Though Balthazar was a bit flustered by the intelligence of the demon and its high recovery rate, he didn't get flustered by the disadvantage. He had expected the demon to have a few tricks, it was just that he had never expected it to possess such intelligence or capabilities that were characteristic of higher demons.
"At least, its attributes are inferior to mine. Even if it has these tricks, it would still not be enough for it to defeat me," thought Balthazar. "But it would surely take some effort from my side to defeat it and probably a few potions and tricks are to be used."
"It is too strong for me to attack it directly but evading to strike it wouldn't allow me to kill it fast. Moreover, it has the sense to stall for time to recover its health," thought Balthazar. "Luckily, I need to hold it in her for 10 minutes. So, my best chance is to keep attacking it. That way, it would assume that stalling for time is advantageous to it."
With those thoughts, Shadow continued to attack the demon repeatedly. He didn't move at his highest speed or used his highest attack speed but started to slowly reduce its health. He also let the demon make a few cuts on him with his halberd. This continued for about 5 minutes before Shadow began to feel a bit tired. Though he had more than 70% of his health left, his stamina was low.
"You tried your best adventurer. Why don't you let me take that thing of you? We can go our separate ways. We don't have any enmity with one another," said the demon.
"It is bargaining with me?" thought Balthazar shocked by it. The more he was with the demon, the more it began to surprise him. "I am a member of the temple of the twelve and I cannot let you go after you have been killing members of the temple."
"You are hardly a member of the temple," said the demon still trying to negotiate with Shadow. "You aren't a deacon or someone of their guard. They don't operate like you do. They order the small town deacons, not cooperate with them."
"Still doesn't give me a reason to cooperate with a demon which has been known to be criminal element at that," said Shadow as he took out a health potion and quickly ate it. The demon suddenly attacked Shadow again and they resumed their fight.
The demon started moving at a faster pace than before and its attacks were getting stronger. Shadow also had to increase his movement speed in order to handle its attacks. The demon got a few more attacks than previously as it increased its speed of attacks and Shadow had to slowly increase his movement speed to reduce the rate of damage he received.
"You are faster!" said the demon after a couple more minutes. "You have been stalling me!" it shouted as its eyes went red and a dark red gas started to seep out of its armor. It clearly went into an enraged state and it had about 70% of its health remaining.
"Let me see how long you can fight me," said the demon as it rotated the halberd and swung it vertically onto Shadow. Shadow managed to evade it again causing it to strike down at the floor. The speed and force with which the demon swung the halberd down made him think that it would break the floor and the array would get disrupted. But the halberd instead of piercing through the floor got bounced off the floor at about the same speed.
The change in direction of the halberd due to this was very abrupt and sudden that the demon almost had the halberd flying out of its hands. "You dare to trap me!" it shouted, and it began to fight more furiously. Shadow was very surprised when he saw that the demon could improve more. This kind of situation usually happens when a monster goes into critical health, but this demon was an odd one and was already in this state.
"I guess it is time I fight it with all my strength. If I keep holding back and get hit by that weapon, I will definitely be put in a stunned or disoriented state allowing the demon to kill me quickly," thought Balthazar.
He knew that his best bet was to use the void strikes effect on his weapon and continue with cheap shot and other skills that he had to reduce its health by a decent amount. After that it would be a tough battle, but he had the skill on void mantle to escape and down a few potions if it became really hard to hold off the demon.
With that thought, he immediately used void strikes. The demon was swung its halberd at Shadow directly but having faith in the description of the void strikes skill of his weapon, he swung the Void Dragon's Talons at the halberd.
The result was completely unexpected from what Balthazar though it would do. He simply expected that the weapon would be able to stop the blow back effect of the demon's attack and injure it giving him the chance to continue with a combo. But his daggers simply cut through the halberd and landed its attacks on the demon.
The halberd was cut into two by a simple attack. It was then that he realized that the strength of unique weapons was a lot more than what he had expected. Cutting through the halberd, the daggers hit the demon causing it significant damage.
Balthazar was completely shocked at the result of his attack. "This didn't happen the first time," thought Balthazar. The first time he used the skill was against Boris and at that time though it had a very strong effect, he aimed the attack at Boris neck and thought that the high damage he dealt was due to hitting Boris at a weak point on his body.
Now he realized that it might not be so. Though he was surprised by the effect, he continued his attack on the demon. It was good chance to overwhelm the demon and he couldn't let go of it. He quickly summoned his clone and began to push the demon back while attacking it. He also used the chance to do a cheap shot and continued his attacks. With this, he managed to reduce the health of the demon to 3500 HP.
He jumped away from the demon before the stun effect wore off the demon. He had caused enough damage for the demon for it to be in rage and go after him. So, he believed that it would continue to attack him for some time during which he just needs to evade and keep it in the room. He also realized that only the first attack after using void strikes produced the effect of cutting through the armament, but the others didn't have the same effect.
"You expect that I would continue to attack you after all this?" asked the demon in a condescending manner once it noticed him backing away.
"Nothing wrong in trying it out," said Shadow as he moved to the side to cover the exit of the room. He just needed to keep it in the room. The entire room had the array and a couple more minutes later, he would have the demon imprisoned by Faroon.
"You clearly want to capture me. You think you could interrogate me or something," laughed the demon. "You are quite foolish to think I, Barakdaros could be interrogated by the temple. I have been fighting the temple for a long time. Just be glad that I don't want to kill you before I am sure that you haven't hidden the thing I need."
"You think that because you managed to cut through a weapon, I borrowed from one of the guards, you can hold me back. I even managed to take down a contingent of those men of the old baron Lockhart. If not for them, I would have never been this weak. Do you even know who I am?!" it shouted in anger as it jumped up and started muttering some kind of spell.
It suddenly started grow in size and the armor that it had on its body including its helmet broke off due its growing size and fell down in pieces. Only its cloak remained on its body most of which apart from the head was covered by a black smoke that wove around its body like clothes.
Balthazar felt that letting it complete the spell would make things more difficult to him and quickly threw all blackrock crystal throwing knives at it. Instead of harming it they simple deflected off the smoke covering its body like it was tangible and hard like metal.
"You can't stop the process, human," it laughed at Shadow's attempt. Its head ended up into the form that looked like that of a scaly cat and its stared to glow iridescent red giving the demon's appearance a completely otherworldly effect. Balthazar was so impressed by the effect that he started to take pictures of the demon.
[Barakdoros - clone] (Minor Demon)
Level: 15;
HP: 3700/10000
As soon as Balthazar saw the new description, he realized the reason why the demon was so different from the other minor demons that he saw. It was clearly a clone of some higher demon which was scouting out the town for this artifact.
"What is in the pouch that you want it so badly?" asked Shadow.
"Stop your nonsense and just die," shouted the demon as it jumped at Shadow. He knew that the demon considered getting away to be its most important priority right now and he couldn't allow it to escape. So, he blocked the demon instead of evading it this time, but he knew he couldn't simply block it and put his daggers in the way of demon at the height of his head with aim of dealing sever damage. Once, he realized that it was the clone of a higher demon, he decided that he best cripple the demon as soon as he could if he wanted to hold it in the room. So he planned to stick his weapons in its neck.
Blocking it head on jarred his entire body and gave him a feeling like he was struck by a tank. He was shocked out of his bones was pushed back almost out of the room and found his ears ringing. As he pushed himself off the floor, he noticed that though he felt very bad, his health only fell by a third.
He found one of his weapons stuck in the head of the demon which frightened him more than anything else. It was stuck in his cheek and the demon was shouting. Apart from that the knife made a big cut through one of his eyes and went all the way towards the forehead of the other eye. Both these wounds caused considerable bleed effects on the demon and he could see the HP falling down.
As he guessed, the head which wasn't covered by the smoke was vulnerable. There were notifications of the demon having stun and bleed effects. But he wasn't concerned by the demon which was also on ground trying from the shock of being injured, he was more concerned of the weapon in its head. The Void Dragon's Talons were a lot more important to him than the completion of the quest.
He immediately ran towards the demon to pull out the dagger from its head and after that made hs way back towards the exit. It made screeching howl as he pulled out the dagger. He noticed that the demon could only look from one eye and it was extremely enraged. He downed a health potion to recover some of its health.
The demon's health was down to 2000 HP when he looked at it. It was apparent that collision between them hurt the demon more than him. He was very lucky that the demon didn't have a weapon, or he was sure that he would have been impaled by it.
He had expected the demon to rage more and some more changes after the collision. It started to move towards the door blind in one eye. Balthazar was sure that the demon intended to get out and he had to stop it by some means.
He immediately checked his notifications and noticed that the smoke didn't cause any corrosion or other effects. "That is good news," thought Balthazar. "It would make things easier." Though the black smoke acts like a curtain and doesn't allow him to harm the demon, it acts like a solid metal armor and he could push the demon away.
He used his daggers to attack the demon's body and push the demon away from the door. The demon also had a new blind spot as it lost one of its eyes. So, this allowed Shadow to attack the demon easier to push it away from the door and also land a few more hits on its head.
He tried his best to take out the other eye too, but the demon held a hand to its head to protect itself allowing Shadow to only land a few scratches on it. Though the demon was slowly recovering itself and its injuries began to heal, it was of little consequence to him.
It had low health and with the blind spot it could hardly protect its working eye and fight properly. So, Shadow had no issue in dealing more damage to the injured eye preventing it from healing. This continued till the deacon Faroon finally shouted Shadow to get out and the entire array on the floor lit up in a bright red light.