Demon King Ascension System

199 In The Middle of The Horde

While Blake continued flying in the air, moving deeper and deeper into the horde, Cyra kept on throwing her fireballs toward the demons below her, seemingly having bottomless nether capacity in her small body. And when they finally got to the middle part, Blake was finally able to see the end of the horde.

Running in a rather visibly relaxed state compared to the others, there was one demon that sat on top of a huge wolf, one that was at least half as huge as Robus, which was impressive considering the gorilla’s size that could rival a small building.

Blake’s eyes had already locked onto that figure that stood out from the others, the demon’s skin was rather similar to his, being jet-black in color, with the only exception that his build was very scrawny compared to Blake that at least had visible defining muscles on his body, despite his not so high physique stat. The scrawny jet-black humanoid could only be said to be only skin and bones.

And other than seeing the back of the horde and the conspicuous figure running at the backmost of the group, Blake had also realized that the behavior of the demons in the middle of the horde was different than the ones at the front.

The demons at the front of the horde could be said to be mindless, their eyes focusing forward, ignoring Cyra’s continuous attacks as if they didn’t care a single bit about them hitting their bodies, and chunks of their body were eaten by the dark flames.

However, the demons in the middle row of the horde were different. Even before Blake flew close enough towards them for Cyra to launch her attacks, the demons in the middle row already had their eyes locked onto him.

Cyra just did her job and continued throwing her fireballs, not noticing the changes in the demons below her. The dark flame fireballs formed in a split second, flew, then hit a patch of demons that already had their eyes observing the flying creature above them closely.

Instead of just ignoring the attack like the others had been doing, the demons in the middle of the horde acted slightly differently from the demons at the front of the horde. They still took the attacks directly as if it didn’t mean much, but they didn’t let that slide as easily.

When the dark flame fireballs hit their bodies, the demons began attacking back. It had caught Blake off-guard with their sudden change of behavior, but because the attacks consisted of the demons throwing rocks from their feet or some other demons with unique physical traits throwing their bones towards him, Blake was able to navigate through them rather safely, avoiding those attacks from either hitting him or Cyra.

.....

Although the demons in the middle of the horde acted differently than the demon undead that Blake had learned about slightly, having their own thoughts to retaliate at him instead of the demons at the front of the horde, which was a textbook example of recorded demon undead, being tireless and mindless, the same ghastly appearance decorated their bodies, telling Blake that they were also demon zombies that somehow regained the ability to think for themselves.

Blake had been doing the same thing for quite a while now, dodging stones and bones thrown toward him and Cyra while letting the little demoness spread her flames. But after quite a while, Blake realized that there was something peculiar about the undead demons that he didn’t know much about.

Blake had circled around the middle of the horde a little after noticing their changed behavior. While he wouldn’t be able to see the demons that he had gone past when he was in the front part of the horde, Blake should be able to see the same demons now that he had moved in circles.

The peculiar thing that he began to question was, ‘Where are the souls of these creatures?’

Although Blake knew a little about the undead demons, the only information that he had about them was their general characteristics. Humans would not be able to see souls, so how would there be information about whether the undead demons would still have their souls inside their bodies after being an undead controlled by a necromancer demon.

The dark flames that Cyra had tirelessly spread around the horde began to be very visible, making significant progress in extending throughout the whole horde, but whether they had successfully killed an undead demon or not, Blake still didn’t know yet.

And to have the answer to his earlier question, Blake then decided that he would do a little test himself.

“Cyra, I will fly slower now, can you please target one patch of demons non-stop until we see their souls coming out of their bodies?”

“Sure, brother!”

Ceasing more explosions from coming from his feet, Blake now only used his wings to glide relatively slower in the air and Cyra now had locked onto a certain demon in his vision.

It was a bear demonic beast, its body being visibly huge even from the sky above, making it a very easy target for Cyra to hit even while flying. Her fireballs that she could cast within split seconds were now focused on a certain target, the fireballs whose initial goal was to spread the dark flames as much as possible, were now used on a single target, exploding large chunks of the bear demonic beast in a matter of seconds.

Blake and Cyra were about 50 meters away from the bear demonic beast, a distance not too far nor too close as Blake glided freely in the air, free from any obstacles.

However, in that small window of time, it was enough for Cyra to throw at least a dozen fireballs toward the bear demonic beast, resulting in the latter being reduced to nothing but a charred corpse that didn’t even have its skeleton half complete.

When Cyra saw the bear demonic beast was standing no more, she ceased her attacks, waiting for Blake to give her her next instruction. However, Blake didn’t say anything yet as his eyes were focused on the bear’s corpse.

‘There it is!’ After the corpse had finally lost the ability to keep its form intact, which was a miracle considering the bear’s condition even before Cyra had attacked it with her dark flame fireballs were already filled with fatal wounds, Blake sighed in relief when he saw the dark orb floating out of the bear’s mangled corpse.

However, instead of staying afloat above the bear’s corpse like what any other soul would do after they were dead, the glowing dark orb instantly moved on its own right after it had separated from its body.

As if being pulled by an invisible string, the glowing dark orb zipped through the other countless undead demons, passing through their bodies and moving right towards the scrawny jet-black humanoid demon that sat on top of the huge wolf.

The scrawny jet-black humanoid demon then raised his hand forward, catching the soul orb with his hand before opening his mouth and swallowing the soul.

Right after swallowing the soul of the demonic bear, the scrawny jet-black humanoid demon raised his head, his eyes locked onto the two creatures that flew above his head, realizing they were the ones who were responsible for reaping the soul of one of his army’s members.

After a single glance toward his enemy, the scrawny jet-black humanoid demon raised his hand once again. But this time, however, there were no souls being pulled to his hand, instead, the moment his hand was raised, his index finger kept extending forward while the rest was folded. The scrawny jet-black humanoid demon was pointing at the flying Blake and Cyra.

Blake wondered what that gesture meant and his eyes strained onto the scrawny jet-black humanoid demon, observing every inch of his body, ready to move away if the jet-black humanoid demon started drawing unknown runes that he had never seen before.

However, to his surprise, the scrawny jet-black humanoid demon did not start drawing runes with his own fingers.

Baffling Blake and catching him off-guard, the demons that ran at the backmost of the group were the ones that started drawing demonic runes instead of the scrawny jet-black humanoid demon.

There were about tens if not dozens of those demons that started drawing demonic runes, and they were all aimed toward him. Blake did not know what kind of spells those demons were casting since their numbers were numerous and it was hard for Blake to determine the elements of spells those demon mages were casting with a mere glance. He could do it if he went through his perfect memory and identify each demon mages slowly, but he surely did not have the time to do that.

So in order to avoid any unwanted circumstances, Blake quickly made his decision.

“Let’s explode up, Cyra!”

“Yes, brother!”

The fiery nether then began to gather at Blake’s feet before he released them all creating a huge explosion to propel his body upward. And similar to what Blake did, Cyra also used her four limbs to create explosions that were aimed below her, boosting the height of their flight even further.

Fortunately, the demon mages that drew the runes had the common speed of demon mages, even slightly slower that it took the demon mages 4 to 5 seconds to finish drawing their runes.

By the time those demon mages had their runes flashed and disappeared, Blake and Cyra had already gone high above the sky, even going past the optimal attacking range for their spells.

And for those demon mages that were of course weaker than a calamity type variant demon and a humanoid demon that was mistaken for a variant, there was no way for their spells to be more effective than Cyra’s and Blake’s.

Even though Blake knew that there was a very little chance that their spells would reach him, he still kept his eyes downward.

And it could be said that Blake was amazed at what his eyes were currently seeing.