As Manug had previously claimed he was right about it, right now he was indeed the best match for the mage, he was undoubtably weaker, by a lot at that, but he was, just like the mage, a wielder of countless different powers, and in this scenario each of these powers is something he could use to counter one of the countless diagrams the mage was using.
He had no way of knowing this, in truth he might have even desired to sacrifice himself so that he wouldn't have to fight anymore, but he was truly the best and only possible opponent for that monster of a mage right now.
And as such the two vanished, the mage focusing on the archer, worrying that he might be able to steal Cades away again using his flight ability, another reason for his match-up with the little girl, and deciding to first take care of the supposedly weaker link before snatching up the monster that was currently being taken care off by two other generals besides herself.
But instead of winning easily when she took the archer away, fighting just a few hundred feet away, about nine hundred all together, she was stuck in a stand still, whenever she used a power he defended, whenever he attacked it barely did anything, she didn't know how he was doing that, but the puppet decided that it would have to wait, and that it would definitely be a bad decision to take the other one of the two prey into the fray, especially seeing as the other one might've been in a worse condition as this one was constantly healing himself, but the other one was still quite a bit more powerful than her, or at least they would be if the two of them fought together.
But while all of this was going on, while the archer and the mage were fighting it out like two children unwilling to have their superheroes lose and continuously inventing new powers for them, Cades had begun to really think, he had realized that some of the monsters did stay down when they were slain, and after some more thinking he had realized something that was the same with all of them.
At each of them he had panicked, he had been in great peril and he had slashed all over them, oftentimes hitting a very specific spot, a spot that made him believe that they might not be cursed, no, they might be suffering from a magical affliction.
A magical affliction was quite the interesting kind of curse, it was different from a mere weakening and often not even seen as magical, as such it was often also just referred to as a mere sickness, such as vampirism or lycanthropy, both of which are supposedly caused by magical sicknesses.
The most interesting part of magical sicknesses is however that they don't spread through the whole body but instead stay at the place where it first began, in the case of werewolves that would be the place where they were bitten, and in later stages, especially during transformation, their heart because it would've spread enough to be in both places during both forms, in the case of a vampire it would however always be at the heart, because that's where both types of blood, the human and the vampiric blood, that are needed to birth a new vampire, meet in the end.
As such one needs to destroy the origin of a magical sickness, no matter what has caused it, and Cades had been destroying one specific bodily part every single time that it had happened up to now, but rather than just trusting in it blindly and frying his own, perhaps to solve the curse, perhaps to rip himself back to reality, it would perhaps be best to test it once more.
And with a resolve that was quite interesting he ripped his body that had sunk deep into the ocean of thoughts out of it and began to aim his sword charging with lightning, a trick that he had recently thought up, namely a few seconds ago, that was utilizing the holes within the handle of the sword to spread the lightning all over it, damaging himself as well as others, though he himself was still constantly being healed by what seemed to be a time-limited ability.
And with that very blade he stabbed one of the trolls into the nether regions, the place where the sun shall never shine, the place that would be the most likely candidate for the sickness to take place if it truly wasn't spread by blood, seeing that one rarely really investigated the nether regions and fungus, especially magical fungus, could easily spread in that region.
And indeed, the ones that were struck and burned in that region never moved again, though they looked in quite the great amount of pain, perhaps another reason as to why they were mostly male, with the exception of the mage and the succubus, at least he assumed that the succubus was female, but he could be wrong about that as well, after all, no one in the history of ehetria had ever dissected a succubus, something that Cades was however very interested in doing as of right now, perhaps if he ever broke out of here the succubus would have to hide themselves as to not be cut into pieces.
Cades always had quite a great resolve, and he knew what he had to do now, it would be painful indeed but once he managed to gain another short breather, perhaps when the two monsters were almost ready to fight once more, perhaps even now, he might be able to do it.
And indeed he was, he pointed his blade inward and slashed his nether regions, causing lightning to bolt through his body while it was still being healed at the same time, perhaps there would've been a better way, perhaps even just grabbing at them and shooting lightning would've solved it, but Cades knew that he didn't have time right now, he knew that this would most likely solve the problem.
Finally he felt the mana flowing once more.