"AAAARGH!"
Damien couldn't hold back his roar.
Divine Energy rocked his entire body, tearing through his internal systems and forcing him into a state of semi-implosion.
XIU! XIU! XIU!
Three venomous needles cut through the storm of mana and plunged into his chest, infecting him with toxins for the first time in this battle.
Naturally, the Ananta Matrix acted fast, siphoning the Divine Energy out of his body and into its grasp, storing it to be expunged when he called for it.
Damien reached up, and ignoring his pain, he ripped apart his chest where the needles struck before the toxins could spread, totally removing the infected area from his person.
Transcendent Regeneration rapidly went to work, but Damien wasn't planning to wait for it.
The Bow Lord was enraged, and due to that rage, he'd provided Damien the perfect opportunity.
In their battle thus far, he'd faced the skills of all three head-on. He knew what they were using, and he formed strategies to take them all down individually.
The only thing he was missing was an opportunity.
He couldn't create it himself with the way the situation was going before, but…
Who would've thought the Bow Lord would give him the perfect opening?
The skills that'd been suppressed throughout the battle by the combination tactics of the three, or the extremes they specialized in, were given a chance to shine.
His eyes were rolled back in pain, as if he was a man with no irises. Red veins bulged on his sclera, giving him the appearance of a mad demon.
He planted his foot on the ground and pushed forward.
Space and time wrapped around him, pulling tight like a yo-yo being pulled back up its string. It wasn't teleportation, but a different type of instant movement that nobody was expecting.
He shot past the Strength Lord, his hand touching the man's chest before he knew what was happening.
Damien suddenly remembered a scene Tian Yang had shown him when he was still young.
"Boom."
Mana exploded forth.
Space and time collapsed, shattering the Strength Lord's stance and throwing him into the air, his trajectory aimed straight for the Bow Lord.
Damien's steps didn't stop there. The Strength Lord was never his main target.
In the same instant, he stepped forward once more and reached the Venom Lord. His arm shot out before the man could react and gripped his neck, pulling him into the air.
"Burn."
WHOOOSH!
Void Flames lit the air on fire. The Venom Lord's body combusted, and when he opened his mouth to scream out in pain, tongues of flame intruded into his body and began burning through his glands and blood vessels.
The Venom Lord needed to secrete venoms that couldn't be dispersed through the Void Physique. The second those systems were cut off and he was forced to use only mana-based substances, his value in this battle would disappear.
Damien didn't need to do anything else to him. The Void Flame would burn eternally unless he found a way to expel them, so either the Venom Lord would be crippled or incapacitated for a considerable period.
Instead of worrying about him, Damien stomped his foot into the ground once more and shot into the air.
The Strength Lord's body that he'd thrown was perfectly positioned.
The Bow Lord couldn't find a good angle to shoot from, and by the time he'd moved to create such an angle, Damien was already behind the Strength Lord and using him as a human shield.
"You said you fortified everything, right?" He asked, his words icy to the point of sending shivers down the Demigod's spine.
"Let's test that theory."
Damien raised his knee with as much force as possible, loading it full of compressed Rudimentary Existence Law.
And he attacked the heavenly jewels.
The "place that should not be mentioned."
"AAAAAAAAAAGH!"
The Strength Lord screamed out in ways he didn't think possible.
A beam of light split his body from bottom to top, and Damien's mana traveled through the most degenerate pathways to reach the internals it couldn't reach before.
Havoc once again appeared in the Strength Lord's body, and this time, it wasn't easily avoidable.
Blood sprayed from his seven orifices as well as some less-than-savory areas, creating a cloud of blood mist in the air that further obstructed the Bow Lord's vision.
"Dammit!"
The Bow Lord exclaimed, aiming his bow into the blood mist and spreading his awareness.
He didn't expect Damien to make such an extreme move with just a single opening.
It made him realize that if any of them were facing him alone, they'd have died ten times over by now!
None of them were dead, but the man whose appearance was so mangled that he looked like a walking corpse had brought them to a state where none of them could properly use their power.
It was unbelievable!
Especially if one remembered that he was a Supreme!
"You're slower than before."
The Bow Lord jumped back as the voice appeared from behind him and instantly shot a barrage of arrows in its direction.
But Damien was already gone by the time they reached.
"Did you not realize it because of your rage? Or maybe the pain I gave you was too prominent for you to realize that it shouldn't have existed at all."
The Bow Lord felt a hand on his head. An immense pressure crushed him into the ground. His body was tremoring as a feeling of hopelessness filled his mind.
"Did you think that was your own feeling?"
Damien's words were beyond confusing.
If it wasn't his, then who–
"Have you checked the state of your soul recently?"
The Bow Lord's eyes widened.
On instinct, he sent his senses inward and looked at the ethereal plane he never even considered due to the enemy's state of existence.
And that's when he saw it.
Half of his soul was eroded. It used to look like an archer constellation, valiant and proud, but that constellation was now without its legs or weapon, utterly humiliated.
"I've come to take back what I gave you."
The first death.
Damien planned it from the start.
Before anyone else, the Bow Lord had to die.
And for that, he'd created a situation where the Bow Lord would never have the time, thought, or ability to check his soul for strangeness.
The single greatest advantage he held as a lower existence on the Ancient Battlefield.
The fact that nobody would ever believe he could interact with the soul plane.
He abused that fact to create this very situation, so with his own power, he could–
"–devour."
The Bow Lord's eyes rolled back in his head. His soul was directly stripped from his body and turned into Damien's power.
As the soulless body was burned into nothingness by Rudimentary Existence Law, Damien turned back to the other two.
The Strength Lord looked relatively okay, besides the absolute hatred painting his face, while the Venom Lord was clawing at his own skin with a terrified expression on his face.
Meanwhile, Damien himself didn't look much better. He tore away the infected area as best as possible, but without precise measurements, he wasn't able to get rid of it all.
His chest was covered in blackish-purple veins of toxin that were making him feel burning pain to his very core. Moreover, that chest was still ripped apart and ruined, a mass of reddish muscle and flesh chunks without skin.
He had several broken bones, and even his brain was affected by the Strength Lord's earlier kick. With this grotesque appearance, it wasn't surprising that others saw him as a walking corpse.
Since Transcendent Regeneration was focused on keeping the toxins restrained in his torso, the non-fatal wounds on his body would remain exposed until he could sit down and fix everything with [Heal].
'But…Transcendent Regeneration still exists, doesn't it?'
In the end, he'd be fine.
But what about them?
Damien grinned to himself.
"A eunuch and a cripple. The rest should be a breeze."
