Chapter 707 Fight of Betrayal
Eisen jumped backward as he pulled out his blade, looking at the enemies right in front of him. The Satyr, Lizardman, Dryad, that man with the night sky-like flaming hair, and the Werewolf-like creature. All of them were now holding weapons and other items to an extent. The Satyr seemed to be a supporter, holding a harp-shaped staff that it started playing immediately, pouring buff-magic into the others.
The Lizardman was holding a large tower-s.h.i.+eld and was wearing thick armor covering its scales. Meanwhile, the Dryad was casting spells to make numerous roots spread through the frozen ma.s.s of water that was the lake Cocytus starting from her feet. As for the man with the flaming hair, who Eisen quickly inspected and figured out to be "Starlight Spark", a species that the old man had never actually heard about, but would certainly try to find a few things out about, this creature was directly casting offensive spells at Eisen while shaping some sort of ma.s.s out of black flames in its hands, but Eisen didn"t know what it was going to be yet.
And then, there was this Werewolf-like creature. It was holding a giant greatsword the size length of its own body, and its upper body was covered in leather armor while its legs were completely exposed. Eisen glared at these five creatures right in front of him and swiftly defended against the first initial attack.
It was a fireball that was hurled at him by the Starlight Spark. Eisen pushed his blade into the ground and increased its size a bit to use it as a s.h.i.+eld temporarily, and once the flames dispersed, Eisen shrunk it down again just in time to clash with the Werwolf"s sword.
Surprisingly, the Werwolf was really quite strong, making this a genuine contest of strength. The issue with this was that this was a fight of five versus one, so Eisen couldn"t spend a long time on this contest with the Werewolf.
And so, the old man quickly activated his Draconic Demon King transformation and turned his whole body into extremely hot, blasting flames that extended onto Eiro"s sword. On top of just increasing Eisen"s basic strength to give him a bit more of an advantage, the heat from Eisen"s sword was pushed onto the steel sword of the Werewolf.
Due to the bad quality of the sword, the sudden heat was felt by the Werewolf as it touched the metal, quickly jumping back once it realized what was going on.
Just at that moment, the Lizardman slammed into Eisen and pushed him to the side. But of course, the old man was able to strengthen the side that was. .h.i.t by turning it completely into rock to lessen the damage. Immediately after that, Eisen pushed his opposing foot into the ground. Due to the heat that Eisen"s body was giving off for a moment, the frozen lake he was standing on started melting a bit. And since Eisen could change the temperature of his flames even to the negative range, he was able to freeze the water instantly to let him avoid sliding over the ground.
At the same time, it gave Eisen the stability to properly counter-attack. Eisen"s sword slammed into the Lizardman"s s.h.i.+eld and put a good dent into it, but it obviously didn"t manage to break it. On the other hand, the Lizardman was pushed back and was now sliding over the ground.
At this point, the roots that the Dryad was pus.h.i.+ng through toward Eisen had reached him and broke through the ice. In response, the old man jumped up and flapped his wings to get away from them, just to be hit by another fireball that came from the Starlight Spark.
But this time, it was a bit different. The Starlight Spark had finished shaping the ma.s.s of flames in its hands, and it seemed like it was turned into something like a bow. And the "fireball" that was shot at Eisen was actually more like a "fire arrow".
Either way, it damaged Eisen quite a bit. This was honestly a new experience for Eisen.
Until now, he was always the subjugator, not the subjugated. He would team up with others in a coordinated manner to take tough enemies down, but he never really had to fight against enemies that were such a well-put-together team that was created just to take Eisen down.
It was somewhat exciting.
Eisen managed to quickly collect himself again, turning his body upright as he let himself drop down to slam his sword into the ice.
It formed cracks that were enough to let Eisen"s flames easily reach the roots of the Dryad to start burning them up, while making it easier to freeze a large area of this ice.
What he wanted to do first was to incapacitate at least one of these creatures. In this case, Eisen"s first target was the Lizardman. The moment that the ground even just weakened, without having to be completely molten, its heavyweight due to its full metal equipment. And then, the old man was able to quickly freeze the water once more to stop the movements of the Lizardman.
Instead of waiting any longer, Eisen slid past the Lizardman and cut into its neck while it was unable to move, quickly decapacitating it. Eisen"s Demonic Greatsword absorbed the soul, so its body swiftly disappeared while the metal items started to fade away as well.
"One of you gone, only four more to go." Eisen smirked broadly, while the other four monsters grew more furious after one of them was "killed". Well, it was already dead long ago, so it wasn"t true death in the end.
Immediately afterward, Eisen was met with a barrage of arrows from the Starlight Spark. He managed to dodge some of them, but clearly not all of them. For the most part, the arrows were stopped by Eisen"s wings though, and since they originally weren"t even part of Eisen"s body, he was able to only get minimal damage through them.
But besides that, Eisen could see that the ground underneath the Starlight Spark was slowly melting as well. He was giving off quite a bit of natural heat as well, after all. That seemed like a good enough chance to get rid of one more opponent, one of the more troublesome ones. Usually, Eisen would have aimed for the Satyr, since he is the supporter that is constantly increasing the strength of the others, but it was being directly protected by the Werewolf and the Dryad right now. That would be a bit too troublesome to go against.
He should wait for a good chance and take the Satyr down when he could, but for now, he still focused on the seemingly physically weak Starlight Spark. Eisen flew toward it and stopped flapping his wings while gravity brought him back down onto the ground.
The Starlight Spark dodged Eisen"s attack and proceeded to shoot another fire arrow at him, one that Eisen defended against with his greatsword. Once Eisen managed to get a proper footing again, he pushed his feet into the ground and slightly started melting the ice again so that he could create something he could properly jump forward from.
Eisen pushed his sword forward against the Starlight Spark and slashed his sword sideways through its body. But to Eisen"s surprise, he didn"t manage to actually cut through it properly, and he didn"t damage it at all. Instead, the monster revealed that not only its hair was made up of flames, but its whole body was. Its body was just made up of flames controlled by some other part that Eisen would have to find, it was most likely a form of core that it was hiding within this fake body.
But luckily, Eisen was already able to narrow down where the core was. The Starlight Spark"s feet disappeared and it grew new ones starting from its torso. So, the core had to be in the upper half of its body somewhere.
Then, Eisen proceeded to chase after this flame-monster and cut through its body vertically. The left side of its body disappeared, while the right side was the one repairing itself. So, Eisen knew that the core was in the right side of the monster"s upper body.
And just like that, Eisen continued to cut the monster apart in specific places whenever he could to narrow the location of the core down more and more. Of course, at first Eisen tried to find the core with his Truth-Seeing Eyes, but since its whole body was made of magic, the core seemed to be rather well-hidden. And then, after half a dozen more attempts at finding the core, Eisen finally hit something and the whole monster"s body disappeared.
To Eisen"s surprise, he really only barely hit the core at all. He slightly damaged a small part of it, something that was clearly easily repaired. And it seemed like the Monster was trying to regenerate its body again as well, as if Eisen only temporarily disrupted its form.
But that didn"t matter too much anymore, since Eisen quickly pushed the tip of his sword into the crystal core, having his sword absorb this soul as well.
And then, there were only three.
The Werewolf swung its sword at Eisen whenever it could, even while the old man was focusing on the Starlight Spark, but was never really able to hit him all that well because Eisen either flew up a bit or simply pushed him back through flames that he created. While this monster had a rough humanoid form and the ability to wield a greatsword like that, it only had the instincts of a beast. And when beasts saw flames, they usually stayed away.
Eisen used that to his advantage to get rid of the Dryad. Killing her wasn"t that hard. Plant Control was something tough to make use of in this sort of environment, so she was at a disadvantage in the first place. And with a single swing of Eisen"s blazing greatsword, he cut through her and burnt the rest of her body up while the sword absorbed this Dryad"s soul.
Just like that, there were only two left.
The Werewolf was a fair distance away from the Satyr, so killing this supportive monster wasn"t hard either. It wasn"t physically strong in the first place. And since the physical buff for the Werwolf disappeared with this, Eisen was able to properly concentrate on that monster. That contest of strength from before was easily overcome by Eisen, and he pushed his blade through the monster"s chest to kill it.
But even though all five of them were dead, the notification to tell Eisen he succeeded didn"t pop up yet.