Life Is A Battlefield
The daemon was an ugly-looking thing with four arms and two long legs. It had a hunched-over figure that forced it to use two of its hands to walk, much like a gorilla, and its skin was pitch black! It was well-built with powerful-looking muscles, but its face was empty, except for a massive, gaping mouth filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth that gleamed under the sun when it screeched at Azrael.
This was a lesser daemon, the weakest of all the monsters humanity was fighting against.
Azrael shifted into his stance and waited for the monster to make the first move. Just like he had expected, the daemon wasted no time and charged straight at him!
BOOM!
SCREECHH!!
The daemon tried to take a swipe out of Azrael's face, but the young man leaned back and rolled away to narrowly avoid the strike before dashing to the side as the demon slammed its hand into the ground!
BOOM!
Azrael twisted mid-motion, shifting his weight so that he was facing the daemon from behind. His hand blurred as he spun around and sent a slash straight for the demon's exposed back!
CLANG!
The sound of metal hitting metal echoed through the room, and Azrael felt a small grin forming on his face. This bastard was as thick-skinned as ever!
SCREECH!
Another screech echoed as the monster pulled its hand from the ground and slashed at him again, but Azrael easily backtracked before he started dodging around to avoid its blows while also waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
A monster of this caliber would normally need a team of demigods with mortal bodies of at least E Rank to be brought down. If a demigod with a mortal body of D Rank wanted to defeat it alone, it was highly advised that you should have a God Aspect in order to handle it. But Azrael was treated as an exception since the academy knew that he didn't have a God Aspect.
Azrael's absurdly high battle instincts also gave him an extra edge that no other students had, so they allowed him to train with the battleground alone, provided he had the necessary mortal body rank.
That was one of the reasons why Azrael had worked so hard over the past few years to make sure that he at least reached D Rank. This way, he wouldn't be forced to join a team every time he wanted to enter the battleground!
The daemon grabbed three large stones from the arena floor and threw them at Azrael with another loud screech.
Azrael didn't flinch. Instead, he stood his ground and slashed through all three stones with the help of his sword!
Boom!
Without hesitation, Azrael quickly dashed forward upon seeing the daemon racing toward him! The demon roared and raised its massive hand again to try and squash him, but Azrael rolled under the hit and emerged behind the beast before dashing forward to leap onto its back! The beast snarled, trying to reach its back to grab Azrael, but he was faster than it and dodged the hand before raising his sword to stab it in the side of the monster's neck!
SQUELCH!
SCREEEECHHHH!!
The beast shrieked in agony before quickly grabbing Azrael off its back and throwing him to the ground hard! He rolled with the impact and got to his feet just in time to dash to the side before the beast slammed its massive fist into the spot he had just been in!
BOOM!
The beast lunged after him, trying to hunt Azrael down with all its strength to try and kill him, and he dashed ahead and stayed out of the beast's range, waiting for it to gradually slow down.
Lesser daemons were all blind, so the only way they could hunt was with the help of sound. But that didn't mean they were weak. The lack of their eyesight had given lesser daemons such a massive boost in hearing that even the sound of a housefly farting could draw their attention!
It was impossible to try and stay hidden from them with any kind of noise around you!
And since the lesser daemons also had a healing factor that allowed them to close up most injuries in five minutes or less, the only way to kill a lesser daemon was by either crushing it completely, to the point where it wouldn't be able to heal no matter what, or by taking its head off.
To take its head off, though, you couldn't just attack it from behind because it had a strong and thick layer of armor protecting the back of its neck, and the rest of its body was as thick as metal. Unless you were a D rank and used your God Aspect to augment your strength, there was no chance you would be able to get through that thick layer.
Instead, you had to aim for the only weak spot, which was a layer of soft skin that was right above the shoulder blade of the daemon. It was a strip of skin that was very close to the mouth, and you would have to somehow get up to the neck to take the head off. But with how tall the daemons were—the shortest ones were two meters tall, and the tallest ones were close to four meters—students couldn't get there easily.
But after facing them so many times, Azrael had found a way to bypass this. The lesser daemons were blind, so they didn't have the advantage of seeing where they were going. They had to listen for the sounds in their environment to know what was in front of them, and it was easy to make them lose sight of what they were heading for if you made them angry enough!
By stabbing the daemon in the neck, Azrael had ensured that it was furious and would chase him down! And since the daemon would get slower because it was trying to heal the injury as well, Azrael knew that he didn't have to worry about it catching up to him.
The injury and the anger distracted the daemon enough that it didn't notice the large log that Azrael was running toward. Azrael jumped over the log and turned in the air before landing hard and shooting off back where he came from! And at the same time, the demon's hands hit the log, propelling it forward in a dive as it headed straight toward Azrael's blade.
A manoeuvre like this would be seen as madness by anyone else! Not only was Azrael risking getting bitten by the lesser demon if he got the angle wrong, but there was also the chance that his plan wouldn't work, and the monster would manage to get over the log without tripping.
But that was exactly the difference between Azrael and every other demigod. They had the freedom to think about other ways to kill the beast because they had the strength of their God Aspect to aid them. Taking risks and putting his life on the line was the only method Azrael had to ensure his victory, and he had destroyed all forms of mental blocks that would have normally stopped him from carrying out such a manoeuvre!
To Azrael, life itself was a battlefield, and the only way to live on a battlefield was by risking your life.
Azrael's sword cut through the area between the head and shoulder blade with pinpoint precision, and he dragged his hand forward to complete the cut as the daemon flew past him!
SLASH!