energy from his black pigmen. Holding it from the flat side, the lasers crashed onto it and were absorbed inside, like the sword was not a hard substance but a never-ending black void.
Those two. Damian opened two waygates and brought them back — it might have cost him more mana, but he didn’t care about it — the Demon Lord had already sent two giant dark swirling energy spheres towards the two cannons.
All three of them saw the two spheres destroy the cannons like they were made of clay. It even left gray and red cracks in the ice wall, as if it had gotten rotten. The decaying spell, Damian realized. Chaos element had this effect for several of its spells.
The black pigmen, small or big, were passing through the broken ice wall in a controlled charge — the pigmen warriors shooting from above along with Sam’s lightning and Lucian’s attacks were barely killing a few, while others behind them just walked on the fallen ones’ corpses and simply carried on.
There was no stopping this.
“Gather everyone and go back to the city,” Damian said, and opened two waygates connecting two sides of the broken ice wall.
“Damian..” Maelor said, but Damian cut him off.
“If I don’t come back and it gets too hard to defend the shrine.. leave this world with everyone you can take.” Damian pulled out another steel spatial storage tool and gave it to Maelor. “This has a waygate cube connecting to the dungeon Einar and Evrin went to. Send the pigmen people who can’t go to Earth there.. It will give them at least a chance.”
With that, Damian released Alex and Maelor, letting them fall into the separate wormholes and reach atop the ice wall. Damian exhaled, looking at the imposing dark figure standing tall in the distance. Then he pulled out another five steel mana-generating cubes and let them float with the three sacrium ones — instantly doubling his liquid mana supply.
The wave of golden mana was already thick, but Damian had a feeling nothing would be enough here. Damian weaved two giant waygate runic circles and placed them at the two broken ends of the valley where, seconds ago, he had sent Maelor and Alex.
Damian himself slowly flew straight — this was a fight that might be the last for him.
Damian weaved all the light spells he had in his arsenal and stood ready. The Demon Lord finally noticed what was going on as a stream of pigmen warriors started to run straight inside the waygates he had created.
Another two giant dark spheres of powerful decay energy shot towards the two waygates he had made. But this time Damian was ready—two wormholes at the last second, and the two spheres landed among the black army, blasting thousands into ashes.
Before the two massive fists or the sword in hand started to attack, Damian launched 20 beams of light lasers as thick as the two giant cannons the Demon Lord had destroyed a minute ago. They landed squarely on the giant bulging shoulders of the armored dark lord.
It dissolved the darkness into nothingness, but the giant abyssal sword soon blocked the beams—once again absorbing them inside. Damian just smiled though and changed the trajectory of the beams going down from the shoulders. The two giant arms were severed instantly, falling down in slow motion—the sword also fell down, however, before all three hit the ground, all dissolved into pitch-black clouds and were absorbed back into the armored body of the Demon Lord.
Fuck this guy.
Damian stopped his lasers and immediately shot hellfire straight at his chest and abyssal dark face. It was working.. Well, somewhat. Everything Damian attacked just broke from the figure and then reattached itself like it was all a formless figure of water.
The Demon Lord pulled even more dark energy from the black army, making his form more solid. He conjured another pair of hands, another sword, and, getting even a slight opening, released the sword attacks towards the wall—accompanied by several dark energy spheres. Damian skillfully used a wormhole to divert all of the spheres. The slash of the sword was thwarted away by Damian’s lasers—it was too big and fast for Damian to use another wormhole in time.
In a fast charge, the pigmen soldiers atop the ice wall were leaving through the waygates. The center of the ice wall had the main headquarters, in which lay the waygates connecting all the major points on the wall. A signal sound was activated—it meant retreat after reaching the closest point for all the pigmen warriors stationed atop the long wall. The points would have the waygates opened by Sam and others with enough mana to operate the cubes one by one, getting all the pigmen back from their posts.
Damian continued weaving spell after spell to counter all and each attack the Demon Lord launched towards the wall. At last, the dark lord started moving. All his attacks were not really managing to stop the retreat, but his massive form was a problem for Damian. It must have hurt the pride of the dark lord to be forced to move from his position.