Chapter 678 All In
As the demon appeared by his side, it was already performing some hand movements, and with it, it swapped Astaroth and Phoenix in space.
When switching places, Astaroth had already equipped his Ironbark Shield and pulled out the Ad Astra, in shortsword form, ready to take the hit instead of her.
With his shield already raised before him, he felt like a bullet train had just slammed into him, and the force behind the hit was all contained in a single spot on his shield, where the tip of Titania's blade was pushing him back.
She stopped her advance when she noticed the different target in front of her and clicked her tongue in annoyance.
"I will deal with you after. Wait for your turn."
Her words were spat with a certain disdain. Almost like Astaroth wasn't worthy of her time, as long as she didn't want to give it to him.
She slashed at him with her second sword, Astaroth barely having enough time to erect a barrier and twist his shield in the way again, before getting batted aside like a baseball in a home-run.
His trajectory was downward, and he knew he would hit the ground very soon. And the dame would not be pleasant.
Even though he had greatly reduced the damage of the first and second attacks, he knew they were only regular strikes.
Titania was not taking them seriously as enemies at all.
'Ipos! Again! Me and her, this time!' he shouted in his mind.
The demon reacted, and with another strange hand movement, Titania and Astaroth were switched places.
The thing with the demon Count's power was that, when he swapped things, they would also trade their momentums and trajectories.
This meant that Titania, who was now again charging toward Phoenix, was now diving face-first into the ground. She barely had any time to react, but still managed to mitigate a large part of the impact by spinning on herself and digging her feet into the ground instead of her face.
As for Astaroth, he used a powerful surge of wind magic to slow down his flight toward Phoenix, and then landed on his feet before sliding for about a hundred feet.
He was as strong as he could be right now, and she was still treating him like a plaything. And that did not sit well with him.
He wasn't sure if he should wait to use sublimation after Royal Protection, or use it in culmination right now, and hope it was enough to battle the woman.
But what he did know was that this battle was not something they would win.
Even if Phoenix powered up to her maximum, and he chose to take the heavy toll and double down on his exhaustion, a level one-hundred and fifty Mythical being was no joke.
He knew he couldn't, or rather, shouldn't, summon his other soul companions. It would be useless.
He had only summoned Ipos so he could use his powers. But he felt like Titania would catch on soon enough.
And just to prove his point, a thin line of deep purple energy came flying at the demon, too fast for him to do anything.
Immediately after it passed through him, Ipos smiled at Astaroth.
"I'm sorry, Master Astaroth. This is as far as I go in this fight."
A line of blood formed on him before his body slipped into two halves and he exploded into pixels.
Astaroth knew the demon had only gone back into the ring. But that had been much too fast.
'A single strike… That's all it took.'
Astaroth looked toward the now falling dust cloud that the attack had come from, and he saw Titania walking out, her face sullied with dust, and angry.
Her wings were pulsing behind her, a trait players online had talked about meaning the Fey's were angry. Their wings would reflect their emotions more than their face, like an emotional mirror.
The Aether he could feel inside the wings was rotating wildly, almost like a raging river.
"You have sullied me. I thought I would go easy on you and take each of you out quickly to assuage my anger. But now, I think I will kill you slowly."
As she dashed, time around Astaroth stopped. The colours drained out of his vision, everything becoming monochromatic in shades of black and white.
Then he heard Solomon's voice in his head.
"The fairy queen Titania. It has been a long time since I saw her. Still as beautiful as ever, even after almost five millennia.
"You seem to have landed yourself in a tough spot, as usual. But I can help you out of this one. I think it is high time I teach you your first legacy skill. Although it won't do much to augment your personal power, I think the skill itself will be useful to this fight."
Astaroth couldn't respond, his thoughts frozen like the surrounding time. He could hear, and think, but not talk back.
But as Solomon finished speaking, a deluge of magical symbols appeared inside Astaroth's head, flooding his memory, like it had always been part of it.
So many symbols, so many runes, and so much power associated with them. He could feel all this coursing in his mind as time was stopped.
Once the information stopped coursing into his mind, he heard Solomon once more.
"Although not all the demons under this rung have accepted you as their master yet, the spell will force them to obey. And who knows, after this, they might just willingly obey you. Give her hell, kid. Literally."
Time slowly moving forward again, but Astaroth was the first to move again as if the time stop had originated from him.
As his mind unfroze from the time stop, so did his body. He was moving so slowly, but he knew what to do to remediate that.
Activating Thousand Thoughts, his mind could move at a normal pace and counter the slowly speeding up time.
And he used this to cast the spell Solomon had just dumped into his mind.
"Legacy skill: Hell's descent, first layer; Avernus Rising."
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