"Lord Banxia! Are you all right?" Lia looked toward the young man with concern.

"Hmph." Ethan glanced at the other demons, dismissive. "What did I tell you? She was always going to come back with companions."

"Wait, Ethan... something's off about that guy..."

"Off? Trapped in my magical creation means as good as finished."

"Finished? The fight's only just getting started." The young man's voice drifted up from the crater.

Ethan stared in disbelief. Not a single vine remained on the young man's body.

"What magic did you use?"

"Don't get the wrong idea." The young man waved both hands hurriedly, as though terrified of being misunderstood. "I didn't use any magic. Your vines were just poor quality — I gave them a casual tug and they snapped."

"Bullshit!" This time Ethan held nothing back. Full power, no restraint.

The toughest vines shot from every direction, wrapping around the young man layer upon layer.

Ethan took a deep breath, weariness showing on that face. "To think a human this stupid exists, facing my finisher and not even bothering to dodge."

"Hey. I'm talking to you." The young man's voice rang out again.

Under Ethan's stunned gaze, the young man tore through the prized magical creation with one hand. Then, with a lazy pull, tossed the tangled vines aside like trash.

"Haven't you eaten today? That force doesn't even qualify as a massage."

That leisurely, unbothered tone. That formidable body built to match the strength behind it.

It finally hit all three members of the demon squad: they had walked into something far beyond anything they'd imagined.

"Damn it — a human of this caliber, here in the south..."

"I had a lot of things I wanted to ask you." Banxia's murmur was almost casual, but his blade had already swung. "One alive is enough."

A massive slash cleaved through the air, bearing down on all three demons at once.

"Human!" The demon warrior bellowed, hurling into the air with a giant axe, barely clearing the strike.

The warrior got out in time. The two frail demon mages standing behind did not.

Ethan poured out every last bit of power, weaving vines into a cocoon, barely surviving.

Rek, the detection specialist standing right alongside Ethan, was not so fortunate.

"What kind of attack is this?" Rek's face drained of color.

From that slash, Rek sensed neither mana nor Battle Aura. Nothing.

There was no time to think. The slash arrived and cut Rek clean in two at the waist.

[Ding, demon Rek eliminated. Total lifespan: 2,400 years. Remaining lifespan: 1,500 years. Now absorbed.]

Banxia's expression didn't change. His gaze drifted upward to the giant axe falling from midair, aimed squarely at his head.

He didn't dodge. Didn't step aside. His slender fingers slowly reached out.

BOOM!

The ground caved in beneath his feet. He didn't move an inch. One squeeze, and the axe, bigger than a man, shattered to pieces.

"What—!" The calm on the demon warrior's face locked up.

The dangerous aura radiating off the young man forced the warrior's body to react before the mind could catch up. A violent lurch backward, panicked retreat, stumbling to Ethan's side.

"This is bad. This guy..." The warrior looked around for the others, and found only Ethan. "So Rek's already gone."

The two demons looked at each other. Continuing the fight was out of the question, they were completely outmatched.

They needed to find a way to survive.

The best method for dealing with humans, naturally, was a hostage...

That thought still half-formed, the two of them turned around, and found the beastfolk warrior had vanished without a trace.

"I see." Ethan stared at the vines the slash had severed. "This human is truly terrifying."

Fighting all the while, and still making a judgment that precise.

"Lady Holy Spirit!" The rescued deer-folk warrior crept quietly up alongside Lia and the young man, eyes fixed on Banxia with open wariness.

"Who is this...?"

"This is Lord Banxia." With the clansman safe and unharmed, Lia's voice turned bright, carrying undisguised pride. "The Great Demon of the south, Lord Banxia eliminated them with his own hands!"

"What?!"

The deer-folk warrior wasn't alone in losing composure. Both demons in the distance went pale at the same moment.

This guy...

He was the human from the rumors. The one who had eliminated Lord Geist.

No wonder. No wonder he was this powerful.

If it was this person, taking down a Great Demon wasn't impossible at all.

The realization hit: they couldn't win, and they couldn't run. The two demons' morale cratered on the spot.

Unlike humans, most demons had no obsession with dying for faith.

The survival instinct overrode everything else.

To stay alive, most demons would do anything.

"Hero of the south, please forgive our crimes! Our parents are at home, waiting for us to come back..." The demon warrior dropped to both knees on the spot, groveling without restraint.

Ethan followed, sinking to one knee, but that mind was running fast.

Ethan was no brute who only knew how to swing an axe.

The young man standing there was not someone whose heart softened easily. Getting through to him would take a stronger reason, a far more convincing performance...

"You're holding your head too high," the young man said, expression flat.

A sharp slash cut through Ethan's head in an instant.

[Ding, demon Ethan eliminated. Total lifespan: 2,700 years. Remaining lifespan: 1,100 years. Now absorbed.]

That ruthless decisiveness nearly made the demon warrior bury their face in the dirt.

In that moment, every last scrap of survival instinct was on full display.

"I ask, you answer. If I'm in a good mood, I might consider letting you go."

"Lord Banxia!" Lia and the beastfolk warrior looked over with visible unease, as if they wanted to say something.

He raised a hand. That was the end of it.

"Lord Banxia, please, ask anything! Everything I know, I'll tell you honestly!" the demon warrior blurted, terrified that even a second's delay would bring the same end as Ethan.

"Who sent you?"

"Lord Schlacht the Omniscient! Lord Schlacht sent us south to eliminate targets that could pose a future threat to the demon race."

"How many of you came in total."

"About that..." The warrior hesitated for just a moment, then gritted their teeth. "I don't know the exact number. This operation was jointly ordered by the Demon King and Lord Schlacht. What I do know is that eighteen demons traveled south alongside Qual the Sage of Corruption."

"What an honest child!" Banxia smiled, satisfied. He followed up with several more questions, and only once every last drop of intelligence had been wrung out did he speak again, unhurried.

"I'm in a good mood. So tell me, where are your parents? I'll send you back to reunite with them."

"Th... this..." The demon warrior's expression froze solid.

Demons weren't creatures born through reproduction. Where would parents even come from?

That mouth opened. Nothing came out. There was no angle to work with, no thread to pull.

"Slash."

[Ding, killed...]

➤ Next: No Marriage, Only Taking a Mount (Bonus)

Chapter 64 - No Marriage, Only Taking a Mount (Bonus)

[Heaven Rewards Diligence, perseverance brings reward.]

[Current Skills: Return to Fundamentals (Chroma) lv.1, Hundred-Forged Body (Chroma) lv.1, Blade Body (Chroma) lv.1, Hypnosis Resistance lv.2, Advanced Meditation Method lv.3, Wrath of Finality lv.2, Mana Concealment lv.2...]

[Current Remaining Time: Twenty-six years.]

[Held Monster Time: 5,320 years (assimilable).]

"So satisfying."

Banxia watched the numbers tick on the panel, a deep, settled contentment spreading through him.

The wolf pack cleared outside Alterna, plus these three high-ranking demons just now, his monster time had jumped by a massive chunk. Over five thousand years. He could actually start thinking about an lv.2 Chroma skill.

He was still mentally tallying how to spend this windfall when Lia came trotting over.

Those big, watery eyes were full of longing.

"Lord Banxia! Tell me more about your adventures!" Lia clasped both hands together, deer ears twitching with excitement.

The entire half-beast tribe was busy setting up the evening feast in his honor. The bonfires were just catching, and the smell of roasting meat had already started drifting over from somewhere in the trees.

Banxia closed the panel and smiled at Lia. "I really can't say no to you..."

He settled back against the wooden chair, gaze resting on the young holy spirit descendant before him.

Firelight caught Lia's white hair and softened it, like warm color settling over snow. Those fluffy ears tilted forward in anticipation, and the proud deer antlers gleamed with a quiet light in the darkness.

"Then let's start from last autumn." He found a comfortable position and began, unhurried.

"The turning point came when I ran into a monster I couldn't have imagined even in my worst nightmares."

"That was the moment I understood just how pitifully weak I really was."

"It was also the closest I've ever come to dying..."

Lia sat quietly at his feet, face tilted up, completely absorbed.

For someone who had spent an entire lifetime inside the tribe, these things were almost incomprehensibly distant. Banxia's storytelling wasn't especially vivid, his tone stayed flat, and he jumped around a bit, but Lia refused to miss a single word.

"..."

The half-deer tribe's banquet was more lavish than anything Banxia had expected.

With the southward migration decided, the clanspeople had brought out everything they'd been saving for years: rare medicinal herbs, fine liquor, all of it. Bonfires blazed until half the forest glowed red. The half-deer folk sang and danced, and the air was thick with roasting meat and the clean, sweet edge of medicinal wine.

Banxia sat in the seat of honor and drank cup after cup.

Plenty of female half-deer folk found excuses to drift close, toasting him, eyes soft and suggestive, ears quivering. The bolder ones used the wine as cover and leaned into his arm.

It made something itch under his skin.

He thought about it more than once. Each time, he pulled himself back. The whole place was full of people celebrating; no matter how lacking in shame he could be, he wasn't going to actually start something here.

By the time the night wore deep and the feast broke up, he was thoroughly flushed when he finally made it back to the room the tribe had prepared for him.

Those herbs and that medicinal wine had real kick to them.

He let out a breath, pushed open the door, and stopped.

"Lord Banxia..." Lia was sitting on the edge of the bed. The moment he stepped in, those fluffy ears fluttered like butterfly wings.

The tension on Lia's face was impossible to hide.

"Did I walk into the wrong room?" Banxia stayed in the doorway.

"...Just now, I went and asked the clanspeople what a 'pleasure house' was." Lia's voice dropped to barely above a whisper, the tips of those ears burning red. "So that's what it means..."

"And?" Banxia pulled the door shut behind him and walked over to sit on the bed, mildly speechless.

"When they heard that was the reward Lord Banxia wanted, a lot of people in the tribe fought over who got to come."

"Oh? So where are they?"

"I chased them all away."

"Hm?"

"Lord Banxia... would I not do?" Lia looked up at him, eyes glistening, a thread of hurt in that voice alongside something quietly stubborn.

"Hey. You're the Holy Spirit."

"Who said the Holy Spirit can't?" Lia pouted. "Mother got to pursue what she loved. Why can't I!"

"..."

Banxia went quiet.

Making a move on someone from a decent family, that was a real test of the small amount of morals and conscience he still had left.

He sat there for a few seconds. Finally he managed: "Let's get one thing straight. I have no intention of sticking around to get married."

"Married?" Now it was Lia's turn to look confused.

Lia tilted one side, antlers catching the candlelight with a soft sway. "Isn't it about becoming a mount? That's what Mother and the First Hero were to each other."

"Uh... let me just ask." Banxia's eye twitched. "Your mother was the legendary Holy Spirit Elk, right?"

"Of course."

"No, that's not what I mean." He gestured vaguely. "The Holy Spirit Elk... did she also look like you, Lia?"

"How could she? Mother was an existence close to the nature spirits. In human eyes, she would have appeared as an elk."

Banxia was silent for three full seconds.

Then he tilted his head back, stared at the wooden beam overhead, and spoke in a tone of reverence that defied easy description.

"Lord First Hero... well played."

"Lord Banxia, did you just say something?"

"Nothing. Come on — let's get in bed. I'll teach you a fun little game."

"Eh? I don't want to play games, I want to do, "

"Shh. It's not good to say that sort of thing out loud."

"...Oh. Okay."

...

The next morning, at dawn.

Banxia had not slept. He said his goodbyes to the half-deer tribe as the sky was still pale.

Before leaving, he told the chief: if any trouble came up after the southward migration, drop his name in Alterna.

He had briefly considered bringing Lia north with him, but Lia's strength and central role in the tribe gave him pause. He let the idea go.

Lia was deeply reluctant to part, but also understood that leaving wasn't possible yet.

They said goodbye in the morning mist. Banxia headed north alone.

The road was quiet.

After a stretch of walking, he came back to the village he had passed on the way in.

"Mr. Banxia, we meet again!" The villagers he'd pulled out of trouble before came hurrying toward him, faces bright.

"Oh, long time no see." Banxia looked them over. "Right, who are you again?"

"..."

They exchanged glances and, with no other option, walked him through the whole story of how they'd met.

"Sorry. I'm not great at remembering men's names." His tone was genuinely apologetic, no intent to wound.

"Ah, so that's how it is..." The villagers laughed it off awkwardly and didn't take it to heart.

Then one of them seemed to remember something and piped up, excited: "You saw the Holy Spirit with your own eyes yesterday, didn't you! We weren't lying, were we!"

"Yeah." Banxia nodded.

After everything wrapped up the day before, Lia had gone back to the village and given them a brief explanation. The villagers didn't know the details, but they knew the demon attack had been handled.

"We told you before — the Holy Spirit is so noble and beautiful — but you didn't believe us." The villager's smile carried a trace of satisfaction.

"You were right. I underestimated Lia." Banxia thought back on the previous night with a reflective expression. "I never expected the first time to be that intense. An ordinary person really couldn't have kept up."

"Hm?"

The smiles on the villagers' faces slowly stiffened. They had the distinct sense that there was something loaded in the hero's words, but no matter how they turned it over, they couldn't quite put a finger on what.

...

➤ Next: Kindred Spirits — Face to Face