[The Narrow Valley, Current Time, Damian's POV]
The gods might not be as harmonious as Damian had thought. Maybe their cooperation was more of a necessity than a joint plan. The demon lord had terrorized the world before, and all the other kingdoms had gathered together to fight him. So it wasn't just empty talk. The chaos god might really just be a shit-stirrer who wanted to mess things up.
Damian had created over a hundred light lasers when the demon lord enveloped himself in a polished pitch-black darkness—imitating Damian's own mana armor—and said,
"Now this is your time to die, kid!"
A giant dark sword materialized in the demon lord's black-armored hand and swung at Damian with full force. Damian also noticed tendrils of darkness coming from behind him, attempting a sneak attack. The darkness of the demon lord gave off no mana—but that, in itself, was what revealed its position. An empty pocket in an environment filled with mana was where the demon lord's darkness lay.
Damian placed twenty-five lasers on each side of the dark-armored demon lord and activated them at full power. The tendrils of mana threads powering so many laser spells were almost visible to the naked eye—so dense had the mana in this one corner of the world suddenly become.
And still, the ridiculous polished dark armor held strong without any effort. All his lasers felt like they were pouring straight into an endless abyssal well that would never be full. There had to be some limit to this thing!
Damian also launched his prepared runic spells for exploding light constructs and bombarded the dark shield the demon lord had erected. He sneakily placed a waygate spell's runic circle directly behind the demon lord. The explosions were pushing the demon lord's back slightly—it was just inches away now. He also had a mana hand spell ready to grab the guy in case he didn't go through the waygate—at the very least, he would manage to get his ID.
With all his spells active, Damian also charged in, holding his sacrium spear brimming with light mana, and clashed against the center of the black shield with all his force. It pushed him back successfully. Damian immediately activated the waygate, but the second the shimmering blue circle started to appear, the demon lord's whole body became liquid darkness and fell straight down into his marching black army—disappearing like a wave of shadow among thousands of marching black pigmen.
This slippery bastard!
Damian didn't want to go searching for the bastard only for him to run away again. Instead, he ignored him and flew straight toward the pigmen city. The flying monsters were still constantly annoying him, but they could not match his speed at all. Finally, Damian reached near the outer city walls. He had created over a hundred massive spheres of water and prepped them with Lucian's freezing spell. He was also launching occasional giant tornado spells among the marching army as he flew here.
Now it was time to put his plan into action. Damian used a massive sphere of water accompanied by two or three freezing spells and slammed the large spheres onto the snow-covered ground—drowning the black monsters that had reached near the outer wall. The monsters were all over the city and even on the last two steps of the stone shrine, but Damian left that to others. He needed to do this—to get that bastard out.
The hundred-plus water spheres—and more that Damian made as needed—froze with the freezing spell and created meters-thick ice walls on all four sides of the pigmen city. He had to create two hundred more water spheres to bridge all the gaps and thicken the walls in some places. Along the way, Damian took care of as many Legendary ones as he came across—the emperor-ranked ones shouldn't be able to break the ice wall.
Done with this, Damian used a prepared supply of his condensed steel and made four giant steel pillars—melting and shaping them midair using his dark flames. Damian expected the demon lord to interrupt him, but it seemed he had given him just as good a scare as the demon lord had given him with his endless tricks. The bastard must be cautious now and wanted to see what Damian was really planning.
The never-ending attacks from the flying monsters hadn't stopped all this time—but his golden shield was too powerful for those annoyances to get through. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Damian felt a familiar mana signature approaching from the other side of the giant shrine, but Sam's mana signature seemed to arrive beside Shadecaster—keeping him occupied.
Sam's life energy and mana seemed to have soared past what was normally his limit. Did the guy activate some hidden skill? Or was this... It did qualify for a transcendent level, but the mana was on the low side. He was an esper though, so it wouldn't be anything surprising.
Powering up in the middle of a life-and-death battle, huh? What was that guy—some cheesy novel's protagonist?
Finally, Damian noticed a wave of darkness moving among the thousands of pigmen trapped behind his ice wall, trying to break through. The demon lord was inching closer to the wall and most likely wanted to breach it to keep pressure on the shrine city. Unfortunately for him, Damian had placed his four giant steel pillars directly along the northern and western ice walls. The wave of darkness was hesitating to go near them and instead began moving around toward the southern wall.
Of course, Damian wouldn't let him do it that easily. Along the way, Damian created more steel pillars and placed them on the path—covering even the eastern side. Damian blasted dozens of his light lasers at the black army near the southern wall. Sam and Shadecaster were fighting at the edge of the southern wall—too occupied to pay them any mind. Damian, too, couldn't take his eyes off the dark wave moving at incredible speed through the black army.