In the forest, hordes of monsters crowded together, pressing forward to destroy the capital of Mynoghra. However, their speed could hardly be called swift. Perhaps because they were composed of monsters inherently ill-suited to organized action, combined with the complex, uplifted terrain of the Great Cursed Realm, their movement was sluggish—a sorry spectacle that could barely be called a march. Among them, only the intelligent demonkin under Fremain’s command understood their tasks correctly and, despite their inexperience, fought desperately to coordinate the monsters.
“Still, telling us not to burn the forest—the boss sure knows how to give difficult orders.”
A demonkin known as the Flame Knight, clad in a blazing red robe with equally fiery red hair streaming behind him and a greatsword slung on his back, sighed and grumbled. The one listening was a man of similar appearance, holding a staff embedded with a jewel; he was a magic-type demonkin called the Flame Mage. Both demons were exasperated by the thickly overgrown forest, grumbling at the glacial pace while trying to issue orders to the monsters, who would scatter if left to their own devices.
“If we’d just burned it, everything would’ve been simpler. We’ve always done it that way before—so why this time, of all times, does he give us such a troublesome order?”
“Apparently, he doesn’t want to attract too much attention. Well, our boss does love skulking around in the shadows. This is probably another one of those kinds of plans.”
“Say that to his face, and he’ll kill you dead.”
“That’s exactly why I’m saying it where he isn’t.”
Their boss—one of the Four Heavenly Kings, the Flame Demon Lord Fremain—was a cunning and cruel individual. To top it off, he was ill-tempered and prone to fits of rage. While his competence meant he was not easily punished, one still had to be careful not to incur his displeasure; the daily mental strain was quite severe. Therefore, exchanging grumbles like this while venting their frustrations served as their own method of stress relief. Of course, as for the source of that stress, it seemed the boss wasn’t the only cause this time...
“Still, ‘don’t burn it’... this forest is eerie, though. Even back in our homeland, you wouldn’t find many forests that exude this much miasma.”
They did not yet know that their forces had already advanced into territory under Mynoghra’s influence. In other words, the surrounding landscape had shifted from that of the Great Cursed Realm to a more sinisterly transformed, cursed land shaped by Mynoghra’s presence.
Amidst twisted trees, the earth decayed and emitted a foul stench. Grass and flowers spilled vibrant juices, and a thick, poisonous miasma hung in the air.
As demons, their bodies were not affected by the miasma, yet even their demonic sensibilities seemed to perceive this sight as something utterly alien.
"Ah, indeed, this sight is abnormal. The Boss's orders state that an enemy posing an obstacle to the Demon Lord lies ahead... but who on earth could it be?"
"Well, it's certainly not the hero."
"Haha, no doubt about that!"
Dry laughter echoed through the Great Cursed Realm, drawing the attention of lesser monsters on guard nearby, who watched the pair with curiosity.
Following the laughter, an unusually profound silence descended, and without a word, their gazes met.
In Brave Questus's Demon Lord Army, uttering the name of the hero was strictly forbidden.
Even saying it without reason invited severe punishment, but to joke about it was either the act of an extreme fool or indicated some ulterior motive.
The Flame Knight had used the latter meaning in bringing up the hero's name.
With that single quip, he was testing whether his partner was worthy of discussing the dangerous matter ahead.
And it seemed the Flame Magician had passed that test.
"Did you know the Boss is planning to betray the Demon Lord?"
"Whoa, whoa, what's with the sudden talk? That's a bit too stimulating for a joke. If the Boss heard that, he wouldn't be joking—he'd kill us outright."
"This operation also apparently might not have the Demon Lord's approval."
"Hey, does that mean...?"
The Flame Magician's astonishment exceeded even what he himself had anticipated.
He had expected some major secret to be revealed given the probing nature of the question, but treason against the Demon Lord was beyond his predictions.
As far as he knew, the Demon Lord Army's unity was rock-solid, and even the cunning and cruel Fremain's loyalty was beyond doubt.
More than realizing he had heard something dire, his surprise was dominated by the question: why would such a thing even be considered?
"No, let's stop. I might just be suspicious because the Boss's mood seems different from usual."
"Don't rush me! If I've come this far, we're in this together. Besides, with two of us, we might notice something. Including what happens to us from here on, it's better to have someone to talk to, right?"
Almost raising his voice in excitement, he quickly lowered his volume to convince his partner.
Whether the Flame Knight who had confessed such a weighty secret was convinced by these words, he nodded with a grim expression and began explaining how he had arrived at his conviction.
"Do you remember when we came to this world? I believe we all woke up together in the same place..."
"Yeah, that's right. So did I. Unlike the monsters summoned later, those of us demons and creatures with some degree of status were all together from the start, as I recall."
"But the Demon Lord and the Boss are apparently different. It seems something happened to them before coming to this world."
"Is that something only the Four Commanders and other executives know about?"
"No, I don't know. The Boss did say 'They were probably chosen, weren't they?'... But regardless, it's clear that whatever happened was an event that made the Boss steel their resolve."
The Flame Knight's account of what he had gleaned from Fremain was fragmented.
But connecting the pieces of information he had gathered, something had definitely occurred.
It must have been a shocking event indeed—one that shook even Fremain, a cunning man who never revealed his true thoughts, to the point of letting something slip to his subordinate.
Only the Flame Knight, who had always watched his master's expression closely to avoid displeasure, could have noticed those subtle changes.
But that was still nothing more than speculation.
He hadn't heard words of betrayal from the Boss's own mouth.
Furthermore, whatever event Fremain and the Demon Lord had encountered was something that felt impossible to accept and almost unreal.
"What's with the vague answers! Tell me properly—we can't afford to get complacent in this situation. What happened at that place?"
The Flame Mage raised his voice impatiently.
Snapped back to his senses by those words, the Flame Knight nodded as if making up his mind.
In the end, thinking about it alone wasn't going to get him anywhere.
Therefore, he decided to lay everything bare and ask his partner's opinion as well.
"Yeah, that's right. Apparently, the boss and the Demon Lord had encountered some kind of being before coming to this world... and that being referred to himself as—"
He swallowed hard.
The fire mage who had been confided in held a respectable position within the Demon Lord's army. The fact that he didn't know this—worse, that even the Demon Lords were maintaining a heavy silence as if concealing something—meant that whatever had occurred at that place must have carried tremendous significance.
Anxiety about what lay ahead for them, and an irrepressible curiosity: what exactly was happening to them?
Tossing between these two emotions, he waited eagerly for the flame knight's words.
But before the veil of hidden truth could be lifted, events moved faster.
"Wait—the advance scouting party has returned. Something seems to have happened."
"Damn it, we were right in the middle of—fine. Did they manage to gather any information? What manner of enemies are they? They mentioned a city—were they able to confirm its existence?"
Branches rustled and swayed, and the familiar bulk of the orc warrior sent out as part of the advance party emerged into view.
The fire mage, who had been on the verge of sighing at the creature's languid movements—utterly devoid of any sense of urgency despite the situation, a low-intelligence monster after all, however much it could communicate—caught sight of what had appeared before him and his eyes went wide.
"You there! What happened!?"
His voice rose involuntarily in shock.
What had materialized before him was indeed the orc warrior.
Orc warriors were subhuman monsters—the face of a pig wedged onto the frame of a large adult male, possessing enough intelligence for communication though nothing remarkable in terms of physical prowess, and combat ability sufficient to warrant sending them on reconnaissance. But the state of the creature that had returned was grotesquely abnormal, unmistakably so from a single glance.
"Huh? What?"
A hoarse voice scraped out from its throat, forced and crushed into a sound that no ordinary orc warrior could have produced.
The orc warrior's face was a grotesque mound of flesh jutting out where the eyeballs should have been, the swollen growths writhing with garish warning colors—red, green, yellow—as though something pulsed and squirmed within like a fat grub. This was no wound inflicted by any attack.
"What is... that?!"
The possibility of disease was also ruled out.
Something was clearly parasitizing them.
Realizing this, the two demon race members hastily drew their weapons and heightened their vigilance.
"Where? I can't see!"
"Don't get any closer! Everyone hold positions!"
The Flame Knight shouted, and the surrounding monsters began to stir in confusion.
Being low-intelligence monsters, they lacked coordination. The Flame Mage repeated orders as support, but this only fueled the chaos.
The two demon race members, after all, were combat personnel. They lacked the experience to calmly assess the situation and restore order to the unit.
In the end, through excessive caution, they remained on watch, allowing what appeared to be a parasitized orc warrior to stagger toward a nearby monster.
"I... I... I... I... I... I..."
"Gu?! Guaaaagh!!"
"Wha—?!"
With a crack like taut skin splitting open, a gigantic ant-like insect burst forth from the protrusion.
The insect, possessing massive mandibles, lunged at the startled monster that had fallen, and with flawless precision, bit into its neck, severing the head entirely.
Alongside a death cry, a pleasant metallic clinking sounded as gold coins scattered across the ground.
The familiar sound of gold coins, and the way the coins reflected the light filtering through the trees with a brilliant sparkle, finally snapped the two demon race members back to their senses. They hurriedly raised their voices in alarm.
"Ambush! It's an ambush! Brace yourselves!"
From above, the same insects rained down, one after another.
From deep within the forest, the rest of the advance party shuffled forward.
The Flame Knight slashed apart an insect that lunged at him, all while catching glimpses out of the corner of his eye of the lesser monsters being bitten to death with ease. With irritation in his voice, he shouted.
"Damn it! Bad positioning! Not burning the forest was a mistake!"
No matter how much they shouted, the disparity in their forces was impossible to overcome.
The monsters they had brought along were by no means weak. In terms of individual combat capability, one could call them the very definition of ferocity.
But the location and timing were terrible. The worst possible, in fact.
With their unit in a state of confusion, and the visibility of the battlefield poor...
Some of their monsters were even having their abilities suppressed by the miasma.
Furthermore, the enemy was small and difficult to pin down.
Their cherished flames were forbidden by their own master.
Every situation was working against them.
"What do we do, partner? Things are bad. If we stay, we'll be whittled down to nothing."
"We pull back for now. We can't handle this. We report to the boss."
"Let's use the monsters to buy time. They'll keep spawning indefinitely... Tch. Still, the boss'll probably give us an earful about this."
"Can't be helped. I don't want to die in a place like this."
Likeminded to their own master, the two of them made cold, calculating judgments in an instant. After issuing orders for the monsters to serve as the rearguard, they turned on their heels, slicing through the swarming insects as they went.
The Great Cursed Realm was treacherous terrain, but if one was specializing in escape, one could achieve a respectable movement speed.
As long as the monsters held the rearguard, they could probably flee without issue, despite the unknown threat that was advancing.
Moreover, they were classified among the elite of the Demon Lord's army. They possessed power far beyond that of any common fodder, and in truth, they had crossed blades with the heroes' party on several occasions. No matter what the enemy was, they wouldn't fall behind so easily.
That was the confidence the two of them held.
It was precisely because such indulgences existed that they failed to perceive the true threat.
"—My, oh my, what a sight this is."
That voice, which suddenly echoed through the Great Cursed Realm—a realm embodying the alien—was an elegant one, reminiscent of a virtuous lady sheltered within deep windows.
"Who goes there?!"
This was the first contact with an intelligent hostile entity they had encountered here.
Above all else, the eerie pressure permeating the surroundings set off the utmost alarm bells within the two demonkind.
"You are all members of the glorious Demon Lord's army, are you not? The dark existence that stands opposed to light, threatening, as they say, the peace of the world?"
"I asked who you are!"
The fire mage, unable to contain himself, aimed haphazardly and unleashed a fire spell.
It was a complete violation of orders,but under these circumstances,there was no room for such talk.
Fortunately, perhaps due to the miasma and humidity emanating from the Great Cursed Realm,the trees did not burn,but neither demon had the composure to care about that.
"That simply won't do. Looking like that."
The slithering sound grew closer,louder.
Something was clearly approaching.
Once demonkind encountered an enemy, there was an inviolable constraint that they could never flee.
Furthermore, they could not tell where the approach was coming from.
The densely overgrown,cursed trees had been unknowingly warping their sense of direction.
"You must be more fittingly of the darkness—beautiful,cruel,and absolute..."
And finally,the moment of encounter arrived.
With a wet,slithering sound... a massive insectoid descended from between the trees.
With a heavy thud that seemed to convey immense mass, the figure that now stood between them was more ominous than any monster they had ever encountered, summoning a terror from another dimension.
A giant insect's body, adorned with protruding breasts. Iridescent wings gleaming like a rainbow, and sharp, scythe-like arms.
A grating, unpleasant warning alarm blared, while a voice flowed as pleasantly into their ears as a famed songstress performing a masterpiece.
All of that combined, manifesting before them as an immense pressure and sheer terror.
The Queen of All Insects, Isla.
By the time they realized it, the monsters under Fremain had already penetrated deep into the queen's territory.
=Eterpedia===
[Fire Knight or Fire Mage]
HP: 350
MP: 100
Attack Power: 25
Defense Power: 20
Magic Power: 13
Speed: 18
Fremain is a water monster.
It will attack the hero using fire-based weapons and magic!
=Message===
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