Chapter 745: Showdown Devil VS Demon (part 17)
Chapter 745: Showdown Devil VS Demon (part 17)
Seeing the last hellscape that appeared behind of Marcus, radiating a familiar sensation, Daimon felt a bit interested.
’This feels a bit like when Adam changed to "archangel form", perhaps because it’s supposed to make Marcus reach his final form’, he thought, in a rare occasion the young angel girl Ariel expressed her opinion.
’You are right, the idea for the ultimate battle plan was to have Adam in archangel form, fight against Marcus’s in his final form, though that won’t be happening for obvious reasons’, she said to then add to herself.
’Though I believe you make a way better participant for a battle between light and darkness... though I don’t know in which side you should be included’, she thought.
Originally Ariel thought that Daimon was to be included in the "darkness" side, not because of his affinities or anything of the like, but because of his fierce and cunning personality.
However, she has also seen firsthand how kind and protective can Daimon be and unlike Adam who only wore a fake mask of justice, he genuinely worried and cared about those close to him, not only about women, though indeed the ratio of his female and male friends is quite unbalanced.
More importantly for Ariel, while Daimon wouldn’t go out of his way to help those unrelated to him, he wouldn’t mind lending a hand if the situation allows it not to mention that he doesn’t treat other people’s lives as garbage just because he is strong or because he can, so while Daimon is not the textbook definition of a hero, he is in Ariel’s eyes a good person.
Also, for the angel girl who has seen many heroes before, both hypocritical like Adam and genuine ones who tried to help others without expecting anything in return through her life, for certain reasons found Daimon’s realistic approach to be more likeable.
Back to the current situation, you might wonder why Daimon isn’t attacking Marcus and the answer is quite simple, there is a barrier produced by the hellscape surrounding him.
And for a change Daimon knew he couldn’t break through this one with the current power he controlled, even if he were to put his everything in a single attack, it’s understandable it wouldn’t be funny if the devil king were to be killed by the hero in the middle of his transformation after all.
Of course if Daimon were to break some rules then things will be different, Narasha is more than able to weaken and devour her way through an energy barrier like that one with a bit of time, in fact she was raring to do so, but seeing Daimon remain calm and descend from the air while lost in his thoughts, she pouted and controlled herself.
’Rituals that follow restrictions already produce quite powerful results and this hellscape followed even the arrangements of his system, what an annoying fellow’, thought Daimon as he crossed his arms to wait for Marcus to be over with it.
"Heh, so you do realize the power of this hellscape", said the devil ruler system user with a smile that stiffened as he saw Daimon... closing his eyes.
’What is this masked bastard doing?’, he wondered only for the ghost-like administrator girl to softly laugh as she answered his question, let’s not forget that users share a connection with their hosts.
In Daimon’s case, Eve doesn’t invade his thoughts out of both respect and because Daimon’s mind is strong enough to not only notice if she tried to but also stop her from doing so if he wanted to.
But Lezabel doesn’t care about what her user’s thinks about her and Marcus can’t stop her from listening to his thoughts, so his mind is an open book for her, well it’s not like he can keep a poker face so it’s not like it’s hard to guess what he is thinking anyway.
"He is meditating, it appears that he knows that while he can’t attack you while you are inside that barrier you can’t do anything to him either, so he is using this little break from the fight to further understand and increase his control over those interesting energies", she said to then add.
"Ah right, if I were you, I would hurry up with the transformation, every second he spends in that state, his battle prowess increases, to think he found a way to mess with you even through an "unbreakable barrier" in a matter of seconds, how devilish~".
Of course, Daimon did this because he has full trust in the lioness not letting the snake get anywhere near him.
’Damn bastard, I can’t even reach my glorious final form in peace!’, inwardly cursed Marcus, he honestly has been looking up towards this, just like Adam back when he achieved archangel form, this is the first time Marcus is going to reach this level.
An interesting thing is that he only needed to follow up such a strict order the first time, after this, so long as he pays the required price he can enter this state at will, but he needs to be alive for that of course.
With a slightly rushed expression on his face, Marcus forfeited all the dignity of his ascension ceremony and flashed towards the throne in the middle of the hellscape to then sit on it.
Unfortunately, while the devil ruler system user could rush the ceremony to start, he couldn’t change the process which he had personally set up, so the first thing that happened is that black and blood mana armored emerged at both sides of the red carpet that led to the throne, that was an honor guard forming a path through which Marcus was supposed to slowly and dignifiedly follow to the throne.
And it didn’t end with that, trumpets appeared behind the throne, to then produce loud sounds as if announcing the arrival of someone important, this happened after the honor guard appeared, as it was supposed to be timed to the moment when Marcus sat on the throne.
’Humph, how dare you put on airs in front of Daimon, just wait the next time I’m allowed to come out, I’ll create not a throne room but a whole royal castle with my shadow mana for him to look down upon the enemies!’, inwardly swore the undead head maid.
Both Rita and Horals treated Daimon thought of Daimon as the most noble existence, they made thrones for him at every chance they had, so of course the undead head maid didn’t like to see someone acting like a king in front of Daimon.
On the other hand, while normally Marcus would have enjoyed such treatment, right now he could only grit his teeth and blame himself for setting the process to be so ostentatious which ended up wasting what now became precious seconds of time in which his enemy grew stronger, these seconds felt like years for the devil ruler system user.
"Devil Crowning Ceremony!", once the trumpets stopped, Marcus could finally continue with the process, needles grew out of the throne and pierced his skin to then... drain him of his blood.
"Pfft, you turned into jerk’s jerky", said Lezabel as she saw Marcus shriveled state, he was completely safe and actually didn’t feel any pain, so he just looked a bit weird, luckily it didn’t last long, veins emerged all over the throne room which then started pulsating, the thing seemed to imitate a heart.
All the blood that was taken out of Marcus body circulated through the "veins" of the throne room, after a few rounds the originally normal red colored blood, gained a tinge of a black tone, it was then when it finally ended travelling through the veins of the throne room and returned to the throne, where it was injected back into Marcus’s body through the same needles that took it earlier.
"Ack!", this time Marcus let out a somewhat pained sound, his originally though tall and athletic still mage-like body bulked up for a moment expanding three times its original size before it shrank back to a relatively balanced shape.
However, there were other changes, first and formal, Marcus’s black hair grew until it reached the middle area of his back, also a large pair of black horns grew out on the top of his head.
Now, Marcus wasn’t a member of the human race to begin with, he is from the devil races, there is a lot of variety among them, some have quite bizarre shapes, but there are also some that don’t look much different from humans, and Marcus is from one of said races, the horned devil race to be more accurate.
The devil ruler system user actually had the horns with which he was born, removed from his head, by Lezabel no less, "My user can’t be showing off such trash horns to others", she said as she plucked the small white-bone horns that used to rest on top of Marcus’s head.
That alongside the no-girl restriction which ended up changing Marcus tastes over time, were the price he paid to be barely able to keep his system.
"Humph, they are simple one end designed, but they are indeed horns from the royal branch, that’s good, otherwise I might have had the urge to crush your head on the spot~", said Lezabel as she saw the black large horns that Marcus now had on top of his head, making the later who had his eyes closed for a moment, shiver.
He didn’t doubt in the slightest that the ghost-like girl would have killed him if he didn’t achieve this at least.
Different devil races have different royal families with different traits that most of the time are evolutions of the normal traits they have, some have tails, peculiar colored or shaped irises like the evil eye race, varied skin colors and the list goes on, however there is one aspect that every devil who wishes to claim to be royalty must have, their sclerae must be black colored instead of white colored.
This is a racial trait which shows that their power has gone to the extreme of the negative side of the energy spectrum, basically it’s a sign of negative oriented mana saturating their bodies.
Marcus whose eyes were closed, stood up from the throne, to then open his eyelids, a black substance filled the white sclerae he used to have to then overflow out of his eyes, creating to black lines that stained all the way from his eyes to his chin.
"Heh, "Devil Tattoo" as well, you surely didn’t want to be killed by me, that’s better, show me a good fight", added Lezabel as she saw those "tear stream" black lines, that was the equivalent of the yellow halo that appeared above an angel for a member of the devil races.
An extra external trait that is formed if the mana of the person in question reaches a certain point and has to be condensed out of the body, it’s a sign of talent for the devil race and it comes with extra perks, like Adam’s halo which gave him the "light blending" ability.
That being said, Adam’s power was incomplete and as a sign of it, he only had one wing instead of two, this is because he hadn’t trained at all and decided to just receive support from the system with a silver spoon, so he didn’t get to use all the power of the archangel form alongside its halo, not like that would have changed the outcome though since Daimon easily smacked his face against the ground even after being brought back into the fight and powering up thanks to Karla.
’He hasn’t reached the peak of his power in a single go, but his form is complete unlike Adam’s one’, thought Daimon as he slowly opened his eyes.
"Crack!", the barrier cracked at the exact same moment when Daimon opened his eyes, which made Marcus click his tongue, secretly he expected the masked silver haired youth to miss the timing of the barrier disappearing so that he could land a free attack to return the humiliation of having to rush his ascension ceremony.
"Royal Black Hell Step", apparently Marcus had discarded the "beast" suffix for his spells, though he was still wearing the lion armor, instead he now used "royal" in it, that wasn’t the only change, Marcus’s black flame mana no longer burned in a fierce and unorganized way.
Don’t get it wrong, the black flames which were combined with the black wind felt as threatening as ever, however Marcus’s control over it had shot through the roof, this was both because he was now royalty among the horned devil race and also because his realm... had reached the peak of the Arch rank.
With a "swoosh" the devil ruler system user disappeared from his previous spot, the next second, his right black clawed gauntlet appeared a few centimeters away from Daimon’s chest.
"Booooom!", both a reinforced energy shield construction which combined Tessa and Femi’s energies as well as the automatic energy armor protection from Femi’s energy, appeared in front of Daimon’s chest blocking the incoming punch, for a second.
"Crack!", however, the black flame clad clawed gauntlet ripped its way through both defenses, before Daimon used his own fist to clash with the incoming attack, the reinforced energy gauntlets as well as the lion armor covering Marcus’s gauntlets cracked and exploded the next second.
This time, Marcus didn’t shy away from the direct confrontation and the energy explosion, which was easy to understand once you heard the "clinking" sounds produced when his body was impacted by the shards of the lion armor.
Marcus’s skin below the lion armor was actually tougher than the defensive magic treasure as he was brimming with vitality now.
’Adam became able to manipulate mana as a knight when he changed into that archangel form, so this guy gaining a huge amount of vitality after becoming a royal devil is not that strange, however it seems like he can’t use battle aura’, thought Daimon.
Perhaps, it’s because manipulating mana as a knight is way easier, after all, mana exists in large amounts in the atmosphere, what’s hard is for a knight who is known to have a rougher and way less precise energy manipulation ability to give that mana a useful purpose.
On the other hand, battle aura doesn’t exist in nature as it is, one of its components does though, vitality, but a life spark is needed to mix it with mana and transform it into battle aura, and mages obviously don’t have life sparks, well there are exceptions like Daimon who is both a mage and a knight by innate and more recently Aura who awakened one with the help of her grimoire.
Fun fact, battle mages as mages who combine aspects of the knight path are called, don’t have life sparks, they attain power like the one Marcus was using, in other words they are mages with strong bodies, basically besides the racial traits and abilities that the special forms Adam and Marcus could use, they were shortcuts to become a magic knight and a battle mage respectively.
"Royal Black Hell Explosion!", smirking behind the helmet of the black lion armor, Marcus pointed his right hand at Daimon and black flames gathered in front of it to then be shot in the form of a flame tsunami that expanded in five hundred meters sidewards in a fraction of a second, this is to be expected, as a peak Archmage, Marcus could now command huge amounts of mana as easily as breathing.
"Storm Breaking Javelin", old habits die hard, Daimon pointed his right index finger frontwards, gathering Arianna’s red energy which allowed him to use martial arts, Femi’s metal energy and Dana’s lightning energy, to then enhance them with the first multiplier of Badr’s energy in order to use an alternative version of his originally most used spell and martial art, black hell javelin and white heavenly javelin respectively.
"Boooom!", a red, copper and bright yellow colored thin energy line was shot from Daimon’s finger and directly split Marcus’s spell in half forcing the black flame tsunami to break in half and spread in opposite directions, not reaching Daimon in the slightest.
What happened is simple, Daimon’s technique is actually weaker than Marcus’s spell even with the first multiplier applied to the energies that conformed it, however all of its power is concentrated in a single point while Marcus’s spell covered a large area, so Daimon easily destroyed it.
’Damn it, I’m not used to fight like a knight, oh well, his attack didn’t reach me either’, thought Marcus, Daimon’s technique did destroy his spell, but at the same time it used up all its power and couldn’t reach Marcus as well.
Still, now Daimon was combining three energies for a single technique, earlier he only used Arianna’s energy as a field to allow himself to use martial arts, but now he could include it into his attacks, which made Marcus feel the urge to curse himself, those minutes of absolute peace he gave to the enemy had come to bite him in the ass.
"Monstrous bastard, however you are not the only one that can gain new abilities in a matter of minutes!", said Marcus before his body radiated black flames to form the mana lion from before, which then opened its jaws and swallowed Marcus, to which Daimon raised an eyebrow behind his mask.
"Crack!", basically at the same time as Daimon turned around, a black gauntlet slashed its claws at his back, but was blocked by a reinforced energy shield as well as the armor protection produced by Femi’s energy.
This time however, the black clawed gauntlet directly broke them without stopping for even a fraction of a second, for the first time, Marcus actually... managed to directly land his attack on Daimon.
"Booooom!", the shield and the armor exploded, even when destroyed they did their best to protect Daimon, reducing the impact of Marcus’s attack by releasing the energy contained in themselves.
"Hssss!", Daimon who had retreated a dozen of meters had black flames burning on his back, until a wave of both his silver energy and Tessa’s bright green energy suffocated the flames.
Daimon’s flesh didn’t suffer any damage, but he did feel the impact of the attack, unfortunately for Marcus who expected the masked youth to scream, this amount of pain was nothing for Daimon.
"That wasn’t moving through the shadows, it was a space jump, so that’s why you didn’t take off the black lion armor, my including it into the ascension ritual, it also had its powers increased", said Daimon to then add.
"Now, it’s almost as strong as it would have been if she was still using it with her real abilities", naturally Daimon was referring to the lioness, if she still had shadow affinity and was out of Marcus’s control, she would be way stronger than she was when she was limited to be his bodyguard.
Marcus managed to force the domain’s power to almost catch up with what the lioness could have achieved through the ritual, which indeed was surprising, that allowed him to move through space fast enough to land a hit on Daimon.
Space related affinities are extremely rare and extremely hard to control, normally those below the peak of the Arch rank would meddle with space, so if one had access to it, it was an incredibly good trump card.
"Of course, I did, I’m a devil so the idea of the contract was to have her refine this power for my sake, whether it was her using it on my stead or me taking it away from her, this was the planned result anyway, I was just toying with her from the very begin...", middle through his sentence, Marcus’s eyes contracted like needles, a black portal engulfed him just in time to avoid a giant pair of red jaws that emerged from the ground below him, the figure to which they belonged was a two hundred meter tall red energy wolf that appeared out of nowhere nearly biting Marcus’s body in half with its fangs.
That was Daimon who finally managed to bring out Arianna’s main technique by enhancing her energy, similar to how he did to create Dana’s lightning tiger, the difference being that he only needed Arianna’s energy and Badr’s first multiplier, probably because it’s vitality related and Daimon has a lot of that, in exchange it required a way stronger control ability to pull it off.