He looked at the group that surrounded him, consisting of Evan, Pride, Greed, Eliza, Amelie, Kayla and a few other high-level B rankers, taking a deep breath as he flared his aura in preparation for battle.
Evan was the first to move, dashing straight towards Zacular as the demon coated his arm in demonic energy in preparation to clash with him.
'Vortex.'
The boy's golden aura coalesced around his sword as he thrust it forward and sent the spiral-shaped mass of aura towards Zacular, who only smiled lightly as he spoke.
"Impressive."
Zacular's palm shot towards Evan's vortex, sending out a wave of brown aura that clashed with Evan's vortex and cancelled it out.
The resultant shockwaves knocked back the two sword-wielding adventurers who tried to attack him from behind, but before he could turn around and hit them with his brown aura, multiple shadowy appendages stretched out of the darkness and latched on to his body, holding him in place long enough for a dozen spears of light to surround him and launch towards his body.
"Hmph."
With a snort, Zacular flexed his arms and broke free from the shadowy binds, flapping his wings and leaping into the air, before spinning around and throwing out a punch toward the incoming fist of the high demon Greed.
**BAAAAMMMM!!!!
The two fists collided with a loud noise, with Zacular tilting his head to the side to avoid the beam of magic power from Eliza's skill, before sending another punch towards Greed and knocking him back to the ground.
The high demon clicked his tongue and rolled his shoulders backwards, however, his sister's hands pushed back the wings he was about to reveal before they could spread out fully.
"Don't…at least, for now."
"Tsk…"
Greed clicked his tongue once more, before summoning Mammonas and turning his gaze towards the sky, where a gigantic two-ringed golden magic circle manifested itself, before dropping a golden bolt of lightning onto Zacular's airborne body.
The other adventures added their own spells and succeeded in knocking the demon to the ground, however, they could not celebrate this feat as Zacular stood back up while looking completely unharmed.
"My god…it's like he didn't even take any damage."
"What did you expect, he's a grandmaster."
"Yeah.
Forget about actually harming him and think about how we're going to hold him back long enough for the S ranker to be done with his battle."
The B-rank adventurers spoke to themselves as they tightened their grips on their weapons, ready to continue their attempt to hold Zacular back.
The demon naturally heard their words, taking a deep breath before kicking off the ground and dashing towards the adventurer who spoke about holding him back.
"Wh-!"
Before the man could even complete his statement, a fist collided with the side of his head, sending him flying into the air.
His companions didn't have time to scream out his name as Zacular flicked his fingers and a dozen undead knights rose up from a patch of darkness on the ground to deal with them.
Pride and Greed attacked him simultaneously but he dodged by flying into the air and sent another dozen undead towards them to keep the two siblings busy, before calling forth a flesh golem and sending it towards Amelie, forcing the woman to change the target of the spell she was preparing.
For Eliza, he picked out a squad of undead mages and sent them towards the teenage battle priestess, turning to Evan and snapping his fingers once more as a near grandmaster-level Dullahan emerged from the darkness and charged straight at the young hero.
"Tsk…he's serious now."
So far, Zacular had been engaging them with melee combat, however, it should not be forgotten, that first and foremost, Zacular was a necromancer who controlled undead.
Melee combat, wasn't his fighting style in the first place, just something he picked up to make up for his weaknesses in battle.
A few finger snaps and magic circles later, and Zacular had buffed all the undead creatures he just summoned, as well as the other thousands of undead he had been summoning at various points across the city while fighting against Evan's group.
"Hmm? That life mage. She's negating my buffs?"
His gaze locked on to Eliza and moved to remove her from the battle, ordering the undead mages to carpet bomb her with spells which she blocked with her barrier, however, the hastily made barrier was on the verge of breaking after that.
Zacular then shot towards her and shattered the barrier with his fist, before summoning the arm of a giant ghoul that punched the girl's body with its enormous fist.
The rest of the giant ghoul's body emerged from the darkness, roaring loudly before charging towards the fallen battle priestess, however, its legs and arms were suddenly held down by a group of shadowy appendages that stretched out from the ground.
"Shadow magic?...But wh-!"
Zacular instantly flapped his wings and shot up into the air, avoiding the dark red ball of flames that flew in from an unknown direction and set the giant ghoul's head ablaze.
'There was demonic energy in those flames…so the Deadly Sin siblings.'
He turned to Pride and Greed who were creating a storm of tornadoes and flaming rocks that fell from the sky and crashed onto the undead he sent after them.
'Defence up.'
The demon added a defensive buff to the undead before stretching out his hand and launching multiple darkness spears towards Greed's magic circle floating in the air.
As if having expected this, the high demon's partial avatar rose its large arm and blocked the darkness spears, resulting in a large explosion in mid-air.
Zacular didn't show any reaction to this, preparing to summon another set of undead, however, before he could do so, his eyes widened in shock as he sensed life-threatening danger, instantly folding his wings and letting gravity pull him back to the ground.
However, the source of the danger seemed to follow him so he instantly called all the undead he had sent out to fight Evan and his companions to act as meat shields for him.
Immediately after, dozens of large three-metre long and fifty cm wide icicles shot through the air and straight towards Zacular, with the demon noticing that despite the fact that these projectiles were made of ice, they all possessed some kind of ribbon of magical flames around them.
'Whatever it is, it's capable of damaging me.'
And indeed, it was.
**KAAABOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!!
A huge explosion of ice greater than any dry ice bomb Evan knew of rang out, with massive shockwaves that sent everyone within a kilometre, both allies and enemies, flying into the air.
The blast propelled multiple fragments of ice at speeds nearing 300 m/s, however, the ice shards did not hit any allies, stopping right in front of them before dropping to the ground.
In reality, the caster had simply commanded the magic not to hit anything with a body temperature higher than a certain level but that's not really important.
What's important, is that all the undead Zacular called to protect him, had been relieved of their subscription to undeath.
If the attack with enough power to kill all those undead with health stats of at least 'C' rank, then even Zacular would not be completely unharmed.
The demon flapped his wings to clear the white smoke away, with his teeth chattering lightly as the temperature drop in the area was just too much.
And when the smoke was cleared, he was met face to face with the figure of a man wearing a black mask, wielding a standard-issue sword in one hand and holding the severed head of Count Falos in another.
Before Zacular could even say a word, he felt another threatening aura bear down on his body, just barely managing to jump to the side and avoid the sword that came slashing down from above.
**BOOOOMMM!!!!
The ground was split open and a mini canyon was formed from the slash, raising up another cloud of dust and dirt into the sky, however, Zacular couldn't pay this any mind as he had to once again fly out of the way to avoid a third life-threatening attack that would have definitely put a hole in his torso.
Now, the amount of damage that would be dealt to the surroundings from an attack capable of putting a hole in the torso of a grandmaster-level existence did not need to be mentioned at all.
When the dust clouds cleared up, Zacular found himself surrounded by three different Grandmaster level existences, and he could sense that all of them were at least level 400.
'Ah…I might have wasted too much time.
This is quite bad.'
Besides the black-masked man, the second one who slashed from above was a black-haired and golden-eyed young-looking man who wore the silver armour of the paladins adorned with a golden rose insignia, Sir Heinr.
The third assailant was the unnamed S rank adventurer who seemed to be close with Guild Master Dasyra as she brought him to the meeting with Evan and the other dignitaries a few days ago.
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