The First Legendary Beast Master

Karl let go of the banner to draw his sword, and it immediately moved to be attached to his back, fluttering over his head.

From somewhere in front of Karl, a Totem Ranked Obsession Demon with four arms and impossible speed laughed hysterically.

"When the Darklight Host goes to war, they sure do it in grand style, don't they?"

{Battle Alliance Request} Oathbreaker requests to ally his force with the Darklight Host. Duration, 1 battle.

{Battle Alliance Request Accepted}

Karl wasn't certain what sort of difference it would make, until he realized that he could see all the names of the Demon's squad in gold, as if they were fellow Guild members. If the banner hadn't already extended the buffs to them all, they would be covered now.

But the real benefit was that they no longer needed to fear friendly fire from channelled spells. If it wasn't an explosion or other indiscriminate effect, it would not hit friendly targets.

The swarm of violet skinned demons charged right into the [Apocalypse], ignoring the [Hellstorm] Vortexes and the flaming blizzard to engage the enemy mages. With their speed, the enemy mages could hardly see the Demons coming, and hundreds died in the first few seconds.

Karl moved forward to engage, while the others remained to hold the defensive position around Lotus, where a steady stream of wounded Demons from their flank was approaching.

Karl charged forward, and the air shattered with a resounding boom as he equipped the Haint Claw and Sword of Champions for an overhanded strike into a mage's skull.

Four Golems collapsed the moment the sword made contact, and the excess energy of the [Void Blast] threw a half dozen more away from Karl's approach.

A stomp sent [Gravity Slam] in a wave in front of him, clearing more targets for Karl's wrath.

But compared to the Demon beside him, his efforts were somewhat feeble.

The Totem Ranked Demon who had called himself Oathbreaker was one that Karl had faced a lesser version of before, and every strike he landed affected every enemy within fifty metres. A single blow of his sword shattered barriers through an entire army unit, allowing his subordinates to charge in and massacre under the effects of [Rampage].

But the mages weren't without their own tricks.

Waves of black energy dropped entire waves of demonic attackers, who the Necromancers raised to fight their allies. One such wave came at Karl, only to be dismissed with a wave of Cara's paw.

[Are you not going to fight?] Karl asked the medium dog sized badger still lingering on his shoulder.

[I suppose. Or at least fly up for a better view.]

[They have spell gems and treasures for spell casting.] Karl taunted her.

That got Cara moving. Not directly to attack, but [Pilfer] had a particularly high success rate on the Necromancers and mages. In the limited instance where she chose to use it instead of knocking them out and turning out their pockets, anyhow.

Karl sent [Rend] into a group of mages whose barriers were shattered by Oathbreaker, and then followed with a [Void Blast] as they struggled to defend themselves and get their barriers back up.

That cleared another group of enemies, but more were coming for them by the second, including one massive bone creature in a black robe with a scythe. It looked like the portrayal of the Grim Reaper in children's books back home, and at Totem Ranked, it was certainly no slouch in combat.

Oathbreaker smirked as he let the undead pass by, headed for Karl.

"Seriously?" Karl shouted at the constantly vanishing demon, whose primary attack skill was a teleport-based ambush.

"It's only right for champions to fight champions. Have fun!" The Demon laughed as his troops spread to leave the two alone behind the battle lines.

The undead went incorporeal as Karl hit it with a [Void Blast]. The spell crackled over its surface, burning at the robes, but even with [Rampage] stacked to its cap, it still wasn't enough to do serious damage.

A set of spirits emerged from the creature's scythe and glided toward Karl at a deceptively high speed.

Ghostfire lit them up and stopped the attack, which fed the Haint Claw.

Three swipes of the sword made a star shaped wave of void energy headed for the reaper, who cancelled them with a wave of soul energy.

Again, their battle was beginning to create a miasma of energy around the fight. Not nearly as intense as Karl's fight with the vampire had, but still unstable.

Only this time, Cara was nearby, and she had a plan. The chaotic energy seemed attracted to her, and simply flying through it would make it stick to her fur. She sparkled like the night sky as the chaos magic danced over her body, but that was only stage one.

Once she had enough of it collected, she focused and pulled it into a ball in her hands, then lobbed it at the enemy like a shining black snowball.

The ball detonated against the incorporeal undead like a snowball as well, simply shattering into dust on contact, with no visible effect. Until a half second later when a million small explosions detonated around the reaper where the chaos energy destabilized.

Karl found himself thrown from his feet, and the reaper was smoking, with parts of its body solidifying, while others were remaining ethereal. The Chaos magic had destabilized its transformation spell, and now it was stuck halfway between forms.

That didn't slow down its barrage of soul attacks, though.

Karl was forced onto the defensive, blocking the soul strikes, as the Haint Claw positively glowed with energy that was seeping into Karl.

The reaper swatted away Karl's return attacks, causing massive explosions on the ground near them, and Karl briefly recalled the collateral damage that had been caused by the battle between Leafa and the Emperor.

If they were in the air, the destruction would be much worse. But as they were on the ground, it was mostly limited to the hundred metres around them, where the deflected spells were landing.

But if you ignored the sound of explosions and the horrible shrieking that soul attacks made when they were dispersed, the battle had an eerie silence to it, with both sides maintaining their distance, where they could use larger scale attacks.