It was a shame. Since even the Infernal Flames could not cleanse the youth of his ego, nothing would 

Wasting such good material was unfortunate, but those who did not submit had to die. Thus, he would end the man here. 

The Infernal Knight shook it's head. Very well. Let him do what he must. With that in mind, the Knight gripped his spear and prepared for a long battle. The man had a strange ability to heal, and such opponents were difficult for that alone. 

Meanwhile, Damien  worked his Wood Manipulation as the last vestiges of the cold flames died out. His flesh quickly regenerated. Muscle, tendon, skin. His eyeballs, which had boiled and evaporated, were the last to grow back. 

As he reconstituted himself all over the city massive roots broke through the rubble and shot forth. They sped towards the armored being and smacked it around. 

Damien let out another mad cackle. "Who's weak now, cunt? Have a taste of my wood."

The Knight was being played with by the roots like a tennis ball. The impacts didn't break him, but they threatened to. They moved fast, these giant tendrils of wood. The Knight brought back his flames. The fire spread through the wood and Damien felt the pain of being burned again. No wounds, but...it was like these roots were connected to him somehow and caused him to feel their pain. 

The flames reduced them all to ash and they they fell down upon the ruined city like black snow. 

But Damien wasn't done with just that. Although the pain was harsh, he pushed through just as he always did. The wood regrew and formed a giant, sun-blockingly huge statue with a thousand arms. 

It was, of course, the legendary True Several Thousand arms! Damien had never actually used it to this scale before. Back during the few days of fucking around when he first discovered his Wood Release, he'd made small figurines instead. He wasn't going to bust out something this size just for shits and giggles, after all....unless he was bored, but he had plenty of experiments to keep him occupied back then.

Except this wasn't the normal Several Thousand Arms. No, he put a small twist on it. Instead of bombarding the Knight with their punches, these arms extended out and each one began to emanate a horrifying amount of energy that made even Damien feel the strain. LIke he was going to lose all sense of self and be swept away into oblivion. But he didn't succumb. 

No, instead his mind and spirit went into overdrive as he manipulated his Life energy and Aura to the fullest extent. He created thousands upon thousands of energy balls within the statue's hands. Each one the size of boulders. And then, he fired. 

And with that, he felt his very life force start to dwindle. 

The knight stared up at the mind-bogglingly huge statue and the oncoming beams of energy. It reacted on sheer instinct and encased himself in his flames. The image of a skull surrounded him as an extra layer of protection, but the sense of imminent danger didn't lessen in the slightest. 

The energy blasts hit like the fury of a mad God and tore though the skull like wet paper. One has to understand, this phantom skull was a technique that would be able to protect him from even nuclear blasts with ease. In the grand scheme of the Mortal and Godly planes, perhaps this was not much compared to attacks that could level entire planets. But it was not something anyone at merely the peak of the Mortal realm should be able to even damage. 

This is why the Knight disliked battling foreign races. The higher-leveled ones were born naturally powerful and surpassed what their actual cultivation level was. The Knight had already kept that in mind from the beginning, but even so he considered the youth weak. He hadn't expected such firepower. 

Even though the boy was at least partially an Envoy, he'd fought such beings before and had never encountered one with this level of raw power, not at the cultivation level the boy was at currently. 

He must be a hybrid of some kind, something more than part human and Celestial. And there's only one race the Knight knew that could push the youth to such extremes at his level and age: Dragon.

This was...concerning. Logically, such hybrids were unheard of. They simply didn't exist. Dragons abhorred the weak, they were arrogant beyond belief and would not breed with most races. Why would a female Dragon breed with a Nephilim? Unless this boy's lineage was not from the imitation, but from a true Angel's. 

This was another point for concern, as the truest Nephilim were usually descended from one Angel in particular, an Arch Angel of considerable power. This boy's father was most likely of that man's lineage...which may explain why a Dragon would breed with him and bear a hybrid like this one, if the father was strong enough to catch her attention.

And if so,  how unlucky the Knight is! A boy descended from not a mere Celestial, but a true Angel and a Dragon. That may be the only reasonable conclusion as to why he had such abundant energy to waste. 

The Knight dared not underestimate the power of this attack and burned furiously, countering the beams of energy with the flames. 

Yet despite the great majesty of the Infernal fires, these beams were simply too overwhelming and whittled away at his defence. Were it not for the difference in their cultivation levels, which was equivalent to an entire realm, the Knight believed he would have already perished to such an attack. 

The Knight was currently near the peak of the fifth realm of human-based cultivation, the Worldly realm. One could say this was a stage where one would be able to somewhat dominate a small, undeveloped world. The fourth stage is where you had already cemented yourself onto the path of cultivation, whereas the third stage, the Mortal realm, is where one only begins to walk it. 

These go by different names, for example the third stage is also called the Xiantian realm in many places. Innate realm in other. But regardless, that is the stage that separates a mortal from a cultivator. 

Sadly these realms get muddy when applied to beings like this, as they don't require the same steps humans often do. Hence why this exceptional hybrid is able to unleash such devastation that even the Knight fears taking this attack. 

What was a more terrifying thought was that at the boy's current stage he had obviously not begun to refine his energies. He attacked with simply the sheer volume of his power. But were he to have already refined this energy, it would be much more destructive. How he contained such massive amounts of power made sense if he were part Dragon, as their cores were limitless supplies of energy. But this expenditure, even a Dragon couldn't handle it at a level like the boy's.

Though their cores could give unending reserves of power, if they expelled this energy faster than their core could replenish then they would meet foul ends. This rarely happened, but only because they didn't use such great amounts of power to begin with and preferred using their fleshy bodies as their main weapons. Such was their arrogance.

A young hybrid like this? Using his power so recklessly? He would wear himself out soon, the Knight merely had to endure.

And it was with this in mind that it resisted the waves upon waves of deadly energy being thrown against it. It wasn't easy, but it was done.

Unfortunately, the dimensional space could not handle this massive output of power. Everything around them was destroyed. The buildings? Gone, even the rubble. The mountains miles off in the distance? Nowhere to be seen. Space itself started to warp. 

The Knight could barely endure. Its armor soon begun to crack. Weblike imperfections shone upon it's previously pristine self. 

But soon enough, the cascade of energy started to dwindle. 

Damien's face paled. He coughed out a fresh pint of blood as he felt strength leave him. Son of a bitch, but that bastard was durable! He hated enemies with bullshit defense and health. Like what the fuck? No one likes a damage sponge. He had flashbacks to that goddamn Adamantoise from Final Fantasy. That fucker took him three hours to take down. Granted, he wasn't the best player of that series but still. 

He was dead tired. He seemed entirely devoid of stamina. And yet?

"I can do this all day."

It was those words that made the Knight truly begin to feel a hint of dread in it's heart.