446 Not Just "A Little Bit" OP
As soon as Minerva used her Domain, darkness covered everything. Slowly, the darkness gathered before each demon that was caught within range... which was literally everything that she could see.
In front of the god-level demons, something like their monochrome clone appeared. The less intelligent ones didn't bother to even look at their clones and continued walking toward their destinations, but the ones that could think for themselves attacked immediately.
Suddenly, the area below us turned into hell on earth.
Various attacks were fired without knowing who they could hit. Friendly fire was rampant!
"Minerva..."
I turned to the culprit of this mess, but she simply smiled at me. An innocent smile, one which you wouldn't be able to attribute to someone able to pull off such a devilish stunt.
"Amazing, right, Sir Will?"
She asked while tilting her head cutely. Almost reflexively, I ended up patting her head with a wry smile.
"Yeah, amazing... Like this, you alone might be enough to wipe out all these demons."
Looking at the current scene below, I can't help but think as such. Wasn't her skill so overpowered? GM, admins, you should nerf her! Anyway, enough joking. With her domain's effect, the number of demons dwindled from the weaker ones first.
The smarter demons were quick to realize that firing their attacks randomly would cause more harm than good. Instead, they worked together with those near them and eliminated their clones one after another, overpowering them through sheer numbers.
"..."
About a minute in, the powerful demons managed to clear their clones without losing even one of them. Right now, they were surrounded by the clones of the weaker ones.
Just as one would expect, even though they had the advantage in skills and power, the disparity in numbers was too great. They took so much time to clear the clones that they lost at least half of their numbers.
Roughly 50,000 powerful god-level demons were left below.
"Now, shall—"
Before I could finish my words, however, it was Hekate's turn to use her domain. Fang was already on the move before Hekate even started, traveling through the shadows and reaching the enemies in an instant.
"[Fleeting Dream's Embrace]!"
A glittery white light flashed, with Hekate at its center. Similar to Minerva's domain, Hekate also had an extremely wide AoE. Everything that was touched by the flash of light, other than those she set as non-targets, was immediately lulled into sleep, standing still with their eyes glazed.
With the enemies standing still in place, it was the perfect chance to reap their heads!
Fang, of course, knows this and didn't dare delay. She stabbed her two daggers into her shadow as she closed her eyes. When she opened them once more, her eyes flashed with a black light.
"[Blessing of Eternal Darkness]..."
Her words were solemn, as if praying. As soon as she finished mumbling the words, the shadow below her turned darker and darker, into a complete black that sucked all colors around her.
Fang finally activated her domain! She had been having difficulty back when we were in the training room, after all.
The shadowy domain covered a total of a one-kilometer radius, and everything that was within that domain was also within her blade's reach.
"[Ultimate Skill: Myriad Shadow Slash]!"
And taking advantage of that property, Fang swung her twin daggers around as if she were dancing. Each of her slashes was reflected as an "attack" on those trapped within her domain—to be specific, on all of the trapped demons simultaneously.
Furthermore, each attack added a random debuff to them. From bleeding, sleep, blind, even silence and petrification, as random as it could get. This wasn't due to the daggers in her hand, but rather to the effect of her domain itself.
After making sure that everyone in her domain was slashed at least a hundred times, she then moved to the next section while recasting her domain, and the next, and so on, until she finally covered a large majority of the demons that Hekate lulled to sleep.
"... Do I even have to be here?"
The three of them wiped out the entire army!
Furthermore, they weren't exerting themselves that much either, given that they only used their domains once, other than Fang, who had to recast it dozens of times.
Down below, only a few thousand that were lucky to stay outside Fang's range were still standing. The rest, all of them, have already turned into essence crystals.
"It should be safe to go down now, Sir Will,"
Hekate declared while she bowed lightly, her usual shy and reserved expression nowhere to be seen. Did reaching the 9th stage boost her self-confidence? Well, it was a positive change, so I'm not going to be picky about it.
I turned to look at the entire battlefield and, once again, felt awe.
"... I'll just handle the remaining ones. You three should begin collecting the Essence Crystals."
"Oh, no need to gather them. Leave it to me, Sir Will!"
Minerva answered with excitement behind her words. With a snap of her fingers, all the essence crystals that fell to the ground floated up before flying to where we were, up in the sky.
This also applied to those still within the demons' bodies. They burst through the dead bodies and flew... It was quite a grotesque sight, to be honest.
In less than a quarter of a minute, all of the hundreds of thousands of Essence Crystals were gathered. I turned to Minerva and wondered: How OP had she become now?
Anyway, with the essence crystals gathered, only the cleaning up of the stragglers was left. I quickly flew down before Minerva handled it too. I mean, having to do nothing is great and all, but it'd make me feel like I wasted my time just standing here without doing a thing.
As soon as I landed, I quickly whipped out the two swords that I still had on me and started to weave through the scattered groups of demons.
However, with the simultaneous activation of Lifeblood and Echoing Thunderclap's degraded version, the battle was over before I could even start to sweat. It was easy beating enemies who were trapped in Hekate's domain, but it kinda felt bad, like I was bullying them.
Anyway, beyond my expectations, the main army of demons was wiped out just like that. I turned toward the north, in the direction where the others should still be busy defending.
"I hope everything's going well back there too."
With our job done, we returned to the capital with our heads held high.
Join me in my lonely discord server: https://discord.gg/DEVbwSbZUh
SeraphWedd
New novel 𝓬hapters are published on (f)reeweb(n)ovel.com