In the afternoon, to the cheers of the entire city, the army marching to subjugate the Great Demon officially set out.

The Three Heroes rode at the forefront to lead the way, followed by the knight order and the noble mages, with the adventurers from the outer city bringing up the rear.

Including their squires, the whole force numbered nearly a thousand, practically draining every presentable high-tier fighter Alterna had.

Because the Great Demon's power lay in manipulating corpses, even the squires on this expedition were high-tier combatants capable of holding their own alongside knights on a front line, far beyond ordinary guards.

The column passed through Cairo Forest, a demi-human settlement, and reached Damuro before sunset.

This city had once been second only to the royal capital, the kingdom's second-largest metropolis. Now it was nothing but stretches of broken walls and rubble, standing silent in the dusk.

In the adventurers' ranks, a handful of veterans who had lived through the subjugation thirty years ago gazed at the ruins before them and unconsciously slowed their pace.

"Stay on guard!" The knight captain wheeled his horse around and barked the order. "We make camp here tonight. The knight order sweeps the surrounding area for monsters first!"

The command clearly bypassed the city lord's accompanying representative, but the old man, who had the look of a longtime butler, made no move to stop it.

Most of the monsters entrenched here were weak creatures like goblins. Even if a high-tier monster lurked somewhere in the ruins, it wouldn't last long against this many warriors, so having the knight order clear a path first was hardly a bad call.

Besides, if their side put in the work up front, they'd have every right to push the adventurers into the vanguard when the time came, and the adventurers would have no ground to refuse.

The knight order returned sooner than expected.

The report they brought back left everyone stunned: not a single monster anywhere in the surrounding area.

"How is that possible?" The knight captain's brow furrowed hard.

His subordinates wouldn't lie about something like this. That meant the report was true.

He glanced toward the Three Heroes, who were setting up their tents with the help of their squires, thought for a moment, then walked briskly toward the noble mages.

"Lord Jill, I'd ask that you perform an inspection in person."

"Of course." As one of the foremost specialists in the field of scouting, Jill, daughter of a great noble house, raised a staff without a word.

A moment later, the staff came down.

"There are no traces of monster activity anywhere in the vicinity. None."

"Even with winter approaching and monsters migrating north, they couldn't have cleared out this completely." The knight captain's voice dropped.

Jill didn't argue.

A pause, then: "Unless I'm wrong, something must have happened here recently that forced every last one of those monsters to abandon this territory."

At that, all three of them reached the same conclusion at almost the same moment.

Whatever could drive an entire region's worth of monsters out of their nests at once was no ordinary threat.

"Could it be the Great Demon?" The old butler was the first to say aloud what everyone was already thinking.

Could the enemy have received word in advance and laid a trap here ahead of them?

In the knight captain's mind, almost unbidden, rose the image his father had described, that night of catastrophic defeat, thirty years ago. That kind of slaughter could never be allowed to happen again.

He turned to Jill, his tone grave. "I'll leave the watch to you, my lady. I need to consult with the Three Heroes."

"Understood." The noble figure in ornate attire gave a small nod.

---

The knight order's camp was disciplined and orderly. The adventurers' side was something else entirely.

Tents were pitched wherever anyone felt like it, east of one group, west of another, spreading the camp out several times larger than it needed to be. If an enemy actually hit them in the middle of the night, just getting word to everyone would take half an eternity.

Roxy finished tying up the two horses and turned around. Her sky-blue eyes settled on the young man hunched over, still hammering their tent into the ground. She finally couldn't hold the question back anymore.

"Mr. Banxia, aren't you nervous at all?"

"Why would I be nervous?" Banxia didn't look up.

"This is an army marching to fight a Great Demon! One wrong move and you might never come back. And from what I've heard, the monsters are overwhelming in number — just clearing them out will take days."

"Hearing you put it that way, I'm actually getting nervous now." Banxia stopped what he was doing. His expression, for once, shifted to something that looked almost serious.

"Right?!" Roxy let out a quiet breath of relief. At least her partner was finally reacting like a normal person.

"Is there any way I can take the vanguard by myself?"

"...Eh?" The blue-haired girl went completely still.

Was that really what she'd been trying to get across?

Everyone else was racking their brains figuring out how to stay in the rear and survive. This man in front of her was doing the exact opposite.

Not retreating. Not evading. Actively trying to be the first one in.

"Mr. Banxia, do you even know what you're saying?"

"Of course I do." Banxia drove the last tent peg into the earth, straightened up, and gave her a look that said this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Miss Roxy, you just said the monsters are overwhelming in number, right?"

"...That is what I said, yes."

"Then you get it." Banxia brushed the dirt off his hands, his gaze drifting past the chaotic sprawl of the camp toward the silhouette of the old city district, nothing but ruins now.

Last time he and Roxy came here to clear monsters, they finished in a single afternoon. The numbers had been far too thin to bother with.

This time, rolling in with the main army, he was finally going to get his fill.

"Get what?"

Puzzled, Roxy followed his gaze.

In the last light of the setting sun, adventurers were gathered in small clusters, talking quietly. The rough edges they usually wore had softened. In their place was something rarer, a quiet, genuine solemnity.

They weren't as relaxed as they were pretending to be. Anyone could see it. Underneath, every one of them was worried, for themselves, for the people marching beside them.

Against a monster horde that clearly had them outnumbered by an obscene margin, no one could be certain they'd walk away.

For most adventurers out on the road, the people beside them were the closest thing to family they had. If a companion died in front of them, or they died in front of a companion, that kind of grief, Roxy understood better than she wanted to.

She pulled her gaze back to the young man at her side. A quiet respect surfaced in her eyes. So did worry.

"But then... who will share the burden for Mr. Banxia..."

"Huh?" Banxia turned to look at her, visibly lost. "What are you muttering about?"

"Nothing." Roxy shook her head quickly.

Since Mr. Banxia had no intention of letting anyone else know, there was no reason for her to go and spell it out.

She gripped her staff a little tighter, lifted her head, and looked at him steadily.

"Mr. Banxia, you are the truest hero I've ever met."

"Huh?"

---

Night settled in. The bonfires burned high.

Patrolling squires moved tent to tent, rousting the adventurers. Some had barely fallen asleep before being dragged out of their bedrolls, and the mood that followed was predictably foul.

"What the hell!" one adventurer snapped, hauling himself upright.

The squire didn't flinch.

"Priest Angela Burke of the Three Heroes will personally bestow blessings on each of you tonight, to guard against a surprise attack by the Great Demon during tomorrow's march."

"..."

The moment they heard it was on the orders of one of the Three Heroes, the grumbling quieted down fast. Hard to stay angry when the point was supposedly keeping you alive.

Still, more than a few caught a whiff of something off. Blessings in the dead of night, out of nowhere, it was strange, and everyone felt it.

"Sooner it's done, sooner we sleep." The adventurer at the front grabbed his weapon and moved to follow the squires toward the knights' camp.

"Apologies — no weapons when meeting the priest."

"...What?" The adventurer's brow pinched. His hand moved to his hilt on instinct.

Then he looked up and scanned the perimeter. Somewhere along the way, without anyone noticing, the knight order had quietly ringed the camp's outer edge.

His hand slid away from the hilt. His voice came out a notch quieter.

"Fine. No weapons."

The front-line adventurers and their parties were escorted, unarmed, toward the knight order's camp.

The whole setup had an unmistakably ominous air, and it rippled through the crowd in low whispers. But the Three Heroes still carried enough weight to keep anyone from openly pushing back.

At the far edge of camp, Roxy shook the young man by the shoulder, voice pitched low and urgent. "Mr. Banxia, something's wrong!"

"...I know. I'm awake." Banxia pushed open his bedroll and sat up.

He'd sensed the knights moving in the moment they started creeping over. No real threat to speak of, so he hadn't bothered.

He yawned, tone as unhurried as ever.

"Don't panic. We'll see what it is when we get there. It'll wait."

"...I suppose you're right." Looking at him like this, Roxy felt the knot in her chest loosen, just a little, without quite knowing why.

---

The first batch of adventurers returned intact. Their expressions, though, were decidedly strange.

That brought some relief around the camp. But when pressed for details, the returning adventurers all wore the same odd look and said the same thing, quietly:

"The priest gave us a very powerful blessing."

So it really was just blessings?

The next groups went in carrying the same doubts, and came back wearing the same expression, repeating the same words. Every single time.

Before long, it was Banxia's group's turn.

Their party was small, so a handful of unaffiliated mages were added to fill out the batch.

They passed through the adventurers' camp and arrived at the largest tent in the center of the knights' camp. The squire who had led them pulled back the curtain and stepped respectfully to the side.

"Honored adventurers — please, enter."

Inside, several magical lamps hung overhead. Far finer than anything Banxia had seen in the pleasure district, the light was clear and even, flooding the tent until it looked like midday.

Three people inside. Only three.

"Oh? Isn't this the little girl from before? Didn't you say you weren't coming?"

Court Mage Ava Marlowe spotted the blue-haired girl trailing behind Banxia the instant they walked in, a smile of genuine surprise and amusement spreading across that face.

"..."

Roxy had not expected to run into this person here. Not even a little.

She remembered, painfully, how firmly she had declared she wouldn't be coming, and how thoroughly she was now being caught in that lie. An embarrassed flush crept up her face and she instinctively edged half a step behind Banxia.

"That was because..."

Banxia glanced sideways at Roxy, then at the court mage across the tent, and filled in the gap without missing a beat.

"I asked her to come with me."

"Mr. Banxia..."

"Is that right?" Ava Marlowe shifted focus to the figure standing a full head taller and looked him over, unhurried.

"So you're the warrior companion she mentioned. You certainly look the part."

Banxia tilted his head toward the blue-haired girl beside him and dropped his voice. "What exactly did you tell this person?"

"I wasn't bragging, I just said that when it came to clearing monsters, Mr. Banxia might be willing to help..." Roxy's voice got smaller with every word.

"Oh — that's fine, then." Banxia looked back toward the three figures on the raised platform and spoke plainly. "For the record, warrior is a side gig. My main profession is mage."

"With that build, you're calling yourself a mage?" Mischief lit up Ava Marlowe's eyes, then paused.

"Though I can sense a mana signature. Hmm... about a year's worth? That's painfully weak."

"Is it?" Banxia's expression didn't shift. "I've always believed enough is enough."

"One year's worth of mana and that's enough? You're something else." Ava Marlowe laughed, a full, unguarded laugh, and the considerable assets on display swayed with it.

"How about coming to my room tonight? I'll personally introduce you to the wonders of magic."

"Sure. Which room? I'll head over after this." The answer came without a beat of hesitation.

Roxy immediately looked up at him, mouth opening, nothing coming out.

"..."

Ava Marlowe went quiet for a moment, visibly not having anticipated that. The laugh faded into an awkward smile.

"All right, Ava. Stop wasting everyone's time." From the raised platform, the middle-aged figure gave a small cough.

"Of course, Lord Angela." Ava Marlowe had only recently taken the court mage title, and in front of a veteran of the Church, she stepped back without argument.

"You must be wondering why we're bestowing blessings at this hour."

Angela Burke swept a calm gaze over the assembled adventurers, their expressions ranging from wary to resigned, and spoke evenly.

"After the three of us conferred, we have concluded that a traitor has infiltrated this expedition."

"A traitor?!"

Every adventurer in the room except Banxia jolted.

"There is no need to panic. When the inspection is complete, anyone with a clear conscience will leave without incident."

"Hold on! Why should we trust you? If there really is a traitor, fine — but what if you just decide you don't like someone and pin the label on them? We'd have no way to fight it!"

The voice came from a young adventurer standing behind Banxia. His face was pale, but his voice carried. The outburst was enough to put the rest of the group on edge, backs straightening, eyes sharpening.

"You may not be aware, but the Church has long held a divine magic of the Goddess, specifically meant to punish those who lie."

Angela Burke showed no irritation. A heavy scripture was drawn out and opened to a particular page.

As the incantation rose, low, measured, a pale-gold barrier bloomed outward without a sound, draping itself over the entire tent.

"For the duration, no one in this room can speak a lie."

The words had barely landed before a noticeable few in the group lost their composure.

Banxia, meanwhile, had already stopped paying attention to the adventurers. He was studying the barrier, the way the golden light moved through it, patterns shifting and turning. Interesting.

Worth testing.

He cleared his throat.

"I'm a lolicon. Petite girls are my absolute favorite."

"...Mr. Banxia, what are you saying all of a sudden?" Roxy went rigid.

"Nothing, just checking if the lie detection works. Seems like nothing happened." Banxia frowned. This Goddess magic seemed unreliable.

"Wait, really?" Roxy caught his curiosity like a reflex. "Then I'll try — I like..."

Before she could finish, another adventurer nearby, gripped by the same impulse, blurted out first:

"I'm not a lolicon."

CRACK!

A bolt of lightning split the air inside the tent. Roxy flinched hard.

The man who had just spoken was flat on the ground, smoking, smelling distinctly of charred meat.

"That is the price of lying."

The priest said it quietly from the platform, in no particular hurry.

"..."

Total silence.

With that demonstration fresh in everyone's minds, no one so much as breathed wrong.

Banxia stood there frowning, briefly reconsidering himself.

Then, after a moment, clarity arrived.

He truly wasn't a lolicon.

He simply loved broadly, and without discrimination.

Lolis were, at most, one small and unremarkable corner of a much grander affection.

"I will ask questions. You will answer."

Angela Burke's voice was steady and unhurried.

"Who among you accepted gifts from the Great Demon and chose to betray humanity by colluding with the demon race?"

"Surely you know that demons and humans are mortal enemies. Nothing a demon tells you can be trusted."

Banxia and the others with nothing to hide denied it immediately.

The only thing the demon race could ever use to bribe him was their own lifespans. And those they had already handed over.

The adventurer who had spoken up earlier was a different story. The color had drained entirely from that face. Lips moved and moved, but nothing came out, not one complete denial.

"I — I..."

"That's our answer."

The Three Heroes exchanged a look. All three shook their heads.

The war between humans and demons had gone on for this many years, and there were still people naive enough to swallow whatever sweet lies the demons fed them.

➤ Next: Geist of the Undead

Chapter 46 - Geist of the Undead

The expeditionary force moved out again at first light, under a thin, pale dawn.

With the traitors rooted out, scattered monsters began surfacing along the road just as expected.

That brought Court Mage Eva a small measure of relief. Forcing through the purge last night over the knights' and adventurers' protests had not been wasted effort after all.

Even so, clearing the outskirts wasn't the point of this march. Any monster foolish enough to wander close got crushed by the knights on the spot; the rest were left to scatter. No one gave chase.

That was how the expedition saw it, anyway. Under normal circumstances, monsters left alive were nothing but a disaster waiting to happen.

At the rear of the column, Banxia watched them flee into the trees on both sides of the road, and frowned.

He swung down from the saddle and shoved the reins into the blue-haired girl beside him.

"Miss Roxy, watch my horse."

"...Huh?" Roxy caught the reins on reflex, still catching up. "Mr. Banxia, is your stomach bothering you? I can stay behind and wait—"

"No need. Just some loose ends to tie up. I'll catch up." His gaze had already moved past her, settling on the tree line where the forest fell quiet.

Roxy followed his line of sight, then looked back at his face, calm, decided, not inviting discussion. She didn't push.

If Mr. Banxia had made up his mind, he had his reasons.

A few minutes later, the tail of the column disappeared around the bend.

The monsters that had been hiding in those woods went silent.

[Ding, Shadow Wolf eliminated. Total lifespan: twenty years. Remaining lifespan: eight years.]

[Cloud Mist Horse eliminated. Total lifespan: thirty years. Remaining lifespan: thirteen years.]

[Time currently held: seven hundred years.]

"Much better." Banxia sheathed his sword and let out a long breath.

Watching those monsters get crushed by the knights or scatter into the woods had been like watching money burn. His heart had been bleeding the entire way.

All of that was living, breathing time.

Now it worked out perfectly. The main force cut a path ahead; he harvested quietly behind them. No delay, no waste, and every fish that slipped the net came back into the bucket.

Decision made, he glanced down at the hoofprints churned into the dirt.

He didn't know the road. Didn't need to. He'd just follow the tracks and catch up.

...

At the southernmost tip of the continent: the City of the Dead.

Not one living person within a hundred miles.

This was where the dead came to rest, and the territory of the Great Demon known as Geist of the Undead.

On the northern front that name was standard. Down south, people had their own name for him.

The King of the Undead.

"It's snowing." Geist held out his palm, catching a flake as it fell, and looked up into a grey and sunless sky.

His appearance was indistinguishable from a human nobleman's. The only thing that set him apart — the only concession to what he actually was — was the pair of massive ram horns rising from his head.

The higher a demon's rank, the more closely they resembled humans. Not just in looks; they had picked up the mannerisms and the language as well.

"Lord Geist, the human expeditionary force is almost here. Shouldn't we prepare something?" Beside him, a demon girl, human in every detail except for the small horns on her forehead, tilted her head up, wearing what she'd learned of human expressions, eyes full of genuine puzzlement.

Her magic was tied to dreams.

She hadn't been alive long, but she had already pulled a vast wealth of knowledge from the sleeping minds of countless humans thousands of miles away.

More than that, through that same ability, she had lured in quite a few greedy adventurers. Made them willing to abandon their faith and swear themselves to the demons.

Humans were strange like that.

They knew, deep down, that demons couldn't be trusted. And yet they still reached for that one-in-ten-thousand chance.

As for those pawns all dying off last night in one go, she didn't give it a second thought. A few discarded pieces. Nothing more.

"Laya." Geist's gaze was steady, resting on the human skeleton kneeling prostrate before the castle gates. "Do you concern yourself with the movements of ants beneath your feet?"

Thirty years ago, the strongest man in the south had marched a great army here to destroy him.

Now, he was a reasonably serviceable undead puppet.

Demons were nothing like humans with their broad, scattered attachments.

Demons were pure. They fixed on a single form of magic and gave their whole lives to it.

Geist's magic, the Gospel of Eternal Darkness, was exactly that.

It was magic that no human mage could ever hope to understand, or even imagine. Not in a lifetime.

It belonged to the demon race alone, a power etched into their blood.

Like the flight that came as natural instinct to every demon, it was a domain humanity had spent a thousand years failing to grasp.

As the caster's strength grew, the death domain of the Gospel of Eternal Darkness spread outward without end, until all the land beneath it became a territory of the dead. Every human who died within its reach had their bones stripped clean from their flesh, rising and reassembling into skeletons that knew nothing but loyalty, bound to him forever.

This repulsive ability had reshaped the south. People had quietly abandoned burial. Now it was written into law: every body had to be cremated.

Geist paid humanity's silent resistance no mind.

Weak bones were weak bones. It didn't matter how many came.

This land was too barren. Too empty. He couldn't summon even a flicker of interest in it.

"Schlacht." Geist's eyes dropped. A scene from a century ago drifted back to him, from the days before leaving the north. "Just what did you see?"

The Great Demon Schlacht, the Omniscient, had come in person to persuade the Demon King, and convinced the Demon King to dispatch Geist alone to the south.

Schlacht held the most powerful gift of foresight in the demon race. An existence the Demon King kept close as a trusted confidant. The second-in-command of the entire race.

In a thousand years, not one of Schlacht's prophecies had ever been wrong.

That was why driving humanity into retreat had come so easily for so long.

According to Schlacht, a powerhouse capable of threatening the demon race would rise in the south. Geist was to gather strength there and crush it before it could.

But Geist had spent over a hundred years in this land now.

Not a powerhouse. Not even a single human of the caliber that would barely register as a threat on the northern front.

He looked at the newborn demon girl crouching by the pile of bones, fiddling with skeletal fingers with all the innocent curiosity of a child. He slowly closed his eyes.

"Perhaps this time, Schlacht, you truly miscalculated."

The land beneath him had been at peace for too long. So long it had lost the soil to grow anything strong.

"Ah! My skeleton tower!"

The little tower Laya had been stacking from loose bones collapsed in a clatter.

She looked up, puzzled, at the Great Demon beside her. "Lord Geist, was that an earthquake?"

"No." Geist's gaze moved past the crumbled castle walls and settled on the distant skyline, lit red by firelight. Something rare stirred in his voice, a trace of genuine interest.

"It's simply that an interesting human mage has arrived."

"As greetings go, that was not half bad."

"Far more interesting, at least, than the one from thirty years ago."

He lowered his eyelids and spoke in a flat, unhurried tone. "Laya, take the skeletons. Go welcome our guests."

"Understood, Lord Geist!" Laya bounced to her feet and brushed the bone dust from her skirt.

She turned toward the castle gates. Behind her, the scattered fragments of bone across the ground began to move, drawn by something invisible, spinning upward, clicking into place, piecing together in midair until in moments they had resolved into a massive skeletal warrior at her back.

Pale blue flames kindled in the hollow eye sockets. The skeleton closed its fists and let out a soundless roar toward the distant fire.

The south's greatest human warrior from thirty years ago, even in death, not something to take lightly.

...

➤ Next: Banxia Felt Nervous for the First Time in a Long While