Across the vast plain, as far as the eye could see, lay shattered shields and broken blades.

Countless bones were scattered across the frozen earth, half-buried by drifting sand.

At the far end of this silent battlefield, a towering castle stood without a sound.

This was the site of the most brutal battle between the southern continent and the demon race, thirty years past. Every warrior who had cut through the outer sea of skeletons to reach these walls had been a legend in their own right.

Now they were all bones. Denied rest even in death, held fast in a Great Demon's grip.

"So slow~" A demon girl with curved horns and the face of a young girl sat perched on a skeleton warrior's shoulder, swinging her legs.

She stared out toward the distant line of banners creeping across her field of vision, utterly bored.

The expeditionary army was moving even more sluggishly than she'd expected.

Laya yawned. Then a thought flickered through her mind,

"Falling asleep mid-gallop would definitely be hilarious~"

No sooner thought than done.

She turned her gaze toward the advancing column and silently unfurled her magic.

Her magic was tied to dreams, but it was by no means limited to sleep. Anyone with weak willpower only had to enter her line of sight to be dragged effortlessly into whatever dream she chose to weave.

It was a crowd-control magic capable of turning the tide of a battle.

Given time to grow, there would come a day when her value on the northern front rivaled any Great Demon's.

With the release of her magic, unrest rippled through the expeditionary army almost immediately.

Without warning, several adventurers in the formation swayed and slid from their saddles, hitting the frozen ground hard and kicking up small clouds of dust.

Then a second group. Then a third. The riders who fell kept the posture of gripping their reins, their faces still locked in the exhilaration of the charge, and just like that, they sank into sleep.

The entire vanguard visibly lurched. Warhorses screamed and squad captains bellowed; knights in the front ranks yanked their reins in a panic while the adventurers behind nearly rode into the horses that had stopped dead ahead of them.

Chaos was coming.

"Hahaha, falling asleep on horseback really is hilarious!" Laya sat on the skeleton warrior's shoulder, legs swinging, admiring her own handiwork.

Humans were such fragile creatures. Their willpower was thin as paper, one poke and it tore. The boundary between reality and dreams barely slowed them down at all.

Her delight, however, did not last long.

A steady chant rose from the middle of the formation. The army left only a handful behind to tend to the fallen, and the rest drove forward without breaking stride, charging straight for the castle.

"What an amusing toy—far more fun than these boring skeletons!" Laya let out a soft laugh and sent her mana reaching toward that surging iron tide once more.

This time, nothing happened.

Her smile froze.

She raised her hand again, refusing to believe it. Mana spread outward like threads of silk, then struck an invisible wall and rebounded completely.

She remembered, then, something Lord Geist had once mentioned in passing:

The Church's holy scripture contained magic recorded specifically to counter mind control.

"So this is the first time I've run into this. This is cleric magic, then." Following the feedback of her blocked mana, her gaze swept the formation and locked immediately onto a figure at its center, surrounded by rings of guards.

Holding the holy scripture, wrapped in faint golden runes, it was Angela, the cleric accompanying the expeditionary army.

Countered or not, Laya wasn't the least bit worried.

She rested her chin on one hand and watched the iron cavalry thunder across the frozen ground until the riders charged right up to the castle walls.

"Warrior, I'll leave them to you." She patted the broad shoulder bone of the skeleton beneath her, flipped nimbly off, and landed in front of the castle gate.

The skeleton warrior said nothing.

Silence was its natural state. Stripped of intellect, a creature like this would simply stand motionless with no orders to follow, waiting for its bones to weather away and the last embers of mana to gutter out.

But now it had a clear command.

Within its hollow eye sockets, the ghostly blue flames surged.

Its jaws opened in a soundless roar. Then it moved, massive legs carrying it forward like a runaway siege engine, crashing toward the expeditionary army.

The skeleton warrior's mind was long gone. But the frame beaten hard over a lifetime remained. The martial instincts branded into the depths of those ruined bones remained. And with the Great Demon Geist's magic layered on top, pain and fear meant nothing to it anymore.

If anything, this husk was more ferocious than the warrior had ever been in life.

Meanwhile.

When the expeditionary army saw that fortress of a body tearing toward them, every face in the column changed at once.

"Scatter! Surround and bring it down!"

At the knight captain's order, the knights and the remaining Gold-rank adventurer parties split to either flank.

"How pitiful. You must have been an unmatched warrior in life." The kingdom's current strongest warrior dropped from the saddle.

Instead of pulling back with the others, Kilian gripped a greatsword, planted low, and stepped into the path of that grinding shadow.

"Let me give you release!"

Bracing for the collision, Kilian called back to two trusted companions:

"Angela, support us—I'm counting on you."

"Eva, I'll hold it down. Find your opening and put it to rest in one shot!"

...

Under the combined assault of the Three Heroes and a score of Gold-rank adventurers, the skeleton warrior, knowing no pain, refusing to retreat, finally crashed to the earth.

Scattered bones struck the frozen ground with a hollow thud, and the ghostly blue flames flickered in the wind a few times before going dark for good.

With the skeleton warrior down, the adventurers across the formation couldn't help but let out a breath.

"Just who was that...?"

The pressure that skeleton had put on them was something else entirely.

It was hard to imagine what kind of unbeatable force this figure had been while still alive.

"Judging by the fighting style and the build... it was probably Lord Isaiah. From thirty years ago." Kilian pressed a hand to an injured shoulder, looking up from Angela's healing toward the pile of scattered bones, voice carrying a thread of bitter nostalgia.

Warriors of this generation had grown up on stories of the South's strongest fighter. Every last one of them.

Nobody had ever imagined that someday they would meet that legend with blades drawn.

Damn that Geist.

"So it was... Lord Isaiah after all..." Muted murmurs moved through the ranks.

That name had been known to everyone across the South, once.

Yet even someone like that had fallen to a Great Demon.

Could they actually win?

The thought was still spreading unease through the column when a young girl's voice drifted over from the direction of the castle.

"Fascinating, fascinating~ Humans really are so fascinating~~"

All three Heroes turned at once toward the small figure perched on a crumbling wall.

"Are you Geist?" Kilian asked, voice low, brow pulled tight.

According to their intelligence, Geist was male.

Could demons change their sex at will?

"Laya, stand down. They are not opponents you can handle." The castle's great gates swung slowly open, and a tall, slender figure stepped out of the shadows.

Enormous ram horns cast curved shadows under the pale sky, completely at odds with a face as elegant as any human noble's.

"Aw~ Lord Geist, don't wrap things up so fast this time~" Laya trotted cheerfully to his side, like a scolded puppy who wasn't scared in the slightest.

Among a species where the strong ruled supreme, those above you in strength were simply your natural superiors. That was all there was to it.

"Just let me play a little too~"

"As you wish." Geist's answer was nothing like what it had been thirty years ago.

His gaze moved past Laya and settled on the mass of figures in the distance. His tone was flat. "Find a suitable opponent yourself and use them to sharpen your magic. I have no interest in dragging dead weight back to the North."

"Eh?!" Laya's head snapped up, eyes lit with delight. "You're planning to go back to the North?!"

"The Demon King was wrong. There is nothing in the South that poses any threat to the demon race. Rather than waste time here, I would rather return to the northern domain and kill a few more insects that are getting in the Demon King's way." As Geist spoke, his gaze swept across the human coalition with the idle disinterest of someone surveying a nest of ants he could crush at will.

"And you think you're walking away from here alive, Geist of the Undead?!"

Kilian's roar split the air. The greatsword rang from its sheath, leveled straight at the unhurried figure before the castle gate, every vein across the back of Kilian's hand standing out hard.

With layer upon layer of cleric blessings stacked on the body, Kilian launched toward Geist like a shell blasted from a cannon.

The charge was fast. The return trip was faster.

Most adventurers never even registered what happened. There was a single dull impact, and then the kingdom's strongest warrior was spinning backward through the air like a kite with a cut string, one arm hanging limp, blood dripping steadily from the fingertips onto the frozen ground.

The elegant figure simply retracted the leg that had kicked and brushed nonexistent dust from his clothes.

"That's... impossible..." someone whispered.

Everyone knew high-ranking demons tended to master both magic and martial arts. But this one, after commanding necromancy on that scale, had physical combat ability that was just as terrifying.

"..."

The shadow of despair was still spreading in silence when hoofbeats sounded again in the distance.

Heads turned. The expressions that looked back were even grimmer than before.

The rider was no one else. It was the very person who had unleashed that devastating spell earlier.

"Didn't the mage burn through all their mana? Why are they riding out here..."

Laya's attention snapped into focus at once. "That's the human who cast that ridiculous spell just now?"

"Lord Geist! I want that one as my opponent!" She was already sprinting past the ranks at speeds no ordinary human could match, a wide, delighted grin spreading across her face.

"That spell earlier would be considered impressive even by northern standards." Geist watched the direction Laya had gone. "Laya—don't damage the corpse. That human will make a fine addition to the collection."

"Understood—! Lord Geist!"

...

...

➤ Next: You Are the Challenger

Chapter 50 - You Are the Challenger

[Held Monster Time: 1,030 Years (Fusible)]

Most of this was the fruit of Banxia following behind the army and clearing out scattered monsters along the way.

He pulled on the reins and gazed at the two demon silhouettes standing before the castle in the distance, his brow furrowing slightly.

Two against one. Not ideal.

While there was still some distance between the two sides, he, ever the careful one, made a decision and issued the command to his system:

"Pump in another two hundred years of mana capacity."

[Year 1: You begin accumulating mana.]

[Year 100: You are still accumulating mana.]

[Year 200: You continue accumulating mana.]

[Advanced Meditation Method lv.2 → Advanced Meditation Method lv.3.]

Under the astonished gazes of Roxy and the rest, the young man drew his bow again, this time without a shred of the exhaustion from before.

Yet the power gathering on the arrow didn't pale compared to the last one.

As scorching white light blazed to life, the Three Heroes' mouths fell open in shock. The others broke into wide, relieved grins.

Laya, who had been charging straight toward the two of them, hit the brakes in a panic and bolted for the rear. "Lord Geist!"

This wasn't Banxia's first time releasing Wrath of Finality. He knew the destructive radius well.

To avoid catching allies in the blast, he deliberately held back the infused mana, filling the arrow with only about fifty years' worth.

Even so, the searing white arrow taking shape in midair cast a deathly pallor across the entire frozen tundra, like a second sun rising slowly at his fingertips.

Chsssh—

The blazing white brilliance surged forward.

"Lord Geist..." Laya's eyes went wide. In that instant, she could actually see the air behind the arrowhead warping and twisting in the heat.

Lord Geist was rushing toward her. But it was already too late.

She couldn't understand it. Why had the human before her remained completely unfazed?

She had poured every ounce of herself into that dream magic, a power capable of silently pulling hundreds, thousands, into slumber, and when it landed on him, it was like a stone swallowed by the sea.

His will to hunt demons was resolute in a way that chilled her to the bone.

This was the first time she had ever seen a human like this.

It was also the last.

The moment that miniature sun slammed into her, this demon body, formidable enough to make any ordinary mage tremble, couldn't muster a single shred of resistance.

Before that blazing, radiant sun, she was the insect.

BOOM—

Thunder filled the sky. The incandescent arrow punched straight through her body without exploding, momentum undiminished, and kept flying, shooting toward the silhouette that had already come to a stop.

"I see. Your target was me from the very beginning." Geist tracked the arrow's path and finally understood.

From the start, the only one that youth had ever meant to kill was him. Laya had simply been caught in the strike as an afterthought.

He stopped advancing. His legs settled slightly as he raised both hands to meet the approaching white arrow.

A formidable demon physique. The reinforcement of Battle Aura. The skeleton of a legendary human warrior he had deliberately brought along on this expedition.

All three layered together, his current defensive capability had long since exceeded anything ordinary imagination could measure.

The instant the incandescent fire arrow met its target, a colossal explosion swallowed everything in sight, just like the skeleton army before it.

A heatwave laced with bone fragments and grit swept outward in all directions. The distant castle shook, dust raining down from its walls in steady streams.

"..."

A moment later, everyone stared at the smoke-shrouded scorched earth, their voices trembling with disbelief. "Did it work?"

Banxia said nothing. He watched the notification that had just popped up on his panel.

[Ding. Demon Laya slain. Total lifespan: 3,400 years. Remaining lifespan: 3,000 years. Absorbed.]

A decent haul.

Though he remembered, there had been two demons standing in front of him just now.

Which meant,

The smoke thinned.

The figure of the Great Demon Geist emerged from the ashes.

His left arm was completely gone. Half his body was blanketed in blackened burn scars, and unextinguished embers still clung to wounds deep enough to expose bone.

His expression hadn't changed. If anything, the interest in the gaze he turned toward Banxia had grown several degrees.

Laya's death was a minor inconvenience, she'd been an asset he'd intended to cultivate and bring north. A pity.

But if he could use the human before him to forge an exclusive skeleton mage of his own, merely imagining it was enough to put him in a pleasant mood.

"I want you more and more."

Chsssh!

Another incandescent arrow ripped through the air.

This one hadn't been charged. Its power and speed were far below the last.

Geist shifted slightly and stepped aside without effort.

"That arrow earlier was somewhat beyond my expectations," he said, scanning the direction the youth stood, and casually raised one hand. The skeletons he had collected crawled up from the ground and closed in around the group. "But that's as far as it goes."

"You're a fine challenger. In the past hundred years, at minimum, you're the first mage to injure me."

"Even so — this is where it ends."

"Monster." Banxia swung down from his horse, handed the reins to Roxy, and waved a hand at her to signal her back. "You seem to have gotten something wrong."

The Great Demon studied him. "You still have a trump card?"

In Geist's reckoning, this mage was now standing within a hundred meters of a Great Demon who had mastered both magic and combat. The allies behind him were pinned down by the skeleton legion, none of them could step forward to buy time.

He'd grant the human's fire power was real. A fire mage of that caliber was rare even in the north.

Paired with a warrior of equal standing, Geist might have needed to fall back and wait.

But right now? At this range? How was a mage supposed to survive a top-tier warrior closing the gap alone?

Even after nearly a thousand years of life, Geist had no answer to that question.

He held every advantage. There was no reason to rush.

The human before him was the only presence in over a century to make him feel something like genuine interest. He didn't mind giving the man a little more time.

"Do you truly believe you can defeat me with magic at this distance?"

"No." Banxia reached behind his back and slowly drew the greatsword. The blade let out a low, resonant hum. "That's not what I mean."

The haul from earlier had put him in a decent mood. He was willing to exchange a few more words with the monster in front of him.

"You're the challenger."

"..."

➤ Next: So You're the One Cultivating Both Magic and Martial Arts, Huh?