One step forward.
Then another.
The Archdemon growled, trying to gather what remained of its courage. Black mana surged around its remaining arm, and its massive body shifted forward as if it ant to charge again.
Maya’s eyes widened.
"Don’t!"
Too late.
The Archdemon lunged.
Elion vanished; they lost sight of him for a mont. He appeared beneath the demon’s guard, Kurogoroshi already moving upward.
Shk!
The blade carved across the Archdemon’s chest from hip to shoulder. The wound opened wide, and more black blood poured out.
The demon staggered, eyes bulging, its strength collapsing around its arm before it could strike. Elion spun once, stepped past the creature’s falling body, and brought the sword around again.
This ti, the cut went through its neck.
The Archdemon’s head flew.
Its massive body crashed into the courtyard with enough force to shake the broken stones beneath everyone’s feet.
Silence followed.
The remaining high mage class demons tried not to breathe too deeply, afraid that even that might offend this walking disaster.
Elion flicked Kurogoroshi once, sending the black blood on his blade spraying across the ground in a thin line.
His gaze returned to Maya. Her face had gone completely pale. The strongest one among them was dead, just like that.
"Now," Elion said in a cold voice. "Answer carefully."
Maya’s fingers trembled faintly.
He pointed the tip of Kurogoroshi toward the glowing runed door behind them.
"Where is the Philosopher’s Stone?" He said placidly.
’I have no choice,’ Maya thought.
She made a difficult decision.
"I will show you where it is," she said, forcing herself to et his gaze, "but you have to promise to let us live."
Her heartbeat thundered as she presented her demand.
"And what makes you think I would agree to such a thing?" Elion asked calmly, without so much as a hint of hesitation. "I could just kill the rest of them and torture you until I get the answer I want. After all, reducing competition would be good for if we happen to be on opposing sides in the later stages of the trial."
Maya grit her teeth. He was right.
There was no reason for him to let them live. Killing them would be much more beneficial for him in the later stages of the trial, if they were against each other again, that is. But she couldn’t show weakness when her life depended on it.
"You can’t be certain of that, though," she said. "We might even end up on the sa side. None of us knows what this trial still holds for our future. Besides, aren’t you forgetting sothing?"
She pointed toward the distance.
"Your allies need you to find that stone as soon as possible. You are running short on ti."
Elion looked into the distance, where bolts of lightning were falling like rain, and the sky frequently lit up with all sorts of colours. Then he looked back toward Maya.
She flinched at his gaze.
More beads of sweat ford on her brow. Elion wearing such an unreadable expression was very discomforting. She couldn’t even gauge his reaction or intentions well enough to guess what choice he would make.
’I don’t want to die,’ she thought quietly.
If he did decide to kill them, she would not go out without a fight.
She continued, "If you kill the others and torture , I will delay you long enough that by the ti you find that stone, it will be too late..."
No more than a second had passed before an invisible mountain crushed onto them.
[Presence]
Boom!
Elion unleashed the ability on them, and they all painfully fell to their knees, cracking the stone beneath them.
Maya’s situation was even worse. Her knees t the ground, but her montum didn’t stop.
Bang!
Her forehead struck the cold stone in a brutal kowtow, cracking her skull and skin open. Blood imdiately began to flow from the wound and onto the ground right before her eyes.
"Ahhh!"
She scread out in pain, but the pain was nothing compared to the wound on her pride. In all her days, she had never been humiliated like this.
She couldn’t move. It was suddenly as if her body wasn’t her own, and she was bowing to another Advanced Mage.
Her. Bowing? Even her own ruthless father had never treated her like this. Her anger montarily clouded her fear and judgnt.
She beca even more eager to stay alive after this, so that she could have her revenge.
’I’m going to kill this bastard the first chance I get! But it won’t be quick!’
Her whole body trembled violently as she did her best to free herself from the effects of his Presence. Slowly, she used all her strength to raise her head from that humiliating position.
’I will cut off all his fingers and penis and feed them to the dogs. I will gouge his eyes out, cut off his limbs, leave him to bake in a scorching volcano, and only then will I kill him. Then I will hang his head out like a trophy in the streets.’
She finally raised her head from the ground and t Elion’s gaze with bloodshot eyes. However, her body was still folded in an awkward kneeling position.
Elion raised a brow when he saw her resist his Presence.
"Interesting," he said simply. "I see you are not too weak after all." However, he imdiately doused whatever plans she had been making about killing him.
"I’m sorry to say," he continued, "But that was only a small portion of my Presence."
Boooooom!
The pressure suddenly rose fivefold, and her whole body was slamd flat into the ground.
"Ahhhh!"
She scread painfully.
Tears slowly poured from her eyes, born from fear, pain, and humiliation. She lay there, an invisible pressure like a mountain holding her down, gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw cracked.
Elion kept her like that for a good thirty seconds. Then, suddenly, the pressure vanished into nothing, leaving her bleeding, broken, and crying on the ground.
"You are right about one thing," Elion said. "I am short on ti. So rejoice, I have decided to take you up on your offer. I will let the four of you leave, and in exchange for your lives, you will give what I want."
He looked down at her with no emotion in his voice or gaze, as if he were looking at an insect.
"Agreed?"
Maya slowly got back to her knees, breathing heavily and biting her lip so hard that she cut it open. She reluctantly nodded.
’Just wait and see,’ she thought quietly to herself. ’I will pay you back for this humiliation tenfold.’
She did her best to hide the translucent puddle of piss that had ford beneath her, but with his eyes, how could Elion possibly miss such a thing? However, he made no effort to point it out.
"Good. Ti is short."
He let Enhanced Cognition slip away. The darkness in his eyes slowly faded, and his pupils regained their usual brightness. The cold wisps of smoke drifting from the corners of his eyes vanished as well.
Manfred, Yaana, and Uta were getting up too, but when Maya tried to lift herself off her knees, her legs wobbled, and she fell back to the ground.
The second wave of Presence had been wholly targeted at her alone, so she had suffered the worst of it.
However, if Maya had thought about it clearly, she would have realised that Elion could have used this Presence ability to restrain all of them and avoid this fight entirely.
Perhaps she might have brushed it off through willpower alone, and perhaps the Archdemon could have done the sa, but the sa could not be said about the others.
Realistically, this would have been a three or four versus one. To put it simply, this fight was over before it even began.
’That was good exercise,’ Eion thought quietly as a light smile returned to his face. Kurogoroshi humd excitedly in agreent in his hand as he put her back into the sheathe.
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