“C-Cut the crap!” Octoaranea’s rage urged her to a more intense offensive. Thunderous roars echoed around them as the terrain was torn apart and remade once more. “Ugh! This can’t be!”
Still, Beelzebub defended himself one-handed without breaking a sweat.
Was this purely the result of a gap in physical ability and strength between two shenmo? No. There certainly was a wide gap, but there was another, simpler factor in play here. As a master of her art, Octoaranea could also understand. As hard as it was to believe, Beelzebub was the superior swordsman.
“Damn it all! I won’t accept this!”
How could she? Her swordsmanship was both her strongest weapon and the symbol of her pride. The residents of the underworld lacked the fundamental concept of training for improvement, but she’d polished her skills during many battles. For Beelzebub to so easily surpass her efforts was unthinkable.
“I simply refuse to believe it!” Octoaranea screamed.
She threw four of her six swords at Beelzebub. They flew at tremendous speeds thanks to her shenmo strength, but he sidestepped them with minimal movement. The swords flew past him, until they suddenly boomeranged back toward him. “Gotcha!”
Upon closer inspection, the swords had thin threads attached to them—Octoaranea’s silken threads that were strong enough to catch a cannonball.
“Web Sword Funeral!” At the same time, she dashed forward and attacked Beelzebub with her two remaining swords. This was her ultimate move, a simultaneous slashing attack that struck from every direction, the perfect technique to utilize her spider threads to their fullest.
“A petty trick,” Beelzebub said. The next moment, blood sprayed out of Octoaranea’s body, while the two swords in her hands had their blades severed in the same breath.
“What...was that?” Beelzebub had moved behind Octoaranea and cut her, along with her swords, as he was passing her by. “That’s not possible. How could I fail to follow you with my eyes?”
“I believe this technique is called ‘shukuchi’ in the human tongue.” Much like Alan and Kevin, Beelzebub utilized the martial arts technique for rapid movement that could be used without preparation. However, it wasn’t usually possible to overcome a shenmo’s kinetic vision with that technique alone. That feat was thanks to Beelzebub’s formidable technical finesse. “This also falls under the category of petty tricks, but I thought I’d use it in response to yours.”
His technique was already beyond the level of the best masters, yet to him, it was no more than a “petty trick.”
“Getting distracted is pretty careless!” said Fabula the Fairy King. He’d sprouted four wings and had floated above Beelzebub at some point. Fabula’s traits were from a monster known as an evil fairy. Evil fairies excelled at magic, particularly black magic, which was the most orthodox and traditional among the underworld’s magic groups. “Eat this, Beelzebub. Black Magic, Number Forty-Five.”
“You’re going to use a spell higher than forty?!” Alan said. He had some knowledge about the underworld’s magic, although not to the same extent as Norman’s, so he knew how strong that spell was.
The underworld’s color magic had spells numbered from one to fifty for each color, just like Template Magic had for each element. Among them, the spells numbered forty and above were particularly difficult to use, but extraordinarily destructive as a result.
To paint a better picture of just how difficult those spells were, they weren’t something a person could normally use alone. It would usually take the combined effort of several demons with high mana and great skill at manipulating it, chanting and weaving their mana together over several days to cast one.
However, the shenmo Fabula was able to easily use such a spell on his own.
“Graviton Fall!” Fabula raised his hand above his head, where a huge, swirling mass of mana gathered like a coil of black snakes. It was a manifestation of crushing gravity, strong enough to make the ground creak from the energy it leaked. Fabula’s goal was slamming that ball of gravity directly into Beelzebub. Even he couldn’t brush off a direct hit.
Fabula brought his hand down and the mass dropped toward its target.
“As I saw, it doesn’t reach Grave’s level,” Beelzebub said.
“What?”
Beelzebub raised his hand to the sky. “Black Magic, Number Forty-Nine.”
“No...!”
“Evil Tree, Black Yggdrasil.” An enormous jet-black tree sprouted from the ground.
“What the—” Fabula was dumbstruck. The tree was over thirty meters tall with innumerable thick, pointed branches spreading out from it like a flooded stream drawing mazes in the mud. One after another, the branches pierced Fabula’s gravity mass and shattered it into tiny pieces.
“This can’t be! How can your spell be so powerful?!” he shouted with his eyes as wide as a frightened animal. After destroying the gravity mass, the black tree’s branches moved on to attack Fabula himself, piercing deep into his stomach.
“I’m not sure how to answer that. My magic has always been this strong. From the very beginning, I’ve been able to use all magic colors from one to fifty,” Beelzebub said.
Fabula, too injured to respond, let out a hacking cough and expired.
“That’s just Beelzebub’s Ex-Skill,” Alan said as he observed the fight.
“Huh? Isn’t his Ex-Skill the eye that can read his opponents’ abilities?” Rosetta asked.
Alan nodded. “Right. You see, he has two Ex-Skills.”
No words could come out of Rosetta’s mouth after this shocking revelation. Beelzebub was unmatched with one powerful Ex-Skill, but he actually had another one?
“His other Ex-Skill is called Ultimate Zenith. With the exception of Unique Skills like my mana of light or Derek’s brainwashing, it allowed him to use most magic and techniques at the highest level from the moment he was born.”
“Wh-What? That’s far too convenient.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Alan said with a strained laugh.
An eye that could instantly grasp opponents’ capabilities and an omnipotent skill that granted perfect mastery of most magical and physical techniques. Beelzebub could fight each foe in their strongest area and still overpower them. What if he employed the tactics they were the weakest against? He didn’t see the point in such a victory, because he was the strongest—absolutely unmatched.
“D-D-D-Damn youuuuuuuuu!” cursed the last shenmo left. Cypclos the Dimensional Eye, who had traits of a monster known as a magician cyclops, floated into the air and spread his arms wide. Summoning magic was his strong suit. “Summon! Devour him, Grodeus Party!”
A black dimensional tear ripped open behind Cypclos. Within seconds, a flood of insectoid monsters poured through it. The creatures were grotesque, ferocious, and numbered more than one thousand. They weren’t individually weak either; each one held enough mana to be a formidable enemy.
“Summon.” Beelzebub responded with his own summoning magic. “Burn them to a crisp, Evil Ghidorah.” A much larger tear in the fabric of dimensions than Cypclos’s slashed open. From inside, three massive dragon heads drew into sight. Their roar alone was enough to mow down the surrounding trees.
“O-Ooh...” Instantly, Cypclos understood the unbridgeable gap in their strengths. He couldn’t even put his fear into words.
“Remove them,” Beelzebub commanded. The three heads fired a blazing beam of destruction with power that was beyond comprehension.
“Geh gyeeeeeeeeeh!” In a matter of seconds, the tremendous wave of energy enveloped Cypclos and his summoned monsters, and their ashes were soon scattered to the four winds.
“That’s insane!” Rosetta trembled in fear after witnessing the demon lord’s devastating power with her own eyes. They were all shenmo, but the gap in strength was immense.
She’d been naive. The Seven Heroes had won more victories than the New Seven Black Stars, and since Beelzebub was a shenmo just like the others who’d been defeated, she’d thought Alan could win as readily as his fellow heroes. She saw the truth now: the demon lord was in a league of his own.
“As tedious as I expected,” Beelzebub said as he coolly observed the wasteland he’d created. “They only displayed the strength I perceived with my third eye. None surpassed my expectations.” He paused for a moment and turned to Alan. “I knew it would have to be you. You and only you, Alan Granger. You and your fellow humans are the only ones who can surpass what my eye has seen.”
“A difficult guy like you had to go and take a liking to me,” Alan said with a long sigh.