Seeing this, the Demon Axe exclaimed, "Whoa! So you know that trick too, huh? Impressive, kid!"
Then, it swiveled its gaze toward Arthur and said, "Arthur, I've suddenly realized I might not like you as much as I thought. Today's likely the day I finally escape this hellish existence! Hahaha!"
Outside the battlefield, Cipher had silently left the car's passenger seat and was now standing on its roof, gazing intently. She could see that the Goat Demon had actually died moments ago, only to resurrect instantly.
Feidric explained, "That's Rebirth by Fire. It's said that some of the more powerful demons possess this ability. When killed, they regenerate instantly, gaining both increased strength and extreme resistance to the attack that killed them."
"Huh?" Cipher blinked, startled. This ability sounded eerily familiar to something she'd seen in her past life—the Berserker-class Hercules' ability in that Holy Grail War anime.
The Twelve Labors—twelve lives, each resurrection granting immunity to the previous fatal blow.
"However," Feidric explained, "the 'Rebirth by Fire' ability is extremely difficult to obtain. A demon might need to cultivate for ages and pay a tremendous price to gain even a single resurrection opportunity. We still don't know exactly how many such resurrections this demon possesses. In any case, Aria's situation is becoming increasingly complicated!"
The perspective shifted back to the battlefield. Aria had just been elbowed away by the Goat Demon, but thanks to Feidric's shield, she remained unscathed. The light emanating from her Holy Sword never wavered as she retaliated with a swift Divine Smite!
Lacking time to fully charge, this Divine Smite fell short of its Light Beam form. The golden light surged forward, striking the Goat Demon, but it merely bared its fangs and let out a guttural growl. Astonishingly, it withstood the Divine Smite and closed the distance to Aria, raising its trident high for a crushing overhead strike.
Normally, demons reborn through Rebirth by Fire become completely immune to the attacks that previously killed them. While the Goat Demon was indeed immune to the Divine Smite's base damage, it remained vulnerable to its special attack damage.
To illustrate, if Aria's attack power was 5,000, it would automatically double to 10,000 when attacking evil enemies, adding an extra 5,000. Against this Goat Demon, however, she was left with only 5,000 bonus attack power, her base value reduced to zero.
Aria immediately took a deep breath, her gaze locked firmly on the enemy. Her heart, which had been racing wildly moments before, gradually calmed, returning to its normal rhythm.
Everything around her seemed to slow down. Her thinking speed and observational skills sharpened to their peak. At this moment, she could even discern every crease on the Goat Demon's skin, naturally allowing her to anticipate its attack patterns.
Flow State. Olivia had once possessed the same skill, and Aria had quickly mastered this ability during her training in Okhema.
Aria effortlessly identified the weakest point in the Goat Demon's strike. Wielding her Holy Sword, she aimed for the center of the Goat Demon's trident, attempting to parry the attack. But the instant the Holy Sword clashed with the trident, Aria's brow furrowed involuntarily.
Aria realized that even at its weakest point, the Goat Demon's strength far surpassed hers. And she was currently boosted by the Holy Sword's physical enhancement buff!
Aria strained to deflect the Goat Demon's attack, skillfully redirecting its force to perfectly block the strike. But the Goat Demon pressed its assault, showing no intention of relenting.
Just then, Arthur finally rushed to reinforce her, swinging his Demon Axe in a sweeping horizontal strike at the Goat Demon.
Seeing this, Aria belatedly extended the Holy Sword's buff to Arthur and Pan Ming.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Another series of intense explosions rocked the battlefield. Arthur, now with vastly enhanced physical abilities, swung his axe with even greater speed and power. However, since the Goat Demon was naturally immune to fire, the Barbarian Divine Artifact's fire damage bonus proved almost useless. Arthur was now relying solely on his raw strength to trade blows with the demon.
Before Aria's buff, Arthur's strength paled in comparison to the Goat Demon's. But with her augmentation, the two combatants gradually reached a precarious balance of power.
Aria regrouped, adjusting her stance and preparing to continue the fight when an aura far more sinister, vile, and despair-inducing than the demon's suddenly emanated from just behind her.
She whirled around, stunned to find that the aura originated from Pan Ming. Having assumed he was an ally, she'd expected the Holy Sword's buffs to enhance him. But now, Aria realized Pan Ming was completely immune to her buffs!
In truth, this had been apparent during their battle with the Falcon Clan. When Aria had unleashed a massive area-of-effect buff while rescuing people from the water, Pan Ming hadn't received its effects. However, everyone had been too focused on the rescue to notice.
Pan Ming pressed his hands together in prayer. A dense, ink-black aura surged from his body—more precisely, from the Prayer Beads on his wrists, spreading to envelop his entire being before radiating outward.
His expression calm, Pan Ming said, "Please move back a little, you two."
The black aura emanating from Pan Ming slowly coalesced behind him, eventually solidifying into the form of a Buddha statue. This statue, however, was entirely black, its face twisted into a ferocious grimace, eyes glaring wide, fangs bared, and claws outstretched. It resembled not a serene Buddha but a maddened demon.
"Those prayer beads... they're actually a Divine Artifact?!" Cipher exclaimed in astonishment from a distance. She remembered the first time she saw Pan Ming, when he had tried to entrust the beads to Hysilens, only to be interrupted and have them confiscated.
Who could have imagined this trinket would turn out to be a Monk Divine Artifact?
Cipher narrowed her eyes, her ears twitching incessantly atop her head, and her tail bristling slightly. The artifact exuded a profoundly unsettling aura.
As Pan Ming continued to channel the Monk Divine Artifact's power, the phantom Buddha statue behind him grew larger, more solid, and increasingly distinct. Soon, it towered to a height of approximately thirty meters. Despite the 'Buddha' sitting cross-legged on the ground, it loomed like a Giant, dwarfing everyone present.
As the image's resolution sharpened, Cipher could see that the Buddha statue was covered in a dense network of tiny tentacles. From a frontal view, some tentacles were even crawling out of the statue's eye sockets and mouth, as if the statue had been parasitized by something—a truly grotesque sight.
The Monk Divine Artifact had been completely corrupted!
On the battlefield, hearing Pan Ming's warning, Arthur swiftly withdrew, while Aria also retreated rapidly. Once both had distanced themselves, Pan Ming slowly unclenched his clasped hands. Behind him, the Buddha statue mimicked his movement exactly, releasing its own clasped hands.
Without the slightest hesitation, Pan Ming's hands blurred as he began to unleash a series of rapid strikes. The Buddha statue behind him mirrored his movements perfectly. Logically, such a colossal figure should have moved with ponderous weight and deliberate force, delivering slow, heavy blows.
But the Buddha statue moved with the same blinding speed as Pan Ming himself. Imagine a thirty-meter-tall Giant unleashing sixty-four palm strikes in less than a second—a blur of motion that defied comprehension.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!—!!!
The Goat Demon was immune to fire and the base damage of Divine Smite, but Pan Ming's attack was purely physical, augmented by a massive psychic assault.
The Goat Demon, which had been locked in a power struggle with Arthur just moments before, was instantly driven into the ice beneath its feet. Its body twisted unnaturally like a broken ragdoll, its newly regrown goat horns snapped off, and even the flames that had constantly burned around it visibly diminished.
Yet even after such a brutal assault, the Goat Demon refused to die. This demonstrated the absurd vitality of demonic beings. Conversely, Aria's initial Divine Smite Light Beam, which had instantly annihilated the Goat Demon, seemed equally ludicrous in retrospect.
After the strike, the entire battlefield fell silent for several seconds. Aria, Arthur, Feidric, and Douglas exchanged bewildered glances at Pan Ming, then at the Goat Demon, now flattened almost into a two-dimensional creature.
Crack!
At that moment, the Goat Demon extended a hand from the shattered ice surface and slowly crawled out. Unlike before, its head was now tilted sideways, its gaze locked firmly on the Prayer Beads in Pan Ming's hand. In a raspy voice, it croaked, "Give me... I want that!"
Meanwhile, the eye on Arthur's Demon Axe began spinning wildly, its entire surface crisscrossed with a dense network of blood vessels. The Demon Axe bellowed with laughter, "Hahaha! Good stuff! Excellent stuff!"
Pan Ming ignored the demons' ravings. He simply assumed a fighting stance once more, but this time it wasn't a flurry of strikes—just a single punch.
Thud!
The impact was surprisingly soft. This slow, almost weightless punch struck the Goat Demon, which had already lost most of its mobility. Before the creature could react, Pan Ming dispelled the effects of the Monk Divine Artifact. The phantom Black Buddha Statue slowly faded away, and he returned to his hands-clasped meditation posture.
A full three seconds passed before the Goat Demon exploded with a boom, erupting into a shower of molten lava that rained down on the surrounding ice, sizzling as it landed.
The Monk Divine Artifact's normal function is to manifest the user's heart. Depending on the wielder, different Buddha statues would appear, each mimicking the user's movements. Imagine a Giant thirty to forty meters tall—perhaps even seventy to eighty meters—capable of martial arts, boxing, and force dissipation. It would be a truly terrifying sight.
Furthermore, the Buddha statues would manifest unique abilities based on the user's nature. For instance, a kind-hearted Monk's statue might possess healing powers, while a Monk who loathes evil might deal extra damage against demons.
But these were the normal circumstances. Long ago, the Monk Divine Artifact had been corrupted. Every user now summoned the Black Buddha Statue, which had been parasitized. Moreover, anyone who saw the Prayer Beads or the Black Buddha Statue would involuntarily feel an overwhelming greed, an irresistible urge to possess them.
This greed once ignited a great war among noble families in the Eastern Ancient Kingdom. In the end, the current Emperor of the Eastern Ancient Kingdom secretly stole the Prayer Beads and entrusted them to Pan Ming's temple, requesting their safekeeping.
It was just an ordinary little temple, housing only about twenty monks in total, yet they resolutely accepted the mission: to safeguard the corrupted Divine Artifact and prevent its reemergence into the world.
Notably, the Prayer Beads couldn't simply be hidden away in some remote location, buried in a pit, or the like. They continuously emitted illusions, luring others to find them. Therefore, someone had to wield the Divine Artifact, at which point it would shift its focus to corrupting the wielder's will, tempting them to fall, and ultimately enslaving them as its puppet.
Should the beads succeed, a Demigod-level or higher Evil God puppet, also a wielder of a Divine Artifact, would materialize on the Material Plane.
Pan Ming's temple initially tasked their Senior Brother with wielding the beads. After enduring for a month, he wept tears of blood as he took his own life, leaving behind only the warning: "Do not trust what you see."
The second wielder was their Second Senior Brother, who gouged out his own eyes before taking up the artifact. Yet he too succumbed after only a month, his final words being: "Do not listen to the voices in your mind."
In this manner, one of Pan Ming's senior brothers risked his life, testing potential causes of corruption one by one. By then, only ten people remained in the entire temple.
Pan Ming's master, the next wielder, had essentially purged himself of all emotions and desires. Yet even he could only endure for a year. With his dying breath, he declared, "This corruption is beyond the endurance of mortals like us. Depart now! Leave this place! We must find a true saint, one impervious to such evil influences."
And so, Pan Ming and the remaining nine monks embarked on a long journey. They first traversed the entirety of the Eastern Ancient Kingdom, but the once-mighty empire had long since decayed. Forget finding a saint; there wasn't even a single genuinely kind-hearted person left.
Lacking funds, three of the nine monks starved to death—not from the Monk Divine Artifact, but from sheer hunger.
After consulting among themselves, the survivors resolved to leave the Eastern Ancient Kingdom. They crossed towering mountains, traversed the All Nations Alliance, and finally arrived in the Northern Territory. Their journey was aimless, entirely random—they went wherever fate led them.
One by one, Pan Ming's senior brothers fell, leaving him as the final torchbearer of this relay race.