"You'll do it?" Asked the spell caster as he raised an eyebrow. "How? Wait… how strong is a demon king anyways? What is a demon king anyways? Is he even a king? Or is he a self proclaimed king? Is he a demon?"
The spell caster rambled on and I waited until he finished asking 'self pondering' questions to himself before I answered him.
None of them know about my true power since I've reduced my grade back at the evaluation. I had no idea that my companies contributed to my over power which made me wonder what's my actual grade without the contribution from the others was. Probably S grade at most. Regardless of what my role was, Catastrophe, my precious ultimate, which was now back in my kit, alone, would've placed me in S grade alone.
I am intrigued to find out what Catastrophe would actually look like once I've used it. I wouldn't use it in a small fight but maybe against a larger army or a boss battle. But even then, I wouldn't use it unless it was my final option. I simply had no idea how powerful it really is and the name itself doesn't help. All it does, is make the skill more ominous.
Once the spell caster stopped talking, I told the group, how I would overpower Zilma and break his illusion. From Lucifer's advice, I had two options. One was to emit a lot of my power all at once and break it by force but it will incapacitated me for a while or I could emit my power over a period of time and break it that way, the only drawback was that it took time. Well both took time but only one of them would put me out of commission for a while.
The best option for me would be the second one because it would also take Zilma by surprise. I gave the group my opinion on which one I would choose and they agreed.
With the accumulative amount of power from my companies, I honed it in and felt Zilma's source of power in the illusion. Once I had a grasp on how much power to put out without Zilma noticing, I slowly started to emit a steady stream of my power, pushing back against his. If I had to describe what I'm doing, I would say that it would be like a balloon slowly being filled with helium, slowly but surely, if you kept filling the ballon up, then the balloon will eventually pop.
Interesting enough, I could just emit my power without doing anything extra. I didn't have to meditate like I would see in a manhua or perform any magical rituals or circles. I could freely do anything until the illusion around us goes 'pop'.
I told everyone that it would take a bit of time and that we could sit around here until the illusion breaks.
I plopped myself down on the red dirt ground and pulled all the food items in my storage ring out. Sandwiches, the hot drink canteen and sweet treats were laid out in front of me. I was surprised at how much head chef Voss gave me, it was enough to give everyone in the group two sandwiches and two sweet treats… well one if everyone was here. I wondered how Takoon and the others were faring, from our stand point, my group didn't have to do anything because in the end it would be pointless since in due time, my power would shatter the illusion but the chances of finding anything to break the illusion, within said illusion seemed redundant because that too could be just an illusion.
Boy that was a mind fuck right there…
I handed out the food to everyone and we started to chow down. Voss had made two types of sandwiches, one was filled with roast beef, cheese and some kind of sauce probably made from the juices from the meat. The other was filled with a fried chicken cutlet and covered with a fruity sauce. The sweet treat was an assortment of cookies, brownies and custard tarts. The hot drink that's in the canteen was some kind of coffee blend that had a nutty note to it.
I'm not much of a coffee drinker but I had drank a fair few to at least know if it had any flavour notes in it or not.
Everyone chatted happily as we ate but then suddenly I started to get anxious about the others. It wasn't strange to see Takoon acted the way he did, the way he talked to me back at the front of the guildhall proved that to me, however, this also showed that even though Takoon was acting this way, I on the other hand should act as the bigger man in this and help them.
I sighed and decided to send out my drones to look for them. If they find themselves in any trouble, I could use my skills through my drones to help them.
I used master's eyes on occasions to check in on what the drones were seeing and on my fifth time, my drones were circling around Takoon's group. The drones had found them on my third visit and had been following them ever since.
Takoon's group was huddled together in a formation, the tanks were out at front whilst the attackers were at the back, their bows aimed up to the sky.
It wasn't a second later, when they all fired their arrows. I used one of the drones to turn and see what they were firing at and then my eyes widened in surprise.
It was an army of demon monsters and they all charged forward when the archers fired their arrows. I sent my drones in and boosted the tanks. The barrage of arrows had only taken out a few of them but it would've needed to take some serious fire power to even make a dent with how many demon monsters there were.
The Bulkier monsters smashed into the shields and pushed the tanks back a bit. Takoon led the attackers around for an flank manoeuvre. I sent one of the drones to follow the attackers, I then set one drone to monitor the tanks, one to the ranged attackers and the last two over to the enemies. If something does happen to any of them, I could use helping hand and either heal or boost them.
If need be, I could even use weather creation and elemental shift to help thin the enemies down. I could change the temperature or even the terrain to make the enemies fighting experience a living hell. If we ever reach a worse case scenario and Takoon's team lost, I could use Catastrophe and see what happens. Though if I ever do use this skill it would be in a YOLO type of moment.
The tankers were taking a massive beating when the bulkier monsters slammed down onto their force field with their fists which sent shockwaves, rippling through the ground. A lot of them fell to their knees as the ground underneath them became unstable.
I used helping hands and boost all of the tankers back to their peak and strong enough to reapply the shields and force fields as well as adding more layers of them. None of them were injured since it was only their shields and force fields that took all of the brunt force.
Since both of the attackers were preoccupied with the bulk of the enemy forces, there were no help for the tanks since all of their time are spent trying to not let the bulkier monsters through and attack the back line.
By this point I wasn't using master's eyes anymore, instead I had screens opened up in front of me that's synced with the drones. I watched the battle with bated breath as I was readied to use helping hand if need be.
Takoon led the attacking force through the bulk of the enemies, ploughing through them. I had boosted them as they did so and a third of them were eliminated in an instant.
I also boosted the spell casters as they summoned multiple fireballs and fired them at the winged monster in the sky. With my boost, the fireballs were able to reach the targets with precise precision and on hit, the fireballs exploded and little shards of flames rained down over the ground force.
It was my bad luck that as the flames rained down, Takoon and his team was also in the mix which meant that I had helping hand ready to heal them up if they had gotten hit by the flames. I knew the flames would severely hurt them since it was boosted by my power.
I kept at it, healing and boosted Takoon's team all the whilst I was also engaging in a conversation with my team.
It was hard, multitasking, I was never good at it but Lucy showed me a few tricks when she helped me with my studies. She's a queen at multitasking and I was amazed, every time I've witnessed it. I've always made sure that she knew how great she was at it and she would smile, stop what she was doing, walked over to me and patted my head.
Every time she did that, I asked her if I was some kind of a child in her eyes and all she would do in response was to continue smiling and patting my head. I was her teacher… well in that moment she was but… I digress…
My point was that I was now getting better at multitasking.
I was listening to the chatter around me and they were talking about Takoon and the others. Even though all of them are guild members, some had developed close friendships.
I smiled at that as I kept an eye on the others. They were fighting a long hard battle even with my help. Takoon and his team managed to dwindle down to about a quarter of the enemies left. All the bulkier and winged monsters were gone and all that's left were the grunts in which was pretty much clean up at this point.
"You have done well adventurers." Zilma's voiced boomed all around us.
I looked at my screens and Takoon's group too were looking up and around.
"But I fear that your next challenge will be a lot worser than this one. Let me introduce to you, Balmia!"
On my screens I watched as the ground started to shake and Takoon's group tried to hold each other steady. A crack opened up on the ground and soon it became bigger. Fingers spurted out from the crack and grasped the edge of the crack.
The crack grew bigger and bigger until it was big enough for a massive monster to crawl out from.
The fingers pressed against the ground as a loud noise erupted from the now, canyon.
But as the monster tried to emerge from the depts of the ground, the monster's fingers started to waver, and then disappeared and reappeared.
"Balmia?" Zilma called out to the monster.
The ground began to shake once again and a head started to emerge but as it did, the same thing happened, it wavered before the head disappeared and reappeared again.
"Balmia?!"
It was then cracks appeared all around us, even the sky, the barren wasteland started to waver, as if reality itself was warping before everything faded into darkness.