I Was Called A Demon

One might think that Bianca was insane… and well, she was. No sane woman fantasised about the kinds of things she did, that much was certain.

However, the important part was that Long Shiyi’s current strength was temporary. It was already on the decline, and if they just waited long enough, she’d drop into the sixth realm, where Huang Su would be able to compete with her on a more even footing. If she then fell into the fifth realm, then their combined strength would be sufficient to subdue her.

Bianca didn’t know much about the Exarch, but she had heard that it rewarded contributions, whether from allies or strangers. If they were to subdue Long Shiyi, wouldn’t they have made a huge contribution to the war effort?

Perhaps it was a stretch, but in the moment, she saw no other opportunity to get out without being captured… and if she was to be honest with herself, she couldn’t help but imagine the mighty dragon on her knees, surrendering herself before her, serving her as faithfully as her dearest pet did… but that was only a minor reason, of course.

Totally. Definitely.

‘Ah, fuck it, I’m not fooling myself, never mind anyone else… I hear all dragons have dicks, so it would be fun to put her in a cage,’ Bianca found herself grinning as she readied for combat, with the others doing the same.

The weakest of their group was Song Ming, at least in terms of cultivation realm, but her physique ensured that she wouldn’t be completely defenceless. Then, Xue Yaling, despite being a stage behind, was in fact much more powerful in terms of cultivation alone thanks to her collection of artefact shards. At this point, Bianca wasn’t sure how many she’d integrated, but even the ones she’d seen were immensely powerful.

Her own cultivation was a bit peculiar, given the Demonic Tyrant’s involvement, but in terms of raw offensive and defensive power, she was certainly above those two. Then, Huang Su, despite being in the fifth stage of Linked Channels, had a relatively low combat strength, and no special traits that would enable her to surpass her realm.

Against them, a single foe, but Long Shiyi’s years of experience and current realm advantage meant that she was not to be taken lightly, not even in her injured state.

The dragon began the fight, instantly turning towards their weakest combatant, a single gesture with her hand causing countless spears to surge out of the ground, each one with a shaft made of dirt and a tip of metal, piercing the tent floor and forming a vast field of spears that was dense… and obviously dangerous.

It headed for Song Ming, who just barely managed to escape before she was impaled – and not in a fun way. However, the dragon didn’t just stand and watch it happen, as all of the spearheads from the closest spears broke off, the shafts collapsing back into simple dirt. They gathered behind her.

In the blink of an eye, half a dozen swords gathered behind her, made up of loose shards that only vaguely resembled blades.

Even then, the energy within each fragment was equivalent to a powerful skill of the seventh realm, and with a single thought, every fragment in one of the blades shot out at them, split roughly equally between the four of them.

Each one burned with enough planar energy to turn them all to ash, and with at least a dozen projectiles being shot out in the initial volley… They were in a precarious spot right from the start. Bianca didn’t believe for a second that they’d be able to handle such a barrage without taking some risks, and so she leapt straight towards them, manifesting the Abyssal Shield just in time for the closest fragment to detonate.

The force shattered her barrier instantly, flinging her back, but it also caused the other fragments to detonate with it, setting off a chain reaction. The power of each explosion was far lessened as a result, and Huang Su was able to shield the others with flaming feathers, absorbing much of the rest of the impact.

Bianca felt pain all over, but she forced herself to stand, even as blood dripped from her nose, her vision tinted crimson from some other wound she couldn’t even feel. Her body was filled with adrenaline, supressing her ability to perceive each individual wound, but the metallic fragments seemed to have sent shrapnel all over the place, so as her barrier shattered, plenty got through to injure her.

Still, she hardly had the time to check everything, as the dragon, seeing their survival, only let out even more energy. The swords behind her suddenly lit up with a blue flame, burning around the shards but not between them, as though they truly formed a single coherent whole… and before the purpose of it became clear, all five remaining blades arranged themselves behind her, forming a strange shape.

“Watch out, it’s a talis-” Xue Yaling’s words were interrupted as the flames transformed into a pulse of energy that instantly spread throughout the tent.

It felt akin to a hand grabbing onto her, squeezing her, crushing every drop of resistance from her body. She felt as though she would her life would be over at any moment, but just before her consciousness faded, the pressure was suddenly interrupted. Through the blood covering one eye, she could still see a faint hint of Long Shiyi’s aura, and the way it suddenly dropped a single stage, the sound of a clock ticking sounding somewhere far away.

From the fifth, to the fourth, a drop that was insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it made all the difference when executing a skill like her ‘talisman’. A single disruption caused it to break, and with it, the suppression did, as well.

Bianca took the moment to attack, simply thrusting her blade with all the force she could unleash. Crimson erupted from the sword, expanding out in the instant before it shot forth, a single overwhelming lance of crackling energy hitting the dragon at the same time as the others all performed their own skills as well.

Song Ming went straight to her runes, manifesting one beneath Long Shiyi’s feet, the energy eruption only a moment after Bianca’s crimson swallowed the dragon up.

Xue Yaling did the opposite, in a sense, a lance made of pure sunlight manifesting in her hand as she lifted it into the air, and called down an immense beam of scorching light from above, at the same time as Huang Su conjured a quick Phoenix Wrath, the vague figure of a phoenix joining the carnage and exploding beneath the mixture of energies.

It was complete chaos, and tore right through the tent, but even before the flames and light cleared, it was obvious that the dragon survived. Her aura still surged, and the obstruction only allowed her to gather her energy once more, and the instant it faded, she had already prepared her next skill.

A dozen swords manifested behind her, each one being far more solid than before, only the slightest semblance of cracks remaining in between each fragmented piece. Together, they flew over to the dragon’s arms, six by each, trailing behind them as she suddenly vanished from the central spot, appearing by Bianca’s side.

As her hands only narrowly grazed past Bianca’s face, the swords were sure to cut it, each travelling at a slightly different angle and trajectory, all burning with enough energy that it would be akin to a red-hot knife slicing through warm butter.

Though she was very much caught off-guard, her instincts were enough to save her. With Tormentor’s Strides, she appeared to the dragon’s side, away from the blades, and wisely so – the instant after she left that spot, all the energy on the weapons surged out, manifesting beams that sliced through the air and reached all the way over to the tent walls, leaving a few faint marks that glowed red from heat.

Even then, she wasn’t safe as the dragon just swung again, almost clawing at her with her other hand, all the other blades already coming for her before she could even think of dodging.

However, she was not alone. Just before they hit, the kitsune leapt to her side, a lance of sunlight in one hand, a buckler as vivid as the sun in the other. She met the blades with it, almost striking back at them, unleashing a vast eruption of overwhelming sunlight the instant the two collided. It pushed the rest of them back, just enough for the kitsune to summon the Nocturnal Aegis, letting it take the brunt of the remaining blows.

Each hit destabilised the shield further, and the fifth finally caused it to erupt, shards bursting out, slicing the dragon’s flesh… albeit barely.

Compared to the already present injuries, even the wounded arm that she was still managing to employ, the shards were only barely able to scratch her skin, leaving faint marks that would likely fade in minutes.

However, just before Long Shiyi could strike back, she froze up again, her aura fading that little bit more, dropping her down to the third stage. Her injured arm suddenly fell completely limp, the swords beside it collapsing to the ground, falling apart into separate shards before fading into raw planar energy.

“Those artefacts… crossing realms that easily? You are a lucky one, kitsune,” Long Shiyi exhaled, letting out a mouthful of steamy air, “It won’t be enough.”

She raised her uninjured arm into the air, and the remaining swords broke away from it, surrounding her, each pointing outwards. They lingered in the air for a moment, then began to rotate around her, spinning faster and faster, until the dragon let her arm drop – and the blades flew out, still spinning around, slicing through the air and burning the air itself.

Dodging even one was difficult enough, but with six spinning around like mad, seeming to only get faster, their trajectory was practically impossible to follow. With the kitsune’s artefact shards used up for the moment – the ones that would be the most useful in the moment, anyway – it was a free for all, all of them needing to dodge and leap around in the hopes of not simply being sliced in two… or worse.

Their only blessing was that the earlier damage to the tent had caused it to start burning, and the spinning blades inevitably cut into the fabric even further. With how much damage they had already inflicted to it, the tent finally crumbled down, covering the battlefield.

On the face of it, that might seem like a pure negative, as it meant that it was harder to move around and that there was less cover for them. However, there were two factors that they – or at least, Bianca – hadn’t considered before, the first being that the material it was made of blocked spiritual perception to an extent. While that would’ve been useless had the dragon truly returned to the seventh realm, her cultivation had already started to decline, and her divine sense was diminished to the level of barely qualifying.

The second factor was that there were plenty of fighting still occurring around them, though since they had entered the tent, the dragon’s forces had notably diminished, leaving most of the survivors fighting off far larger numbers of the Exarch’s troops. The moment that they drew yet more attention to themselves, some of them turned their attention to the dragon, and sensing her weakening state, decided to charge in and take their opportunity.

“Pathetic locusts! Swarming in only when others have already wasted my time!” the dragon summoned several waves of spears at once, all them surging out at a far greater speed than when she initially attacked Song Ming.

By luck or deliberate design, they all just narrowly missed the four of them, instead impaling dozens of the Exarch’s troops, third and fourth realm fighters crumbling like flies, even fifth realm fighters struggling to evade and most in their path being severely injured. However, that was just the beginning, as all of the spear tips broke away and soared towards her, assembling a vast multitude of blades in an instant.

Even when her realm suddenly wavered again, another tick of the enormous clock behind them making her fall to the second stage, only a few of the blades collapsed.

And just like with the six weapons prior to them, the dragon let them all go wild, spinning around her before lashing out further, slicing through foes with ease, only narrowly avoiding her allies – and curiously, Bianca and the others as well.

She may be a little simple when it came to cultivation, but she did still have a functioning brain in that head of hers. The power output she was displaying now, compared to just seconds ago, when they were fighting in private, was obviously disparate, and there had to be a reason for it.

In the moment, she was able to think of two – the first relating to her waning power. The more she used, the more her cultivation could wane. Thus, taking them out with minimal strength wasted would leave her with as much energy as possible to take on the rest of her foes, though considering how quickly it was dropping even then, there was no chance that she could accomplish much before the Exarch and the others would overwhelm her.

The other… was that she wanted to be defeated. It sounded insane, but at the same time, she landed right in front of them after being pushed back at the front, she went easy on them, only using minimal energy and leaving them with attacks that they were able to deflect, and most importantly, even in the chaos of the fight, not a single attack went towards Bianca or her group.

For it to be an accident would imply luck even greater than anything they’d experienced so far, even greater than Huang Su deciding to come along and submit to her on a whim.

It seemed like an impossibility, an absurdity, even, but at the same time… it was the only way to completely explain her actions in the moment. She had no clue what might motivate her to act like this, but in absence of a better answer, she could only assume it to be true for the moment, and act accordingly.

Namely, by letting Long Shiyi slaughter enough of the competition that the ground was dyed red with blood, the stench of death filling the air, scaring off all those that had managed to endure so far – or that had been behind Bianca and the others.

The moment that the dragon’s realm faltered yet again, she used her energy to tear right through the fabric obscuring her, and charged straight at the dragon, using Tormentor’s Strides several times to skip across the gap between them, ending up with her blade right above the dragon, slashing down. Of course, even with that speed, Long Shiyi was able to meet her blow with her arm, the scales on it easily taking the hit and only causing the dark blade to bounce off.

All of the energy she imbued into it, the crackling crimson that would normally split her target in two with ease, seemed to wash over the dragon’s body while doing absolutely nothing to harm her.

“That won’t be enough,” Long Shiyi just smirked, suddenly delivering a kick to Bianca’s stomach that sent her flying.

It nearly made her throw up, but she was able to endure and rise, just in time to see the others also return to action. Huang Su took the lead, flooding the area with flaming feathers, hampering visibility from the outside but more importantly, impairing the dragon’s mobility, giving Song Ming the opportunity to set up her runes, covering the ground in several at once.

They weren’t able to overlap completely, so she couldn’t concentrate a dozen runes into a single massive eruption of energy, but she was still able to flood the area with energy, to the point that the dragon was effectively contained by it.

That would’ve still been insignificant, if Xue Yaling didn’t employ Anathema in that moment, the area around the dragon suddenly being deprived of planar energy. She showed a hint of surprise for the first time in that moment, her eyes going wide as she looked towards the kitsune, practically letting herself be consumed in eerie light from the runes beneath.

At the same time, the distant ticking from the impossibly large clockface heralded yet another drop in stage. Long Shiyi was only in the first stage now, a single step from crumbling down into the sixth, where Huang Su would have a chance at fighting her properly.

The only thing that mattered now was holding out for a few more seconds, maybe a minute at most, and they would win – whatever winning looked like. Given that she was already thinking over things, however, she couldn’t help but notice the fact that the Exarch hadn’t yet arrived here. It was a sixth realm expert, a step from the seventh realm, and should have been more than capable of interfering with the fight if it so wished.

Was it being occupied by something, or was it also allowing the fight to go on, hoping to gain something from the involvement of another, perhaps even their success… Bianca didn’t know, She couldn’t really focus on it, though, as the dragon soon emerged from Song Ming’s runes unscathed, diving straight into the flaming feathers without a moment of hesitation.

Her target was Bianca, and while she was still manifesting those same fragmented blades, the way she was employing them changed quite a bit.

Instead of flinging the whole blade at her, a single shard broke off and flew at her instead, turning sharper, thinner, akin to a lance that could penetrate her with ease. She was able to evade, just narrowly, but of course, even if the dragon was letting her off easy, that was only in comparison to the true seventh realm fighting capability that she possessed.

After the first shard, dozens more flew out, and only half of these turned into lancing shards, the rest suddenly exploding mid-flight, turning into a shotgun-like multitude of fragments. It was about as overwhelming as Song Ming’s rune eruption, but Bianca wasn’t about to simply let herself get pelted by all those projectiles. While the Abyssal Shield would do nothing to stop them, it did provide an instant of cover, blocking sight very effectively for both parties – and the instant after she raised it, she had already used Tormentor’s Strides to get away from danger.

While she didn’t know the specifics of the skills that Long Shiyi was using, if the dragon was letting them off easy, then she would definitely allow for the shards to fly towards where Bianca had been, without guiding them towards where she was escaping to.

Indeed, every fragment simply struck the ground, kicking up just and shredding what remained of the tent in the process.

With the dragon’s attention on Bianca, Xue Yaling had the freedom to bring out the Butcher’s Cleaver, imbuing plenty of energy into it to make the phantasmal cleaver burn with energy, a vivid crimson killing intent that promptly swung at the dragon. It crashed against her waist, slicing through cloth but practically bouncing off her flesh, but it grabbed Long Shiyi’s attention.

For whatever reason, she seemed to be outright afraid of the artefacts that the kitsune was able to project from her shards, and as Bianca was already doing a lot of thinking, her head came across a potential reason for it – the shards may not have been just ordinary artefacts.

The kinds of abilities that they were demonstrating seemed to get more and more outrageous compared to what could be performed with a typical artefact, even a high grade one, and if the kitsune was right about some of the other shards in her possession… well, they would be even more over the top.

So, what if the dragon knew of their origin, or knew of certain potential abilities that such shards could produce? Then, being wary would be vital, as it would ensure that she didn’t get hit by something that she couldn’t actually deal with.

‘At this point, I’m not sure if she is actually just pretending to be beaten, or if she’s actually worried about one of us pulling off something impossible… this whole thing sucks, I wish I didn’t have to use my brain this much. My head hurts already,’ Bianca held back a sigh as she turned towards the two that had yet to strike.

Huang Su and Song Ming were limited in their arsenal, though for different reasons. Her dearest pet was exceptionally powerful when it came to the Crusader’s Runes, but her other skills were relatively weak at the moment, especially for a fight against a seventh realm cultivator. Meanwhile, Huang Su was most experienced outside of combat, and the current situation put her at a disadvantage… until the next tick echoed over the battlefield.