Holias flew upwards, and the clouds parted in the wake of the momentum his body carried.

As he reached high above the ground, his gaze landed on the birds escaping away from him, and he raised his hand as if to catch them.

The shadows flowing from his body twisted, and he plummeted towards the ground.

Bael watched him descend with a staggering speed that would surely end him, or so he thought.

As Holias was a few meters from crashing into the hard ground, shadows spread outwards into what appeared like gigantic black feather wings.

He flapped his wings like the birds, but he was unable to replicate their flight and crashed into the ground, though most of the momentum had already been killed by the wings.

"So your shadows can imitate anything..." Bael said as he appeared before him and crashed his blazing fists forward.

Holias also lifted his fists, and black flames appeared around them as he swung back at Bael.

Their fists met — Holias’s arm exploded into pieces only for the shadows to reforge it the next moment.

Each attack produced a loud boom that echoed throughout the battlefield, causing all of Leonara’s nebulae to appear.

Selva Thorne and the other nebulae appeared beside Melvin, and Selva asked, "What the hell is going on? Who are those two?"

Melvin shook his head. "I do not know... They came out of nowhere."

"I know one of them," David, who had come with them, mumbled while staring at Bael.

The nebulae turned their gaze to him and asked in a voice that sounded desperate for answers, "Who is he?"

David searched the soldiers who were watching the otherworldly battle and said, "He is a guard of two noble heirs."

Confusion spread across all of them. They glanced at Bael, who was tearing apart the very battlefield with his strikes, and mumbled somberly, "That is a guard...?"

They stared at the two with grim expressions. Even though they had the power to defeat Holias, they were sure they couldn’t manhandle him like this supposed guard.

No matter how they looked, he appeared more like a demigod or... a demon.

As the two of them fought, Holias began to learn, and the shadows around him turned stronger, which caused Bael to raise his brows.

Shadows were weak to light, and Bael’s fists were covered in bright golden aura flames, yet nothing was happening to him.

"It appears you do not have the same weakness as shadow soldiers..." Bael concluded as the aura solidified into gauntlets, and he punched through his chest.

Holias’s chest exploded backwards, and a gaping hole appeared in it which was soon refilled by the shadows.

"What a cockroach," Bael mumbled.

’My attacks are useless,’ he believed, as no matter how much he crumbled Holias, the shadows never stopped; it was as if they were endless.

’Got to change the approach.’

"Do not... die..." Holias drove his fist at Bael’s head.

Bael jumped back and spun his leg while forming hand signs.

As he finished his hand signs, flames erupted around the two of them, and seeing Holias unbothered, he noted, ’Flames aren’t the weakness either.’

For the next few minutes, he used all of his ether arts on it, but no matter what element it was, none could affect Holias.

At the end, he took out the sword he had stored in his inventory before attacking Holias, cloaked it with golden flames, and swung it at him.

For the first time, Holias dodged the attack, and Bael raised an eyebrow. ’Why did he... don’t tell me only aura swords can kill it?’ 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

No matter how he looked at it, that didn’t make sense. Bael had used attacks with much more strength and aura behind him, yet what feared him was a simple aura sword.

"It doesn’t matter," he whispered. His eyes glowed, and he sliced as he traced Holias’s weak points.

A dark sword of shadows appeared in Holias’s hand, and as he thrust it, the very shadows attacked Bael.

Spikes and blades rose from below his feet, and he side-stepped to dodge them. Then Holias’s fist crashed into his abdomen and hurled him out of the flame wall around them.

Bael rolled onto the ground, and Holias dashed after him.

As Holias neared, Bael shot to his feet and swung his sword upwards, severing his left hand.

The shadowy hand fell and exploded into dark wisps that crawled into Holias’s body. His hand reappeared the next moment, but there was a malformation in it.

The fingers weren’t correct: some were too small, and some were too big.

"Huh. So that’s why you fear the aura sword," Bael nodded and slashed forward.

"I fear swords!" Holias responded with his own attacks, and unlike before, Bael stopped dodging them because he no longer needed to.

The spikes pierced his feet and his abdomen. The blades cut through his leg, but the next instant, golden threads wiggled out of his wounds and healed him.

Bael didn’t even feel a shred of pain as he had already adapted to such mundane harms.

With each of his strikes, more deformities appeared on Holias’s body, and after just a few minutes of him fighting like a madman, Holias’s body became a mangled mess that had multiple short and long arms, each holding a dark sword; his left leg had turned into tentacles, and his lower jaw had crooked blades protruding out of it.

The ground around them had already turned flat and full of fissures from the impact of their strikes.

’Time to end this.’ Golden aura solidified around Bael’s right foot as he lifted it and crashed it into the center of the shadow commander’s chest.

The shadow commander flew backwards and slammed into the ground some distance away from the four nebulae who were watching everything with horrified expressions.

He walked towards the mangled monster, gazed at the duke’s nebulae, and said, "Go and inform your master that I, Bael Leonara, have come for him."

"I won... Kill... me..." The monster tried to stand, but before it could, Bael lifted his sword above his head, and heavy golden flames appeared over its blade.

The blade shone like a miniature sun as he brought it down onto the monster, killing it instantly.

A crack appeared in the ground, and he turned back towards Leonara’s army.

As he walked, the crack widened, and a vast fissure parted the land into two.

"Dare step past it, otherwise I’ll come for you," he declared.