Enough lightning means endless thunder phantoms. As long as I stay hidden among them, there's no way he can kill them all.
Gail cut open his palm. Blood Ice Golem activated. Passive skill Reclaim activated.
"I'm leaving these ones in your care."
A massive ice golem took up its position beside Silvara and the others.
From the very first moment he appeared, I should have realized. He has always been concerned with human problems, and his understanding of my skills, and of Roland, goes far beyond what either of us knows about our own abilities. He is not a demon at all.
A storm doesn't just bring lightning. It brings endless water.
The next second, more ice golems appeared.
"And every single one of your stats falls below mine. If there are this many of me, what are you going to do about it?"
The two sets of clones faced off against each other in an instant. Roland's fury grew. "Why aren't you making a move yourself?"
The next second, Gail moved. Celestial demon shift activated. The sword transformed into a knuckle duster and came crashing down on one of Roland's phantoms.
"I'll be ending this war soon."
Roland's original body knew it could not go head to head with him. He had no chance of winning, but he had at least figured out the rough shape of Gail's abilities. Extreme regeneration, but he still lost HP when hit. He was not truly unkillable.
Ua was an SSS tier weapon capable of storing energy, with the ability to bypass all defense. If he could charge it to full, a one-hit kill was possible. Ua was currently bound to him and would follow the original body. He just needed to stall for time.
But the next second, an ice golem appeared behind him. The ice blade drove straight through his chest. Roland nearly lost control of himself entirely. Lightning surged across his body as his original consciousness shifted into another phantom.
"I can shift between phantoms in an instant. You will never kill me."
Ragnar saw a glimmer of hope. So that's it. The commander keeps generating phantoms using the lightning, and he shifts between them freely. As long as he never shows himself, there's no way to kill him. And the ice golems have a time limit. No matter how much HP he has, he can't create them forever.
"You're going to lose to the commander. You can never kill him."
Gail wrapped his hands around one phantom's throat. He tightened his grip slowly. "Who said anything about killing him? I said every crime he committed deserves a slow death."
Roland felt a chill run through him. He thought back to the sick things he had done as a child. Don't you dare just die on me. If you die, I've got nothing left to play with.
Funny how that works. Now he's the small animal on the wall.
"Every phantom is a part of you. Every bit of pain they feel gets passed on to you. Isn't that right?"
Roland was seized with dread. How does he know that?
"Staging a coup, assaulting women, abusing prisoners, murdering your own men. Not a single one of those is settled by your death."
The words had barely landed before the phantom's head was torn off. Roland's original body let out a scream of agony before he could even react. Another phantom was torn in two by an ice golem. Then another was cut clean in half.
"You should feel exactly what the people you hurt felt."
Ragnar finally caught on. Gail had never intended to kill Roland outright. He just wanted to make him suffer.
Veins bulged across Roland's forehead as a string of curses tore out of him. "Hold on. Hold on. I'm pouring everything I have into it. It'll be fully charged soon. It'll be fully charged soon."
The thunder drake had once been playing happily in the forest when it suddenly realized someone was trying to capture it.
"Did you see that thunder drake just now? What a shame it got away."
Little did they know the thunder drake was watching them from the trees. As if you could catch me.
But the moment it turned around, its heart nearly leapt out of its chest. A young Gail was sitting right there in the branches, eating chips. The thunder drake bared its teeth, ready to attack. Gail acted like he hadn't even noticed and kept reaching into his bag of chips. Then he held some out.
"Want some?"
The thunder drake had absolutely no idea how to respond.
"Lately, the humans and demons have been fighting over magic crystals again, and a lot of people can't even eat."
For someone so young, he already carried the weight of the world in his heart. "I want the war to end, too."
And just like that, a boy and a dragon became friends.
Roland's face was twisted with desperation. "This is an SSS tier weapon. One strike is all it takes."
He watched the lightning wrapping around the blade and broke into wild laughter. "With this one strike, the entire demon race will cease to exist."
Gail stood across from him in complete stillness. The two of them faced each other. The thunder drake watched in silence beside them.
Then Gail spread his five fingers wide. "Ua. Return."
In that moment, he looked absolutely unstoppable. Roland still hadn't grasped what was happening and kept laughing wildly. But the next second, the weapon in his hands began to fall apart.
Roland was completely blindsided. As the hilt came to rest in Gail's hand, something in Gail's presence shifted to another level entirely.
"Returning what belongs to its owner."
Roland was dumbstruck. "How? How is that possible? I already bound it to myself."
"Thank you for charging Ua to full for me."
Then Gail picked up Ua and walked slowly toward Roland. He raised his right hand slowly. Ua's dark blade surged. With a single light strike, Roland's phantoms were swept up like leaves in a tornado, coming apart one by one. With a thunderous boom, a massive sphere of energy appeared. Before long, the clouds broke apart and the sky began to clear.
I knew it. It's you.
The thunder drake lowered its head. You're back.
This was its true companion, Gail. The two figures slowly merged into one.
Roland's phantoms each wore different expressions, but they all shared one thing. They faded. The storm clouds and lightning were gone.
Roland knelt inside the ring of ice golems, his heart full of despair and confusion. No matter how hard he tried, he could not understand how everything had flipped so completely.
Gail looked down at him. "This war is over."
Then the thunder drake let out an agonized roar. The device on its neck was forcing it under control. It writhed in pain, but Roland was threatening it to block Gail.
Gail's eyes went cold. Jeta had grown up alongside him. A boy and a dragon sharing years of good times together. He had even made it fetch things like a dog, and Jeta had shaken its head so hard it looked like a rattle. In the end, he had given in. Jeta was his best friend after all. But Jeta had been a little annoyed about the whole fetch thing.
Back in the present.
"There's no more lightning, and your energy is nearly gone. You have nowhere left to run."
Roland wasn't about to accept this. "No. Thunder drake's speed is close to ten thousand. You can't catch us."
He clutched the remote detonator, ready to press it at any moment. "Fly me out of here or I'll blow you apart."