Although combination skills were powerful, and a helpful skill when necessary, I hadn’t bothered to develop them. It made more sense to gain power by spending our time leveling. Any interesting thing we unlocked using combination was a thing of pure luck. I didn’t like having fights depend on luck. One might ask why I didn’t have every girl use every mana source and unlock every skill, and the answer to that was simple. How could I predict which skill would be useful? Even if I did come up with a more powerful attack, I could get those just as easily levelling up. Who says a more powerful attack would even be useful in a future desperate situation?

Besides, if a level 30 skill developed a powerful combination skill, then wouldn’t a level 90 skill develop an even more powerful combination skill? By wasting all of our skill slots, I’d be restricting everyone’s abilities. Thus, I had to leave it to situations like this, where the result of combining the skills could only be guessed, and not certain. Naturally, we hadn’t planned to get to this point, but fighting Aberis truly had been more difficult than I had ever thought possible.

Although Deedee’s attack was what we were hedging our bets on, the other girls attacked as well to increase the likelihood of it succeeding. They each used their strongest attack, and I was no different. When we all attacked, Lord Aberis had some kind of repelling shield. He launched it now, but this time our attacks were far more brutal. We were going to force our way through his defenses.

“You’re all going to die!” He screamed as a half dozen attacks landed on him.

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Only two weapons managed to slice through his shield. The first was Deedee’s sword, supported by her death strike. The second was me, using the malacrum dagger and the same skill Shao liked to use, Backstab. I never used Backstab before. It wasn’t my style. I also didn’t use daggers normally. However, it felt like a suiting attack for the situation. It came from Demon Knight’s level 15. That didn’t seem like a knightly ability… but they were demons after all.

I didn’t power it with external mana though. There was no saying what the attack would turn into. It really was a gamble Deedee took. It was one that could easily kill her. We both couldn’t afford to die to take this gamble, so she took on the burden while I supported her. In the end, it was an ability called Death Strike. Neither of us knew exactly what it meant until it landed on him.

To make it land, my attack struck first. His eyes popped open in shock as her sword sliced through his defensive shield. He was so focused on her, that my Backstab worked. He let out a shriek as he was stabbed in the back with a malacrum dagger. It would have done a lot more damage if it had been Shao doing this, but there was no use crying over that now.

The distraction was just enough, and the sword struck as well. With the malacrum striking his back, and the silvthril in the front, it was truly a brutal hit. Which was why we were shocked when a force field seemed to strike us. Everyone was thrown back by a massive wave. It felt like getting struck by a bus, and I had to heal myself before I was able to stand again. For Deedee, the attack was far more damaging.

“You… are going to regret that.” A voice came from the epicenter.

We all stare in disbelief as a disheveled demon lord stood there. His eyes had turned black, and his skin looked charred black. He looked more dead than alive.