"Reign!" Tank shouted as he sprinted inside the giant cave that could be found at the end of the crevice. The others as well all made their way inside as the sounds of battle rang through the cave.
Reign was currently locked into battle against the monster that resided here. After seeing the monstrosity, he realized why this cave was unexplored, there were perhaps even some demons that entered but never returned, prompting the others to simply write the area off as too hard to explore and useless in order for the Tier II demon to not force them to their deaths.
The enemy that Reign was fighting was over 8 meters long and had numerous metallic legs. Two giant mandibles could be seen on its face as a hard shell covering the whole body. Reign was currently blocking the two mandibles with his swords as the monster thrashed about as tried to slam him against the walls of the cave.
"What the hell is that?!" Shadow asked as he looked at the monster with disgust.
"A centipede," Laura said with the same disgusted expression on her face.
The giant centipede that Reign was currently fighting against was not only big and strong, but its body was incredibly flexible and multiple times it tried to coil around Reign who used the walls of the cave to change direction and force the centipede to the side, dodging what might be deadly for him in this situation.
[ Tier I, lvl 70 Giant Steelplated Centipede ]
"That's a high level." Said Wolf as he quickly went forward to join the fight with the others. The cave they were in was a big one and allowed the centipede to move around easily. The ceiling was about 12 meters high and the cave was about 40 meters in length while 30 meters in width.
Beast didn't summon any of his beasts right now, even though the cave was large, the centipede was long and its thrashing around made it hard to get close to it. A large area of the cave was taken up by it and for now, there was no need to make the space even more crowded.
Wolf ignited his greatsword with his flames before jumping in the air, he reached a height of 7 meters with one jump but before he started falling down, he suddenly tapped on the air as flames exploded down.
Wolf had learned a lot during his stay in the other world, one of the things was how to use his ability more proficiently and with more imagination. This new skill he had created for example allowed him to walk on air.
The way it functioned was quite simple, Wolf would channel mana to his feet and allow it to build up before exploding with his flames, the explosion that would be created would propel him higher up and allow for him to stay in the air as long as he had mana.
Of course, Wolf could also choose how powerful he wanted the explosion to be, if he needed to go high fast, then he would make a more powerful explosion that drained more mana. If it was a matter of simply staying in the air, then controlled bursts of fire were enough.
"That's cool, but let me try stopping this guy first," Shadow said with a grave expression as he summoned the shadows inside the cave. There was barely any light inside the cave and thanks to that there were a lot of shadows that he could use, making his ability stronger here.
Tens of thick shadows sprung up from the ground and went toward the centipede, each of the shadow vines was as thick as a normal person's thigh and was quite tough.
The vines all reached their target and started coiling around the centipede which prompted it to start flailing around even more while fighting the shadows off. Shadow wasn't successful at completely binding it, but he was able to control 4 of the vines to get to its head and help Reign with escaping its mandibles.
Laura quickly started drawing a pentagram, but compared to how she usually did things, she actually started drawing a pentagram in the palm of her hand. It only took Laura a little bit to draw the pentagram as she used the blood from her finger in order to do it.
There was another way of drawing it, which was to carve it on the palm with a knife, that would make the skill she was about to activate more powerful, but it also drained a lot more demonic energy and hurt like hell.
The pentagram started shining ominously as Laura's hand suddenly started turning purple with small scales appearing on it. She quickly used her other hand to draw another pentagram in the air before twisting her hips and punching it with her purple arm.
The blood-red pentagram suddenly turned purple as flames appeared around it, and a heavy aura appeared in the cave before a dark purple beam suddenly shot out from the pentagram, hitting the centipede and actually penetrating through it with relative ease.
Laura panted a bit as the combination of skills she had just used drained quite a lot of demonic energy and life force, even so, the power behind it was amazing. That was one of the things she had learned while staying on the demon-infested planet.
The people there had come up with many ways to overcome demons and use their powers against them. One of the ways was making pentagrams on their body, thus letting the body part turn demonic which would in turn increase the power of any demonic skill the user would use.
It wasn't only that after the limb becomes demonic, it gets much more powerful compared to normal, for example, Laura's arm right now was much more powerful than usual, almost triple.
Of course, the skill came with a drawback, it would only last for a short period of time when done this way, and the cost was high and it was in turn not that cost-effective since the limb would be damaged afterward.
Laura quickly drew another pentagram as a spear came out of it, she promptly grabbed the spear with her demonic arm and threw it at the centipede with full force. A sonic boom was heard as the spear quickly hit the centipede and went deep inside but failed at completely penetrating through the monster.
Laura's arm suddenly started bleeding as the scales fell off and the purple color disappeared. Multiple parts of Laura's arm burst open and were bleeding as she had even some minor fractures in her arm.
With her ability, however, she quickly healed herself before continuing to attack the centipede. Only those with healing abilities could use such a combination of skills, but those with healing abilities were usually weak so they would simply heal others and allow them to use the skills.
However, Laura was different; her ability was pretty much an anomaly and could be used for healing and attacking.
Clang!
Reign suddenly burst out with power as he managed to push the mandibles away. Shadow's vines helped him out and finally, he was able to get away and face the monster in battle.
"Why is it always me that gets stuck between mandibles?" Asked Reign as he remembered being it the exact same situation with the giant spider during the first challenge. Thanks to the spider not having great defense at where its eyes were, Reign was able to use his [ Lightning roar ] to get out, but the centipede had no such weakness and it made the situation much worse.
'I could've still gotten out by using my [ Lightning roar ], but it's better to conserve mana, for now, we got no idea what we could face in the other two locations.' Reign thought as his lightning coiled around him, the centipede was a powerful monster and even though it had a huge body, the flexibility it had made hitting it a bit challenging.
The steel plates that decorated the body made it hard for normal weapons to do anything to the monster and even Reign and the other needed to use a good amount of mana to break through it.
Shadow's vines were only able to hold a part of the centipede's body for a short period of time, the centipede was simply too hard to catch and hold as it would thrash around and try to coil around the vines and use its mandibles or metallic legs to cut them off.
Bam!
Suddenly Wolf crashed down at the centipede with great speed as he created an explosion that propelled him downwards. He used the exact time when the centipede was coiling around the rest of the vines in order to remove them to attack.
His sword was fully covered in flames and he quickly slashed down at the centipede's head, only to be met by its body as it quickly moved in order to dodge the powerful attack.
Boom!
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