Clang, clang
The daggers and hands clashed against each other, leaving the ground around them riddled with holes from their fierce battle. One slim figure danced, dodging many attacks from the huge figure in front of her. The last earl-stage devil had already assumed his devil form, making it difficult for Eleine to evade his attacks. Even though she had used one of the secret techniques of the Rivas family to temporarily increase her power, her enemy was a devil who was already stronger in the same realm, and now he was even more formidable in his devil form.
Eleine was a genius picked up by the Rivas family as Irene's retainer and one of her 'hands' to support her in both daily activities and battles against enemies. She could fight opponents with higher cultivation levels than her own, having been trained for such encounters. But battling a stronger devil in his devil form was still a bit too much for her. A single mishap could cost her her life.
Sweat dripped from her pretty face as she unleashed a few techniques, her energy depleting with every passing second of the battle, raising the danger she was in. Strangely, even though the devil had the upper hand, his face looked tense.
"I need to get to the city, but this woman is a real pain in the ass. And that man—Viscount stage? Even if you kill me, I don't believe it!"
The devil thought about the man's skills, marveling at how seamlessly he utilized them, as if performing daily activities. He believed the man was at least at Duke stage cultivation, and a strong one at that.
"I need to figure out how to get out of here, or we'll be dead at this point!"
Eleine rushed to attack again with extreme agility, always dodging the devil's huge attacks by the smallest margins.
"I have to end this fast to help the young master." She glanced at Aldrian to check on his situation, but what she saw made her jaw drop. That split-second loss of concentration did not go unnoticed by the devil, who tried to deliver a fatal blow to her. Eleine, surprised for a moment, realized her mistake and hastily raised her defense with Water Wall to reduce the impact. However, before the devil's strike could touch her defense, a swooshing sound was heard, and the devil's head separated from his body, dropping dead in front of her.
Eleine stopped her defense technique and stared at the corpse for a moment before looking at Aldrian again.
"That was wind shaped like a blade." she thought. She could feel the power of that blade, strong enough to kill even a low Marquess stage opponent, so the result was decided the moment it touched the earl stage devil's neck.
When she saw four marquesses not moving—two dead, one immobilized, and the strongest on his knees with his arms chopped off in front of Aldrian—she knew that her young master had won with a tremendous gap in strength between them. Despite this, his handsome face remained calm and relaxed, without a drop of sweat, as if facing four Marquess stage cultivators while still at Viscount stage was no big deal. She hadn't realized Aldrian was this strong, and this display of power made her reassess her perception of his strength, unsure of his limits.
Aldrian looked at Arion, who was on his knees and back to his normal form, with a deadpan expression, his arms severed from the shoulders. He had sealed the devil's cultivation by blocking the dantian with his energy, making them unable to gather or release any energy, essentially rendering them like ordinary humans.
"I don't feel any sort of emotion, even after killing someone, even if that someone is a devil." he tried to evaluate himself. The experiences he had inside those visions over the years had truly changed his way of thinking and personality. He remained calm when facing strong opponents, or what might be considered strong by others, but he still did not feel trepidation. The way he faced something new was also strange because he felt he already knew about some of these things. He then looked at the screen displaying his information.
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Aldrian Aster
Domain : The secret realm and Balin city
Age : 12 years
Cultivation : High Viscount
Current energy : 253,234 (+1.4/15m)
Energy needed for the next stage : 270,001
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"As usual, my energy is not depleted after a few uses. As long as I'm inside my domain, I will never run out of energy" he thought. He then looked at Arion.
"I can experiment on him and the others for some of my technique theories." He glanced at the dead bodies, or rather, the things that had come out of their bodies a while ago and disappeared. "What are those things? They are so soft and fragile." Those things had emerged after he killed them.
"Their souls?" he thought.
"Are they returning to the underworld to reincarnate or something?"
There were a few new things for him to comprehend, so he looked at Eleine and said, "Eleine, I will teleport you back to the mayor's mansion. Report this to the mayor if you can meet him. Tell him about the teleportation artifact and bring just a small number of people to that palce. Don't make the other devils who are already in the city suspicious."
"What about you, young master?" Eleine asked.
"I will stay here for a little while. I will be in that house with the devils' bodies before you arrive with the mayor's people."
Eleine nodded and suddenly disappeared, teleported by him. Aldrian had teleported her not far from the mayor's mansion to prevent confusion among the mayor's staff. Left alone, Aldrian looked at Arion.
"You see, I was quite surprised when I first met you all. I thought the devils would have difficulty maintaining their sanity with the way you cultivate, but from the looks of it, you guys are just fine. Can you tell me more about yourselves?"
Arion remained silent, but his eyes were resolute before he grinned. "Just kill me."
"That won't do, I still need you for my experiments. Let's see." Aldrian closed his eyes and touched Arion's forehead.
"First, let's see if my memory search technique works." But when he tried to access his memory, he found something inside Arion's brain, more precisely in the memory part of the brain. "A seal formation?" Aldrian carefully sensed the seal and tried to examine it.
"Hmm, quite a complex seal, but it still has little weaknesses in some parts. Let's see how to open it. Move this here...like this—" Aldrian continued deciphering the seal formation for two minutes until he successfully broke it. Without waiting any longer, he inserted his energy into Arion's memory part of the brain and dived into his memories as if he were Arion himself. Arion trembled as something invaded his brain.
"He broke the seal!" Arion wanted to scream but couldn't. The seal in his brain was a preventive measure against information leaks. When forcibly broken, it would destroy the host's brain and soul, ensuring secrecy. Yet, this man had broken the seal without triggering the deadly failsafe, which baffled him.
A few minutes later, Aldrian opened his eyes, frowning. "Arion's memories are quite useful but still ambiguous. They plan to continue infiltrating for three years at most, after which the operation to attack the Ivory Empire will commence. The specific date will be announced later. So, they're infiltrating this place without a specific mission, just to gather as many forces as possible over the next three years." He looked at Arion. "Also, this guy is under the command of the Wrath Devil, one of the seven great devils."
One of the great devils, the Devil of Wrath, cultivated the negative energy of wrath within living beings. Despite this, Aldrian just smiled.
"Looks like I will have a bothersome enemy, but I hope his power doesn't disappoint me." He then moved on to the next experiment.
"Next, the technique I created to read others minds and intent." Aldrian moved a few meters away and locked his energy onto Arion.
"To read one's mind and intent, I have to infiltrate their heart and brain. The simplest way is to use something inside the target as the medium, which is their own energy. The entire body of a being flows with energy. I can slip my own energy using my senses into their body, but the weakness is that if the target can protect their entire body, I can't read them." he thought. "The more complex method involves using a combination of my senses, energy, and karma. I can force a connection with the target to read their mind and intent using a karma string."
He tried to implement his theories, and the results were as he expected: satisfying.
"Oh, you feel rage and want to commit suicide to bring me down if possible? It's a pity, but your dantian is under my control. What can you do?"
Sometimes, a cultivator can make a desperate move by exploding their dantian. The explosion of condensed energy in the dantian of a high-level cultivator like a marquess cannot be underestimated, it can blow up everything within a 100-kilometer radius. It can kill cultivators of the same realm and severely injure stronger ones if they are not prepared.
Aldrian then shifted his focus to the immobilized marquess, giving him the same treatment as Arion, with more or less similar results.
"There are already more than 1.030.290 devil cultivators who have infiltrated Balin, and some of them are at the duke stage. Many are under the command of different great devils." he thought.
"Well, let's return first. Eleine has already brought some people to the teleportation artifact." He sensed her on her way. He instantly teleported all the bodies back, leaving only the aftermath of the battle, and followed soon after.
The barrier opened, and silence returned to the field, which had become a silent witness to Aldrian's first battle.