Lotus-shaped marks manifested on Aku's skin.
Exactly where Bīng Xuě had made contact.
From his arm bloomed stars of ice stakes, which spread from his arm, solar plexus, cheek and chin.
The stars grew more and more, intertwining with each other to form a prison of ice stakes.
Many of these stakes pierced his skin, causing a sensation Aku could interpret as pain.
It was intense and unpleasant, however it wasn't enough to cloud his mind.
The demon king acted.
He was fortunate that part of his body was covered by armor and therefore that area was safe.
However, his face had been completely disfigured.
Though that wasn't something that worried Aku much. His nervous system wasn't conventional. It was like a symbiote.
His brain acted like a liquid when the ice stakes pierced it, being pierced through but without suffering real damage.
Aware of this, Aku tried to push his influence much further.
He began absorbing temperature from a much wider area, concentrating all that heat over the ice.
Soon the ice began to melt. The ice stakes collapsed under the heat being induced upon them.
In exchange, several hectares around him had frozen.
Seeing that, Bīng Xuě was bewildered and turned to look at Aku, who was now expelling steam all over his body.
"Hahaha! Impressive! However, I'm sorry to tell you it won't do any good," Bīng Xuě said cheerfully.
Upon saying those words, the marks glowed again with that intense cyan color.
The demon king had barely had time to reassemble the damaged matter of his body when [Frost Coffin] was activating again.
"It's a curse. Those ice flowers will never stop blooming until they've completely trapped you," the hero said with a laughing attitude.
Aku was worried, however upon hearing those words, he felt relieved.
A curse?
That was his specialty!
Aku wasn't a hero like the others. He was a demon king.
Something like a curse to him was nothing more than food.
However, there was a problem. When he tried to analyze the mark on his body, he found no familiarity.
It was different from the curses of his world, most likely because it came from a different source of power.
He had to buy time.
First he made vibrations attack the ice again to turn it to dust, making the ice stakes that were spreading explode.
Seeing that, Bīng Xuě grew annoyed. He was taking too long to die.
"Tch, I'll have to finish you off myself," he said as he extended his hands.
A gigantic ice stake formed in front of his palm and began spinning at an incomprehensible speed.
In an instant, the ice stake accelerated toward him.
Aku acted swiftly, manipulating the randomness of the air to create a whirlwind which collided with the stake, stopping it in its tracks.
"Heh, haven't you learned? Manipulating air is [Taboo]," the hero said with a proud smile.
However, the air didn't stop spinning.
Spinning at equal speed but in the opposite direction to the ice drill, the whirlwind managed to bring the ice projectile to a halt.
"Huh? How?" Bīng Xuě was bewildered. Why hadn't his ability worked?
The reason was simple, or perhaps not so much.
Aku hadn't manipulated the air itself, but the probabilities.
Therefore, he hadn't interacted directly with the air but had controlled it indirectly.
For example, it's not the same to manipulate water to create a sphere of liquid as it is to use air to mold water into a sphere.
This was something similar.
The air hadn't been manipulated as such, since it continued behaving as it normally would.
Instead, the functioning of probability and randomness in the environment were what had been altered.
That's why that [Taboo] hadn't affected the whirlwind in the slightest.
The air managed to pulverize the ice, turning it to dust, creating a frost cloud that Aku crossed through.
The demon king was completely unharmed now, and there were no more cursed marks on him.
Aku had analyzed his surroundings. The energy Bīng Xuě used was different from that of his world. It was called spiritual energy, though Aku didn't know that.
However, the demon king noticed that to create the curse, Bīng Xuě had inverted the nature of his energy.
That inversion was something Aku could affect, since it was the inversion of something positive into something negative.
Knowing that, Aku managed to connect with and understand that energy, and devour it.
"How? How did you break a curse?" Bīng Xuě asked in disbelief as his eyes stared incredulously at his enemy.
Aku didn't respond. He simply delivered a powerful punch.
Bīng Xuě protected himself with his forearm, seeking to block the attack.
However, the force of the blow was enormous, and Bīng Xuě was sent flying several meters.
Aku smiled, feeling the excitement growing within him.
"Now I understand. It's not that you're invulnerable. There's something nullifying the damage to your body, am I wrong?" Aku asked with a slight smile.
The hero smiled from the rubble, a sharp and cunning smile.
"So you noticed... well, I suppose I don't need to hide it anymore. I'll have to go all out," the boy announced.
Suddenly, Bīng Xuě's aura became much more ominous.