Damien's eyes widened, not out of surprise, but so that his field of view could reach its maximum size.
He saw everything that was coming at him in slow motion.
He saw what Envy and Wrath were doing, and he read their exact paths to understand where they were planning to go.
He saw Lust, who couldn't do much of anything, and Gluttony, who was perhaps the only one who currently had the chance to harm him.
There was only a split second for him to make the decision.
Did he want to continue attacking like this or did he want to push back?
'For now, retreat.'
In any case, being surrounded wasn't a good idea at all.
Damien jumped into the air just as Wrath reached him.
BANG! BANG!
The first punch missed, but the second was aimed upward at Damien's body.
'Damn!'
Damien twisted his waist and tried to avoid the impact force, but he couldn't from his position.
A huge burst of air pressure struck his side, cracking several ribs.
However, the impact also pushed him higher in the air.
That was why Envy wasn't able to reach him in time.
She jumped, joining him in the air with her claws outstretched.
All she needed was a single touch.
But Damien knew that, and he refused to allow it.
Using the air as his stepping stone, Damien's feet became those of an artist. He danced through the sky in such a way that nothing could touch him, and as his body turned more illusory, he was finally given a chance to look at his own internal body.
At the same time, on the ground…
BOOOOOM!
The explosion of Damien's mana still struck Lust as it was meant to. There was no way for her to avoid it.
The cloud of mana expanded rapidly and turned more and more chaotic.
Lust was thrown back several steps, sustaining severe damage to her skin. However, before the attack could truly injure her, Gluttony stepped in.
He'd opened his mouth for a reason.
Like it was being suctioned by the strongest vacuum in the world, Damien's mana was pulled into Gluttony's throat.
The air was cleared, and Lust was saved.
Gluttony turned his attention to Damien's body in the air and…
Well, he burped.
He regurgitated the energy he'd consumed in a different form. It was now laced with his own mana of Gluttony, shooting back at Damien to give him a taste of his own medicine.
'Tch.'
Damien clicked his tongue.
The 4 Evils weren't being overly destructive, but their attacks were still terrible. With the four of them working together, Damien was never given a moment to himself for whatever reason he needed it.
Even when he thought he was safe, one of the four would make sure he was forced back into battle.
It was a strategy that, while less powerful overall, forcefully wore the enemy down until they couldn't fight any longer.
'Are they trying to capture me…?'
Damien suddenly had a realization.
'Right, Malevalon doesn't want me dead, at least not by someone else's hands. He still needs to get the Celestial Prison back, and that's not considering all the information he's dying to extract from me.'
He was extremely valuable. Even someone like Malevalon couldn't easily sentence him to death.
'That means…'
Damien grinned.
It seemed he had a lot more maneuverability than expected.
'Luckily, I've pretty much diagnosed the problem.'
The issue in his body, as he thought from the start, was a foreign energy causing problems.
In normal cases, his Void Physique would have removed this energy automatically so it couldn't cause problems for him.
However, this particular energy managed to avoid the detection of his physique.
'Is it because it's too convoluted, or is it something else…?'
Damien had to find out, and as he found out, he had to isolate the energy so it couldn't affect him.
Of course, all while he continued to fight for 4 Evils.
'No big deal, right?'
Damien grinned as he twisted his body again.
His mana raged, swelling around his leg as he slammed it down.
Envy was right there.
She was concealed, but she couldn't hide from Damien.
She tried to grab his leg, but instead, she found it coming down on her neck.
BANG!
The mana shield made sure Envy didn't have contact with Damien's skin as he struck her.
His leg slammed square into her neck, throwing her downward, and since Damien made sure to aim properly…
Her falling body just so happened to end up in the path of Gluttony's attack.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
Green scales went flying everywhere as Envy's natural protections were destroyed.
Her body went flying further into the air, covered in mana as she tried to correct her position.
The other Evils saw her get hit, but none of them moved to help her.
Recovery was her own problem.
Their goal was to capture the target for their Lord.
Damien focused his vision again and allowed time to slow.
'Wrath is about to jump. Lust will recover soon. Gluttony is…I don't know.'
Wrath's movements were easy to read. As for Lust, she was incredibly angry, so she was also telegraphing her movements a lot.
Gluttony merely stood there. He stared at Damien with the same dull look in his eyes, but he didn't seem to be aiming to attack at all.
'Hmm…'
The previous few seconds before Wrath made it to his current position…
'...I can use them.'
Damien immediately went to work.
His mana created a cage within his body, slowly guiding the foreign energy so that it would be trapped within.
While it did so, Damien took the opportunity to truly analyze the energy.
'It's not familiar, but it's close…'
At first, there wasn't much he could see.
The energy didn't look like anything he'd seen before, and its properties weren't similar to mana or malakh. It was an entirely new energy source that Damien hadn't encountered before.
'If that's the case…maybe the Void Physique didn't grab it on purpose?'
The Void Physique could cleanse his body, but anything it devoured would be turned into pure energy and fed back to him in a digestible form.
If that happened to a foreign energy, it would lose the signature that allowed Damien to comprehend and seize it for himself.
'Now that I think about it, I encountered something similar with Nox Mana too.'
He couldn't devour it when he was younger, and eventually, he gained malakh because of that.
'Whatever this energy is…'
It wasn't from the True Void Universe or the Sacred Abyss Universe.
'But for it to show up here…'
…it had to have been used by the person who created the Celestial Prison.
Suddenly, the 4 Evils, and even Malevalon Straea, started to look insignificant.
But still, they were the ones threatening him now, so Damien had no choice but to focus on them.
'For now, I'll tuck it away.'
He gathered the foreign energy and made sure it could no longer impede his systems.
It was easier than expected, especially when Void Energy was brought into play.
And as Damien's strength began to return…
'That Gluttony guy gave me a great idea.'
A new way of fighting.
He was going to have fun testing it out.
