"How many?"

"About 8 of them, 2 on each side of us." Beast suddenly said as the party continued moving forward, their weapons held in their hands, ready for a battle.

"Even with my mana sensitivity, I can barely sense anything, it seems these guys have the skill or ability to completely keep their mana inside of them." Said Reign as he yawned a bit, acting like nothing is happening.

It had been about 15 minutes since the party started going up the mountain, they had a couple of encounters, but the monsters they encountered were still just higher-leveled monsters that hadn't gone through the first evolution when put up against Reign and the others, they had no chance of winning or even surviving.

"Let's just continue, when they feel confident enough and attack us, we will respond," Wolf said as the others all nodded in agreement.

They had a feeling that they were being followed for a couple of minutes, and after Beast summoned his snake and let it hide in his sleeve, he was able to use his ability and gain the snake's great sense of smell and the ability to feel vibrations from the ground.

Thanks to that, he was able to quickly sniff out the monsters that were following them, since it was so easy to sense them this way, it probably meant that whatever skill or ability they were using was not a really great stealth skill, as even the normal ones would at least minimize their presence, making it hard to sense that they were watching, not to mention the fact that their breath and movement should be incredibly faint as well.

These guys had none of that, they were able to hide well and almost completely hide their mana, making it hard for even Reign to sense anything, but other than that it seemed they could do nothing else.

None of them had seen the monsters so far, so maybe they were also invisible.

Reign and the others did just what Wolf said, they simply continued walking, looking around as they marveled at the size of the mountain and the amazing view. Their hands however never let go of their weapons as they were ready to engage the enemy at any moment.

After some 5 minutes of walking around and acting normal, a change occurred. The party suddenly stumbled upon a group of monsters in front of them, to be more exact, 5 demons.

Each of the demons had ash-gray skin, very different compared to the demons they had previously fought who all had blood-red skin. The demons also looked very similar to humans, the only difference being their sharp claws instead of fingers and the lack of a nose or ears. They also had a third eye, right in the middle of their forehead.

"Ash demons."

"That's .. fitting, to be honest," Shadow said as he scratched the back of his head.

"The ones we fought during the event are called blood demons, they have great vitality and can regenerate fast, just like we have experienced, these, on the other hand, have great defense and their sharp claws can rip apart steel with ease, the third eye on their head is useless most of the times as only the talented amongst them can use it to deliver a mighty ray of black light, the truly talented and powerful can unlock more of its power as I have heard," Laura said as she quickly got into a fighting stance, out of the 5 demons, only one was Tier I and the group should be relatively easy to deal with.

"Where are the 6 right now?" Reign asked Beast as the latter nodded at him before briefly closing his eyes.

"Two are still behind us, and three are on each of our sides." Beast said as Reign nodded before walking toward the demons who had already noticed them.

"Should we fake it?" Reign asked Wolf who smiled wildly at the question.

"Well of course we should."

The party quickly initiated a battle against the demons, Reign took on the strongest, Tier I demon as he used his two swords to meet its claws.

"Humans!" The demon growled as he stared at Reign with a gleeful smile on his face.

"We were wondering what we should eat, think that food would come to us." The demon smiled again before he used his long tongue to attempt and lick Reign's face.

"Bro, that's just gross." Reign said as he dodged the tongue and tried to cut it off, only to be surprised after the demon managed to dodge the attack.

"Hmmm, not bad." Reign commented as he continued fighting against the demon.

The others all fought against the other, weaker demons. What was weird however was the fact that even though the demons were much weaker than them, it seemed they were struggling.

That was of course the tactic the party decided to use for this battle, since the 8 monsters were still around them, they wanted to make this battle seem very close in order to lure the monsters out, when they showed themselves would be when everyone would explode with full power and destroy them all.

"You are strong for a human, but you shall die nonetheless." The demon bellowed as it used its powerful claws to swipe at Reign, who managed to swiftly dodge the attack before kicking the demon's leg from the side, making him drop down on one knee before it quickly sprung forward, dodging another slash from Reign.

Nobody was using their abilities yet as they could easily defeat these demons without them, they just made it seem like they were struggling as the demons attacked them recklessly. Reign on the other hand was clearly in the lead against the demon, but if someone was to attack him, it would definitely tip the scales.historical

And someone of course did attack.

Two shadows leaped out of the bushes nearby as they attacked Reign from the back, while the remaining 6 attacked the others, each monster attacking one of them.

[ Discharge ]

Black and white lightning burst around Reign as the two enemies screamed out in pain, even the demon, who was a bit further back wasn't spared from the powerful lightning.

In an instant, Reign appeared in front of the demon and used his sword to cut off one of its legs before stabbing the other one with a rank B sword that was lying in the inventory. Reign pushed the rank B sword deep inside the ground and left some lightning on it, making it incredibly difficult for the demon to grab it, let alone pull it out and free itself.

Reign took out his katana before charging at the two monsters that had attacked him. Each one was Tier I, but they belonged to the weakest amongst Tier I monsters, just like the demon was.

When put against Reign, those kinds of monsters were still far too weak, even though they were as strong, if not a bit stronger with normal humans at the same tier and level.

The monsters in question were weird, to say the least. They had the body of a lizard, more specifically they looked similar to komodo dragons, but their tails were wide and had many spikes on them. Their heads were also larger and completely unlike a lizard's as they looked similar to a wolf.

Their whole body was brown, but upon touching the grass, it would quickly turn green as well, letting Reign know that the monsters had camouflaging abilities. The monsters were about 3.5 meters long, the tail being about 50% of that.

[ Tier I, lvl 53 Mountain Pursuer ]

"So that's your name huh?" Reign commented before charging at them with his lightning coiling around him. The fight didn't last long, even though Reign was outnumbered, his strength was much larger compared to any of the three that attacked him.

The beginning of the fight showed the difference between their capabilities, Reign was able to immediately immobilize the demon before attacking the two monsters. The demon could talk and understand human speech, making it a valuable target for getting some intel about the mountain, as for the monsters, well, they were useless to them.

The second Wolf and the others exploded with their full strength, the monsters knew that they couldn't win, it was unfortunate that they had no way of escaping them, however. Wolf's flames quickly fried one of them while Shadow's shadow bindings squeezed the life out of another one.

Beast made his enemy look like a porcupine as numerous arrows littered its body. Tank smashed him to pieces, just like Greenie did while Laura simply used her ability to drain her opponent's life, making the monster look like it was only made of skin and bones.

The whole battle only took about 1 minute as the party unleashed devastating power against the monsters, not knowing just how powerful they might be. The result was that they went overboard as the monsters weren't a threat to them at all.

The demons on the other hand looked at them with shock before trying to escape. Since they were even weaker than the monsters, they were quickly killed by Beast as he sent a couple of arrows and claimed their lives.

"Now, let's see what this guy knows." Reign said as he crouched in front of the demon who looked at them with a ghastly face.