"Three Demonic Dragons and an entire swarm of Demonic Drakes," I counted. There were dozens of them, so I didn't bother counting all of them. If I wasn't mistaken, the Demonic Drakes were Mystic ranked whereas the Demonic Dragons were Earth ranked, so that might have been a problem if I didn't already have a bunch of Earth ranked spirit beasts myself.
No wonder Demonic Dragon was so confident. Damn, why the fuck did he have to call himself Demonic Dragon? We're going to mix him up with the actual Demonic Dragons spirit beasts. This was so confusing. Maybe he named himself after the demonic monsters?
"You're so screwed now!" Demonic Dragon crowed, pointing his saber at me. "GO AND DIE!"
Typical Chinese villain dialogue. Always telling the protagonists to go and die (Qu Si Ba). Like, honestly, couldn't they come up with something less…cheesy and cringey? Ugh.
Pushing my glasses up my nose with my free hand, I sighed heavily. "Go get them, Xiao Huo Long."
My shiny Charred Dragon materialized behind me, bellowing a challenge at the incoming trio of Demonic Dragons. He took off, flapping his wings and bombarding them with his stuff. He was accompanied by my Round Owlets and two Arrow Owls, who set off in a v-formation behind him before plunging right into the Demonic Drakes with near glee. On the other hand, Xiao Huo Long unleashed his flamethrower attack in an effort to incinerate the Demonic Dragons, causing them to scatter.
Even so, he was a single Earth ranked spirit beast against three. I was hoping he could lure them to the ground where my Titan Golem and Terra Tortoises awaited, but they kept to the skies. And my Round Owlets and Arrow Owls weren't going to be of much help, though they could at least keep the Demonic Drakes off his back. Whenever they were under threat, they would fly into the cover of the spirit arrays where Sylvie and Silvia were waiting, their spirit sword formations and lightning bolts striking out to bring an unfortunate Demonic Drake down.
Demonic Dragon must realize that if this turned into a ground battle, even his newly arrived Demonic Drakes and Demonic Dragons wouldn't be a match. But he resolved to at least take out Xiao Huo Long first.
"I don't care about the rest, but your Charred Dragon isn't going to survive this battle!"
"Oh? I wonder about that."
There were a few thuds, and Demonic Dragon turned around in horror, seeing Celestial Avian get incinerated by Xiao Huo. Meanwhile, Long Wang had stabbed Muscular Beast in the chest and ripped out his heart, mercilessly butchering the burly demonic cultivator, while Jun Hai and his spirit beasts had finally caught hold of Demonic Bat and crushed his relatively frail body to death. He screamed before Jun Hai's Swamp Stomper stomped him to a flattened, bloody mess.
"Sorry for taking so long."
"Nah, you guys are just in time."
"I see the enemy reinforcements." Jun Hai was grinning before he raised a hand and summoned a dragon of his own. Unlike the oriental dragons associated with Hua Xia, Jun Hai's dragon was more of the archetypical western type, clad in sapphire scales and sporting massive red wings. Three fins grew over his reptilian head, and azure flames blazed from his jaws. Four muscular legs slammed down on the ground, the claws digging into the earth. Jun Hai climbed into the dragon and pointed to the skies. "Let's go!"
"That's a…Violent Salamander?!"
"Yeah," Jun Hai admitted with a grin. "He evolved around the same time as my Swamp Stomper and Steel Tri-horn. I wanted to keep him a secret because he's my trump card, but I guess your Charred Dragon will need some help."
"Damn…that's awesome." I wasn't sure why they called Jun Hai's dragon a Violent Salamander, but I guess it was a better name than…uh, Salamander Menace. That just sounded weird. "You're really surprising me. How many more spirit beasts do you have?"
"That's a secret, but I currently have six combat ready ones."
Why six?
I didn't get to ask him that because Jun Hai's Violent Salamander had already taken off to engage the other Demonic Dragons. Similarly, Long Wang had transformed to his dragon form and soared to the air. Xiao Huo also turned to her nine-tailed Fire Fox form and leaped onto Long Wang's serpentine figure, riding him as he darted toward the Demonic Dragons that Xiao Huo Long was currently engaging.
"You've got to be kidding me…" Demonic Dragon yelled. He glared at the ruined corpses of his former companions. "You're trash! All of you are trash! Can't even win against a kid and a couple of spirit beasts!"
I didn't rise to the provocation, instead attacking him. He growled and slashed at me once more, his saber cleaving large portions of rock from the cliff. I evaded, blocked and parried, then delivered a riposte that he deflected with his gauntlets.
Damn, but those things were annoying.
"As long as I can kill you, then this battle will be over!"
"The question is whether you can successfully kill me before my brother and my friends can destroy your entire army."
By now, his demonic forces were decimated. There weren't very many Prickly Piranhas, Corrupted Crocodiles, Spine Lizards and Sail Lizards left. Only the Demonic Drakes remained in force, but they were being kept at bay by Sylvie and Silvia's spirit arrays, weaving through a storm of lightning and evading bombardments from spirit swords while engaging my Round Owlets and Arrow Owls.
I decided to help them for a bit. After a nasty exchange that resulted in me withdrawing to a safe distance, I quickly called upon assistance from the Sylphs. As expected, they were furious that the forest had been corrupted by demonic miasma, and they responded to my request with rage. Clenching my fist, I wielded their elemental powers and called forth a hurricane that blew the Demonic Drakes off course. While they reeled and staggered in the air, helpless against the gigantic gale, I ripped them apart with a tornado.
Demonic Dragon, panicking when he saw what I was doing, hastily pounced on me with another two-handed strike that forced me to halt the casting of wind spells and parry his blow. The ground underneath my feet shattered and my knees buckled, but I held firm. The Sylphs temporarily retreated, for they appeared only to enact my will, and didn't actually fight the demonic monsters on their own initiative. That was fine. For now, I focused on my opponent, who was bellowing at me furiously.
"Just who the hell are you?! Why are you getting in my way?!"
"…uh, I wasn't getting in your way. You were the one who attacked us for no reason. We were just exploring the forest and investigating what happened to the Dragon's Gate here and the Dryad tribe that used to inhabit this region."
Even though I said that, it wasn't as if we would have simply left Demonic Dragon and his weird rituals to corrupt the waterfall and the Dragon's Gate alone when we found him. But he didn't need to know that.
"It doesn't matter! The moment you decided to trespass into our territory, you have sentenced yourselves to death!"
"This isn't your territory."
"Yes, it is!" Demonic Dragon snapped, swinging his saber again and carving another fissure into the earth. I could see his qi take on the form of a black dragon before charging at me. I countered it with my own azure dragon that froze his miasma and turned the whole place into a tundra, even freezing parts of the river and the top part of the waterfall into ice.
"No, it isn't!"
"Yes, it is! My predecessors have been here for generations! They sacrificed so much to wipe out the residents here and absorb the wood qi from their bodies to nourish their cultivation! By killing over a thousand of the wood-people tribe here and sucking their essence dry, they were able to attain unprecedented heights of their cultivation and develop the Hidden Heavenly Dragon Formula to its fullest potential!"
My blood turned cold as I listened. Now I had learned the fate of the Dryads. So their tribe was annihilated by Demonic Dragon's predecessors. Just who were they?
"We are the Dark Carnage Demonic Sect!" He continued crowing, as if reading my mind. "And by corrupting this place and turning it into our territory, we will be able to build an army of demonic monsters and perpetually expand our borders! We will conquer the world!"
Then he glared at me, his saber ripping another chunk of rock off the ravaged cliff.
"But you have to show up right before we can terraform and fully corrupt the area and ruin our plans!"
"Can't say I'm sorry to ruin your plans."
"I don't give a fuck whether you're sorry or not! For the crime of spoiling our good schemes, you deserve death!"
"Oh, really?" I snorted, unable to suppress the rage within me. "For your own greed and dark ambitions, you slaughtered an entire tribe of Dryads and corrupted the place. Who do you think you are, getting to decide who lives and who dies?"
"Idiot!" Demonic Dragon sneered, chopping away with his spirit saber and forcing me back. I deflected a vicious strike, but he whirled around with another decapitating blow that I had to parry. He bore down on me, using his superior strength to pin me down with his brutal weapon. "That's how the world works! Survival of the fittest! Strong eat the weak!"
"Not this bullshit again…" I groaned in annoyance. "Because if you truly believe that, then you shouldn't complain when you get killed by us when we prove to be stronger than you."
"Delusional!" Demonic Dragon roared and relentlessly struck me again and again with his cruelly shaped spirit saber. "You're clearly weaker than me! Just die already, you delusional idiot!"
I had enough of his nonsense, and I had also finally achieved my objective – learning what the hell he was here for, and what his schemes were. Sliding the blade of Azure Frost in between the gap between the yellow blade and the length of black metal that stretched as the blunt end (if you recalled, the saber was shaped like a dragon's jaw, and so there was a gap between the two long pieces), I then locked his weapon in place. Demonic Dragon hissed and tried to yank his weapon free.
He would have succeeded eventually because he was admittedly physically stronger. But he wasn't as smart.
Without hesitation, I drew Azure Dragon with my free hand by reaching into my storage device and pulling it out. Demonic Dragon's eyes widened, but he was too preoccupied with trying to pull his spirit saber free to react. In a single stroke, I cleaved off both his hands at the wrist, leaving him to fall back with a scream as blood fountained from both stumps.
He held up his arms in disbelief, staring blankly at the blood jetting from the stumps and almost not noticing that I had scissored his neck between Azure Dragon and Azure Frost. He blinked and stared at me almost pleadingly.
"P…please," he begged. "Don't…don't kill me. I don't want to die. I can't die here!"
"I don't think the Dryads wanted to die either, but did your sect spare their lives?"
"N…no! Please! You…you are a great, benevolent person! Surely, you can let a small person like me off?"
Wow. It was absurd how all these cliché villains reacted almost identically. Behaving all arrogantly when they thought they had the advantage and massacring whoever they wanted, but when they were cornered, they began begging for mercy. Did they all take lessons from the same Villain Academy or something?
"What was it you said?" I asked with a roll of my eyes. "Strong eat the weak?"
His teeth clattered incessantly as he all but wet himself. Tears rolled out of his eyes and he mumbled something incoherently.
"And would you have spared my life if the situation was reversed?"
He didn't bother to lie and say that he would. I had to hand it to him. On the other hand, he was so dumbstruck by fear that he couldn't form a proper sentence. Hell, he couldn't even say a single word. He was just rambling noises at this point, not speaking in any human language.
Glancing up, I could see that Long Wang, Xiao Huo, Xiao Huo Long and Jun Hai were still fighting the Demonic Dragons. They were far from victory, and I could see their injuries mount because of the sheer amount of corrosive miasma that the trio were emanating. I didn't doubt that they would win eventually, but it was going to take a lot of time and effort, and they would sustain wounds that would take a while to heal.
"Sorry. As distasteful as it is to execute a helpless, already defeated enemy, I have no choice but to be ruthless in order to ensure the safety of my brother and my friends."
"No…"
Without waiting for Demonic Dragon to finish uttering his plea, I beheaded him in a single stroke, sending his disembodied head flying into the river.
At that moment, the demonic monsters descended into chaos, turning on each other or withdrawing. The Sail Lizards and Spine Lizards swiftly turned around and slipped into the river to swim away, while the Prickly Piranhas tore into Demonic Dragon's head in a frenzy. They also attacked the Corrupted Crocodiles, who also fought back, and the river was stained red with blood, the crimson even flowing into the waterfall leading to below. My summoned spirit beasts didn't even bother to finish them off, keeping their distance and watching our former enemies rip each other apart.
The Demonic Dragons, suddenly bereft of instructions, reeled around in confusion, and Jun Hai, his Violent Salamander and my summoned spirit beasts capitalized on their sudden disorientation to strike, delivering fatal blows before they could recover, and sending them crashing down to the ground to be torn apart by the berserk Prickly Piranhas.
As for the surviving Demonic Drakes, they wheeled around and flew off. While they did, I saw that several of my Round Owlets had evolved into Arrow Owls, and the two Arrow Owls had evolved into Grim Owls from the ordeal, allowing them to fight back.
"Finally…"
Sinking on the ground, I smiled in satisfaction even as the system notified me through a holographic window that I had accomplished the mission.