"You better surrender yourself while you still can! With that beacon, all of the demons from the other fortresses near this one will come and reinforce us!"
Hearing the earth demon's words, Kayn thought for a second, giving his words a proper thought.
'All the demons from the area and other fortresses would come into this place…
Then that means I…
I will have…
I will have even more cannon fodder to kill and take their souls!'
Kayn wasn't crazy enough to think that he could go up against hundreds of demons at the same time if he were truly surrounded from all directions.
If they were all just ordinary demons that couldn't use magic, then it might be doable, but he doubted that would be the case.
Even in this fortress alone, about half of the demons were able to use magic and send their attacks from afar.
If Kayn were attacked by 100 demons who used magic to attack from a distance, even he would be powerless against them.
But that would only be the case if all the demons came at the same time. But he doubted that.
The demon in the current fortress alone was barely able to follow simple commands, he was 90% sure that the other demons wouldn't be like coordinated armies that could time their arrival together and lay siege upon him using advanced military strategies.
But Kayn decided to just wait and see later how it would turn out, he didn't have any plans to do any suicide attack if the enemy turned out to be too powerful for him to handle.
For now, Kayn had another goal he wanted to achieve.
With Kayn's long silence, the earth demon thought that Kayn had decided to give up after realizing the danger he was currently in. All demons have their self-preservation above anything else, so he believed that Kayn wouldn't throw that away just because of his ego.
Alas, the earth demon was soon proven to be wrong.
"We'll see who arrives first! The reinforcement coming here or your soul entering my throat!"
Kayn then resumed throwing fortified ice spears, and the earth demon continued making walls that kept on getting destroyed the second they rose from the ground.
All the other demons, the cannon fodder, couldn't do anything as they're seeking shelter behind the earthen walls.
'This crazy guy…' The earth demon thought to himself as more and more ice spears broke through his walls and were scattered on the ground.
'We're at an impasse for now, I only need to hold out until the reinforcement arrives.' The earth demon steeled his resolve as he kept creating earth walls, not stopping even for a second, as the ice spears kept coming in.
The demons weren't afraid of playing the long game. They literally breathed mana, and their mana was nearly inexhaustible.
They will keep regenerating mana until their heart is too fatigued to do so anymore. And that would take a long time, or a very hard, continuous exertion of mana.
Unfortunately for him, though, Kayn didn't intend to play the same game.
'I may not have the ability to control dozens of spears to fly around and pierce my enemy like that psycho cheater ice demon, but I've got something else in store.'
After the last set of ice spears broke through yet another wall of earth, there were already dozens of fortified ice spears lying on the ground, and Kayn decided to try out his new spell.
Seeing Kayn stopped sending the ice spears, the earth demon still created more earth walls, as he didn't know what Kayn was planning to do.
Even when Kayn summoned different runes to cast a different spell, the earth demon couldn't do anything other than prepare himself.
And he certainly wasn't prepared for Kayn's new spell.
"Ice Spears: Explosion."
As the spell manifested, the dozens of ice spears lying on the ground trembled for a split second before exploding into millions of pieces.
The newly erected earth walls were destroyed in seconds, and even the ground beneath the ice spears was also destroyed by the explosion.
Not only that, the explosion of the ice spears also left a massive amount of ice affinity mana behind, as they began freezing the ground and everything around them.
Seeing his walls were destroyed again, the earth demon simply rebuilt them, thinking what Kayn did was useless.
But Kayn wasn't done.
After the ice spears detonated themselves by his new spell, Kayn then proceeded to cast a familiar old spell.
"Frozen Wind."
The spell wasn't actually a very strong one. It needed time as a wave of ice mana slowly invaded the opponent's body, eventually freezing them if they did nothing to the mana invading their bodies.
But just like before in the ice domain, where abundant icy mist filled the place, and almost froze Kayn completely in a matter of seconds, the spell was a dangerous one in certain conditions.
And the abundant ice mana floating in the air due to the exploding ice spears was one such condition.
Kayn aimed the frozen wind to invade the fortress, and so it did.
A wave of ice mana blew from Kayn's spell, going to the castle, carrying every last bit of ice mana that was produced by the ice spears before.
As it didn't have a solid form, it flew above the tall walls of earth the earth demon created and soon entered the fortress.
The wave of icy mana ran through the fortress, filling the hallways and rooms with dense ice mana, freezing the cannon fodder demons just a second after they were wrapped in the wave of ice.
Some stopped moving and froze in place, while the weaker ones died on the spot as they had their whole bodies frozen.
The earth demon realised what had happened and erected another set of earth walls on all four sides, protecting himself from all directions.
Most of the frozen wind still got to him as they just came from the open top side of his barricade, and his whole body started becoming rigid, and it was harder for him to move, but it was still much better than the conditions of the other demons.
Without anyone stopping him, Kayn easily flew inside the fortress, coming in from the open courtyard.
Kayn was then greeted with a marvelous sight. The remaining demons that had decided to hide inside the fortress were now all frozen in place. A thin layer of ice covered their whole body.
Without much resistance, Kayn walked around the place, swinging his claws here and there as each swing earned him a soul.
He consumed more and more souls, relying on his nose to smell out the souls of the demons that were even hidden in the rooms.
The ones who were hiding behind a closed room were spared from being frozen, but after they saw Kayn break the door, all their sense of calm was gone, and they just charged towards Kayn as a last-ditch effort.
Which made Kayn's job easier as their attack was easily predictable. With his ice claws, he could just simply make sure that they didn't dodge his attack, then the ice claws could simply sever any limbs or pierce through any bones the demons had.
Kayn ran around the castle and harvested his farm before finally going to one last soul that he had purposely left for last.
Climbing the stairs to the highest level of the fortress, Kayn kept his guard up as he approached the earth demon, the one remaining demon who was still alive inside the fortress.
And when he finally arrived at the end of the hallway leading up to the room where the earth demon was in, Kayn halted once again as he heard the words of the earth demon.
"I give up! I will join you instead and help you defeat Lord Ignavar!"