Supreme Monarch

Back in the Grade 3 underground mine in the Fabelt Pass.

Fear-stricken by the wave of negative energy that assaulted them, most of the Intermediate class monsters that had managed to survive the spell, desperately tried to flee for their lives while the others whose survival instincts had been forcibly overwritten by despair, retreated closer to the walls as they tried to make themselves as small as possible while shivering in fear.

However, Tyler had no intentions of letting even a single one of them escape. It did not matter if they had already submitted to his Spell and could now be tamed. For some reason, he just could not tolerate the existence of these creatures who had dared to inflict damage on him even though he had already fixed his eardrums with the spell, Light Heal.

°Spatial Distortion°

Having a very limited range of skills and spells, he knew he needed to get creative with the ones he had. Spatial Distortion, while it was only a skill attached to a magic artifact— it had proven itself to be the most valuable skill Tyler had. After all, it was a skill at the peak of the 7th tier so therefore, it could do more than just utter or distort the rules of the space around him. It could even Distort the rules of other skills or spell, just like what he had done with the spatial movements skill when he had accidentally created what he now called the spatial teleportation skill.

While there was a lot he could learn from further experimentations and testing. What he knew about the skill at the moment was more than enough for what he was about to do.

—Spatial Lock.

What Tyler would do this time was equivalent to a barrier of sorts. A restriction forcefully placed on the space around him that nobody weaker than him would be able to break. Something like a spatial lock.

By distorting the concept of leaving this expanse and connecting the action of leaving to the that of entering, none of the Night Terrors could escape this space.

His skill spanned the entire cave but he was only focused on the space within this expanse. Still, almost like mindless creatures, the Night Terrors continuously tried to escape the expanse only to turn around each time as they found themselves back where they had started from.

They did this repeatedly, almost in a frenzy, completely foregoing the thought of attacking, and hadn't even used their skills.

Seeing the scared creatures acting like this— their previous intelligence nowhere to be seen. Tyler suddenly felt the anger slowly fade away. While his emotions had once again spiraled out of control and his slight anger had been greatly intensified by something within his soul.

He still had no intentions of sparing these monster's lives, after all, their cores would at least hold some value. The monsters also didn't seem to have paid his earlier words any heed or perhaps they just didn't understand it, or were too frightened to care, still...

"I guess there's no point in speaking to savage beasts like you huh... Fine, I'll end this in an instant."

As Tyler raised an arm to cast a spell, he suddenly felt the blood surge into his head as his body shuddered for a moment and he instantly felt a wave of piercing pain that came or originated from his left arm all the way to his chest.

Raising the sleeve of his coat to take a look at what happened, he noticed that his left arm looked deathly pale as the negative corruption that had only affect the area around his palm had now extended fully all the way to his shoulder and the left parts of his chest.

As Tyler stared at his arm with a perplexed expression on his face, he suddenly realized the problem and almost faced palmed himself.

'Damn it, how could I get so carried away with something so dangerous looming over me.'

He had just realized why this had happened, after all, he had used the wave of despair spell yet again. It was a spell that was overflowing with negative energy and in his rage, he had completely ignored the consequences of his actions. All he had wanted was to see the insolent monsters tremble in fear and yet now he had to deal with this.

Another wave of pain suddenly brought his mind back to the reality at hand and Tyler quickly used the spell Light healing to slow down the effects of the rapidly growing corruption. However, the spell didn't seem to be as effective as it once was as the corruption was only temporarily halted and the pain was only slightly reduced.

In this brief moment of hesitation, a few of the Night Terrors constantly trying to escape his spatial lock suddenly broke free of their frightened state and took the opportunity to attack their oppressor. They were after all partly undead creatures and had high resistance to negative mental attacks so this should've been expected.

The monsters flew rapidly at him and clawed at him with their bloodied talons. Tyler being slightly numbed from the corruption— although he was able to sense these creatures approaching a mile away— was still too slow to react in time and could only raise his arm in an attempt to block their attacks.

It was a good thing his current outfit was quite durable as it hadn't been torn by the barrage of attacks. His unbalanced stance made him stumble back and the monsters saw their chance to land a decisive and most likely finishing blow to their enemy.

However—

"Don't get cocky pests."

In a fit of annoyance, Tyler's eyes flashed red and the bodies of all ten Night Terrors that were attacking him slammed headfirst into the Rocky ground.

°Demon's Might°

While the monsters had been easily influenced by his skill, Tyler suddenly felt his head pound for a moment due to the sudden use of his skill. With his mind going blank, he fought desperately to keep his awareness as he was the only one amongst his group that was still conscious and could not afford to be careless now.

He promptly pulled his magic weapon 'Narsil' out of the void and opting to use the weapon's only skill. While most items would use the mana of the wielder to utilize the weapon's skills, Tyler's magic weapon 'Narsil' was a little different. It had not only been made with a magic crystal but had managed to retain about fifty percent of the energy that was contained within a Tier 5 magic crystal.

So naturally, the weapon had more than enough mana to perform the skill. However, Tyler knew that there was no such thing as a free meal in this world as Narsil only had a single skill and the skill would constantly drain the durability of the weapon the more he used it. If he was to abuse the ability, he would end up eventually destroying his weapon.

However—

There was no time for him to hesitate as the only other option he had was to use his fist and that would end up just being inefficient and could even bring down the cave upon him. Besides, he wasn't sure he could produce enough power in his current state to kill an intermediate-class monster with his bare hands.

°Rapid Burst°

With a single swing of his blade, several streaks of rapid and explosive blueish white energy tore through the air in a wave that almost seemed like the space in this world could not contain such massive and pure energy and would collapse at any given moment.

Without a doubt, the streaks of an explosive wave whose energy surpasses the limits of mortals devastated through everything in its wake as completely annihilated the monsters in its path, dispersing just before tgey hits the walls.

In less than ten seconds, more than half of the horde of Night Terrors had been completely destroyed leaving only the bodies of a few as the streaks of explosive energy had completely annihilated the bodies of most of them.

Seeing the rest of the monsters either still trying to escape or hide. Tyler decided not to use the skill again as that display had thoroughly impressed him and he now held the magic weapon in high regard and didn't want to damage it without an extremely good reason.

He took a moment to cast the Light heal spell on himself once more and also the Placate Spell. These spells didn't seem to irritate the corruption so he was quite fortunate otherwise he would be in a bind without any help.

Although, the corruption that corrodes his arm still sent pain to his brain. With the constant use of the healing spell, he could now manage the pain and move freely. Done with his preparations, Tyler instantly disappeared from the sight of all the monsters that stared at him as their heads steadily began to drop at an unnerving speed.

His clean-up job only took him a few seconds as he had cleanly and easily killed off all the confused and frightened monsters in the expanse without any further incidents.

Returning his blade to his storage space, Tyler sighed in relief. That had gone out of hand for a moment there. Luckily these Night Terrors didn't have any more unexpected skills or abilities that would've posed a problem to his current limited self.

Casting the Placate spell on himself once more, he silently reflected on his actions. The constant flares in his emotions due to the so-called Demon's pride or something much worse was a problem. He urgently needed to find a better way of dealing with his emotions as the use of the Placate spell didn't seem to be very useful in a bind.

After trying and failing to rid himself of the corruption in his left hand, Tyler gave up on it. With the use of several more light heals, the pain he felt had subsided quite a bit and he could even feel himself developing better resistance to pain.

Still, he would make a point to learn any pain resistance or nullification skills in the future. Tyler then adjusted his outfit after settling down as he stared at the hundreds of bodies scattered all over the expanse.

Truth be told, he really didn't like the look and feel of these man-faced bat creatures and wouldn't want to use their corpses for anything but he still needed a lot of manpower to defend the castle and so would not waste these valuable resources.

Tyler then brought out a small storage box from his storage ring however, as he tried to store one of the bodies in the box he discovered that the small storage space was almost full. Besides, he felt like it would be tedious to go around and store all the monsters one by one.

Taking a glance at his ring, Tyler sighed and give in to his current mental fatigue as he infused his Spatial Infinity ring with Mana, and with the help of the Spatial Distortion skill, he expanded the range and instantly stored all the bodies of the Night Terrors.

After withstanding the backlash of using a skill from the negative corruption with the aide of Placate and Light Heal, he walked over to where Nadine and the rest laid unconscious, and after casting the Placate and Light Heal spells on them as well, they were able to recover after their ears had been Heald and after only a moment, they began to wake up.

"Devil! There's a Green-eyed Devil."

Kylyra's voice echoed throughout the now empty expanse as he desperately and manically shouted at the group who were slowly waking up in confusion.

"We need to get out of here now! There's a... Green-eyed devil in this mine!"

Naturally, Tyler stared at this succubus in confusion as well, as his eyes trailed off to Nadine in a questioning gaze.

"Wait what!?"