There existed a treacherous mountain range known as the Demon Mountain Range.
The range was divided into three layers.
The first layer.
A mountain range composed of steep peaks, blanketed in snow year-round.
The monsters inhabiting it were far more formidable than those on the surface.
Danger class C monsters were the norm, and species such as wind dragons and ice dragons also made their home there.
This first layer was what both the Human race and the Demon race referred to as the Demon Mountain Range.
The second layer.
Beyond the towering peaks of the first layer lay a place devoid of all life.
Nothing but mountains too tall to surmount blocked the path, and lethal, freezing winds bore down on anyone unfortunate enough to arrive.
All one could see was a world of snow and rock.
Should one, through sheer misfortune, pass through the first layer and stumble into the second, the full fury of nature would descend upon them.
The third layer.
The terminus of the Demon Mountain Range.
There, a dragon sat enthroned.
As its final guardian.
The Demon Mountain Range spread out in a semicircle.
Seen from above, the mountains formed three distinct waves—a clean, elegant pattern of peaks and ridges.
A reincarnator looking upon it might predict that the range had been formed by the collision of continents through crustal movement caused by plate tectonics.
However, that prediction was half right and half wrong.
The Demon Mountain Range had indeed been created by the collision of two landmasses, but that collision had not been caused by the drift of tectonic plates.
Rather, a certain individual had deliberately shifted an entire continent and merged it with another, and the Demon Mountain Range was the result.
No one besides that person knew this truth.
And if the Demon Mountain Range had been formed by the collision of two continents, then a vast expanse of land should lie beyond it.
No one in either Human race or Demon race territory knew that fact either.
Only those who lived on that land knew the truth.
A colossal island, hemmed in on one half by the Demon Mountain Range and on the other by the sea.
Its area spanned roughly 1.57 million square kilometers.
About the same size as Mongolia back on Earth.
A touch too small to be called a continent, but more than large enough to qualify as a nation in its own right.
That nation had no name.
If pressed, one might call it a land that belonged neither to the Human race nor the Demon race—a Land in Between, independent of both.
Neither the humans nor the demons knew of its existence.
Because they could not cross the Demon Mountain Range, nor could they traverse the sea.
In the same way, the inhabitants of the Land in Between could not leave their country either.
But they did know about Human race and Demon race territory.
Due to the geographic nature of their land, the people of the Land in Between were compelled toward complete self-sufficiency.
As a result, their primary industries were agriculture and animal husbandry.
Other industries were likewise geared heavily toward daily necessities, and luxury goods were exceedingly scarce.
And most notably of all, the nation lacked both the tradition of crafting weapons designed for combat and the specialized artisans who made them.
In a world where monsters—creatures hostile to all living things—ran rampant, weapons and armor were indispensable.
But that did not apply to the Land in Between.
Because monsters did not exist there.
The mechanism by which monsters came into being was no different from that of ordinary animals.
They did not simply spring into existence from nothing.
Occasionally, places called Dungeons would appear and monsters would spill forth from them, but setting aside such exceptions, they reproduced just like any other living creature.
If no monsters existed in the first place, there was nothing to multiply.
Furthermore, nothing could invade from outside.
The Land in Between had created an environment in which monsters simply could not survive.
The animals dwelling within it were all tame, docile creatures that could not even be called monsters.
Carnivores existed, of course, but they too were not monsters.
There was a clear distinction between animals and monsters.
With no monsters, there was almost no need to fight, and so no weapons or armor were forged, and no warriors existed.
This was what the nation looked like—a country that embodied what could only be called a miracle in this world.
The miracles did not stop there.
The people living in the Land in Between were themselves a miracle.
If one were to Appraise every resident of this country one by one, one would uncover a staggering truth.
That in this nation, the Human race and the Demon race—who had fought each other throughout all of history—lived together side by side.
More than that, the two races had intermarried, and half-blood children existed as a matter of course.
In fact, those of purely human or purely demon blood were the minority; the vast majority of the population carried the blood of both races.
Two races locked in perpetual conflict, joining hands to live in peace.
The Land in Between was such a miraculous nation.
It was the ideal country that a goddess had wished for, and a man who sought to grant that wish had built with his own hands.
But now, an unprecedented crisis was bearing down upon that nation.
An ogre—stripped of everything by the humans and now driven into the Demon Mountain Range by them—had arrived at the third layer.
It had crossed the second layer, the frozen hellscape where food was all but nonexistent, driven by nothing but the will to survive.
Having reached the extreme threshold between life and death, the ogre ignored the Ice Dragon's warning entirely.
It had not listened to a single word from the start.
With reason wholly abandoned, standing on the very brink of death, the ogre could no longer even see the dragon before it as anything other than food.
Consumed by nothing but wrath, it had become a creature that could only kill and devour—a mere ogre, stripped of all else.
The Ice Dragon lost half its body but barely managed to escape the maddened ogre.
It fled so that it might deliver word to its master: a terrifying entity was approaching the Land in Between.
And so the ogre crossed the mountain range.