Chapter 193 - Unwinnable Battle

My hammer came swinging down followed by a sickening crunch. The earth shattered from the blow, causing cracks to spiderweb out from the impact.

I didn't pay any attention to the blood seeping into the shattered earth and picked the hammer up to swing yet again. The notification chime in the background signaling the creature's death didn't even register in my head.

The chime had happened so many times my brain filtered it out.

[Momentum of the Avalanche] had reached its peak and I would get no stronger than I was currently. [Righteous Fury] was already activated and my bloodline had long been burning in my veins.

I had over 2000 points of strength behind my swings now and that didn't even account for my bloodline strengthening the base rather than adding more stat points.

My swings shattered the very earth with its power. Let alone the level 80 and 90 Demons standing in my way.

[Mighty Blow] and [Pervading Cold] weren't even necessary to fell most, as a precise swing to the skull ended them all the same.

Demon blood coated me in thick, sticky layers. The Ice my armor was made of was long dyed a sickly reddish-black. The lifeblood of my foes stained upon it.

It was times like these that the class choice Chilling Death of Helheim made sense. Even if my rational mind didn't like it, and my emotional mind found it disgusting, that all went out the window in the face of a threat.

I didn't care if the blood of hundreds, let alone thousands, had fallen at my hand. The only thing that mattered to me now was ending it.

It was with a grim resolution that I marched ever forward. One step in front of the other dragging Winter with me.

It wasn't easy, and the environment didn't welcome it like it used to, but I wrangled it into line all the same. My Spirit, Law, and Mana would not be denied my little slice of Winter.

Snow fell from the sky from the natural moisture in the air as it cooled, unable to hold onto it anymore. My Winds picked it up and sent it careening through what I had claimed.

The circle of death that was mine and no one else's. Oh, they tried to assert what they could but it faltered and crashed in the face of overwhelming power.

Their piddly domains of Blood and Death couldn't defeat mine. Some tried to impose what I assumed was the environment of their home planet but even that failed in front of my chilling winds.

My form was battered and bruised, wounds caked in ice and frozen blood. At this point, my body was half wounds. My pristine armor and Ice were nowhere to be seen.

Lesser Demons crashed down on me, natural weapons bared taking chunks of Ice with their attacks. One chunk, two chunks, three ripped away my icy protection completely.

In sight of their foe weakened, it was like their eyes lit up and redoubled their attack. My hammer was swift, but numbers had a quality of their own. Even as my weapon came whistling around to take out three of those who surrounded me, a fourth plunged its dagger-like hand into my leg.

Its limb was awash with its Demonic Mana and empowered with a skill of some kind as it met no resistance from my tempered body. If my flesh hadn't been enhanced from refining it, my leg would be at risk of being lopped off.

[Identify] lashed out at the one who did it seeing level 99.

A step away from D-rank, and a strong Law to back it up. It was a Law I was unfamiliar with, an ugly aura that tried to scrape and penetrate my own. Demonic Blood, perhaps, maybe Demonic Perversion because that was what it felt like in my leg.

[Frozen Patchwork] sallied my Arctic mana coursing through my body from [Reinforced Body] to attack the intruding mana but it met its match. Even having the advantage of being within my body didn't help.

My left hand shot out from its spot on my hammer and grasped the arm of the Demon. The limb crushed in my grip, shattering the Demon's bones as I ripped its arm out of my leg. Not to let an attack go without reparations, I pulled the arm so hard it ripped off.

Blood shot out of the newly made cavity and where the humanoid Lesser Demon once had two arms, it now only had one.

Taking my Hammer in one hand and new weapon in the other, I redoubled my efforts and called on what my body could give me. My doubling of strength was the only reason I could swing such a heavy weapon in one hand.

Just as I was about to dive into the next Demon that stood against me, a spear of black shot up from the ground reentering the wound [Frozen Patchwork] was trying to close.

The fresh Ice wasn't enough to bear the strength of the attack, shattering to pieces and allowing yet another wound upon my body.

"Ahh," A pained scream escaped me as I whipped my head around in search of the Demon responsible.

No matter where I looked, I couldn't find the one responsible, but with the pain came a touch of clarity.

Not much, but enough of my mind cleared to realize that I was still alone. My gut feeling of something being wrong led me to the other edge of the Valley, where the Demons were thickest and where I was supposed to meet Ashton.

We planned to pincer from both sides and meet in the middle to stand against the Demon's Leader, but he wasn't here.

I didn't have time to go in search of the man, hell, I didn't even know if he was still alive. The attacks launched at me weren't soft and if he didn't have the strength his level indicated, he could very well already be dead.

It was a miracle I was still standing, let alone someone else.

That knowledge only drove me harder. If he was off dead somewhere else on the battlefield, it fell to me to stop whatever the Demons were trying to do. And they were trying to do something, I knew that much at least. Call it a budding hunch.

The books and information packets were long forgotten in my head. They were nothing compared to the experience I was undergoing now. They talked of such things, but they didn't portray the details of experiencing it myself.

The books didn't portray the pain I felt, the weakening of my body as my blood leaked out of me.

They didn't say anything about glimpsing around and seeing Demons in every direction. They didn't write about the fear of Death that seeing such a scene causes.

I was no stranger to the feeling, I had felt it before, but never so strong.

Not even facing the waves alone in the tutorial prepared me to face such a feeling. Like staring up at a mountain you had no hope of climbing. One of gazing upon an unwinnable battle. Something I couldn't hope to overcome-

I threw mana into [Mental Freeze]. It was subtle, but I felt something pressing upon my mind. My feelings of hopelessness were being exaggerated by something.

Even with the skill activated, the feeling didn't go away. It was too subtle for my skill to defeat. It wasn't trying to control my mind, only influencing what I was seeing.

It was a nasty piece of work.

On instinct, my eyes turned to where I felt the influence upon my mind originating and I saw it. Even acknowledging the reason behind the manipulation didn't make the feeling go away, if anything, it made it worse.

It made me realize I was out-ranked, out-leveled, and out-numbered.

[Goranth - Evolved Demon - Level 105]

It was a named Demon. A D-ranked named Demon.

Finally, it felt like I was shocked awake. I went over how I had gotten here to make sure I hadn't been influenced and found nothing that stood out.

There were no traces of manipulation in my mind that I could find and unless the Demon outclassed me, which was possible, I hadn't been controlled. After the 'Mindbreaker,' we went to great lengths to combat any form of mind control.

Not everyone had the points to buy protective measures, but I certainly did. The amulet I wore wasn't much, but it was said to detect any form of intrusion upon the mind.

It would light up if it did while also defending against it, yet the amulet stayed dull.

If it wasn't trying to mind control me, what was it trying to do?

Even as Demons came at me and I felled them with my Hammer, I searched for any clue I had missed. Something was wrong here and I couldn't figure out what.

The gut feeling I had hadn't gone away and had only gotten worse. It didn't give off a definitive direction, but with the Named Demon revealed, it was clear it was involved somehow.

My brain whirled trying to come up with the reason yet it couldn't. My amulet didn't go off and [Mental Freeze] didn't do anything. Both would have at least noticed mental manipulation of some sort.

If it wasn't mental, it had to be something else.

Evaluating the scene as best I could mid-fight, I noticed that no matter where I moved while fighting, the Demon swayed with me. It was like it was trying to keep itself between me and whatever was behind it.

Looking deeper, it felt like it was trying to hide something. I wasn't sure how I knew, but once I thought it was hiding something, realization exploded in my head.

Like glass, the curated scene shattered apart with it. The Demon wasn't trying to mind control me. My amulet wasn't broken and [Mental Freeze] wasn't defunct.

It was an illusion.

Technically, illusions were a form of mental manipulation but the way they worked was different. It didn't penetrate the mind in order to influence from within, tricking you internally. It worked externally, tricking the senses into telling your mind faulty information.

Similar, but different.

Since there was no intrusion upon my mind, nothing my skills did could stop it. The thing that broke the illusion was realizing there was one in the first place. That was the hardest part of breaking out of one. My intuition saved me.

As the illusion broke, the feelings that pressed on me faded. The hopelessness didn't go away completely, but it diminished from before. The illusion amplified what I had already felt, meaning the base feeling was something already there. Breaking the illusion wouldn't make it go away.

"Ah, so you broke out of it. Surprising, but it doesn't matter. You're too late anyway." A guttural voice claimed. It felt like a mental attack just to listen to the Demon speak.

Other than the feelings fading, I noticed what the Demon was hiding from me.

There, in the center of a bloody formation, was a portal. It wasn't complete yet and was still in the forming process, but the fact it was even there scared me. Stray bodies of humans were strewn about the newly revealed section of the battlefield, their corpses mummified from the exsanguination.

A mass of mana and essence swirled in the center of the Ritual. Blood swirled with it, Demon and Human alike, painting the growing power a mix of red and black.

Our war council had spoken about what the Demons could possibly be doing and while this possibility was brought up, no one thought it was possible. Our tutorials said that our planet was still protected from outside influence.

What I was seeing shouldn't be possible.

If I let that portal finish forming, our entire planet was doomed.