A Contest Of Strength I

Kies and Jesyeu watched the fight alongside the other demons. Well, Jesyeu wasn't really watching the fight at all. Instead, she was going around, looking at the faces of every single demon in the crowd. She was a lot more interested in doing that than watching the fight. Was it because she hadn't seen others of her kind before? Whatever the case was, it was sure interesting to see the other demons' reactions. They all gave her strange or confused looks, which was expected since none of them had ever seen her before.

After going around the circle of demons twice, Jesyeu ran back to Ammine and said something to her in demonic. Ammine smiled and patted the small demon on the head before going back to watching the fight. Tornon looked down at the demon with a surprised expression. "Old demonic... that's rare," he murmured to himself. The demon king shook his head and turned back to the fight. Kies also diverted his attention to the fight.

The brawl was almost over with most of the contestants already out. There were only a handful of demons left who were still fighting. Though, the fight didn't seem fair at all. Some demons would get ganged up on by the others and lose because of that. If Tornon was trying to find the strongest demon then shouldn't he have one on one fights instead of a free for all brawl?

Kies brought this up to Tornon, suggesting to him, "Wouldn't one on one duels be a better idea than having them all go at each other at once like this?"

"You're not wrong, but fair fights rarely ever happen in real battles. You have to be prepared to face multiple opponents at once as well as keeping an eye on your surroundings, knowing when to fight and when to retreat, and all those things. Strength isn't everything in a fight you know." It was as Tornon said, strength wasn't everything.

There was one demon that caught Kies' attention who was running around in circles, actively avoiding fights but whenever he found an opportunity to strike, he would go for it. The other demons didn't like what he was doing and many of them started to call temporary truces to deal with him but despite them all going after him, none of them actually managed to catch him. The demon running around would cast some sort of spell that made the ground beneath the demons that were chasing him turn black.

The black areas would restrict the movement of anyone who stepped foot on them and caused them to sink into the ground. However, the caster didn't seem to be affected by this as the demon who created the grounds ran on top of it without sinking. The other demons saw what happened to their fellow brethren and ran around the corrupted ground to reach the one demon who was responsible for all of this.

The demon casting the magic quickly ran into the center of the circle where he was safe from the demons trying to get him as they couldn't just run through his magic to reach him. However, he forgot to pay attention to the demons who were already trapped in his magic. One of them grabbed the caster's legs and pulled himself out of the ground using the other demon's body to do so, and then punched him hard in the face.

The attack on the caster interrupted his magic and caused the black ground to disappear, launching all the demons who were trapped in it up into the air a few feet. They all landed on the ground with little to no injuries and then all of them proceeded to gang up on the one demon who used the magic.

"Hurrah!" The crowd cheered as the poor demon was clobbered by everyone and then thrown out of the ring. He landed outside the ring of demons on his back. The demon lifted his head up very momentarily before letting it fall back down on the ground. He wasn't getting up from that anytime soon.

The brawl continued, becoming even crazier and bloodier than before now that the nuisance was out of the way. The remaining demons were quite literally piling on top of each other. Kies didn't know if it was even considered a fight anymore. It just looked like the demons were messing around at this point.

Tornon also thought so too and yelled at the demons to get their act together. "What the h*ll are you all doing!? This isn't some kind of party! We just lost a bunch of fighters and we also have three that have been captured by the humans, this is no time to be fooling around!"

Tornon's voice silenced the cheering of the crowd and the demons in the center all got out from the dogpile and turned to face each other again. The demons all unleashed their magic and went at each other, seriously this time.

The winner of the brawl became apparent pretty early on after they all started fighting for real. There was one demon who was practically destroying the competition. He was taking all the other demons out one after another with his chains. It took Kies a moment to realize that he had met the demon before. More than that, he had fought with him before. He was the demon that challenged him to a fight when he came to the village for the first time.

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