Agatha The Legendary Guild Master

I retreated to the centre of the nineteenth layer, and as Aria and others were still back at layer seventeen, I had nothing else to do but to start killing these demons.

However, before getting myself busy in that, I turned to face the two demons in my balloon, sitting together like close fiery lovers; what a scene to behold among all this mess and stress.

"How are you feeling now?" I asked, as I turned to face them, while keeping my shield held in between my hands.

"I'm feeling better. Still weak, but not dying at least," she said, before adding with a sincere tone, "I'm very grateful to all you did to me, really appreciate this."

"Don't mention it, after all it was my mistake for not taking care of you after killing that monster."

"It's a really hard to deal with monster, very tricky and very deadly. It's really lucky for you to be able to resist its weird ability, and also kill it," she said, while sighing in a tired tone.

���It's now dead, and won't bother us anymore," I said, before turning towards the topic I wanted to ask about, "you said I shouldn't send my spear inside, why?"

Her face turned serious as she said:

"The appearance of that monster wasn't a fluke. Your spear can't differentiate between anything, destroying the central forte in layer fifteen, leading to fully releasing the seals around that monster. if you released your spear without care, you will risk destroying the central fort there, and the monster in layer twenty is much more brutal and bloodthirsty than the one in layer fifteen."

"The Giant barbaric," my demon sighed, as his face turned instantly pale, as if he recalled some distant, yet painful and scary memories.

"Yes, that's one of his many names. He is also called the sovereign of all demons, the master of myriad arts, the cruel merciless killer," my demoness added, saying a long list of scary names of that demon.

I was already scared by this, and I recalled the recent talks with Diana and others about the demons in each central fort, and the demon in layer twenty had many horrible descriptions, a long list of nightmarish abilities and strength. "Is he that powerful?" I asked.

"He isn't only powerful," the demoness shook her head, "he was born as our leader, the leader of all demons. He had the ego and the greed of any emperor, wanting to rule everything even by ruining the whole world. I recall he was sealed by the witch, after an epic battle between the two, where he was an equal foe to her," she added, and her words made me realize more how hard facing this demon would be.

"At least someone had already beaten him after the witch, taking control over the fort, right?" I said, as this was the only silver lining of hope I currently had to conquer that demon.

"You are mistaken," the demoness simply shuttered that weak fragile hope of mine with her next words, "the witch knew if this demon would have the chance to be free again, bad things only would follow. So, she sealed him completely, leaving the fort only guarded by a weakened miniature version of his. No one had ever fought the real demon, and hopefully no one would."

I swallowed my throat, which was currently dry and bitter, before she threw the good news, finally. "the seal lies in the foundation of the fort itself, so if you let your spear inside, demolished this fort or even weakened it, you will risk releasing that beast, and no one here could stand a chance against him; not you, not your mystic art master, no one at all!"

As long as he kept sealed under the fort, I had no complaints here. even if it meant for me to slowly march forward, taking much more time in killing those monsters and demons up ahead.

After all, we had already lost the importance of time. dealing with things here fast or slow wouldn't matter, and that was the only good news here. "I will make sure not to use it then, or when I use it, I will recall it fast, not letting it act as it likes," I said, declaring my intentions.

"That's a relief, now have a rest; you just ended a huge fight, and a huger one just lies ahead," my demoness said, suggesting I rest.

"No, I shouldn't rest now. my army is still weeks away from us, and we need to replenish the exhausted stores of the pearls. I will start killing these demons, hunting their pearls and amass them in huge numbers, clearing this layer until my players reach here."

The two demons glanced at me in silence, while the demoness then hit the demon with her elbow as she hurriedly said:

"Move your fat body and help our master. Don't be this lazy as you always are, letting girls around you do all the hard work."

The demon glanced at her in a strange way, while I only chuckled at her words and attitude. This demon was really cute, being this docile around her making me forced to remember Shin, was he really acting docile with my presence as well? I thought of this as I started to kill demons, while my demon took back his sword and used his other artifacts to vent his embarrassment, killing demons in endless batches without any rest.

And as such, our three weeks fight here kept raging, without being interrupted even for a single time by anything. My enemies seemed to be afraid to step forward to meet me, as not a single shadow of their monsters or demons trespassed the barrier to the nineteenth layer.

"Keep yourselves confined into layer twenty, when I finish with these demons, regrouped with my army, I will come and fry you all!" I muttered every single time I was remembered by their presence, and their fear.

We kept killing demons in huge numbers for hours, then after completely clearing a zone, we would descend, start dissecting the demons, taking out their pearls and bones, storing them all into my seemingly empty porins.

As for the demoness, after a few days of rest, she started to join the fun, with her killing ability not anything lower than my demon. In fact, I had the feeling she was stronger than this, but she didn't want to embarrass my demon further than that, so she held her powers back.

As we kept killing demons endlessly, we started to butt into many forts, scattered in this layer, under the complete control of the nobles.

Each fort was really worthy to be a fort of such a high layer; as it deserved to be called a city fortress. Each fort reigned over a large stretch of land, with many defensive towers inside, many smaller fortes, and even inner walls surrounding each small fort with a group of towers.

Each small fort had a defensive doom activated, and the whole city castle had a huge dome to defend all. The number of nobles inside was really huge, and I never doubted the presence of many mystic art players among them.

"Let your deaths be the blissful contribution for my army, let your lost medallions be all mine, making my players much stronger, and your filthy nobles weaker, Amen."

I said this short sarcastic pray each time I faced one of these large city fortresses. These huge castles and forts might seem challenging to anyone, not me.

I didn't need to waste my hunger value over them, as I handed them entirely to my demon and demoness. The real attacker here was my demoness, who used her lava ability in all her attacks, showing part of her seriousness, eroding the defensive barriers easily, killing huge numbers of players inside the barrier without any resistance at all.

As for their retaliation, either from players or from the city castle and its towers itself, all were blocked easily by my shield, making the three of us harmless, while everywhere we went was now covered into a thick layer of lava and dead burnt fleshes of these nobles.

And right here I noticed something strange. "Can your fire kill the true souls of the players?" I asked, as it was strange for the bodies of these players to remain after their deaths, and even after hours of me collecting the huge loot around this fiery graveyard.

"Sure, I can kill their true souls if I wanted to, or just let them return back to the game and resurrect there," she replied, and she didn't need to elaborate further, as I knew she was doing this for me, as her own revenge from these traitors to stand against my path.

By the end of the third week, the vanguard of my huge army appeared looming from far away, causing a huge cloud of dust. The number of balloons they were using strangely increased, and I was reminded by a simple fact; there were many forts there controlled by the nobles!

That was great, as now I had a huge pile of hundreds of thousands of medallions, and there were still many forts here to be conquered!