The monster that Reign had taken with him was a balanced type of monster. It was fast, but not as fast as some other monsters of the same realm, it was strong, but there were stronger ones, there were those with better defense, monsters that were smaller and larger than it as well.
It possessed no attribute that was exceptionally high and was a jack of all trades, which was good for Reign as such a monster was a perfect guard at this time. The monster could catch the faster amongst the demons, could tank attacks, and deal devastating damage to the demons and it was able to both block and dodge attacks thanks to its size.
Still, that also posed a problem as injuries were piling up. The demons knew that even if they were to lose this battle, killing Reign would deal a heavy blow to the humans, so they made it their goal to end his life.
All of them started fighting a lot more aggressively, not caring about their lives at all. Reign was perplexed as he didn't understand why they would be like this, only to quickly realize the reason for such actions.
The demons could revive, not just the Ash demons, but all of the demons. They were all connected to their home planet, and as long as one reached Tier I, they were almost guaranteed to be revived at some point in time. Those that hadn't reached Tier I had the chance to revive, but it mostly relied on just what the demon had done in its life, if it had been able to learn something that was beneficial to the tribe or kill beings of great talent and potential, the planet would reward him with another life, if not, it would either be revived hundreds of years later, without its memories, or their souls would be used by the planet as a power source.
Without a true death, the demons here didn't care what would happen to their bodies. Those that were able to harm souls were simply far too rare, thus leading to them not caring about life or death.
That was the main reason why demons were still present in the universe even though they were hated by all. Each time demons appeared the many powers of the universe would immediately attack them and do their best to destroy them.
Still, since it was hard to completely destroy a demon, they would come back after some time, never relenting, never letting go, never shying away from a battle.
Of course, there was a silver lining, and that was that it was thanks to the demons that those in the universe were able to continue leveling up and reaching higher levels faster than they could normally.
Demons had a very low fertility rate and new demons being born was something that was difficult to happen, which helped with keeping their population under control. A bunch of immortal beings that could continuously give birth to more of them would be the nightmare of the entire universe.
The planets of the demons were hidden, existing in their own separate realms, hence why it was so hard to destroy the demons. Finding the planet would not be easy, but upon finding it, it would be even harder to survive. Unless the person was a very powerful god, they would quickly be killed by the demonic gods present, many of which had reached the high-god status or above.
Reign stared at the demons, angry at himself for forgetting such a thing. He had gotten used to demons being scared around him thanks to his soul manipulation and the fact that he was able to completely destroy them, forgetting that that wasn't the case for the others.
With the demons fighting much more aggressively now, the players had a hard time keeping up. If one was to fatally wound a demon but not deal the finishing blow in time, the demon would blow up his mana core, which would result in his body exploding and dealing massive damage to those around him, even demons.
The players now had to take a defensive stance in the battle in order to keep their casualties to a minimum. The monsters, luckily, did not need to do such a thing. The monsters didn't fear death either, and they were also ready to blow up their monster core if they were near death.
The immortal soldiers were similar in that regard, upon joining the army, even without having any loyalty to Tank, they were bound to him and his commands. They would follow the commands to the fullest and wouldn't care about death, but the only disadvantage was the fact that most of them did not possess a mana core. They functioned differently from other beings and mana was present in their entire body, instead of being held inside the mana core.
Only those that had reached a certain level of royalty were given a mana core by the ability that Tank had, allowing them to be more powerful since they could hold more mana thanks to the mana core, and were able to control their mana better as well.
That was why, even without fearing death, the immortal soldiers were unable to respond to the demons and do the same, blowing themselves up and killing many demons. There was not enough mana focused at one place for them to do it after all.
'I wanted to make the demons stay and fight till the end in order to get rid of them, which was why I silently took the soul of the winged demon I killed, forgetting that the weaker demons in the army would become suicidal in their attempts to kill me.' Reign said, lamenting what he did before.
Had he used his powers, he could have made a small show, allowing everyone to see the soul of the winged demon he was taking, and letting them all know that he could do the same to them all.
Aiming at the weak points of the demons would not work. Ash demons would anger their god if they died without their middle eye present, but in such a battle, without anyway of being fully protected, it was almost impossible to keep their eye-safe, and the god would not punish them for it.
Laura knew all of this, which was why she was trying to come up with a solution that would help the players. She had been on a demon-infested planet and knew much more about demons compared to Reign and the others, but this was one thing that made it very difficult for the people on that planet as well.
Demons would always fight in such a way, not caring about their safety at all. She had thought that Reign would take the soul of the demon he killed to make the other demons fear death, but she didn't expect him to forget about such a thing.
Demons would usually still fight normally if there was a chance to defeat their enemy as even though they would get revived, they would lose levels, and sometimes, their memory would be lost as well, which made them somewhat apprehensive of death, but never fearful of it.
'Tch, I should have reminded Reign about this, how did I make such a blunder?' Laura thought to herself. She could also completely kill a demon with her skills, but it was different for her as she was still fighting against the demon she had attacked from the beginning.
Compared to Reign, someone that had killed the most powerful amongst them, she wouldn't be able to make the demons fear her so much that they would fear dying.
Reign stared at the demon before taking a deep breath.
"Stop for a moment," Reign told the three teams who looked at him with perplexed expressions.
'Aethion, help me out, I need about 40 souls, the tier III ones should be enough.' Reign said as Aethion simply nodded, fully aware of what he was going to do.
Reign used his soul manipulation, making the 40 souls go to the demons and catch the souls of those that had just died. Upon catching 40 of them, Reign used up everything he had to utilize the soul manipulation to its fullest at this moment.
The souls became visible, floating above the two large armies, and it only took moments for both the demons and players to notice them.
Seeing how 40 of their brethren were captured by phantoms that looked the same as Reign made the demons shake suddenly. He had manipulated the 40 souls and made them all look like him so that the demons would know what was happening and who was doing it.
The phantoms suddenly started destroying the souls, ripping them apart and devouring them before moving on to more. The demons suddenly stopped blowing themselves up and some even thought about escaping.
Dying was not scary for them, but having their souls devoured meant that they would never be revived, which was the ultimate fear of every single demon present.
Reign only hoped that this would be enough to stop their rampage as he could feel that he couldn't last much longer. He still made it possible for the demons to see the phantoms, but now, they were flickering in and out of their vision.
They would see a phantom move, then disappear, before appearing next to a demon's soul and destroying it. In such a manner, Reign destroyed about 100 demons' souls before stopping as he could feel that he would faint if he continued, which would make it all for naught.
He had to keep awake till the end of the battle, otherwise, the demons would continue doing what they did before.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om