Watching the dragons retreat and the bright golden figure of the Herald of Order take her place above the twin planets, Daimen's face twisted into a deep scowl and his hands tightened into fists so tight that he drew blood.

  He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. Now was not the time. He could do some damage here, but not enough to affect as much as he wanted, less so now that both dragons had left. With heavy reluctance, he succumbed to Patience.

  When his eyes opened again, they were widened in fright as Damien fell down on his knees, heart racing and sweat running heavily down his brows.

  A palm landed on his shoulder just as Huiron's voice came in. "What's wrong with him?"

  Damien raised his head to see his brother standing behind him with a worried look. Behind him stood the other Lese lords, most of whom had turned their attention to the kneeling Damien.

  Unable to speak, he left the reply to his brother, who answered curtly. "Nothing. The battle up there must have been too overwhelming for him."

  Both Huiron and Sareina nodded. Solis grudgingly turned his face away after a lip curling look of disgust. But Vanis, Vanis stared at Damien for a while longer, more than the others, and then he nodded sharply and turned his face away.

  But Damien knew already that he didn't believe one bit of Keilan's explanation.

  Damien sighed as his brother dragged him up, face grim and expression intense.

  He didn't need to ask before Damien nodded. "Daimen," he mouthed.

  Keilan nodded sharply. "Are you alright now?"

  "I should be."

  "Good, because we've got little time to waste." Solis cut in. "The Yxil have had enough time for a stable foothold, we can't let them gain more than that. Move out."

  ***

  The Yxil Tyrants, or more officially, the Mind Clan, weren't so much physical beings as they were ethereal, Damien noted.

  Finally, he understood why Gray had rated them on par with the others of their ilk that wielded great affinities.

  "The Yxil Tyrants, just like the usual mind wielders we're used to, are physically weak." Squad commander Gharosh said. "But still, they are perhaps the most powerful of the Demon clans, and if not, on par with those at the top."

  Gharosh was a bull-descended human, with a large, wide bull nose and two equally large eyes. Long, thick dreads ran down his muscled olive skin, and he was clothed in heavy metallic armor with two heavy battle hammers hanging down from his belted waist.

  The Spirit King raised one of his weapons, pointing it at the large crowd gathered around him.

  "In their true bodies, they are extremely weak! But they have balanced that extreme weakness with an immense affinity for the controlling aspect of the mind. If you know your mental shield is not very strong, I will advise you very strongly to step away from this battle. In fact, I will mandate it. A weak mind will only be fodder for those brain suckers and more problems for us, and believe me when I say I do not want to have to bash some of you to pulp."

  His aura billowed out at that moment, causing some of the lords present to shiver.

  "Do not expect to fight them in their physical bodies because those aren't battle capable. Instead, you will be combating mind thralls, victims of the Tyrants' mental powers. Expect to deal with mental attacks as well as other forms of attacks. Now move out!"

  As one, they all jumped down from the large barge arriving slowly over the large battlefield.

  The gateway that the demons had used to invade was a construct of large swirling purple black, with a large resemblance to those the Kingdoms back at home had used in moving armies.

  From its thousand-foot height crawled thousands upon thousands of creatures, from humans to elves to dwarves to beastkin, all running straight at the wall of warriors in black and crimson.

  Aside from their vacant expressions, the most eerie thing about them that Damien noticed was the silence. As one they all moved, running in a synchronized formation with silence as their banner.

  The silence went on until the warriors of House Verrille met them in blade and thunder. Explosions rang out and the land quaked as techniques began flying around.

  In his entire life, Damien had never seen a battle of this caliber. The one between the Verille Divine king and the Aveanii could be argued to have surpassed this, but Damien knew in his heart that it was the opposite.

  What were millions of soldiers if they couldn't think for themselves?

  Here, the battle was between two races of creatures that could think and act very much on their own accord. No external strings pulling from a domain up top.

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  Damien landed in front of a vacant-looking dwarf wielding a large bastard sword and wearing armor made from some kind of black metal.

  Unbalanced from his landing, he met the woman with his spear, grimacing as the intense vibration from their clash went up his arms.

  Before he knew what was happening he was already back in the air, flying to crash into an already destroyed building, crashing through the walls and into what looked to be a living room.

  That was when Damien realized that this location had once been a residential area. The first clash between the demons and the Verrille warriors must have seen the entire local landscape changed by a considerable extent.

  A Sonic boom and a whoosh of air informed him of the arrival of his opponent.

  Sparks flew into the air as the bastard sword scraped over the surface of his spear, and only the quick adjustment of his fingers and body posture saved him from getting his body split in two.

  Before she could recover, he brought down his fist on her right temple, watching as she was flung head over heels over the floor to crash on the other side of the building.

  Damien picked up the sword and stepped outside just as the building finally collapsed, choking the environment with more smoke and dust.

  When it finally cleared, it was to the view of his opponent standing with her hands curled in a gripping manner.

  It didn't take long for him to realize what she was doing when the sword started vibrating, shaking intensely like a magnet attracted to a piece of metal.

  Damien raised an eyebrow. "You want it? You can have it."

  He drew back his hands and with all his might, threw the sword blade first, like a spear.

  A shockwave rang out and the wind tore as the blade cut through space in an instant, appearing before the woman in an eye blink.

  Admiringly, she reacted quickly, a wall of thick stone rising out of the ground to block the sword, which shivered as it stuck to the earthen wall.

  When she brought down the wall, it was to Damien's spear piercing her chest, carrying her to crash a few feet away.

  He walked over to stand over her, stepping above a large piece of vibrating rock —which he crushed to dust with his boot—to place his booted foot on her belly.

  Despite the wide hole in the middle of her chest, the woman looked very much alive, like the injury had zero effects on her.

  His lips curled in disgust when tiny tendrils trailed out from the hole on her chest, wiggling desperately in the air. It didn't stop there.

  Damien felt it as mental hands pushed at his mental shield, grasping and feeling for where to latch onto.

  He felt his body calm and knew that if he let this unnatural feeling stick with him, his mental shield would collapse. Thankfully, he wasn't so weak that a technique like this would easily work on him.

  His right hand stretched forth, grasping the spear that suddenly flew into it. With a smirk at the look of desperation the creature immediately took, Damien brought down his spear, tip first, on the skull of the dwarf, watching as brain matter alongside a dimly glowing tentacled creature flowed out of it.

  It looked like a glowing translucent jellyfish, except where its tentacles ended were long, deadly sharp curved blades.

  Damien grimaced and leaned back as his eyes landed on the giant monstrous purple eye that represented its bell.

  "Disgusting," he muttered as he stabbed his spear in once again for good measure.

  Done, he stepped back to the view of a golden sheen spreading across the surface of the planetary barrier, blocking and muting a considerable amount of the energies clashing up above.

  Not entirely though, as Damien could still see a mix of radiant powers flashing and arcing all around, with dull sounds of explosions reaching the world from up there.

  With a sigh, he turned his eyes down on the three people moving to surround him; a human man with a short sword, a tiger beastkin with floating daggers surrounding them, and an elf with a menacing bow standing right in the middle.

  Damien's grip on his spear tightened as he stared at the trio. They hadn't attacked yet, but even then, he knew this battle wasn't going to be similar to those of the dead dwarf, considering all three of them carried the aura of peak Spirit lords.

  Their opening attack came in the form of a mental hammer that slammed against the walls of Damien's mental shield.

  He staggered, grimacing just as his vision blurred and his knees wobble. Before he could react, an arrow slammed into him, penetrating through his foot to pin itself on the ground.

  Damien's eyes widened in shock and pain when he looked at it. This shouldn't be possible, the armor was supposed to be too strong for a mere spirit lord to pierce through. It shouldn't be possible... Except here was the evidence.

  It was at that moment that Damien remembered the one thing that powered the armor: Mental power.

  Ever since he'd gotten Gray, the number of times Damien had gotten injured had lessened significantly, so much so that it felt almost like a cheat to keep using the armor.

  There was only one time that he'd gotten significantly injured, and that was the first time in a long while where his willpower was drained almost to the end.

  Now, Damien wasn't completely drained, but for some reason, these mentally possessed creatures had still managed to get through the chink in his cheat-level armor.

  All this passed in a blink as he bent down with a grunt to pull out the arrow, gnashing his teeth together at the agony that swept up his leg.

  A whoosh of air and subtle tremor on the ground had him staggering backwards with a scream of pain.

  Grey stars materialized over his head just as a blade came back down with a loud crackle of lightning, meeting empty space as Damien quickly flew back.

  He dodged a flurry of arrows, weaved out of the way of a swarm of daggers that tried for his head, and again had to jump backwards to avoid the man who tried to run him through.

  He knew his technique was never going to do damage to them, considering how spread out they were and how quickly they could move, but that wasn't what he wanted to do.

  As soon as the Starfall landed, erupting their surroundings into an explosion of sound and force—and dust and smoke—,Damien dived in. He stepped into the smoke just as his foot healed, closing up in real time.

  With his spear, he appeared to the side of the swordman, who erupted in a burst of lightning. But before they could do anything, he jammed his spear into their neck, yanking it straight up a moment later in a vertical motion.

  A mental attack slammed into his mind just as the man dropped dead onto the ground, leaking blood, gore, and a dead mind demon, but because of their reduced number, its effects were lessened compared to the first attack.

  The smoke cleared to reveal his two remaining opponents standing still with their weapons pointed at him.

  Thunder roared and the earth heaved as techniques flew from one place to another, tearing up the already damaged landscape till only bare simple earth remained, which was then turned to glass as a sea of fire devoured it.

  Damien and his opponents stood right in the middle of this, quiet in their own little island. Slowly and building, unease crept into him as both demons remained standing, staring at him with zero expression and no movement. Their heads tilted and they glanced at each other, and then another Demon landed beside the first two.

  And another.

  And another.

  And another.

  Damien's mental shield shattered the instant they struck, and the world as he knew it dissolved.