Baal didn't have time to question her motive when Xander appeared again. His jaw slackened because two more Xanders appeared this time in two different directions.
"There's two of her? Are they twins? That will explain her hiding shenanigans."
Three more appeared just as the previous two shot forward. Then four, five, six, seven, eight. Their numbers kept increasing and they kept attacking Beelta from different directions. They were all useless. They would turn to smoke once they were hurt by the tongues so they didn't really matter.
"What use is this? It will only worsen the situation."
Baal got more perplexed the more he watched. He already understood that the Xanders he is seeing are clones but he doesn't understand how throwing weak numbers at a being that gets stronger the more she eats will help. What they need is overwhelming strength from personal strength or combined power. The clones are useless no matter how numerous they are. You just can't drown a giant with weak paper-thin ants.
He chose to wait and see. He understood that there is a lot he doesn't know about Xander and she had to have a reason for her actions. He just hasn't seen the reason yet. He watched carefully and noticed that the range of the wind cyclone that the demon lord's tongue produced had reduced after being pressured from all sides by the clones.
He shouted at the demon dukes. "Attack. Everyone attack now."
His shout roused the dukes who had been watching the spectacle. They began attacking again. His shout didn't make them attack harder or try their best. It only made them attack again. Some did attack harder. But they did it because they were trying to sabotage Xander's effort in killing the demon lord. They thought that Baal wanted them to stop her.
If there is something that demons can cooperate on, it is to sabotage another demon. The cooperation of high-rank demons to hunt the Lord of Chaos is one such rare occurrence of unity among demons.
Their motives don't matter as long as they attack. A large amount of power slammed in Beelta's direction. Some of them hit Xander's clones but the clones didn't offer much resistance. So the spells destroyed the clones then they continued onwards toward Beelta. She has to defend herself from the attacks. She turned her attention to the spells only for more clones to be produced. The clones continued to throw themselves at her through the gaps in the attacks.
The demon duke's attacks compounded the sticky situation that Beelta is in. She can't handle all the clones. That's why she was being pushed back. That means she definitely won't be able to accommodate the attacks. Now she has to choose between the attacks that can do real harm to her weak body or the useless clones that will pop with a touch and cannot be eaten.
She chose to focus on the threatening attacks. It is the wrong decision. Then again, any decision will be the wrong one once you have to choose between two bad decisions. There is no way out for her in this situation. Beelta chose the greater evil so some of the clones slipped by her defense of tongues and came close to her body. Beelta came to realize that the fangs of the clones are very real and very painful when they bit into her.
The fangs of the clones are like black and sharp curved blades. Each clone has six of them in their mouths. Three on each side of the mouth. Two on their lower jaw and four on their upper jaw. And all of them sank into her body when they made intimate contact with it. The contact was not pleasant in any way to Beelta.
The fangs pierced into her weak body sending terrible pain through her. Each bite made her shiver involuntarily. Then the clones disappeared once they bit into her. They shrank and entered her body as venom through the holes that the fangs created. The space they left behind allowed more clones to have at her.
Beeta has reached her limit in the number of tongues she could produce. Each maw is producing at least 3 tongues while the largest maw has produced 6. She can't produce more unless one of them is destroyed. Her maws are also full of tongues so she couldn't use them to bite the clones. She could do nothing as more and more clones bit into her.
She steeled her eyes and yelled, "You have pushed me this time."
There is something she can do that she hasn't done since the days she was a struggling demon. It pains her to do but it is better than her desperate move. She withdrew all her tongues into her maws. Then she opened the maws wide and began regurgitating. The things she had swallowed were shot out of her countless maws in every direction.
Giant fireballs flew out of her maw toward the demon dukes. Wind blades and all sorts of attacks shot toward them en masse. It hurt her emotionally and physically to give up things that she had eaten but it hurt less than the bites from the clones. That's why she made sure it will hurt the dukes more by empowering the things she ate to make them more powerful and more explosive.
She only regurgitated attacks, not the body parts that she ate. It will take more than some painful bites to make her give those up. So various attacks flew away from her and exploded admidst the demon dukes. Arms and other body parts flew away after being forcefully liberated.
Her attacks destroyed everything around her. Even the ground was cratered. The demon dukes had to retreat quickly to preserve their lives. At least 10 of them lost their lives because of the sudden bombardment. So Beelta was granted reprieve before she switched to swallowing attacks again. She swallowed the dead and injured demon dukes first before she turned her ever-hungry maws at them in search of more things to eat. It was very intimidating.