In the meantime, the earthlings were busy fighting against the aliens who were still suffering from the after-effects of Anna's attack. But they had to be careful. If they got too far from the Xyrans, the ship hanging over their heads like a guillotine would shoot them down in an instant.
The only way to ensure their survival was to stick around the Xyrans as they were surely not going to fire at their own soldiers. But this was a problem itself. Anna's attack had only placed them in a dream-like trance.
The Xyrans would break out of the trance and attack them if they were to get too close. Considering how even Ashton was forced on his backfoot while fighting the aliens, it was safe to assume, they wouldn't last against the aliens either.
This forced their hands to engage them from a sort of Goldilocks zone. If they took a step forward, the Xyrans would attack them whereas if they were to take a step backwards, the ship overhead would burn them to a crisp.
"Don't be afraid!" Sheera rallied the troops, "Our 'King' is fighting against the strongest of them all, are we his soldiers so weak that we can't even bring down the enemy's foot soldiers?"
"King?"
The crowds were confused. Why was Sheera talking about Jonathan now? Wasn't he dead already? Even if he wasn't, the king wasn't there to fight against the aliens. Did Sheera hit her head or something?
"But King Jonathan-"
"I'm not speaking about the former king, but the king who is fighting the foes while putting his life on the line," Sheera yelled at top of her lungs, "King Ashton Bismark!"
It took a moment for the people to cheer up, but thinking about having Ashton as their king, left a warm and fuzzy feeling in their hearts. They were still scared. They wouldn't be in their right minds to feel otherwise. However, they weren't scared enough to give up fighting altogether.
"As much as I would love to think like you people," Anna interrupted them, "I don't think Ashton would be interested in being a king. But before arguing over such a trivial matter, we should try saving a kingdom for him to rule over, shouldn't we?"
"Usually I wouldn't want to agree with a woman having close relations to Ashton," Verina chimed in, "But she is right. We can't let Ashton fight this battle by himself. We have to help him."
Irina wanted to say something as well but decided to talk through actions, rather than words. Sparks could be seen flying around the moment their eyes meet. Ashton had never introduced them to each other, and yet the sisters and Anna were in some kind of conflict over him.
"Good to know." Renee scoffed, "Now if you could only do something about that name of yours, people might start taking you seriously."
"Oh shut it."
"Let's go then," Anna mumbled before turning into her Demonic form.
An armour materialised around her as she turned. But unlike her enticing appearance, the armour wasn't provocative in the least.
The set of crimson armour had a squared helm with a faceguard which had been shaped like the face of a dragon. Attached to its side were two small holes, through which her horns popped out. The shoulder plates were fairly squared, wide and quite big to not hamper her hand movement.
Her upper arms were protected by pointed, layered metal rerebraces which sat nicely under the shoulder plates. Her lower arms were covered by vambraces with a skull-shaped metal ornament piece on each outer side.
The breastplate was made from many layers of squared metal sheets. It covered the entire front and backside, but the attachment straps left her underarms exposed. Meanwhile, her upper legs were covered by a skirt of many layers of metal-like sheets that barely reached below her groin.
The lower legs were protected by greaves which had several layers of some mystical metal sheets on the outer sides, while the rest of her feet were left unprotected, it was done to ensure that the armour didn't hamper her agility. All in all, the armour looked quite intimidating.
It was supposed to be a battle armour, but even that could not hide the fact that Anna was a succubus. Regardless if ladies saw her or the gents, none of them could help but gawk at her, even Irina and Verina weren't an exception to Anna's lustful aura.
***
Ashton's borrowed three minutes were over. During the time he had stabbed Beelzebub numerous times using Balmond. Any other being belonging to earth would have died ten times over, judging from the way Ashton attacked Beelzebub.
But once his stats were restored to normal, the trouble began. Ashton had been dependent on his speed to dodge and strike the Xyran at the same time, but now his speed was gone, Ashton was just like a ragdoll for Beelzebub.
'Damn it! All that effort and I only managed to drop his health by 35%?' Ashton complained, 'What kind of bullshit situation is this!?'
[Even achieving what you achieved is too much for someone like you. I can only imagine how humiliating the situation would be for Beelzebub. It might have been temporary, but still being beaten around by a kid... he must be raging on the inside.]
As much as Ashton wanted to laugh along with Astaroth, the situation was bad... really bad. There wasn't much he could do now. Most of his skills were on cooldown. However, there was a bright side.
Thanks to [Aggravate], Beelzebub was losing 1% of his HP every minute. If Ashton completely gave up on attacking him, it would take about 65 minutes for the Xyran to die. The only problem was, that Ashton didn't know if he could even survive for 65 seconds, let alone 65 minutes against Beelzebub.
"The situation is infuriating for me." Beelzebub sighed as he appeared before Ashton, "But it also showed me something important. The fact that there are irregular beings like you wasting their talents on useless planets like earth."
He continued, "So here's my offer. Join me and live, or don't and die."
"Yeah, thanks for the offer. But serving under someone isn't something I could get used-"
"Your choice..." Beelzebub shrugged his shoulders before grabbing Ashton's head and throwing him away from there like a ragdoll.
They took their fight somewhere else. Ashton tried to fight back, but his efforts were in vain. He was being beaten black and blue. Even the term 'manhandling' did not seem to justice to what was happening to Ashton.
[COME ON! LET ME HANDLE HIM!]
Ashton could hear Astaroth's voice, but couldn't do anything about it. ill now, it felt like he had a fighting chance against the Xyran, but now Ashton knew it was nothing more than a pipe dream. Beelzebub wasn't fighting him seriously from the beginning and Ashton foolishly thought that was the extent of the Alien's strength.
"YOU. SHOULD. HAVE. JUST. SURRENDERED."
Beelzebub shouted every time he punched Ashton. Ironically, Ashton was actually thinking about taking his offer now. He had no personal enmity or grudge with the Xyrans. Whatever he had learned about them was from Astaroth and Lucifer.
He was believing every word they said. But were they even speaking the truth? After all, if someone would have tried to kill him, it wasn't like he would speak anything good about them, even if they were good... to an extent.
Could it be that Astaroth and Lucifer were doing the same?
Countless thoughts like this one were running rampant through his mind as Beelzebub kept thrashing him over and over. The [Regeneration] ability kicked in, but the rate at which Beelzebub was doing damage to him was much faster than the rate of recovery.
'Maybe this is... it.' Ashton mumbled as his vision got blurry as his.
However, just as Beelzebub was about to land the finishing blow, Ashton saw an enormous blinding electric beam descending on them. Just like the one Xyrans had used to kill thousands of his people.
Maybe Beelzebub was taking too long to end him, so the Xyrans decided to take him out along with their leader. Beelzebub seemed to have realised what was going on. He stopped hitting Ashton and wanted to escape. However, Ashton summoned whatever little bit of strength he had left and wrapped his limbs around the Xyran.
"Where... do you think... you're going?" Ashton spoke between choking on his own blood.
"Let me-"
Beelzebub's voice got drowned in the loud fuzzy of the plasma beam. Ashton assumed he would feel pain, but when he didn't he chalked it up to his pain tolerance being high enough to negate it. But when he realised his HP wasn't going down, he realised something was up.
Without Beelzebub's continuous attacks, his HP was actually recovering. Soon his vision cleared up a bit and he found himself in the centre of a small crater. Beelzebub was there as well, but at some distance.
"What's happening?" He mumbled as he struggled to get back to his feet.
"Need a hand?" A cheerful voice asked.
"Thanks-" Ashton took the hand without looking up, but when he did, he immediately jumped back, "You! You're the one-"
"The one who bit you. Yeah, I know." Dracula yawned.
"Now is not the time for chit chat folks." A hoarse voice suggested, "We still need to take care of the Xyran bastard."
"Oi, Frank, why you gotta take the fun out of everything man!" Dracula pouted, "You're becoming more and more like this were-turd Lycaon."
At the same time, Ashton felt a furry hand on his shoulders. A hand of a transformed werewolf, "You did good kid. Better than anyone of us had expected. We'll chat later in detail. But or now, you should back away. Because things are about to get quite... messy here."
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