Chapter 160: Ch 160 : Hunt the Hunters

"Greetings to you all," the two demigods of Reflection said in unison, their voices filled with a palpable sense of relief and enthusiasm. They could feel the immense, suffocating auras of the five newcomers and knew the tide had turned."Greetings," the demigods of Sunny replied, their voices a calm chorus of purpose.

"It’s time for us to hunt the hunters," Loki declared with a wicked grin. In a flicker of movement, his form dissolved, not into shadow, but into something impossibly small.

He became a single, harmless microbe, shooting off into the forest and vanishing completely, a patient assassin waiting for the play to begin.

Nova stepped forward, her humanoid form radiating an impatient power. She took a deep breath and let out a roar.

The sound was not merely a roar; it was a spatial bomb. The air itself warped and buckled, and three distinct points in the landscape; a rock, a tree, and a patch of empty air; flickered as the demons’ invisibility spells were shattered by the sheer force of the sonic and spatial disruption.

"Found three of them," she announced, her eyes locking onto the most powerful of the three auras.

Her body began to expand, her humanoid form melting away as she grew to an insurmountable size. In seconds, a colossal black dragon, whose single claw was now larger than a giant, dominated the sky.

"Shenlong, Umbra, you take the one on the left," she commanded through their mental link. She then turned to Reflection’s two demigods. "You two handle the one on the right. Loki will handle any runners." With the orders given, she shot like a black comet towards her chosen target.

"We have been caught, brothers! Let’s have some fun!" one of the demon demigods, a hulking creature of blood and sinew, roared as he became visible.

He never got to finish his sentence. A punch, packed with a force akin to an exploding star, connected with his face.

The world dissolved into a blur of pain as his body was sent hurtling backward, smashing through an entire mountain range and carving a trench hundreds of thousands of miles long in the ground.

"You talk too much," Nova’s voice echoed in his ringing ears as she appeared above him, her expression one of cold disdain. "And your strength is just... meh."

"Who... hit me...?" the demon groaned, his vision swimming. Before he could complete his thought, another punch, just as powerful as the first, landed squarely on his already swollen face.

"Stop hitting me!" he screamed, a desperate fury replacing his shock. "BLOOD REVERSAL!"

Nova felt a horrifying sensation. Her own blood rebelled against her. Half of it tried to flow to her heart, while the other half tried to flow away, creating a catastrophic pressure jam in her veins.

Her vision blurred, a wave of dizziness threatening to overwhelm her.

But she was Nova, the Guardian of Veridia. With a roar of pure defiance, she slammed her will down upon her own body. ’Move,’ she commanded, and her muscles, fueled by raw mana, began to contract and relax, becoming a second heart, forcing her blood back into its proper rhythm.

"Petty tricks," she hissed, her eyes blazing with fury. She descended upon the stunned demon, her focus now split between manually pumping her own blood and methodically pumping her fists into the demon’s face.

On the other side of the battlefield, the second demon faced a far more insidious foe. A shadowy tendril wrapped around Shenlong, and Umbra’s voice echoed in his mind, [Buffs active].

He felt his physical strength, magical power, and defensive capabilities all surge to a new level. The real body of Umbra then dissolved into the surrounding shadows, her presence a constant, paranoid whisper in the back of the demon’s mind. Where will she strike from?

"Imprison," Shenlong’s voice was calm and absolute. A shimmering rope, woven from the pure, solidified hope of billions of souls, materialized and wrapped around the demon, its very nature anathema to the creature of malice.

"Fire," Shenlong said. A holy, cleansing flame erupted from the rope, engulfing the demon. The demon roared, unleashing a wave of demonic energy that shattered the bonds of hope.

But before he could even take a breath, Shenlong spoke again. "Imprison." The rope of hope reappeared, stronger this time. "Fire." The flames returned, hotter.

The demon was trapped in a relentless, two-step cycle of absolute despair.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of being bound and burned, his struggles ceased. His body collapsed into a pile of smoldering ash.

"Wind," Shenlong said one last time, and a gentle breeze blew the last remnants of the demon away.

The third fight was a textbook display of teamwork. Reflection’s two demigods, one a master of fire and the other of water, moved in perfect synergy.

The fire-wielder created walls of flame to trap the demon, and the water-wielder turned the intense heat into devastating steam explosions.

The demon, the weakest of the three, was completely outmatched, unable to land a single blow.

With the guardians defeated, Nova flew to the pedestal where the Pill of Life rested. She reached out and gently touched the shimmering pill. Thɪs chapter is updated by ????????????????????✶????????????????✶????????????

The moment her claw made contact, the invisible restriction that had protected it from demons vanished.

And in that same instant, the pill itself disappeared from her grasp, replaced by a shimmering, worthless mirage.

"Hehe, my illusions are the best," a new voice cackled from the shadows. A fourth, sneaky demon, the true guardian of the trap, materialized nearby, holding the real pill.

He was about to make his escape, but his triumphant smirk froze on his face. He felt a sudden, cold line across his neck, and then a strange, floating sensation as his head, cleanly severed from his shoulders, slid from his body.

Behind the collapsing corpse, Loki appeared as if he had been there all along, casually wiping a single drop of demonic blood from his dagger. "Don’t celebrate so soon, my friend," he said to the dead demon.

"Take the pill from him first," Nova’s voice commanded from above. She had known about the fourth demon all along, her senses far too powerful to be fooled by a simple illusion.

But an elder sister knows when to let her little brother have his moment of glory.

"Yes, Sister," Loki replied. He retrieved the pill from the dead demon’s hand. He then summoned an orb of pure water and began scrubbing it. Then he blasted it with fire to sterilize it. Then with wind to dry it. He repeated the process five times until he was satisfied.

"Here, Sister," he said, presenting the gleaming pill with the pride of a master jeweler. "Now it is clean."