Chapter 597: Trap

Salor the Berserk Slaughter, a famous personage in many dimensions… At least back seven years ago, he could be considered one of the highest-tier powerful existences in the Chaos Abyss as well.

He wasn’t a Devil Lord. However, his reputation with devils had actually exceeded that of the Devil Lords since the latter rarely appeared. Salor had participated in two previous eternal Holy Wars, and was the commanding general on the bloodiest frontlines. If you wrote down the names of all powerful individuals that he had killed before, the list would probably be even thicker than a phone book.

However, the devils had now greatly weakened as a species. The fragile balance between demons and devils had been broken. Salor went from being a leading frontline general to nothing more than a vagabond in a single night. It could be said that he had fallen low.

Other devils had always viewed him as a slaughtering machine without a brain. When he heard news of the devils’ loss on the battlefield, he had gone berserk, and tore apart numerous Inferno Demons in front of his subordinates to vent… and then, he was exiled for the crime of “killing allies”.

Obviously, such a crime was ridiculous to pin upon him. However, only Salor knew that he had voluntarily requested to give up the status and position of a general commanding on the frontlines.

“…This war will be completely different from all previous wars. The Chaos Abyss has lost its master. All Chaos Gods and Demon Lords no longer have any restrictions upon them. It’s only a matter of time before a full-scale war breaks out between demons and devils. Although it’s inconceivable, the Chaos Abyss is indeed establishing a new order. That person is actually organizing the Demon Lords. And when the Demon Lords are finished organizing, if I’m a devil with such an important position… I’ll still be able to retreat if I leave now, but I won’t be able to stay alive if I’m too late!”

That was right. Even though Salor was scarily deformed, spoke coarsely with no apparent logic, and often vented his anger on others, which all made him seem like a classical musclehead without a brain, he had managed to survive for so long already. Not only that, he was the general commanding a place as important as the frontline. It was impossible for him to actually be an idiot with no brains.

Although everyone believed he was just like a demon in devil skin, this meant that either something was wrong with the Chaos Abyss itself, or that he had given others a false impression of himself… Since the will of the Chaos Abyss was never wrong, this meant that Salor had successfully fooled everyone!

“Just because I’m ugly, does that mean I can’t enjoy what’s beautiful? Just because I’m deformed, does this mean my heart and mind must also be twisted? Just because I’m muscular, does this mean I must be brainless?”

Very few people knew that not only was Salor an expert in strategy and warfare, he was also an incredibly skilled artist. He was also a top-level grandmaster sculptor and musician. He even had his own theories on finance and politics. It was his deep search for the foundational nature of things that helped him gain a special understanding and control over the Concepts of Mass and Existence.

Salor, this ugly and deformed devil, was the one and only devil that Sarwenstan, the Lord of Tyranny, truly trusted. Salor was also Sarwenstan’s direct descendant!

As for why Salor was entrusted with the very important mission to capture Roland, even Lasnina, who was nominally in charge, only knew the official reason. Only Salor, the sole relative of Sarwenstan, knew the true goal and reason.

Even though two Devil Lords had perished recently, Salor still had no intentions of giving up. He still had a trump card. As long as he could find Roland, and successfully find a chance to ambush him, he would definitely be able to…

“Hey, Salor, what are you thinking about? How come you’re concentrating so hard?”

“…I’m thinking about how to catch Roland…”

Someone greeted Salor in a familiar and friendly voice as if they were old neighbors. Salor answered instinctively, but he immediately realized whom this voice belonged to. Salor opened his mouth wide and stared with disbelief at the person before him.

“Roland! You, why are you here!?”

Sitting at a streetside table in front of a store was someone who seemed to be on vacation. This person with a coffee and newspaper was exactly Roland, whom Salor had recently been trying to hunt down.

However, I frowned when I heard Salor’s words. This meant he wasn’t in this city because he had followed me? He hadn’t followed me here, so he had to have other reasons to come here…

*Boom!*

Yet, I no longer had any time to think about things. The already large devil before me expanded even more as his sawtoothed axe viciously slammed into the ground. An entire restaurant on the street was smashed into a deep pit.

Salor’s gnome-like arm waved, causing countless amounts of dirt to go against the laws of gravity and fly into the sky. The entire location that we battled at now appeared as if a giant had dug around here and emptied most of it out.

Whenever Salor fought in battle, he would be a pure slaughtering machine. Clichés like an antagonist dying due to talking too much would never happen to a true military devil general.

Salor’s unique ability to control mass was already well known through all the dimensions. Any target that he hit would enjoy being exploded from within into several pieces. Anyone who knew about his abilities would never be so foolish to have a direct melee battle against him. Yet today, Salor saw something that truly shocked him.

His war axe that nobody ever dared to try and block had now been blocked by a thin ice shield!

The enemy he faced had clearly been unarmed just a moment ago. But now, Roland was wearing some half-translucent ice armor.

Before Salor could recover from his astonishment, several dozen ice blades floated up in the sky. After whirling a bit to amass greater force, they directly slashed at him.

One, two, three, and more. The sharp ice blades continuously assaulted him.

I took a deep breath. It seemed that my trump card I personally prepared against Salor was indeed effective.

Unlike hot-blooded protagonists that could limitlessly increase their combat strength simply through shouting mysterious slogans, I firmly believed that success or failure in battle was mostly depending on how much you had prepared beforehand. This was a mage’s typical way of viewing battles.

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That was also how it went for me against Lasnina. The first time that I fought her, I was gathering information. The second time, I would naturally have a much greater chance at victory. And when I knew that Salor was highly likely to become our enemy, I naturally made preparations against his incredibly dangerous ability.

“I never thought that my Absolute Zero ice armor would be used again…”

Salor’s ability was just as famous as it was unreasonable. He could forcefully modify the mass of any object that he touched. This was obviously a Concept-level attack that could change the very laws of physics, invalidating any enemy’s magical or physical resistance. His enemies would forever be taken apart by their own flesh and blood exploding from within. This was why Salor was renowned as undefeatable in melee.

I found it impossible to comprehend how he obtained such a cheat-like ability that seemed like an illegal game hack ability. Neither did I know where he’d got such an overly powerful special ability from. However, I could still extrapolate the theories behind his ability and defend against it.

I theorized that he was capable of modifying the physical status and even existence of any object that he touched. However, he would likely need to first understand the existence of that object. For instance, he would have to know whether this object was iron, steel, or ice before activating his ability and changing its very nature… So, if he touched something that wasn’t even from Eich, my “Coldest Ice” that also broke the laws of physics, would he be able to modify it?

“This should be impossible. His ability is basically like a game mod for cheating. He can edit the foundational data of this game (the world), but this doesn’t mean that he will have the power to edit data from other games (other worlds). And even if he’s truly capable of this, he will still need enough time and attempts to adjust his own ability.”

And now, what happened before me proved that my theory had been correct. The ice armor I had stored away in my dimensional bag had indeed defended against Salor’s mass-based attacks.

Of course, I could only grit my teeth and bear the fact that I would suffer severe frostbite after using this armor. It would be quite worth it to kill off a powerful existence in exchange for some frostbite.

Although the storm of ice shards I sent at Salor seemed vicious, I was only tossing shards of ice that he would be unable to control at him. Considering how tough-skinned devils and demons could be, I had zero hope of being able to kill him with this.

Salor indeed stood up right away with no signs of injury. As expected, his true power wasn’t limited to only his unique special ability.

But even though he was uninjured, he had a panicky expression. It seemed that this was the first time he had met an opponent who was completely not scared of his special ability.

“You… just how did you do this?”

“Ha, just take a guess.”

I would never be stupid enough to explain my own abilities to an enemy. Icy flames started spreading on my ice sword and ice armor. Since I was already destined to suffer from frostbite, there was no need for me to hold back with my double-edged weapon of the Coldest Flames.

Their pale white flames enveloped my ice armor, which also caused Salor to instinctively retreat. His devil combat instinct told him that if he touched those flames, he would never wake up again.

“As expected of that person’s brother. It seems that the rumors were real…”

The deformed devil general wasn’t violently angry like he always was. Instead, he took a deep glance at me as if he wanted to remember what I looked like. And then… he turned around and ran!

Correct, the devils’ glorious frontline general, this devil who had never been defeated before, unhesitatingly turned around and ran.

The price for his extremely powerful ability was that he had zero ranged attacking capabilities. Was he supposed to wait around for death against an opponent that countered him so much?

As a long-time general who fought on the frontlines, something like a warrior’s honor was nothing more than a joke to him. Not only had Salor run away before from powerful enemies he couldn’t defeat, he had even jumped into piles of corpses and faked his death in order to escape before.

However, I laughed out loud as I shouted a prearranged code…

“Tank’s resistance and defense is good enough, so we should take things seriously and defeat this boss! Wait three seconds for attracting aggro before attacking, and don’t just go through the motions! The person with the lowest damage output won’t receive any payment!”

The next instant, a female fallen angel knight appeared in front of the escaping Salor. She held an ice shield and wore ice armor that looked rather familiar.

And then, a centaur wearing all ice armor jumped out from a rooftop. He was actually using an ice bow and ice sword…

An ice-armor-wearing Goddess of Wealth priest jumped out from a corner…

The devil general glared at me with hatred in his eyes. He sensed that he had entered a death trap prepared directly for him.

“…Would you believe me if I said this was a coincidence? Isn’t it quite normal to carry some extra sets of ice armor? You’re still glaring at me? If you glare at me any more, I’ll eat you!”

I kept acting ridiculous, but my secret commands to the other adventurers were all serious. This was no time to act relaxed, as a powerful devil could easily take others down along with him even at the end.

“Don’t get close to him. Even with the ice armor, he can easily tear you all apart. He has no ranged attack capabilities. We’ll slowly use ice arrows and ice spears to bleed and kite him to death!”

Harloys suddenly transmitted Adam’s angry shouts to me at this time. His party should have ambushed Donatis at the exact same time, which meant that they had only fought for two minutes…

“The target is too tough! It’s too dangerous! It’s time for tactical retreat… What I mean is we’re running away!”