C39. Demon's Pride?

Ghahahahahah, I did it, I hit you, I finally hit you. Fwahahaha..."

The Gray-War troll laughed tauntingly at him in clear delusions. It was battered and had even lost an arm, but it's eyes shone with lights that reflected the madness in it's soul. Tyler felt like a vein had popped on his forehead, this entire situation was ridiculous and annoying. He thought he would only be a little irritated when suddenly he felt a surge of pure rage, hate and unstoppable wrath.

His grip on the greatsword tightened and large amount of mana flowed into the blade. Tyler wasn't sure why he was so angry right now, but the more he heard the trolls voice the more he wanted to rip the heads of every single troll on this battlefield.

"Trash!"

Tyler unconsciously spoke those words with gritted teeth. His rage rising continuously made his thoughts narrowed, he felt insulted. Normally, this should be on a similar scale as when someone was on a win streak but lost the streak to a weak opponent just because they went easy on them at the start, yet, this felt more infuriating.

A simple annoyance was all he should be feeling, yet something inside of him felt disrespected, it felt like blaspheme. A common troll dare reach out their filthy hands to touch the sun, how can he forgive such insolence, how could he not render punishment upon them.

"YOU, YOU INSIGNIFICANT, ABSOLUTE TRASH! HOW DARE YOU PIECE OF SHIT LAY YOUR FILTHY HANDS ON ME! I'LL KILL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!"

So intense was his fury that Tyler was struck speechless. With his volcanic roar came an explosion of energy from within him that rendered the entire battlefield still. If it wasn't for the quaking of knees and clattering of teeth's, someone would've mistaken the stillness for a place where time had stopped for a moment. Tyler's hazel coloured pupils glowed red and it narrowed in on his target.

With a step he appeared before the Gray-War troll and swung his blade with a skill. °Burning Strike° The already cracked blade could not handle anymore punishment and shattered upon impact with the trolls hard skin protected by the runes and glyphs on them, but the fiery red aura that escorted the attack took off the head of the troll.

Tyler let go of the broken sword and his gaze turned to face another troll. It was an elite troll who stood close to Albert's group. Everyone that met his gaze felt the life drain out of them. It was such a piercing gaze that it made them retreat. Liz took a step back as well, she wasn't sure why but she had a bad and familiar feeling about this that made her skin crawl.

They were not the targets of his rage yet they still felt fear. So how could those that received the bloodlust directly withstand it. Of course they couldn't. All three of the ordinary trolls had already collapsed and the so called elite trolls were on their knees with a face full of fear.

"Not enough."

Tyler's rage could not be calmed by one life. The hate that erupted within him threaten to drive him mad if he did nothing, he needed to release it. He saw the fear filled faces of the trolls and wasn't satisfied, he wanted them to feel something worse than fear. With that Tyler decided to use a spell.

With his right index finger pointed at the trolls, a menacing amount of greyish black aura wrapped around him as he uttered a phase to the helpless trolls that were trembling, almost at the verge of collapse.

"Know Despair."

Liz mind almost went blank, her memories of that event might been a bit hazy but she knew exactly what this aura meant. For a mage that was almost completely immune to cold a chill still ran down her spine as she hurriedly moved forward. Although she was scared, her love for her friend who might die if that spell was used now pushed her forward. She couldn't let him use it.

Tyler's gaze was fixated on a single troll, he wanted to release the rage within and the first thing he thought about was the spell that could completely drain him of energy.

"Wave of Des—"

"Ice Blades!"

Tyler's spell was interrupted when several flying swords killed off his intended target. His anger rose even more and he was about to flare up when suddenly he felt a tug on his arm, turning his head to look he saw a blonde and beautiful girl with tear filled eyes holding on to his arm.

"Please..."

His rapidly rising emotions cooled down at an even faster rate when he heard those words and saw the tears that fell down her slightly red cheeks.

"If you do that... they might die... and my friend, my friend would not survive."

Tyler was dumbstruck, why was he so angry that he was about to use a spell that could also knock him out, not to mention everyone on this battlefield. Even if he was the only one standing like last time how would he move so many people across the river.

The hate and rage within him almost seamlessly disappeared and Tyler finally regained proper cognitive functions. He sighed deeply, 'Something's wrong with me? Why do i suddenly have so much pride... Is it the so called demon's pride? Am i really no longer human, or is there a deeper meaning to this.' He pondered but could not find the answer.

Tyler then patted Liz on the head and nodded to her with a faint smile. He wiped her tears with his hand feeling a bit apologetic for making such a beautiful girl cry, although her cheeks appeared reader he figured it was the stress.

He needed to figure out what was wrong with him but now was not the time, he might be able to find some answers in the magic library but he had other things to worry about right now. For example, what to do with the rest of the trolls who were now grovelling on the ground in fear.

The entire residents of the settlement and the leader of the red scaly creatures who had managed to withstand his aura stared at him with widened eyes and apprehension. They might be both terrified and awed and even Albert and Erin looked a bit pale.

Albert was the first to recover, the fact that the terrifying pressure his master just exuded had completely disappeared without a trace had shocked him a bit. He quickly went over to Tyler's side and asked. "My lord, what do we do with the rest of these trolls? As well as the Kobolds?"

"Kobolds?"

"Yes, the red creatures."

"Oh, well, I don't really care so do whatever you want."

Tyler wasn't interested in those red creatures from the start, they definitely live deep in the forest so they had no helpful information for him. He also felt a bit tired now and didn't want to be responsible for killing the rest of the trolls. However, there was something he was a bit interested in.

He walked over to the headless corpse of the one known as Kadiz and picked up the massive weapon that had managed to hit him, the most likely cause of this mess. The troll was over 17 ft tall so it's weapon was naturally much larger than what Tyler could hold properly, however, the Hamaxe shrunk dow to what he could wield the moment he touched it.

The chains wrapped themselves around his arm and Tyler immediately didn't like the weapon anymore. It was slowly draining his energy and Tyler felt uncomfortable with how it felt. He walked back over to Albert and the others and handed the weapon over to the Ogre's chief Azar. It was an apology for destroying his greatsword.

Azar refused to accept the magic weapon at first but Tyler didn't say a word and just threw it at him. Albert soon returned back to him with startling news, he had gave the trolls an ultimatum, to submit to his master or die and they immediately choose submission, which was a strange move for gray trolls but Tyler didn't care about that.

His only problem was why, why the hell was Albert adding more baggage to his already impressive load. The bad news didn't stop there though as the leader of the so called Kobolds had also submitted, perhaps it was out of fear of Tyler of fear for their lives in the wild, Tyler didn't care. His headache just kept getting worse.

•••••••

Since the battle had ended the group quickly recovered themselves with the help of Erin. The cleaned up the battle field by storing the corpses of the trolls and kobold in the chief's storage box just like how they've stored any monster they've come across so far. Of course the magic crystal from the gray war troll was give to Tyler who now had Seven in his possession.

The group boarded their carriages and left, they were fortunate that no one had died and their group had gained the protection of 12 large trolls who rode on top of the large carriages.

Their faces was enough to scare any monster that was attracted to their location so they were able to make up for the time they spent fighting. The kobolds didn't seem to like the trolls very much, but they didn't offer much resistance when they had to share the same carriage as them.

Tyler was getting annoyed for a completely different reason. He didn't care how many creatures followed them as he was still in denial about who they were actually following. He remembered he came on this trip for a completely different reason but was now trapped in a carriage with ogres that didn't have much information.

Tyler sighed deeply, the group of ogres that had originally sat a cross from him were still there so Tyler thought he would continue from where he left off. They seemed more respectful of him now and the Hart fellow wouldn't stop smiling at him.

He was going to ask about the closest cities and towns to this region and how they were structured in case he needed to escape this predicament. He wanted to be more tactful about it though, if it sounded like he was conducting an investigation, he had no idea how they would react.

"So how did your town survived so long on its own? Did you guys make everything you needed yourselves?" He asked, Hart was a little confused, he looked like he didn't understand the sudden question, Tyler thought about adjusting his strategy but before he could, Jarret answered the question.

"We mostly just hunt around the town and defend against monster siege, we had moved with a lot of supplies thanks to the captain's spatial storage ring, it contained enough food and materials that lasted the entire town for 6 months. During that time we gathered all the cores and magic crystals we collected from the monsters."

"The captain let us borrow the storage ring anytime we needed it, so ones a year we send a team to Winged city in the north, with both the ring and the chiefs storage box, they're able to exchange the cores for money and buy a year's worth of supplies, we usually buy materials we aren't able to get around the settlement, foods, seeds and rare ore for elder Berlin, oh Berlin Bungo is our famed blacksmith who claims he had been taught by dwarfs as a kid."

"He's a very talented blacksmith and his weapons and armors are highly sort out for, although he's not very sociable, he still donates more than half of what he makes from selling his products to the town, that's why we always make sure to buy him as many rare ores and materials as he needs."

Tyler was a bit pleased by the information he had just gotten, all he needed to do was head north and he would find a city, with the fact that he was probably a demon and no one could tell otherwise, all he needed to do was be able to traverse the land all the way there, surviving any trouble that came his way and he would be able to buy supplies and even a mound, with that he had a high probability of leaving the demon continent.

This brought him to his next problem, he had no idea what currency this continent used, did they use silver and gold coins like the human continent or was it completely different, what's worse, he couldn't think of anyway to ask that question without projecting himself as someone without common sense.