Chapter 384: Battle Part 2
"..." I dodge several attacks, quickly analyzing who to kill, focusing on the weaker ones and avoiding those who are problematic to hit or get too close to.
I create six swords to use on each arm and begin exchanging blows with several heroes. Although they are fast, I can keep up. Fortunately, the mask is good and doesn’t impair my vision, even though I’m temporarily blind.
’That...’ I notice Takeru preparing something and remember that he has one of the abilities I deemed dangerous. I quickly advance towards him, sacrificing two arms to get past the heroes while cutting the distance extremely fast.
"!!!" He’s surprised as I’m already in front of him. I stab two swords into his head and cut his body with the other two, while being pierced in the back by a sword.
’I got another soul...’ I cough up blood in the mask, feeling the accumulated damage. No matter how fast I regenerate, it’s still difficult to deal with all this damage without being able to use much magic.
I force my body, pressing the muscles and breaking the blade with the pressure, while using my tail to strike whoever is behind me.
’Being blind sucks’ Even though I can sense who is attacking without vision, it’s difficult to know exactly who is really attacking because the combined magic of everyone messes with what I can perceive.
’Why can’t my cores remove the blindness?’ I generate another core and chew on it while dodging a sword strike, retreating into the shadows.
Deducing that the problem is the eyes themselves, I destroy them, feeling an unpleasant pain, but continue fighting as they slowly regenerate.
’Great, another injury...’ 3 minutes until I can use magic again, but now I can see again. It seems I’ve regained my vision. I see Sakura sending dozens of clones at me, but in the darkness, I pierce the heads of all the clones.
"Urgh" I let out a groan of pain as the gravity becomes so heavy that the pressure damages parts of my internal body. I didn’t consider this ability a threat before, but it’s annoying.
"Hey, over here!!" Eri calls for support as I advance towards her, who has this irritating gravity ability. Ryota appears in front of me, blocking my attack with a large shield.
’It seems this is the limit of a body made of flesh’ My hand expands, forming a monstrous black arm with a large claw. With a single movement, I completely crush Ryota, capturing his soul. And since he died first, the person he marked can now be killed.
The arm dissolves into black mud, covering the parts that suffered damage and regenerating them.
’Minus 3 organs...’ I can’t regenerate properly. The debuffs have messed everything up, so I’m sacrificing organs to regenerate the most important parts that are taking damage.
"GAarh" I let out a mixture of surprised scream and pain when I took a step back, and something resembling a bear trap caught me. It’s large, and the teeth pierced my belly and back, almost tearing me in half.
’It’s Kaori’s ability’ She must have spent all this time preparing this ridiculously strong trap. I try to break it with my tail, but I can’t.
’More resistant than the damage I can cause!?’ I’m alarmed as the heroes approach me. I try to force the trap’s teeth open using my arms, and also try to dematerialize, but I can’t. The trap seems to be preventing it.
In a mix of urgency and survival instinct, I convert a large part of the area of my abdomen into a mouth. My bite shatters the trap’s teeth, and I barely manage to dodge being decapitated, retreating.
Fortunately, thanks to my [Devourer] passive, I can chew on something even if it’s absurdly more resistant than what I can destroy.
’1 minute left...’ In nine minutes, she created a trap that almost killed me. It seems I severely underestimated what the [Trap Set] can do.
"Hey, you demonic bitch, check this out!" Kaito yells, making me look at him. In the same instant, golden swords pierce my heart, lungs, liver, and head, while the swords drain my vitality.
’It must be his unique ability’ Not caring anymore about how monstrous my appearance becomes, I generate mouths in each place where the swords are and begin to devour them.
The mask cracks and breaks, revealing my face as I launch myself with the shadows towards Eri. At the same time, I use the shadows to make my hand even more deadly.
With a quick blow before Eri can defend herself, I pierce her heart. Using the shadows, I send them into her body, the shadows begin to shred her from the inside, causing a quick death as I take her soul.
"Guys, let’s stick together and..." Tsubasa tries to speak, urging them to unite so no one becomes an easy target, but at that exact moment, 10 minutes have passed.
"Boom" I murmur, and in the same instant, everything explodes. A violent concentration of mana occurs throughout the castle, instantly evaporating everything. The barrier manages to contain the explosion.
But the weakness of these heroes’ barrier is that it keeps me trapped here, but it also keeps them trapped inside, defenseless against an attack that hits the entire area inside this huge barrier.
A slight cracking sound occurs as the castle turns to ash and the terrain is perfectly flattened. This was just a pure mana explosion. With the brutal amount of mana I have, any mana-heavy explosion generates devastating effects.
’Even this didn’t break the [5-Stage Anti-World Barrier]’ This barrier is annoyingly good.
In less than 3 seconds, all the ambient mana disperses, returning to normal, as I see who died and who is still alive from this attack.
’Damn, my body is burning...’ I see huge wounds on my body, severe and deep injuries leaving several areas raw. It’s Yuki’s unique ability, [Origin’s Curse], she returned all the damage I took back to me.
Fortunately, I knew this mana explosion wouldn’t be enough to incapacitate me, so I risked it.
’Haruka died...Natsuki died...Mei died...Naoki died and finally Keita also died...only 5?’ Only the weakest ones died, and none of them had dangerous abilities.
Now the abilities [Mental Trace Evasion], [Conscious Nerve Burst], [Percentage Drop], [Hidden Force Cut], and [Breath Lock] are gone.
Among these, the only problematic one was [Hidden Force Cut], so it really wasn’t worth destroying the entire castle and receiving all this damage for only 5 deaths.
"You’ve let your guard down, Demon King" A hero speaks too close, I didn’t notice him, probably the serious injuries that left my body raw interfered too much with my nervous system.
I look at who it is, seeing one of the worst possible, Kenta Shimizu, who has the [Touch of the Void], one of the abilities I considered dangerous to me.
[Touch of the Void] Anything Kenta touches with the palm of his hand simply disappears matter, magic or soul. The power is absolute, but it only works once every 24 hours. He himself doesn’t know where what he touches ends up, and depending on the target’s power, they can resist.
’Damn!! I can’t dodge’ I watch as he touches my body, immediately a small purple sphere appears at the point of contact, and I feel my body disintegrating.
"...!!!" I watch my arm turning into some kind of mass and being pulled, it reminds me of the spaghettification that happens when a black hole pulls things, but unlike a black hole, this doesn’t generate any real gravitational force.
It seems to be stuck to my body while absorbing me, and it’s fast, very fast. In seconds, half of my torso has disintegrated, and at this rate, I’m really going to die.
’I KNEW THIS SHIT WAS DANGEROUS!!’ I’m stressed and full of hatred for this stupid ability, I refuse to lose to something as stupid as a single touch.
"[Demon King’s Gravitational Pressure]" I use magic, generating a powerful gravitational force that crushes the ground beneath me, creating enormous pressure around everything. I reduce the area, increasing the pressure.
30 meters, 15 meters, 8 meters, 4 meters, 2 meters, 1 meter, 50 centimeters, 10 centimeters, and as the aura reaches a distance of 5 centimeters, the gravitational pressure near me is enough to completely disrupt the planet’s own gravity.
Causing my body to simulate a planet, gaining its own gravitational force and gravitational field, making the broken rocks nearby literally orbit me as if I were a small planet.
I literally became a living microcosm, the same effect that occurs with neutron stars and black holes that have more mass than their actual size indicates. My small body is now like a lesser planet within the planet, competing with its gravity to maintain stability.
My gravity can maintain a stable orbit even with the planet’s orbit trying to "fight" against mine to return to stability. As a singular point of my own, I can maintain an insanely high gravity.
The gravity is so high that anything that comes within 5 centimeters of me would be literally destroyed beyond dust, leaving at most their atoms.
But that doesn’t prevent this thing from continuing to compete with me, it just slowed it down a bit because I’m fixed in place by the gravity.
’There’s no other way’ My body has received too much damage. I’m being absorbed by this thing, and I doubt magic will be able to keep me alive. So I decide to use my true form immediately.
I wanted to have used the partial form, but in this situation, it’s better to expand my body to the maximum to avoid being completely consumed. My body begins to expand into a black sludge.
The humanoid form dissolves as I deactivate the [Demon King’s Gravitational Pressure]. A black liquid quickly begins to spread across the floor, covering everything.
The heroes are now stepping on this black liquid that covers the ground, rapidly expanding to reach the entire area inside the barrier, while hundreds of arms, mouths, and eyes emerge from this mass.
With one of the mouths, I devour the Touch of the Void, chewing and swallowing it, which seems to work, cutting off its effect. Immediately in the center of this black mass, the "bait" appears.
A humanoid body with a false core. The entire surrounding area is my body, but the bait serves to deceive anyone, making them focus on this specific point when they could just attack anywhere.
"Let’s go, heroes, we still have a lot to do" I speak with the hundreds of mouths, creating a distorted cacophony of my voice for all of them.