After taking an axe attack on the chest, the bat creature had another grevious wound on its body through which thick dark liquid was seeping out. During the brief moment of contact, Caroline’s Xuanli gushed into the chest cavity of the bat creature and began to do more damage from inside.

The bat creature took many steps backwards and put its wings forward as temporary shields to defend itself from further attacks, and at the same time tried to focus its energy and power on its chest area trying to mend the wound. From the presence of the spirit energy from its main body, it sensed that all it needed to do right now was to hold on and its main body would reveal itself, make a connection and take it “home”.

Jason got up from the ground, lunged forward and roared as he thrust his pen-spear at the bat creature’s leg, which was not shielded by its wings at the moment. The tip of his pen-spear punctured a clean hole on the bat creature’s right leg. The bat creature swung its right wing to the side like a cleaver in retaliation, which collided with the shaft of Jason’s pen-spear, knocking him back and prevented him from doing any more damage by pushing the tip of his pen-spear deeper. Yet, Jason’s Xuanli had already entered into the bat creature’s body - small pellets of sharpened metal and stone spikes began coursing inside of its body, damaging its veins and internal organs along their paths.

In an attempt to gather more energy to heal itself, the bat creature took a deep breath through its mouth, and all the zombified lycans began moaning at the same time, because more streams of the dim blue energy surfaced from their bodies and were inhaled by the bat creature. And the zombified lycan that was restrained by Laura’s energy seals and restraining spells was drained especially hard, possibly due to the fact that this lycan was restrained during the fight and hardly endured any harm or damage.

“I am watching this place!” The bat creature spoke through its teeth: “When I come here with my full glory and power, you shall be treated with the harshest torture in this world! I, as the Overlord of Despair and Purposelessness, shall let all of you set your eyes on the face of true horror!”

“What?!” Some lycans fighting alongside Zack Dooms let out gasps of disbelief.

“Who are you!?” Zack Dooms gave his teammates a “were you even paying attention” look, then asked as he and a few members of his team took the opportunity to tear through a few of the zombified lycans: “Where is the Night Lord!?”

“That poor sod fell.” The bat creature laughed out loud: “Her godhood, now belongs to someone else. But still, thank you for keeping this body in such a good condition. When I descend upon your pitiful world, I shall grant you better chances of joining me in my kingdom…”

Before the bat creature could finish its sentence, it seemed to have gargled, and its wings and limbs started trembling and shaking, and its power seemed to have become unstable.

“Cool spirit poison.” Jason raised his silver pen-spear and said to Laura.

“It’s - a bit too effective?” Laura responded with uncertainty: “It’s a spell I’m unfamiliar with, but I've never heard of it being this effective -”

At this moment, the bat creature had its two front claws holding its neck and the wound on its chest, just like a human choking and having a heart attack.

“Cover me.” Caroline said to Jason and Laura, then her body turned into a string of afterimages as she leapt at the bat creature. And this time with a green aura around her and the edge on her battle axe glowing in light green.

The bat creature roared in an attempt to intimidate and deter Caroline. But it did not stop her at all, and with the blink of an eye, the bat creature’s head, along with most of its neck and a small piece of its right shoulder was removed from its body. Right after the battle axe reached the end of its trajectory, she unleashed a fist strike with her left hand at the neck and shoulder wound on the bat creature’s body.

“Boom!” The body was blown to thousands of pieces of burnt charcoal from inside. The shockwave from the explosion pushed its head to slide on the ground towards one corner of the hall, the dim flames inside its eye sockets still burning.

Jason lunged at the head, the tip of his pen-spear widened and became encapsulated with layers and layers of thick rock and clay into the shape of a giant hammer. The head of the bat creature opened its mouth, seemingly attempting to say something, yet its being completely crushed by a stone hammer with a long silver pole stopped it from happening. This time Jason had absolutely no intention of keeping it alive for later questioning, and he finally let out an exhale of relief as he sensed that the disturbing presence that parasitized this bat creature’s body was rapidly losing its vitality.

A sudden loud cry came from somewhere near the ceiling and a small energy explosion occurred. But nothing else came of it.

“A portal?” Laura and Jason asked at the same time.

“Now it’s DEAD dead, right?” Caroline took a few deep breaths to finally stabilize herself - just like Jason and Laura, she did not get hurt or injured during the fight, but pushing herself like she did was nothing but exhausting.

The zombified lycans fell down onto the floor and started twitching, a few of them stopped moving after a short while, while others calmed down and were only taking shallow breaths.

“It’s up to you now, Mr. Dooms,” Caroline said: “You wanna keep on what we were doing?”