Draconic King of Shadows-Chapter 98: Demon in Disguise

Lyra turned around and left Zain behind. She didn’t have the heart to stay and watch him die, so she did what was best for herself.

The Extraterrestrial’s core was retrieved, and she stored it in a compartment of her Exoskeleton.

She had switched back to the regular mode of her Exoskeleton, which granted a small space in it where she could keep anything, as long as it was small and could fit.

Lyra placed the fist sized Wolf’s core there, together with her other stuff. She scanned the vicinity for a moment, her gaze lingering on Zain for a second, before she left.

Her mission was complete, and there was no longer a reason for her to remain behind.

She took the fastest and safest route back to the base, and in no time, she got there, only to meet Damion, Kenzo and Matilda standing still and looking straight ahead.

Lyra moved over to them, but as soon as she glimpsed what was happening within the base, she stopped in her tracks, her heart skipping a beat.

Damion had long noticed Lyra in his range of perception, but he was too stunned to take his eyes off what was happening before him.

Suddenly he snapped out of it, shaking his head.

"What was that?!" He muttered, his gaze lingering on the ground.

They had stood on that spot for as long as four seconds, when they should have been running for their lives.

"Is it ’that’ Artifact again?" Damion iterated, his mind going back to that moment before they had entered the Hall the day the Training Program began.

Everyone was rooted to the spot on that day, stunned into immobility by the grandeur of the Academy’s Hall. It wasn’t natural by any means, so they had thought it to be the work of an Artifact.

The same thing was happening at the moment, and Damion didn’t hesitate to snap the rest out of the trance.

Kenzo shook awake, his eyes steeling as he unsheathed his sword and activated his Stigmas.

Matilda took a step back as black scales grew over her forearm and the sides of her face. A green glow circled her already green eyes, and she activated Drake’s Poison Aura.

Her hair changed slightly, becoming longer and tangled, but it was barely noticeable when compared to the rest of the changes.

Damion spotted Nyx from the corner of his vision, and with a mental command, he shot into his palm, turning into an O-Katana.

Purple flames lit up around the Sword, and Damion didn’t wait for another second before he started running.

His body blocked Lyra’s vision, and that seemed to be enough to pull her out of the trance too.

She didn’t hesitate to switch the mode of her armor and follow Damion, sprinting ahead as fast as she could.

In just ten steps, Lyra found herself lagging behind. She was never as fast as the rest, and this weakness was only made painfully clear after Damion’s evolution and its effects on Kenzo and Matilda.

She had recently created the speed based mode of her armor, so she was faster than she was before. However, she was still lacking.

Damion felt Lyra in his perception range getting further and further behind, with a creature having multiple limbs and mismatched body proportions closing in on her.

He gritted his teeth, annoyed, before grinding his heels into the ground and spinning around.

Damion reverse engineered Shadow Pulse with a simple thought, and his arm flashed, a wave of shadows rolling out and slamming into the approaching grotesque creature and throwing it back.

Lyra gasped. She hadn’t noticed the creature until now. It appeared to have a concealment power of sorts —making its approach silent and deadly— or her Magitech’s radar was unable to detect it.

As soon as this thought formed in her mind, two more shadow waves rose and slammed into three more creatures.

Lyra shook away the distracting thoughts and shot forward faster.

Her blasters came online swiftly, and she fired behind blindly, zooming past Damion at the same time.

The energy beams collided with two creatures, destroying their bodies and blowing them apart.

[Lower Rank 1 Demon]

[Zombie Grunt]

Damion’s hands moved, and a massive, crude, 10-meter-wide scythe of condensed shadows formed, its tip having a dark-green/purple glow to it.

His control wasn’t perfect yet, but the limited understanding of Shadow Manipulation was enough for what he was about to do.

The scythe shot forward with a burst of energy, slicing the creatures apart before breaking apart upon crossing thirty meters.

A frown formed on Damion’s face when he saw this. His current range of attack was approximately 50 meters, but the Demon’s strong defences made it collapse before it reached that range.

The Zombie Grunts were creatures that made no sense. They weren’t creatures that moved on all fours, and neither were they bipedal.

Their movements were based off the amount of limbs they possessed. Some had up to six or eight legs of different proportions and sizes, with some of those legs being hoofed, clawed or scaled.

They had just two disproportional arms though, a head with three different eyes: one horizontal, rectangular pupilled, another vertical slit pupilled, and the last, round pupilled; and three small bumps on their foreheads.

Their putrid, red flesh made them look like they had just been mutilated with sharp blades, then nearly burnt to a crisp.

Some reached towering heights of two and half meters, while some were as short as one meter.

They exuded a disgusting, awful smell, making their existence all the more unpleasant.

Damion’s frown deepened, and his eyes darted to a part of the ground.

Two Demons were regenerating quickly, standing back up to their multiple feets as their exploded body parts came together, attracting towards themselves magically.

Damion’s gaze snapped back towards the other dismembered Zombie Grunts, only to see their severed body parts coming together too.

He looked ahead, staring at Captain Shodan standing within the base menacingly, staring back at him through the visors of his helmet.

’A Demon,’ Nyx said to Damion.

’What?’ Damion asked, his eyes narrowing into slits as he stared at the red aura beginning to spiral around Captain Shodan.

’That man is a Demon...’ Nyx replied. ’A True Demon.’