The daemon was an ugly-looking thing with four arms and two long legs. It had a hunched-over figure that forced it to use two of its hands to walk like a gorilla, and its skin was completely black! It was well-built with powerful-looking muscles, and its face was empty other than a massive mouth with sharp rows of teeth that gleamed in the sun when it screeched at Azrael.
This was a lesser daemon. The weakest of all the monsters that humanity was fighting against.
Azrael got into his stance and waited for the monster to make the first move, and just like he expected, the daemon wasted no time as it charged straight for Azrael!
BOOM!
SCREECHH!!
The daemon tried to take a swipe out of Azrael's face, but Azrael leaned back and rolled to avoid it before dashing to the side as the demon slammed its hand into the ground!
BOOM!
Azrael shifted his weight so that he was facing the daemon from behind, and his hand blurred as he spun around and sent a slash straight for the demon's unprotected back!
CLANG!
The sound of metal hitting metal echoed through the room, and Azrael felt a small grin showing on his face. This bastard was as thick-skinned as ever!
SCREECH!
Another screech echoed as the monster pulled its hand from the ground and slashed at Azrael again, but Azrael easily backtracked before he started dodging around ged its blows while waiting for the perfect moment.
A monster of this caliber would normally need a team of demigods with mortal bodies of at least E Rank to be defeated, and if a demigod with a mortal body of D Rank wanted to defeat it alone, it was advised that you have a God Aspect in order to handle it. But Azrael was treated as an exception since the school knew that he didn't have a God Aspect.
Azrael's absurdly high battle instincts also gave him an extra edge that the other students didn't have, so they allowed him to train with the battleground alone so long as he had the necessary mortal body rank.
That was one of the reasons why Azrael had worked so hard over the past few years to make sure he at least reached D Rank. This way, he wouldn't be forced to join a team anytime he wanted to enter the battleground!
The daemon grabbed three large stones from around the arena and threw them at Azrael with another loud screech, and Azrael stood his ground and destroyed all three stones with slashes from his sword!
Boom!
Azrael quickly dashed forward, as he saw the daemon racing toward him! The demon roared and raised its hand again to try and squash Azrael, but Azrael rolled under the hit and got to the rear of the beast before dashing forward to climb its back! The beast reached back to grab Azrael off its back, but Azrael was faster than it as he dodged the hand before raising his sword and stabbing it in the side of the neck!
SQUELCH!
SCREEEECHHHH!!
The beast screeched in pain as it quickly grabbed Azrael and threw him to the ground hard! Azrael rolled with the impact and got his feet under him again before dashing to the side as the beast slammed into the spot he had just been in!
BOOM!
The beast started to chase Azrael down with all its strength to try and kill him, and Azrael dashed ahead and stayed out of the beast's range, waiting for it to slow down.
Lesser daemons were all blind, so the only way they could hunt was with sound. But that does not mean that they were weak. The lack of their eyesight gave lesser daemons such a massive boost in hearing that even the sound of a housefly farting would draw their attention!
It was impossible to try and hide from them with any form of noise around you!
And since the lesser daemons also had a healing factor that allowed them to close up most injuries in five minutes or less, the only way to kill a lesser daemon was by either crushing it completely, to the point where it wouldn't be able to heal no matter what, or by taking its head off.
To take its head off though, you couldn't attack it from behind because it had a strong layer of armor protecting the back of its neck, and the rest of its body was as thick as metal. Unless you were a D rank and used your God Aspect to augment your strength, there was no chance you would be able to get through that thick layer.
Instead, you have to aim for the layer of soft skin that was right above the shoulder blade of the daemon. It was a strip of skin that was very close to the mouth, and you would have to somehow get up to the neck to take the head off. But with how tall the daemons were—the shortest ones were two meters tall and the tallest ones were close to four meters—students could not get up there easily.
But after facing them so many times, Azrael had found a way to bypass this. The lesser daemons were blind, so they didn't have the advantage of seeing where they were going. They had to listen for the sounds in their environment to know what was in front of them, and it was easy to make them lose sight of what they were heading for if you made them sufficiently angry!
By stabbing the daemon in the neck, Azrael ensured that it would chase him down angrily! And since the daemon would get slower because it was trying to heal the injury as well, Azrael knew that he didn't have to worry about it catching him.
The injury and the anger distracted the daemon enough that it didn't notice the large log that Azrael was running toward. Azrael jumped over the log and turned in the air before landing hard and shooting off back where he came from! And at the same time, the demon's hands hit the log, propelling it forward in a dive as it headed straight toward Azrael's blade.
A maneuver like this would be seen as madness by anyone else! Not only was Azrael risking getting bitten by the lesser demon if he got the angle wrong, but there was also the chance that Azrael's plan wouldn't work, and the monster managed to get over the log without tripping.
But that was exactly the difference between Azrael and every other demigod. They had the avenue to think about other ways to kill the beast because they had the strength of their God Aspect to aid them. Taking risks and putting his life on the line was Azrael's only method to ensure victory, and Azrael had destroyed all forms of mental blocks that would have normally stopped him from carrying out such a maneuver!
To Azrael, life itself was a battlefield, and the only way to live on a battlefield was by risking your life.
Azrael's sword cut through the area between the head and shoulder blade with pinpoint precision, and he dragged his hand forward to complete the cut as the demon flew past him!
SLASH!