Chapter 368: A fair fight
’Enhanced Cognition — Level 2.’
The air around him changed completely as the world sharpened. Every sound separated itself from the others.
The crackle of distant fire. The dripping of demon blood against stone. The faint tremor in Yaana’s fingers. The uneven breathing from one of the High Mage demons. The quiet pulse of Maya’s spell circles. The heavy rhythm of the Archmage demon’s heart.
Every movement became slower, clearer, and easier to read. Lines of possibility spread through his vision, not as perfect predictions, but as paths, openings, risks, and opportunities.
Silent Heart washed over him at the same time as Kurogoroshi’s influence cooled his emotions like winter mist pouring over a battlefield.
All the pain became distant. Undying Will activated, making something deep inside him harden.
His body still hurt, his wounds still bled, and his muscles still ached from blocking the Archdemon’s strikes. But none of it mattered. Every sensation became information rather than a distraction.
Maya felt the change before she saw it, and her smile faded, "What is he doing...?"
’Temporary Stat Conversion.’
He sacrificed most of his stats, like speed and strength for one...
[Speed x300%]
The next moment, Elion vanished.
A black blur cut across the courtyard, and before the nearest of the five demons could react, Kurogoroshi had already passed through its throat. The demon’s head did not fall immediately. It simply stood there, eyes wide, and hands twitching toward its neck as blood began to pour between its fingers.
Elion appeared behind it and moved again.
"Formation three!" Maya shouted as her heart thundered in shock. "Tighten around me!"
Yaana spun her scythe in panic, but Elion ducked beneath the blade, slid across the rubble, and used blood magic to yank at the bleeding wound in her shoulder. Her body jerked off balance for half a second.
He used that half second to slash across her thigh.
Shk!
"Ahhhhhh!"
She cried out, stumbling back as blood sprayed across the stone.
"Yaana, back!" Manfred barked. He came in from the side, with his sword stabbing for Elion’s ribs while his shield covered his centre.
Elion swapped his stats again.
’Strength.’
Kurogoroshi met the shield, and the result was exactly as you would expect.
Bang!
The cracked shield split apart completely, the Mythical blade tearing through its enchantments and carving a line across the swordsman’s forearm. Manfred retreated with a sharp breath, only barely avoiding the follow-up cut aimed at his neck.
Even then, a shallow line opened across his throat, so shallow he did not notice it at first, that is, until blood began to flow out of the narrow slit.
Maya fired three spells at once.
A binding circle beneath him, a spear of light toward his chest, and a curtain of sharp water blades from behind.
"Do not let him move again!" she shouted.
Substitute.
Elion vanished from the centre of the formation, leaving behind a faint afterimage that was quickly replaced by a block of rubble just as the spells converged and destroyed it in a burst of dust.
"He vanished!" Uta shouted.
"No," Maya snapped. "Above!"
Elion reappeared above one of the High Mage demons, dropping from the air with Kurogoroshi raised in both hands.
The demon looked up.
Too late.
Shkaaa!
The blade split it from shoulder to hip, and the corpse fell in two directions. The demons finally felt it properly then.
For the first time perhaps in their whole lives, they felt true fear. It moved through them like cold poison.
Every time they looked at Kurogoroshi, something ancient and instinctive screamed inside their blood. The sword did not merely cut them. It suppressed them without mercy.
It made their corruption tremble before it even touched their flesh. Wounds caused by that blade did not close, and blood did not stop flowing.
Even the Archdemon’s grin began to fade. Kurogoroshi’s Nightbane Authority’s full effect washed over them like the presence of a reaper.
Elion landed lightly, smoke-like wisps curling from the edges of his eyes and drifting upward into the red air.
"Do not look at the damn blade!" Maya ordered. "Watch his shoulders, his feet, his mana flow."
"That’s easy for you to say," Uta hissed. "You are not the one within reach of it."
Yaana’s laugh was breathless and cracked. "He’s so much better than us up close."
"Focus," Manfred growled.
Uta’s hands came for Elion from six directions.
Elion raised his left hand.
Fire and water bloomed together.
A spinning ring of steam erupted around him, boiling hot and thick enough to obscure vision for a breath. Uta’s hands entered the ring and were instantly scalded, the wet mouths shrieking in tiny, disgusting voices before Kurogoroshi flashed through the steam and severed seven of them at once.
Uta staggered back, his face twisting with anger as Elion emerged from the steam like a shadow.
Uta’s eyes widened as Elion descended on him.
"Maya!" He cried out for help.
Maya saved him by throwing a barrier that snapped between them just before Kurogoroshi reached Uta’s neck. The sword cut halfway through, crimson ripples sliding along its edge, but the brief delay was enough for the Archdemon to slam into Elion from the side.
Boom!
The hit landed cleanly.
Elion was thrown through a broken wall and across the courtyard, crashing into a tower base hard enough to crack the stone behind him. His armour flared violently. Impact Dispersion spread the force across the full set, but even then, pain thundered through his ribs and shoulder.
He coughed up blood, but he still stood up immediately with no hesitation whatsoever. He didn’t even grimace in pain.
The Archdemon’s grin vanished. "What...?"
Maya’s face tightened. "How does he just get up from that? Is he even human anymore?"
Manfred’s voice was grim. "He suddenly doesn’t care about the pain?"
Elion rolled his shoulder once as he popped it back in place. Fortunately, the bone had not broken since the armour had done its job.
He looked at the Archdemon and used temporary Stat Conversion again, as speed and strength both surged, in exchange for every single point in his mana stat.
He moved.
The Archmage demon swung its massive arm, trying to catch him mid-rush. Elion ducked beneath it, but the demon followed with a knee, faster than its size suggested. The strike would have crushed his chest. Elion used earth magic to raise a slanted stone plate under his foot, stepped off it at an impossible angle, and passed over the knee instead.
"Pull back!" Maya shouted.
Too late.
Kurogoroshi came down just as the demon was about to pull back. However, it was never going to be fast enough.
Shk!
Its hand spun into the air. For a heartbeat, the massive hand remained up in the air, and then it fell.
"Haaaaaaa!!!"
The Archmage demon roared.
Elion landed behind it, blood and black mist spraying across the stone. He did not stop, using blood magic to seize the bleeding stump, forcing the blood to burst outward in a violent spray that blinded the demon’s nearest eye.
Earth spikes rose beneath its feet as fire exploded against its back and water blades cut across the tendons behind its knees.
"Cover!" Maya shouted, her voice having lost all of its previous calm.
A wave of pale force slammed into Elion’s side, pushing him away before he could finish it. He twisted in the air and landed on one knee, sliding backward.
Another High Mage demon lunged at him from the left.
Elion did not even look back. Kurogoroshi flashed backward, and the demon’s chest opened from ribs to spine.
Third one dead.
The remaining fighters froze for half a second
That half second told Elion everything. They were finally losing rhythm, so he pressed harder without a thought. The fight became a brutal nightmare after that.
Elion did not rely on the sword alone anymore.
He used everything.
Earth magic created sudden footholds, walls, spikes, and angled platforms that let him move through the shattered courtyard like the terrain belonged to him. Water magic redirected attacks, bound ankles, sharpened into blades, and created mist that broke sightlines.
Fire magic forced enemies apart, burned Uta’s hands, and detonated rubble midair. Blood magic disturbed wounded bodies, worsened bleeding, and pulled at every injury Kurogoroshi had created. Illusion magic flickered only briefly, enough to mislead a strike by half an inch.
Half an inch became life or death.
"Our left side is collapsing!" Manfred shouted.
"Uta, restrain him!"
"I can’t reach him, he’s too fast!"
"Yaana, cut off his path!"
"I’m trying!"
"Maya!" Uta snapped. "Your barriers are too slow!"
"My mana isn’t infinite!" Maya shouted back in anger, even as spell circles flickered around her trembling fingers. It suddenly dawned on them that this was never going to be a fair fight, no matter how many more allies they brought!
The numbers had never mattered.
