Chapter 14 - BOSS fight - Fleshmancer Demon

I never expected that I would face a demon this early after moving to the capital. Moreover, it is not just any demon but a fleshmancer to boot. I won't be surprised if I were to meet with low-level demons like Imp or Succubus but to suddenly meet a notorious one like a fleshmancer?

… I am really worried that I have the infamous hero constitution which would cause its bearer to keep meeting with troubles left and right. Well, now is not exactly the right time to contemplate other things.

Boom boom boom boom boom!

A series of explosions keep happening around me. The demon keeps on barraging me with fireballs like it has infinite mana. It also started chasing me after knowing that his fireball barrage could not do much to me.

Well, it would be impolite of me not to reproach when attacked, isn't it? Let's try another fire lance.

"Here try another one. Fire lance!"

Another jet-black lance flies toward the demon but it doesn't seem to care as it keeps on charging toward me. Of course, the black lance hit it a moment later.

BOOM!

"HAHAHAHA! Useless, useless! I am now invincible! Just give up and let me sacrifice you to god!"

It didn't work. Now that I look closer at the demon, I notice that there is invisible layer around it that won't let the black fire surrounding it to come close. That… should be mana shield right? The unique defensive spell that all mages could use after they reach tier 4?

A wannabe god figure, fleshmancer, and a sudden rise in tier level. Now where have I heard a similar thing before? Sigh… Yeah, that tentacle ball. I'm glad I didn't take the wannabe god offer before. Not like I even have any intent to. But turning into that kind of monster is definitely not something I want to happen to myself.

But speaking of that wannabe god, geez, you deity and follower really like the word useless. Don't tell me the wannabe god is that certain vampire. I really hope not. The themes of that wannabe god are flesh, tentacles, and terror after all. It is totally different from that certain vampire

"Stop running you brat! Offer your flesh and blood to the lord!"

"Whoops!"

That was close! The demon almost managed to catch me. I guess a surfboard is not the best to use in combat. I can only use my shadow to power my movement while my body cannot contribute. Then I should think of a movement technique that uses both my shadow control and muscle.

But first, I need to escape far away from the demon!

"Shadow refuge"

I immediately fall into my own shadow and hide there. As always, I can't feel anything when I am in my own shadow but I already decided a direction to move.

Quick to move quick to get out of shadow refuge state. That is the only way to use the spell for the current me. I can't risk colliding into the demon's shadow either as fleshmancer is known to be related to darkness element. There is no guarantee that it can't drag me out of shadow refuge condition.

I reached the maximum range I could move with shadow refuge and immediately went out. I also put my guard up as I don't know the current situation outside while I am still in my shadow.

And just as I expected, I could see fireballs flying at me. In my evasion reflex, I immediately start running away from the source of threats. I also unconsciously added my shadow control technique to boost my speed. And I slowly change my running move to sliding move. Then it suddenly clicked in my mind. Ice skating! This is the answer for a better movement technique!

Also, using shadow control to help my movement now is extra important in this collapsed building area. There is so much debris around that if I'm not careful when running, I might get tripped by a random pebble and die from the fireball barrage.

On the other hand, when I use my shadow to help my movement, my shadow will create a path above the debris so my skating won't get disturbed.

With my movement technique getting optimized, the demon will have a harder time catching me. The only problem left now is to deal damage to it.

Mana shield is a powerful defensive method. That is the reason why mages are considered better than knights. In tier 4, a knight would be able to shoot their mana outward by utilizing their weapon by using techniques which are commonly known as mana slash, mana thrust, and mana crush. Each technique represents the 3 main method to deal physical damage namely slashing, trusting, and bashing.

Basically, knights gain a method to do ranged attacks. Meanwhile, mages already had ranged attacks since the beginning and in tier 4, mages receive defensive method. It is clear that in the same tier, mages have a better advantage over knights.

Yeah, there would be arguments that knights could easily shrink the distance and make mages fight in melee range where they would have absolute dominance because of their physical prowess but why should I be concerned with that? It is not a problem for a hybrid like me after all.

Anyway, my physical strength is still bad as I am only a tier 1 knight. And considering how grotesquely buff that demon is, I assume doing melee combat with it is a big mistake. The demon can also run fast with its overly muscular legs but my shadow skating is still faster. I guess the risk of me getting caught is low for the time being. So let’s do some experiments.

Know yourself and know your enemies. I might face another fleshmancer demon in the future so let’s gather all the information I could in preparation for the future.

Am I not feeling afraid that I could nonchalantly do an experiment mid-battle? Well, of course, I also feel afraid. But let's not forget where we are now currently. We are in the middle of the magic academy. There are other strong mages around. I can just run away if I get overwhelmed. But that won’t do me any good if I were to retreat from battle. There are profits to be earned from this fight.

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I keep moving around zig-zagging and making sharp turns to disturb the demon’s aim. The demon becomes more and more irritable as I keep kiting him around.

Well, let’s try attacking with every element that I mastered.

With a single fire lance, I can’t see any effect on the demon. The black flame created by my magic is also pushed out by the barrier, unable to directly touch the demon’s body.

With a single ice lance, I can’t see any effect either after the spell hit it's mana shield. But soon, I could see ice condensed on its skin even though my magic got blocked. Is temperature not something that mana shield can block? It might also be the case for fire elemental magic then. But let’s move to other elements first.

Next are wind lance and earth lance and those are not effective at all. The mana barrier could perfectly guard against those two elements. I even shot each spell 5 consecutive times but the result is not promising.

By the way, yeah, the naming of intermediate magic is indeed uncreative. It is after all created with fire lance as the base but modified to the other elements’ version. Of course with a twist of their own. Wind lance is more like a wind drill with how the wind element that forms the lance is spinning like a drill and earth lance is not shot from the caster body but from the ground instead.

5 consecutive wind lance is just a normal shooting wind lance 5 times but 5 consecutive earth lance is totally different. As the spell is shot from the ground, the earth lances are shot from different places. When the 5 consecutive earth lances were cast, the demon was like getting stabbed by spears from 5 different positions. The earth lance is weak sadly and it broke instantly when met with the sturdy mana shield.

“Did you do something? I can’t feel anything you did. Try harder brat!”

Oh, trying to do some BM to shake my composure? Too bad that I am not a rage gamer, it does not work on me. I could try BM it back but my experiment on fleshmancer weakness is more important.

Next in the menu is the lightning element. But I will not do my favorite magic as it is a non-lethal spell. I need a lethal one. So I use the spell 'Lightning' to attack the demon. Throwing a lightning lance like how the Athens god depicted is cool but casting lightning by letting electricity jump from you to your target directly is easier to do. So lightning element does not have its own version of the Lance series. At least not at the intermediate level.

The lightning spell hit the demon in a flash but the shield still stood strong. The electric charge could only crawl on the surface of the shield.

I thought it would also be as ineffective as the other spells but then I noticed the demon’s tentacles twitching for a moment before getting normal again.

“You are indeed superior just like your boast. Your affinity is for the darkness element yet you could cast spells from all four basic elements plus lightning. Who knows if you still hide something else up in your sleeve? But brat, no matter how high your potential is. That is for the future. No matter how high your potential is, you still could not beat raw power!”

“Well my test subject, unfortunately for you, I still have many things I want to test you with. So please don’t die too fast, okay?”

“...... You are still cheeky even when your magic can’t touch me? I’d say you don’t even have any awareness of danger like many other geniuses do. Stop resisting and die, kid!”

Actually, I am telling the truth. But of course, the demon won't believe me as we are enemies. But from my observation in my short test of trying to damage the demon through its mana shield, I notice that temperature is not blocked by the shield. I could not be 100% sure as my fire magic would explode upon contact and hinder my vision but the ice element spell managed to leave a clear mark. I assume that high temperature also affects the demon but as it has that infamous close-to-immortal regeneration ability, maybe the mark from a single fire lance is negligible to it.

The other thing that I manage to observe is that… those tentacles sprouting from the demon's back are actually reached outside its mana shield range. Which is why those tentacles twitched before when being shocked by lightning. I can harm the demon if I aim my lightning spell at its tentacles instead. I can use its tentacles as conductors to send my electric attack directly to its body.

Buildings around us keep getting blown away thanks to the demon's relentless fireball barrage. I have instructed my mage squad to evacuate everyone in the surrounding area so there should not be any collateral casualties from the demon’s rampage. It also gives me ample time to do some more experiments on it.

Next in the experiment list is to cast multiple fire spells, ice spells, and lightning spells at once.

I think I will do lightning element last. I want to slowly boil this frog so it does not realize that its life is in danger and keep acting like it is invincible. Don’t want to alert it too much, right?

So anyway, I cast 5x fire lance in succession. I feel a bit of a pinch in my mana reserve and in my head because of the sudden jump in casting frequency but it's not something I could not handle. I am fortunate enough to absorb that mysterious parasite treasure which let me learn fleshmancer magic and allowed me to form my magic core. I also have the resilience that a fleshmancer demon possesses. I have devoured all of the waste flesh matter from my meat packing industry for a while now which gives me ample fuel that could be turned into mana. I sadly still did not understand how I could heal myself with the flesh in my storage so I still could not recklessly tank the demon’s attack with my body.

Aside from my fleshmancer magic and my extra fuel tank, my magic core also gives me a superior magic reserve from the usual tier 3 magician. I couldn’t tell any other pros that the magic core gives me currently as it is a foreign concept that I borrowed from xianxia fantasy. But any kind of advantages that I can get, I will make them all mine.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!

“AAAARRGH!”

Oh, That’s the first scream I heard from the demon after it received direct damage from my spell. No, that is not the first, now that I think about it, was it when it just turned into a demon and I tried to stop it from morphing by attacking it? Anyway, it seems to be working to a certain degree. Too bad I can’t just control the heat to gather around the demon. I can perfectly cook it if I can do so. I can only move around the ‘physical form’ of elements when I cast spells. Another thing to explore in the future.

“HAHAHAHA, that was hot. Nice try kid! But it would take a lot more than that to hurt me!”

Okay, 5x fire lance will only hurt it a bit. I also want to check whether the demon needs oxygen when breathing but it just immediately resumes chasing me again after getting hit. Even if I burn the oxygen around it with my fire lance, it doesn’t seem to be in any trouble from the dust and smoke caused by the explosion and just moves away from the area. Ah well, the suffocation test will need to be delayed next time.

Next on the menu is 5x ice lance. I have somewhat high hopes for this. This spell is the only one that could show any effect on the demon so far besides lightning.

The demon still doesn’t bother evading the incoming ice lances. The ice lances immediately hit its mana shield and broke into pieces. The spell direct offense is thwarted but the hidden offense still lingers around. In a few seconds, the demon's movement got visibly slower. Flowers of ice start to bloom across the demon’s body, trying to hold it down from moving.

Still, the demon is still too powerful for a mere freezing effect to hold. It immediately exerted more strength and managed to free its legs from being covered in ice. Gradually, the slowing effect from the lower temperature disappears from the demon.

“HAHAHAHA. So what if you are a genius? So what if you realize you can bypass my mana shield with ice elemental magic? You are still too weak to defeat me!”

Mr. demon, you are still very energetic. Did you inject yourself with chicken blood or something? No, wait, you get that wannabe god parasiting tentacles inside you. No wonder you are so energetic.

The slowing effect then disappears completely and the demon resumes chasing me again at full speed. That takes the demon around 9 seconds to fully recover from the slow effect. That’s nice. I can do many things to it in 9 seconds.

Okay. now I am ready to test lightning magic. But, it might be the last spell the demon would willingly tank after realizing how dangerous my lightning magic is. I guess I need to finish it at the same time while the control effect from my lightning magic still holds it down.

I throw a fireball straight up into the air. The fireball then soon explodes in the air like a firework.

That is my signal.

The signal for counterattack.