The Paladin in the Abyss
Chapter 817 - 828: Turnaround Victory

Banishment Slash, a Fifth Circle protection spell, infuses the caster’s weapon attack with extraordinary supernatural force and banishes the target. If the target is not a native of the current plane, it will be sent back to its home plane; if the target is a native of the current plane or is not a planar creature, it will be teleported to a harmless demiplane and rendered incapacitated. When the caster ends their spell concentration or the spell’s duration reaches its one-minute limit, the banished target will be teleported back and reappear at its previous location.

A similar spell in the Fourth Circle is Banishment, which has nearly the same effect as Banishment Slash, with the difference in activation method—Banishment requires a standard casting action and a material object that the target detests as casting material; whereas Banishment Slash requires neither a casting action nor a material object, only a short incantation to cast.

More importantly, creatures with high charisma or innate magical resistance can easily resist the effects of Banishment, while Banishment Slash triggers upon a weapon hit. Although it may still fail if the target has abundant life force, it inherently deals substantial force field damage, making it far more reliable than Banishment.

Though Lancelot learned a lot of magical knowledge from Kalalin and Tijana, he had never truly seen this spell in battle before, thus was not immediately clear what had happened, initially thinking it was some new trick orchestrated by the Medusa manipulating the golem. However, upon Tanya’s prompt, Lancelot quickly realized that the next minute would be the key to reversing the battle’s outcome.

It might not even take a full minute.

Currently, there were two animated treehouses controlled by witches left on the battlefield, along with four Meizeros Demons wielding tridents. One of the treehouses had been almost crippled by the Human Knight’s slashes earlier, while the other remained relatively unscathed from its skirmish with the dwarves, still had considerable combat power; the four Meizeros Demons were bearing varied degrees of injuries, one of their companions having been killed by the Elf Priest earlier, but now Kalalin, Barrend, and Fran were all seriously wounded, and Tanya had come to assist Lancelot, leaving the Elf Priest alone to fend off the fiends, putting him in a dire situation.

In addition, there was another unseen enemy: the Medusa Kesme, who controlled the angel golem. Lancelot wasn’t particularly worried about this—once the golem was temporarily banished, Medusa’s greatest threat would be her petrifying gaze, which only worked when she could be seen, and with a vampire wanderer who had once killed her at hand, Kesme would hardly dare show her face again.

At this moment, Lancelot faced a crucial decision: whether to rescue Alamir or to attack the witch controlling the animated treehouse.

On the battlefield, a commander always faces various choices, and Lancelot was well-acquainted with this. Different people have different decision-making styles, and Lancelot’s method involves not wasting time pondering which option yields the best result, but evaluating the cost of each option with the utmost caution. Once he figured out that question, he knew how to choose.

Attacking the witch directly might yield the greatest victory, but the cost could be Alamir. The team already had several severely injured members, and losing the Elf Priest might mean he would have to bring several corpses back to Cranvo. Although with the Lord of the Dead, fallen comrades could ultimately be resurrected, being killed causes immense trauma to one’s mind, and the process of dying and resurrecting is extremely painful, sometimes even altering a person’s personality dramatically, so it’s best to avoid teammates dying whenever possible.

In an instant, Lancelot made a decision and ignored the tentacles reaching towards him, charging at the Meizeros Demons with overwhelming force.

These beetle-like fiends usually hunched over, but even when standing straight they were no taller than seven feet, not even reaching Lancelot’s thighs after his Titan Transformation. A glacier plummeted like a meteorite, the Meizeros Demon targeted by Lancelot had no time to react and was instantly smashed into a pool of blood.

The cracking sound of the carapace greatly shocked the remaining enemies, causing a brief delay in their movements. The Human Knight wouldn’t miss such an opportunity, and he had already prepared for the chase. Most of the glacier sword’s blade was embedded in the ground, Lancelot took a large step forward, his body driving his arm to make an upward motion, the great sword breaking through the earth like a lurking shark-lizard beast, hitting another Meizeros Demon heavily between its legs.

When forging the glacier, Lancelot had instructed Barrend to sharpen both sides near the tip, and now this design showed its effectiveness. The great sword ascended, moving the Meizeros Demon’s groin up to the shoulders, then lifting its almost halved corpse high into the air.

At this point, the animated treehouse’s root tentacle reached Lancelot’s body, wrapping around his waist and yanking him back. Lancelot did not resist, letting the enemy pull him away, knowing that the Elf Priest’s predicament was resolved. With Alamir’s strength, and Tanya’s assistance, even if the exhausted Bruto was entirely ineffective, dealing with two Meizeros Demons would be no problem.

Moreover, how could he refuse when the enemy actively closed the distance to himself?

The witch controlling the animated treehouse obviously hadn’t anticipated the target would make no resistance at all. By the time she realized the Human Knight was leveraging the pulling force, it was too late. The treehouse continued executing the witch’s previous command, opening its large mouth filled with wooden fangs at the bottom, aiming to bite the Human Knight it dragged back, but it only bit its own tentacles—Lancelot had proactively ended his Titan Transformation state, easily using his suddenly smaller frame to escape the tentacles, swiftly floating onto the roof of the small house like a specter, already having switched his weapon to the hand half sword Frostslash, striking straight at the witch’s throat like a meteor.

"Mercy!!!!"

These were her final words, and the next second her shriveled head was sent flying into the air, never to curse venomous words again.

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