Legend had it that a direct descendant of the First Hero and the Holy Spirit Elk lived deep in the forest.

Whenever someone lost their way or found themselves in danger, she would appear without a sound and offer a hand to those in need.

Her noble antlers, and the graceful ease with which she moved between human settlements and the wild, had made her a totem of faith for many of the local villages.

Some said she was the living breath of the earth itself, guardian of the forest, a goddess of purity.

"So you were all nearly killed by monsters in the forest just now, and she didn't show up to save you?" Banxia asked, genuinely baffled by the villagers' shameless praise. "Isn't that just false advertising?"

"M-Maybe Lord Holy Spirit ran into some kind of trouble and couldn't get away in time." Several villagers fell abruptly silent.

"Seriously? Has any of you actually seen the Holy Spirit with your own eyes?"

"I heard about it from my grandfather's generation. The village was nearly wiped out back then, and Lord Holy Spirit stepped in and saved everyone."

"Is anyone from your grandfather's generation still alive?"

"...No."

"Then what exactly are you basing this on?"

"..."

Faced with this man tearing apart their faith piece by piece, the villagers could only clench their fists. Not one of them dared to start anything.

He was their Banxia, after all.

And more importantly,

Even if they rushed him all at once, they'd lose. They'd just get beaten bloody.

"I thought I might finally unlock the half-deer entry in my compendium. What a shame..."

Banxia sighed.

Nearly half a month out of the city, and he'd finally stumbled across a few living people, only to sit through their whole Holy Spirit legend. He'd hoped there might actually be a beastfolk tribe nearby, something to broaden his little brother's horizons, but it turned out to be nothing. Completely made up.

The beastfolk you could find in Alterna amounted to maybe a handful of types.

Banxia had worked his way through all of them over the winter. He was ready for something new.

But beastfolk in the wild were genuinely hard to come by.

The deeper you pushed toward the Central Continent, the louder the drumbeat of pureblood human supremacy got. Some of the more extreme nobles apparently believed that even speaking to a beastfolk was a stain on the honor of pure human blood, let alone anything else.

Banxia had picked that up from the Shinomiya household.

The further north you went, the scarcer beastfolk became. The only real exception was that free city-state known for its merchants.

...

Deep in the forest, the half-deer tribe was at war.

"Lord Holy Spirit, please go! We'll hold them here!"

The tribe's strongest warrior had placed himself at the front, weathering the savage assault of three demons alone, and still turned back to shout.

"I..." Lia looked at the scene unfolding around her, the tribal warriors on every side throwing themselves into the fight, spending their lives to carve open the thinnest thread of an escape route.

Lia had watched these people grow up.

And now they were locked in a life-or-death struggle with creatures far beyond them, all so Lia might live.

"Lord Holy Spirit!" Another shout, and Lia's hesitation broke apart.

Lia bit down hard on the lower lip.

No fool. The demons' target was Lia, that much was obvious. The only way to truly defeat the enemy's purpose was to survive. If Lia died here, every sacrifice behind her would mean nothing.

"All right!" Lia finally nodded, turned, and ran for the edge of the forest.

But Lia knew exactly what would happen the moment she was gone. These demons would not leave a single living thing standing along the way.

So she had to be fast.

She had to reach the nearest village before the pursuit caught up. Every person warned was one more person alive.

The night wind moved through the noble antlers and drew out a low, hollow sound, as though the entire forest were mourning on her behalf.

It wasn't long before Lia came upon a small group of humans on a path through the trees.

"Humans — go back to your village and tell everyone to evacuate. Monsters are coming!"

"Antlers, white hair, a beautiful face..." The villagers stared with glazed eyes. "Lord Holy Spirit? Am I actually seeing this...?"

"She really exists..."

While the others stood frozen, the broad-shouldered young man among them was bolder than the rest. Without asking, he reached out and ran his hand along one of the antlers.

"..."

Lia swallowed the discomfort and pushed it down. There was no time for this. The words came again, one by one:

"Humans, go back to your village and tell everyone to evacuate. Monsters are coming!"

That landed. The villagers went pale, the weight of it hitting them all at once, and they nodded in a rush. "Lord Holy Spirit, we'll go warn everyone to find shelter right away."

"Um, Mr. Banxia, are you coming with us?"

"I'm fine. Go on ahead." The young man waved them off without looking away from the figure in front of him.

White hair fell in loose curtains. A pair of noble antlers swept back from her head, and small, furry beast ears poked up through the strands. She wore a feathered robe the color of the forest, its green layers draping over pale inner garments, the hem hinting at the line of a waist beneath.

Lower down, there were no beast limbs, just a pair of fair, slender, very human calves, and bare feet.

The First Hero's human bloodline had apparently been dominant enough that most of the beastfolk born from those unions kept only a fragment of their beast traits.

"Human, why aren't you running?" Lia frowned at him.

"Are the monsters strong?"

"Obviously. They're demons that the entire half-deer tribe can't hold back. If you don't leave now, it'll be too late."

"I don't really have a frame of reference for the half-deer tribe." The young man shook his head. "How do these demons stack up against Geist of the Undead?"

"A Great Demon is obviously far stronger." That was the kind of question a three-year-old could answer, and it showed on Lia's face.

"Stop asking pointless things and run. If you won't go, I'm not responsible for you."

"Then there's no problem." Banxia nodded.

"What do you mean, no problem?"

"I'm the one who took down Geist."

"..." Lia went still. Then came the look, pure, undisguised disbelief.

"Hey! What's that face for? Haven't you heard that Geist was slain?" Banxia paused, genuinely at a loss. "How cut off from the world is this place...?"

"Wha—?! The Great Demon who ruled the south for a hundred years — you actually defeated him?!"

The moment the honorific slipped out, Banxia glanced at the deer girl's completely changed expression and muttered under his breath, "You're way too easy."

"Um... what should I call you...?"

"Just Banxia."

"Lord Banxia! Please, save everyone in the half-deer tribe!"

"Sure."

"Then let's go, "

"I have one condition."

"Name it."

"Afterward, take me to whatever beastfolk establishments your people have. The entertainment kind."

"Establishments? What do you mean?"

"...Never mind. A beast tribe probably doesn't have that sort of place."

The disappointment on his face was completely unguarded. Lia looked at it, and something seemed to settle behind those eyes.

One hand came up in a decisive sweep. "Lord Banxia! I don't know what you just meant, but, if you deal with the demons threatening my tribe, whatever you want, I will make it happen for you."

"I swear it on my mother's honor!"

It was the same as all those years ago, when Lia had helped the humans rebuild their village. The maiden stood before him and made her vow.

"If it's you..." Banxia's gaze moved from her face, down along the gentle contours shifting beneath the feathered robe, and he gave a slow nod.

"Mm. Not bad at all."

"Hm?" The deer girl tilted her head, utterly lost.

...

➤ Next: So Soft

Chapter 62 - So Soft

"Why can't you just obediently wait for death?"

Ethan looked down coldly at the beastfolk warrior trussed up in vines, voice stripped of any pity.

"Humans, beastfolk, you're all pitifully weak, yet you insist on putting up this kind of meaningless resistance."

"We never once provoked the demon race." The beastfolk warrior bit back through gritted teeth. "No grievance, no enmity, so why attack us?"

Throughout the long war between humans and demons, most beastfolk had kept to themselves, siding with neither and provoking neither. They had lived deep in the forest, at peace on this land, for centuries.

Even now, mid-conversation, the warrior kept straining in secret, trying to wrench free of the vines coiled around both arms.

Ethan watched calmly. Made no move to stop it.

"Save your energy. The vines binding you are not ordinary plants." Ethan's gaze swept the clearing, the other deerfolk, all firmly suppressed, hanging or pinned by those same creeping vines, and a faint, barely perceptible pride entered the voice. "This is a magical construct I spent centuries developing. Once it has you, escape is impossible."

"That said, don't worry. I won't kill any of you just yet." Wearing a fox mask, horns rising from the brow, Ethan looked with quiet interest toward the direction that one had been shielded away in escape. "The one who got away will go looking for companions. They'll come back for you."

"Keep dreaming!" The beastfolk warrior spat a mouthful of bloody froth, but the look aimed at the demons was nothing short of triumphant. "Lady Lia is already safe! Your scheme fell apart!"

The warrior didn't understand why the demons had struck without warning. But the one thing that set the deerfolk tribe apart from every surrounding tribe was Lady Lia, rumored to be the direct descendant of the First Hero and the Holy Spirit Elk.

No one in the tribe could say with certainty whether the legend was true. What they could say, without any doubt, was that Lady Lia was unlike anyone else.

That young, beautiful face had not changed once since the days of their grandparents' grandparents.

That, probably, was the only reason the demons had come for them.

"No." Ethan shook the head slowly. "She'll come back."

The tone was certain. Absolute.

"Whether humans or beastfolk, you're all such tedious creatures. Feelings, language, honor, comrades, all these unnecessary things. They're nothing but obstacles to getting stronger. So why do you keep clinging to them?"

A quiet pause.

"I genuinely don't understand it."

"Ethan." The demon warrior standing nearby kept both eyes fixed on the direction Lia had fled, voice flat with barely contained irritation. "If that creature doesn't come back, you can go explain it to Lord Qual yourself."

That warrior had wanted to give chase. Ethan had stopped it.

The three-member squad was evenly matched, no one meaningfully stronger than the others, no natural leader who could pull rank. They had come south with Lord Qual the Sage of Corruption for one purpose: to eliminate the hidden threats that Schlacht had flagged as potential dangers to the demon race.

Letting one of the targets walk away meant punishment waiting for them back home. That much was certain.

"She'll come back." Ethan was unbothered.

These kinds of scenes, Ethan had watched them play out too many times in the north to count. As long as you didn't slaughter every last person they cared about, those driven by emotion would deliver themselves to you eventually. They might even bring more targets along with them. This mission could end up finishing ahead of schedule.

Ethan gazed down the empty forest trail, and from beneath the fox mask came a laugh, so quiet it was almost nothing at all.

...

Meanwhile, at the other end of the forest.

"Lord Banxia, could you please hurry up..." Lia watched the young man with anxious eyes, the rims still faintly red. "Everyone in the tribe could die at any moment."

"A man can't be rushed like that," Banxia said, with great moral gravity.

"Why not?" The innocent deerfolk tilted her head. Her beautiful antlers swayed with the motion, her expression pure bewilderment.

"...Forget it. Pretend I didn't say anything." Banxia looked away.

There was a reason the villagers treated this girl as a Holy Spirit, as a totem. That warmth she carried without even trying, and the inexplicable calm that seemed to settle over a person just from standing near her, was genuinely unfair.

He unslung his oversized pack, tucked it into a concealed patch of undergrowth, then crouched down halfway.

"You're right, though. We do need to move fast, or the demons might get away before we arrive."

"Huh?"

Neither the action nor the words made any sense to Lia.

"Get on," Banxia said flatly. "Didn't you just say we needed to hurry? By the time you walk there on your own, everyone in the tribe will already be wiped out."

"Eh — do we have to..." The girl clambered pitifully onto his back.

Two pale arms looped around his neck. The soft weight against his back pressed in a little closer out of nervousness.

So soft...

Banxia could say with full confidence that this was, without question, the softest body he had ever come into contact with. Not the near-malleable, pliable give of a Forest Elf, this was soft with a bounce to it, an elastic warmth,

He got a grip on himself and evicted the thought.

"Is something wrong, Lord Banxia...?"

"Nothing." He shook his head. "I'm going to use a flight technique next, a warrior-specific skill. You'd better hold on. I'm taking off."

"Ah?"

Lia didn't get the chance to ask anything else. The ground dropped away.

Wind roared into her ears all at once. Lia yelped in fright, plastered herself against his back like a startled koala, and did not move so much as a finger.

...

"Ethan." The demon warrior's patience was gone. The battleaxe swung level, poised to cut down the bound deerfolk. "Go apologize to Lord Qual yourself when we're done here."

"Idiot!" Ethan snapped a spell out, catching the battleaxe and wrenching it back. "As long as the mission gets done, what does it matter if we wait here a full month?!"

"You—!" The warrior raised the weapon, defiance plain on the face.

The two locked eyes, tension pulled wire-tight, on the edge of settling who the real leader was the hard way,

BOOM!

A massive impact detonated behind them. The ground shook. Dirt and rock sprayed in all directions.

"Rek?" Ethan spun around fast toward the squad's third member.

Rek specialized in detection magic. Right now, Rek's brow was furrowed, and the head was shaking.

"No mana fluctuations," Rek said quietly.

All three stared at the enormous crater freshly punched into the earth. Dust and smoke churned upward. None of them moved toward it.

"I — I thought I was going to die..."

A voice floated up from inside the crater. The deerfolk went rigid.

"Lady Lia?!"

"Relax." A second voice followed immediately. "I'm usually quite gentle with women. There was never any chance I'd let you get hurt."

That exchange left every demon and every bound beastfolk in the clearing frozen.

The smoke thinned and cleared, revealing a solidly built young human, and one of this mission's targets.

"Who are you?" Ethan looked at the strange human, expression unchanged.

"Call me Happy Superman." Banxia was in a decent mood. He rarely bothered with jokes, but today felt like a day for it.

"Happy Superman?"

The three demons looked at each other.

What kind of name is that?

"Trying to hide your real name." Ethan's voice went cold. "Pathetic."

The words were barely out before Ethan moved.

Vines erupted from every direction and converged on the young man in an instant, wrapping him into the shape of a rice dumpling.

"Hmph. Not even worth the effort."

➤ Next: Defeat? The Battle Is Only Just Beginning