The demon looked up, and the next moment it was instantly stomped into the ground by Maggie. Nightingale felt that the strong impact even made the earth tremble a little.
And she thought that if it was an ordinary person, the impact would have definitely smashed its bones.
"Well done, Maggie! Stomp it to death!" Leaf said, clenching her hands into fists.
"Bite it! Whip it with your tail!" Iffy was so excited that she loudly shouted.
"Awh!"
Maggie howled cheerfully. She put Agatha down and was going to beat the demon again. Just at that moment, she uncontrollably transformed from a fierce Devilbeast back into a little girl, falling to sit on the ground, at a loss to understand what happened.
"It's a Supermagic!"
Agatha yelled. She was the first to react. She lifted up an ice spike from under the ground, which she crashed into the demon and sent it flying out, breaking several trees.
Giving the demon no chance to catch a breath, she immediately caught up with it and froze its feet.
"Now!" she shouted back at Maggie.
Maggie came to her senses and drew a pistol, aiming and firing continuously at the frozen target. Nightingale bit her lips and reloaded her gun. She asked Iffy to help her up to her feet and then walked to join Maggie. The demon's Magic Barrier shined on its armor, but it soon dimmed down. The red light in its eyes was flickering on and off.
Suddenly, it roared hoarsely and threw its hand toward Agatha and sent her flying backward without even touching her. At the same time, the ice crystals around its feet melted instantly. It jumped up and staggered, wanting to escape.
"Don't let it go!" Agatha shouted, "Maggie!"
"Let me stop it!" Leaf grabbed the Sigil of God's Will from Anna's hand. She had not consumed very much magic power in the previous fight, though she was severely injured when she was forcibly pulled out from her Heart of Forest form. During their regular tests, she was able to light up four stones of the Sigil, and now, immediately after she injected all her magic power into the Sigil, a bright golden light lit up the woods once again. The demon turned around and let out a strange sound in disbelief.
The golden thunder struck the demon again.
This time, he did not survive it.
"The demon is... dead?" Nightingale asked in a weak voice.
"Only half of its armor is left behind!" Maggie answered while dragging the "enemy" back. If it was not for the delicate glyph on the edge of the armor, it would be hard to believe that this charred mass was the demon itself. Apparently, it was not as strong as they had imagined.
Lightning was found, too.
When the demon released the black waving, she was affected and lost her magic power temporarily. She had fallen from above, hit her head on a branch and fainted. Luckily, as she had not been high up in the sky and the thick branches and leaves of the trees had acted as a cushion to her fall, she was not heavily injured, except for a bump on her head.
However, she still looked upset and disappointed because she missed the fight. After making sure that everybody was alright, she said, "I'll inform Brian of the situation here and ask him to send someone to fetch you."
"You survived. That's a miracle" Agatha exclaimed.
"Yeah, I don't know how to tell His Majesty that all of us got beat up by just one demon." Nightingale heaved a sigh, enduring the pain.
"No, Nightingale. This isn't an ordinary victory. The enemy is a Supermagic!" Agatha shook her head and continued, "Maybe several Senior Witches could confront a Senior Demon, but they could never defeat a Supermagic. Only the Three Chiefs of the Union could compete with it."
"Only the Transcendents?" Leaf asked, frowning.
"Yes." Agatha confirmed and added, "The Union paid with blood for this lesson."
"What kind of ability does a Supermagic have?"
"Supermagic is just a title, instead of a certain kind of ability." Agatha explained. "Every Senior Demon has many kinds of abilities, and different from witches, demons don't have to get their abilities through awakening. Someone in the Union once witnessed a Senior Demon, who had led the enemy to attack Taquila many times, that evolved two different Magic Cyclones inside its body in merely several years. That means it gained two more abilities during that time. No one knew how it did that. The demons seem to be more naturally talented than us in manipulating the magic power.
A Supermagic doesn't refer to a demon with certain kinds of Magic Cyclones, but refers to an extremely powerful Senior Demon, who can release power to create the effects similar to those of a God's Stone."
The last sentence from Agatha made Nightingale's heart skip a beat. "You mean... it can prohibit magic power?" she asked.
"To be more accurate, it interferes with magic power." Agatha corrected her and continued, "The Supermagic is able to break through the defense of the God's Stone of Retaliation and can obstruct or diminish the magic power attacks. They can also dispel or stop magic power effects. They're really tough opponents for all the witches."
"I... don't understand." Iffy was confused and asked, "Why is that not a special ability?"
"It's not," Agatha answered. "Take Anna for example. If she was a Supermagic, her Blackfire will remain effective even under the influence of the God's Stone of Retaliation, and at the same time, the place affected by Blackfire will become an interference region. That means, the other magic power effects near the Blackfire will be wiped out unless Anna's opponent is another Supermagic."
What Agatha said immediately reminded Nightingale of the demon's lightless black hole. She recalled the whole process of the previous battle, and remembered that there was only the dim shadow around the demon when she hit on its Magic Barrier and was caught by it in the Mist. She was surprised to find that the demon attacked as if it was the Sigil of God's Will, giving out absolutely no magic power light during the fighting.
She told Agatha what she had seen through the Mist during the fight and then asked, "That's why the first strike of the Sigil of God's Will didn't kill it?"
"Probably," Agatha shrugged and said. "But I'm not sure. This is the first time for me to encounter this kind of demon and the Union left no record about using the Sigil of God's Will to fight against a Supermagic."
"So the Chiefs of the Union depended completely on their own power to defeat the Supermagic?"
"Exactly," Agatha said while nodding. "Extraordinaries are really powerful, especially when they wear the God's Stone of Retaliation. They shine like the sun in the battlefields. Wherever they go, demons would melt like the snow in the spring, and Transcendents are the center of the sun. If you could see Lord Alice in a fight, you would be overwhelmed by her power."
Hearing that, Nightingale was deep in thought, "Counting all the Chiefs of the Union, there were only three Transcendents." She then asked, "No witch of the Union had become a Supermagic before?"
"As far as I know, no," Agatha answered, "and no one will. Witches and demons have fundamental differences. Numerous demons can evolve into Mad Demons, but not many of us can become someone like Alice, no matter how hard we practice."
Maggie, who kept fiddling with the demon's armor, found a little black box from the remains of the demon and said, "Look! What's this?"
Agatha took the box and tried to open it. "It's locked."
"Let me try." Nightingale observed the square metal box through the Mist and when its silhouette was distorting, she put her fingers into it and grabbed the contents out of the box.
Several glittering stones fell out of the air.