The sudden appearance of Shadow created chaos amongst the ranks of the demons. All six of the remaining demons stood frozen as the corpse of their comrade fell down on the ground. Before any of them could respond to what happened, however, a new development occurred.
The soul of the demon was suddenly shown above its body, the soul thrashed violently but was slowly moving to the left, right into the hands of Reign who absorbed it.
"He took his soul!" A demon spoke as the other 5 all had crestfallen expressions on their faces. As demons that had hit Tier I, they weren't afraid of death as their soul would return back to their planet and a new body would be constructed for them. All demons actually had low fertility rates and having offsprings was actually hard, but thanks to their ability to revive, the demons were still high in numbers and very powerful in the universe.
But if their soul was destroyed or captured, then there would be no revival. Seeing as how the soul of the strongest amongst them was taken, the others all felt incredible fear taking over them. If they were killed today, then that was it, they wouldn't have a chance to even get revived and would cease to exist completely.
"Damn it, stop staring and fight, we have to go all out or we're finished!" One demon bellowed as the others all woke up from their stupor, they immediately channeled their demonic energy and started a battle with Reign and the others. The battle, however, was finished before it even started.
The demons were not only slightly weaker compared to Reign and the others individually, but they were also outnumbered, having to fight 7 people while there were only 6 of them.
It didn't matter that the demons were using everything they had, the difference in power was simply not something that could be changed that easily.
Reign's lightning shocked them while Shadow's vines made it incredibly hard to move and dodge attacks. Shadow would also use his spikes occasionally and stab the demons, even though the demons had higher defense compared to others at the same level, after being stabbed multiple times by the spikes, their defenses slowly crumbled.
Wolf's fire burned fiercely as the demons tried their best to get out of its way, the ones that got struck were burned heavily while Greenie and Tank made sure to show their overwhelming strength against them.
Both Tank and Greenie had incredibly powerful bodies that were in no way inferior to the ash demons and could take quite some beating. Beast on the other hand simply stayed behind and showered the demons with his arrows.
The one that did the most damage, however, was Laura. Her skills were after all custom-made to battle against demons and would shine brightest when used against them. She summoned weapon after weapon that quickly sped to the demons while occasionally using her [ Demonic Whip ] to fight against them at the same time.
In a short 3 minutes, the demons were almost dead, each one had multiple wounds on their body and could barely stand. It was obvious that they were going to lose and fleeing was also impossible. Shadow appearing behind them without any of them noticing showed them at the very beginning that they would die without knowing what happened if they showed their back to the enemy.
Reign as well had shown his great speed during the fight which made it obvious to the demons that they were outmatched in all aspects.
"Fuck it, I'll make sure to at least bring down some of them with me!" One demon shouted as his body started turning black and an incredible amount of power was suddenly leaking out.
"Well, why not, our souls would get destroyed anyway." Another demon said as he did the same, and the other four quickly followed.
"Tank!" Laura shouted as Tank quickly got in front of the group and used his best defense skills. His shield shone with a gold color while a black hexagonal shield appeared in front of him. The demons were now exuding great power as they stared at Reign and the others with great hatred.
From the moment the first demon shouted and Tank had put his shield up, only 4 seconds had passed. Luckily for them, Laura had previously told them to stay close together in case the demons tried anything, just like they did now.
All demons could decide to sacrifice a part of their soul, or the whole soul and blow themselves up. The power of the explosion was incredible and enemies at the same level would most definitely be killed, or at least heavily injured by it.
[ Severing, Second Sword ]
[ Zephyr's Spear ]
[ Gravity Strike ]
[ Darkness Implosion ]
[ Greater Fire Ball ]
Everybody quickly launched their attacks at the demons while Laura channeled her demonic energy and mana in order to heal anyone after the explosion. The attacks, however, never reached the demons as they exploded before they could get hit.
The small forest they were in shook violently as a great explosion took place. The trees around the demons were blown away immediately whilst burning in the air. The trees that were a bit further away swayed greatly as their roots started coming out from the ground before they were blown away as well.
Thanks to the multitude of attacks, Reign and the others were able to weaken the explosion on their side and make it easier for Tank to defend against it. Laura quickly used her ability on Tank in order to strengthen him, it was a new function of her ability after it became rank A.
If Laura was to try and heal someone that wasn't injured or was slightly injured, her power would nourish the person and make him or her stronger. Tank could immediately feel himself getting stronger as Laura gave it her all, the explosion was still powerful and Tank would need some help.
The explosion hit Tank's hexagonal shield and both the shield and Tank were pushed back, the shield cracking from the intense power behind the explosion. Tank even used the full power of his mark and grew larger as his power increased.
It was still not enough to fully block the explosion and soon, his black shield was broken and the explosion hit him and his golden shield. The golden shield fared no better as it slowly started cracking, Tank's face was tense as he used up everything he had in order to defend against the explosion, only for the shield to break and for him to be sent flying back at the end.
Still, he managed to block enough of the explosion to let the others withstand it without much trouble. Laura quickly started healing him as his body reverted back to its normal human form.
"That was, damn, that was something," Shadow commented as he looked at the aftermath of the explosion. The place where the six demons previously stood was gone, in its place was a huge hole that was 5 ( 16.4 feet ) meters deep and 13 ( 42.6 feet ) meters in diameter.
Luckily, Shadow had taken the body of the demon he had killed previously and placed it near Laura. Even though the body was blown away by the explosion, they were able to quickly find it some 30 meters away from them.
"Well hello there." Said Reign as he held the five souls of the demons in his hands.
"What, they didn't sacrifice their whole soul?!" Shadow shouted as he looked at the five souls that were trying their best to get out of Reign's grip.
"Only the first one did, these guys however sacrificed half of their soul." Reign said as he looked at the clearly weakened souls of the five demons.
"Had they sacrificed it all, we would have definitely been injured by that explosion, even Tank wouldn't have been able to block it."
"But they didn't, hmph, they were probably hoping that some of them will sacrifice everything and that in turn, they will be able to escape," Wolf commented as he looked at the five souls in disgust.
"Hey Tank, you good man?" Reign asked as he got close to Tank who simply put a thumbs up whilst breathing a bit heavily.
"I'm great." He said with a smile on his face as Reign smiled back.
"Alright, let's go to the crevice and rest up, the explosion was bound to attract the attention of some monsters, perhaps even more demons would come over to check it out." Reign said as the others all nodded in agreement.
"Oh and Shadow, take the body with you, we don't want to leave any evidence," Wolf said as Shadow took the corpse and put it over his shoulder, his face grimaced a bit from the act, but he said nothing.
"Alright, the faster we put the portal, the faster we can put the doors and plates, making it impossible for enemies to attack us, let's go!" Reign said as everybody started making their way back to the crevice. They had followed the demons for some time in order to not fight near their future base since the sounds of battle could draw monsters near, not they see that truly was the right thing to do as the explosion would definitely make a lot of monsters curious about this place.
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