Swoosh!
The winds were whipped into a frenzy as three figures shot backwards at the same time, leaving their palanquins and making distance from Damien.
They only stopped their retreat after regrouping with their comrade, who had been blown away during the previous impact.
“Oho! The four of you are acting together, huh? Very shameless of you, if I do say so myself.” Damien mocked with a grin.
“Hmph. If you think such vulgar provocation can incite us, then you must not have a brain. Didn’t you already realize that strategy wouldn’t work when you were cleaning up the ants earlier?” One of the Demon Generals scoffed.
“Hey! Don’t call them ants! Ants have feelings too!”
But all he got in response was more mocking words. Feint signs of a vein popping from his forehead emerged on his face.
“Enough. Jeriah, Trom, Dorte, the three of you go around and surround him. I’ll take the lead. Make sure he doesn’t get any advantage on us.”
The three Demon Generals nodded before spreading out. Damien simply watched them and let them do as they pleased.
Since the dust cloud from his explosive entrance had finally cleared up, he was able to take a good look at the Demon Generals that he was facing this time.
All four were male, and just like those from before, they were generally handsome. They shared the same black hair and eyes, but their other features were all varied.
Their main differences were the locations of their non-human body parts. The leading Demon General, who hadn’t announced his name yet, had a pair of twisting goat horns protruding from his forehead. The one names Jeriah had a demonic tail, Trom was covered in scales from head to toe, and Dorte had a pair of bat wings spanning from his shoulder blades.
‘See, these guys look more like demons. What’s up with Elitra and her human appearance? Even the All-Seeing eyes didn’t see through her, so it wasn’t an illusion.’
Perhaps a transformation? Damien imagined Elitra with demonic features for a second before shaking his head. Wasn’t he supposed to be in battle right now? He really needed to learn how to control his stray thoughts.
While Damien was relaxedly thinking about random things, the Demon Generals finally got in formation. They warily watched the man standing in the center of them, waiting for him to make a move.
But since when was Damien someone who would meet his enemies’ expectations? He simply stood there with a finger in his ear as if the current situation had nothing to do with him.
“Now!”
The leading Demon General shouted, and the three others charged at once.
From Damien’s back, a twisting tail shot forward aiming to pierce him. From his two sides, the other two Demon Generals rushed forward with fists outstretched.
The three attacks that seemed to want to crush Damien where he stood soon reached their target with a boom.
But Damien was no longer there. His body flashed at the moment of impact, appearing behind Jeriah and clenching his tail in his hands. Using it like a chain, Damien swung Jeriah’s body into the area where he was standing a second before.
Boom!
Two punches landed on the body of their comrade, causing him to cough up blood as he tried to retreat, but Damien didn’t let go of his firm hold on his tail.
“Keuk!”
“Be careful! He can teleport!” The leading Demon General shouted.
“Ohhh, thanks for the heads up, Captain Obvious! Now they know that I can teleport! What great information to have!”
Damien yanked the tail in his hand, causing Jeriah to swing in his direction. Jeriah’s eyes widened due to the pain, but in that split second, he steeled himself. Using the momentum of Damien’s tug, he shot towards his opponent.
Boom!
He threw a punch forward the second he reached Damien, not wanting to give his opponent an opportunity to teleport. At the same time, Dorte flapped his wings roughly and appeared behind Damien.
For the second time, two punches shot towards his body. The only difference was, this time there was black mana coating the two fists.
Damien grinned. His right hand was outstretched backwards, positioned to catch the fist behind him, while his left shot towards Jeriah to meet him head-on.
Blazing flames shot forth from his fist, meeting the black mana and causing a small tug of war to begin between the two manas. Sunflames raged towards the inky death aura while the Nox mana tried to corrode it.
Boom!
At that time, a second impact rang out as Damien’s hand caught Dorte’s fist.
But Dorte couldn’t be happy with his success. An odd current of mana encircled his body, causing his movements to gradually slow down to the point where his fist didn’t carry any force by the time it hit.
Even when he tried to move or use his mana to block the force, he was unable to do anything to it.
“So? How’s the combo attack going? Actually, there’s only two of you attacking right now, what happened to the other two? Scared? Or maybe they’re too weak to join in?”
Damien casually chatted while holding off the two assaults coming towards him. Feeling enraged by his casualness, Jeriah threw his other fist forward, trying to throw a hook into Damien’s stomach.
Bang!
“Keuk!”
A swift kick landed on his chest before his arm could reach Damien at all.
“Now, now. Stay obedient and don’t try to be an overachiever. Don’t you know that it’ll only get you killed faster?”
Damien spoke lightly while twisting his body to the right.
Swoosh!
A black beam shot passed his head as he did so.
“Oh! So the leader is a ranged combatant. What about the last guy, what about him?”
Damien’s fist, which was still connected to Jeriah’s as their manas clashed, swiftly changed positions to grab his wrist. His mana gushed into his hands, causing space to distort around the two fists in his grip.
“”Argh!””
Two pained shouts rang out along with the sound of bones cracking. Damien then let go of their hands and flashed away again.
The frenzied attack of the final combatant, Trom, reached his position at the same time.
“You should’ve sat patiently and watched. Didn’t I tell you that you’d get hurt otherwise?”
Damien’s voice was like the devil’s whisper, ringing into Trom’s ear as if he was right behind him.
Trom quickly twisted his body and threw a heavy kick backwards, but he only impacted air.
“I can teleport, remember? Even your leader already told you about it! How can you be so dumb?”
‘Is the level of Demon General actually not that great?’ Damien wondered. He was genuinely surprised by how stupid they were.
Elitra’s case could be excused, since she was fighting an internal battle rather than fighting him. And although the three that were with her were strong, they weren’t anything special besides the fact that they had combat prowess above their level.
‘Is it a matter of practical experience?’ Damien thought as he saw the Demon Generals flailing around at his provocations. He was just teleporting around while throwing out random statements to rile them up, but they hadn’t been able to follow his teleportation at all.
This was the effect of Tian Yang’s teachings to mask the spatial ripples, but even that could only be useful against opponents below his level and perhaps those around the same level as him.
‘Ah.’
That’s when he realized it. Was it that they were too weak, or that he was too strong? Even when he went all out in the past, he always had more moves that he decided not to use or didn’t have the need to use.
It could be said that the versatility of his destructive power basically made him into a bag of trump cards.
But this fact made Damien slightly disappointed. He liked being strong, and he liked the fact that opponents like these couldn’t cause him trouble, but…
‘Will I ever face a situation where I have to go all out without facing an opponent that I never had a chance to beat in the first place?’
He didn’t want to get conceited, but he couldn’t help it. His defeats were always either in the face of a large group of opponents more powerful than him, or an opponent that vastly outstripped his power level to the point where the fact that he was even fighting became a joke.
‘Well, I’ll find them someday. Until then, I guess I should just take care of the problem in front of me.’
Damien’s body reappeared several meters away from the group of demon generals. He was no longer in the mood to play around.