Chapter 1003 - Final Battle (14)

Lucifer's aura changed again. A mere human trying to raise his chin in front of him… that wasn't something he could tolerate. While he kept making replicas leave his body as if he was some kind of virus, Lucifer made the already existing copies attack Ryan with dark spheres of energy. Just hitting him a few times wouldn't do. He had to make sure his body would be destroyed down to an atomic level since he had Chronus power.

Ryan began to move around and dodged the attacks. The replicas didn't grow strong enough as the previous original, so he could do that much. However, suddenly, a replica teleported behind him and then grabbed Ryan's back, preventing him from moving freely. Ryan used Teleport to escape the next attack, but the replica used Teleport and made his return. Ryan felt his body melting away by the attack that could destroy all types of matter. But in the end, he survived… he was just bleeding from the chest a little, but then recovered WITH Temporal Healing. However, the next attack came, and the demon on his back didn't go away.

Since he was stronger than the replicas, Ryan had an idea that it might work. He used Void World after putting the replica to sleep and then used it as a shield against the dark sphere of energy.

"You…" Lucifer glared at Ryan with vicious eyes.

While Lucifer was doing that, he exterminated another replica with the previous combination of skills. Power Shot, Angelic Arrow, and Time Skip. It was a combination that consumed a lot of mana, so Ryan needed some time to prepare.

Upon noticing that such strategies won't work against Ryan unless the replicas grow stronger faster, Lucifer decided to change his strategy. The replicas created numerous arrows made of corrupt energy, and Ryan raised his guard. While he could control all types of energy now, he could only withstand so much at the same time. He may not lose his mind, but his mind still will suffer some damage and leave him wide open.

Instead of dodging them, Ryan summoned hundreds of copies of his Diamond Crossbow and pulled the trigger when the replicas began to fire. For a while, nothing happened since Ryan had the skills to hit the corrupt arrows before they could hit him, but that didn't change anything. Lucifer still was replicating himself, and the copies were growing strong…

"What about this, Ryan?" Merlin asked. "I finally analyzed Lucifer's skills, you can now obtain the classes related to his pride."

"Man, you are noisy…" Ryan said and then sighed. "I don't need any more power ups. I will shatter this guy's pride and his existence with what I already have."

Ryan began to hold his bow more tightly than usual, and Lucifer understood that he wanted to attack him in the future again. He was making some of his replicas steal his mana all the time, but it seemed that wasn't enough…

Lucifer didn't want to do that since it would weaken his main body, but in the end, he decided to use all his mana to speed up the Replication process. With more replicas, he will be able to steal more mana and gain strength faster. So, Ryan would eventually be put in a corner.

Ryan clicked his tongue when he saw what Lucifer was doing. In the blink of an eye, the two hundred replicas became eight hundred. While none of them were real trouble to him in a one-on-one fight, the fact that they could all steal his mana was troublesome. Thanks to that massive number, his mana was being stolen even before he could do anything with it.

Without any other option, Ryan went to hand-to-hand combat. The first replica that tried to block his attack broke its arms by doing so, but four other demons attacked Ryan from behind. However, Ryan attacked them after grabbing the replicas by the arm and spun its body to crush all of them at the same time. Ryan gained some mana and coins from it, but the other replicas stole that. To make things even worse, while he had killed three demons, fifteen others had appeared.

"You can't take a break, huh, Ryan," Merlin said.

"I wish I could take a break from your nagging," Ryan said.

What was the best way to eliminate a high number of enemies? Use area of effect skills. However, given that the enemies were replicas of Lucifer, that wouldn't work. Not to mention, there was the problem of mana… Before Ryan could find a solution to that predicament, Lucifer made half of his replicas attack him with Corrupt Arrows and the other half to steal his mana. That was a really troublesome combination…

In the end, Ryan just let those hit him. Aside from the pain, Ryan also felt his head being taken by dark thoughts. These weird images made him question if he had lived or everything he saw over the past year had been an illusion. Seeing Ryan contorting himself like that made Lucifer smile from ear to ear. But then suddenly, the smile disappeared when the heads of seven copies exploded for no apparent reason. He felt the use of time magic, and he also felt Ryan recovering his mana a little bit, but he had no idea what had happened.

"Relying on numbers won't do you any good," Ryan declared while grinning from ear to ear. "You'd better prepare something at the level of a supernova, or you will be defeated much sooner than you can imagine. That would be disappointing..."

Lucifer got enraged, and several of his replicas grew stronger exponentially. It didn't seem like a taunt given how serious Ryan was when he said that, but it didn't change the fact that he stepped on Lucifer's pride once again.

When Ryan repeated the same thing a few seconds later, Lucifer understood that those hadn't been empty words.. Ryan really meant it.