[Demon Blood Release]

Most powerful demons never live in their true forms because of their great power. They have to cripple and weaken themselves to be able to have a relatively normal life and face challenges in their fights.

For example, while Lunara is usually a purple-skinned demoness with multiple horns, her true form is more of a humanoid rabbit woman. Kali also spends a lot of her time as a little girl, but quickly turns into her true form of pure destruction when she wants to.

But Arad was certain that Poppy wasn’t a demon before, which means this transformation of hers is temporary. He took a step forward and glared at her, quickly shifting his gaze around to count the people around them. He had to defeat Poppy, hopefully catch her alive so they could question her, and make sure their fight didn’t cause a lot of deaths.

ZON! With a single void step, he appeared behind her and threw his hands down, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Time to go on a trip."

One of his incarnations, a Nymph, was now in the abyss, so he tried to switch places with her. Unlike the capital, the Abyss was mostly a desolate land without life, and only a few large demon cities existed. His Nymph was in the middle of literally nowhere, which made the place a decent fighting arena.

But... the teleportation failed. Arad felt as if his back cracked, and this little girl was far too heavy to teleport. It has been a long while since he felt such a thing. He can’t forcibly teleport or even suck her into his stomach.

As he was stunned, Poppy pushed his arms off her shoulders, spun back, and threw an upper cut in one motion. But she wasn’t aiming for Arad’s chin; he was too tall for her to reach. Instead, she jumped and aimed at his jewels, which she got a clean and direct hit on.

Cain had told her before. Void dragons store all of their organs inside their stomach to protect them, so aiming for anything but the brain or spine is useless, but there is one organ that they can’t store, and that is always out in their humanoid form: The testicles.

Being hit with a punch powerful enough to crack a building in half directly to the nuts, Arad buckled down for a moment, and quickly ate a scissor kick to the face, followed by a tentacle slap to the throat.

^He is stronger than me... I have to keep going.^ Poppy thought as she wrapped the bloody tentacle around Arad’s neck, and came straight down with a drop kick to his face. But she could fell it in her bones.

^The hell is this guy? He’s hard!^

Hitting Arad’s head felt like trying to punch a steel ball, and even his throat was too dense for her. But at least, she was certain that she was getting through. She grabbed onto his hair with her toes, wrapped the tentacles around his limbs, and wrapped her legs around his neck.

Using all of her strength, she tried to snap his neck. Her arms swollen with blood, her tentacles almost torn apart, and her face turned bright red as sweat rushed down her skin as if a bucket of water had been poured on her head. Her fingers snapped, the skin on her hands tore, and her arms slipped across his head without turning it.

Arad jumped back and fell straight on his back, aiming to crush her. Poppy was forced to let go of him and quickly stepped on his face and rushed down, aiming a kick at his jewels once more. She had to slow him down somehow, unless she wanted to get massacred.

Her foot got a clean him, but instead of Arad buckling down again, it was she who gasped in agony. The bones of her foot shattered, and she was forced to jump back, feeling like she had kicked a chunk of steel. Usually, such a wound won’t hurt her, but for some reason, she was forced to scream.

"Ah..." Arad gasped and looked at her. "It won’t work a second time."

She healed her foot and growled right back at him. "What did you do?"

Arad jumped at her, and in the next moment, she was kissing the bottom of his foot as he kicked her directly in the face and sent her flying back into the streets.

"I’ll tell you if you give up and surrender." He walked out of the shattered house and ripped his shirt off to expose as many scales as possible.

She barely managed to stand, and stared at him for a second. "You covered that with your scales, I can guess."

Arad blinked several times. "If you know, then why ask?"

"Trying to get you to talk, so you waste time and allow me to recover. What else?" She clapped her hands together and sent a swarm of blood tentacles at him. Arad dodged the first few tentacles and tore the rest apart with his bare hands with ease.

"I, too, would rather you don’t rampage too much and fight compactly." He threw the severed tentacles behind him and started walking toward Poppy with a smile.

"No way, you’ll kill me immediately." She growled, jumped back to keep a fair distance between them.

"Fine then." Arad sighed, "You don’t seem too insane to me. Why are you doing this? I’m certain you had no reason to start attacking us."

She smiled. "Would you sit still with a world-destroying monster in the nearby kingdom? Even if that monster doesn’t attack you, it’s a threat that must be eliminated." She pointed at him. "I’m the only other Pricolici, so I understand what kind of monster you are. Even if everyone else saw you as a fair emperor, I only see a bloodthirsty draconic fiend."

Arad stopped for a second. "I understand that, I do look scary. But I’m really not. I’ve got enough wives to prove it."

Poppy burst laughing, "Are you joking? The very proof that you’re a mad monster is that you managed to get along with that crazy barbarian Nina." She pointed at her head. "You won’t fool my eyes. I can clearly see that you’re hiding a monstrous nature that defies the very nature of existence."

Did she notice something about him? Arad had recently learned about himself being the overgod, and if Poppy had somewhat got a glimpse of that power, she has the right be scared.

"Besides all of that... you’re the one who unleashed that skinwalker upon us." She did notice Fernanda, and that only served to get her even more scared of Arad’s existence. She clenched a fist, "This world should be ruled by mortals and humanoids, not us demonic monsters."

With that, she had fully healed and jumped at him with a clenched fist. That was a direct frontal assault, but it was all just to hide her true attack, which was a tentacle that emerged from the ground behind Arad.

Arad’s eyes moved at lightning speed. He looked around the street and houses, counted every person there, and then threw his arm back, caught the tentacle, and swung it back at the charging Poppy, making sure not to hit anyone.

In the sewers, Poppy was shaking. "He is a monster, a true monster. I could kill anything, and he is toying around with me, while protecting all of the weak humans in the city."

[Try to talk with him as much as you can. Even with the demonic powerup, you aren’t his opponent.] Cain whispered in her ear, [But once he captures you, we’ll start our plan. So be careful.]