The Demon Lord also launched dozens of decay energy spheres to target him, along with releasing his powerful presence—the pressure could make any third ranker go flat on the ground, but Damian was no simple transcendent.
At first, only a thin layer of mana coating was possible with his low mana pool, but now Damian could literally make an armor of solid mana around him—imitating the massive Fist Creating Spell of Asher but modified to envelop the whole body of Damian. Needless to say, it cost a lot of mana, which was why no sane person had thought of doing it before—almost double the amount of mana required to open a small waygate.
He already felt the reduced pressure with his powerful demonic body, so even doing this spell was not necessary—even with the pressure of a fourth ranker reducing his speed, he was too fast for the giant dark form of the Demon Lord. In seconds, he reached near the face of the guy and blasted his hellfire along with 30 light laser beams at full power—all targeting the big abyssal swirling darkness that was the face of the Demon Lord.
The enormous figure of the Demon Lord fell apart as a few of his lasers shot a figure out of the dark giant face and threw him far in midair. The dissipating dark energy of the Demon Lord spread out in all directions—some returned to the pigmen down below, still marching without any stop, some going back to the flung-off Demon Lord’s human body, and some turning into giant swords and arrows launched toward Damian’s flying figure.
Damian’s hellfire and lasers were still active though, and he simply changed the aim of a few of his lasers to destroy the dark solid attacks—while the main focus of Damian’s hellfire and many of his lasers was still the thrown figure of Land Breaker. When he was too far, Damian opened a giant wormhole and closed the distance for all his attacks, firing them directly inside the wormhole that opened meters away from Land Breaker.
Damian had noticed the flying figure creating some big black sphere to protect himself, but Damian did not give it much thought and kept blasting all his attacks until Land Breaker had sealed himself completely inside the dark sphere and crashed into the marching army of his, making a giant crater in the snow-covered land.
Damian fell inside the wormhole as the hellfire ended and flew straight down towards the fallen Land Breaker, but by the second he came close to launch another attack, Damian lost the mana signature of the Demon Lord—the black sphere had blocked the mana completely. The dark sphere turned to black energy, sweeping through his black army.
Damian stopped in midair and turned all 360 degrees slowly, but there was no trace of the Demon Lord anywhere. Did he escape?
The flying monsters were still after Damian, and even the marching black army released their three simple element attacks in hundreds of numbers when he flew close to them. The Legendary-ranked ones had the farthest reach; Damian had killed so many, yet there were still new ones who came afterwards.
Damian charged through the flying monsters straight up with his twisting dark-fire-spewing spear—incinerating all that came in his way to ashes. Suddenly, when he was almost through the flying monster horde, two dozen decaying spheres shot out of the dark flying monsters at point-blank range, aimed directly at Damian. There was barely a second to react. Thankfully, he had inscribed a wormhole spell on his body for quick access; otherwise, his flesh would be rotting right now.
In the last mini-second, Damian fell inside the wormhole created beneath his feet and came out high up in the sky. Damian looked down—the massive energy explosion had killed many flying monsters, but beyond that, Damian saw a cloud of dark energy somewhere inside the charging army. There he was.
He could not go simply charging though—from what he had seen, the whole black army was like a reserve power for the Demon Lord himself to use. In the form of Land Breaker, he could even use other spells despite being an esper originally. Still, Damian was not here to play hide and seek.
He had enough mana, and there was one spell that could give him total defense. Damian instantly used another wormhole to go down near the slight cloud of energy he had seen passing through a black pigman—the second he came out of the wormhole, however, he activated the runic circle he had weaved for total body armor of solid mana—Asher’s modified spell. He had enough mana to do it for a while.
Damian stopped the dark flames and channeled light mana through his spear. The demonic spear did not handle light attribute well, which was why Damian used a condensed steel sword, but he had no time to change weapons as he landed with an explosion and charged through the dark army with his bright gold mana-covered spear held forward.
He chased after the dark cloud. The shitty thing was fast, but Damian too had a speed boost he could activate anytime—the dark flames pushed him forward. His golden armor enveloping his whole body made any and all attacks landing on him ineffective—of course, it came at a high mana cost, and he had to constantly pour mana into it, but his eight mana cubes were going at full power and he had no shortage of mana.
With increased speed, Damian was right behind the dark energy going through the army.. but the second he got too close, suddenly the simple energy wave transformed into a giant sleeping monster made of dark energy. With his speed, Damian could not stop himself at all and got absorbed deep inside the monster without any resistance.
Damian couldn’t see, but outside the darkness enveloping him, over a million pigmen lost their dark color and fell down unconscious, with their original blue and red skin color returning to them. The giant monster form of the Demon Lord added more and more dark energy and took a form that was ten times in size compared to his earlier humanoid form.