Encounter with the Demon (5)
"This is…."
Alex, who had been poised for battle at her side, was just as flustered by Erin's sudden transformation.
"Eek! What the hell are these tails and ears?!"
Erin stared in confusion at her own changed state, feeling strange sensations from her waist and head.
She now looked exactly like a fox beastkin with nine tails.
This was her second transformation through semi-forced awakening via the gumiho's intervention, but the first time she'd noticed it while fully conscious.
"Pull yourself together! Your change has me rattled too, but focus on dealing with that demon right now!"
"Ah… right!"
Erin snapped to attention and gripped her rapier again.
Despite the clear opening from Erin's distraction, the succubus Lira hadn't ambushed her—because even Lira was thrown off by the situation.
What the hell is that mana… Where's all that mana coming from…?
Lira hesitated at Erin's explosively increased mana, but Erin looked utterly bewildered by her own shift.
Lira's original plan had been to transfer some of her accumulated mana to Erin, frame her for these serial assaults, then harvest more from additional humans.
But seeing Erin's state, Lira's eyes gleamed.
If I could drain all that mana…
It wouldn't be impossible to elevate her lower-demon rank to mid-tier.
The temptation overwhelmed her, drowning out any resistance or caution.
"You've got something nice there. I'll be taking that power of yours."
Like a hyena eyeing a feast, Lira licked her lips, flapped her bat wings, and dove toward Erin.
"I won't let you do as you please."
Alex intercepted her flight path, swinging his sword to disrupt her.
Lira halted mid-air and twisted back, barely dodging his horizontal slash. She scowled and glared at him.
"What a pain. You."
Irritated by the interruption, Lira drew the sword hilt from her waist and slashed at Alex.
"A succubus with a sword?"
"First time seeing one? But that's weird. You humans shouldn't have even encountered us demons before, yet you talk like you've seen us."
Seizing the opening as Lira spoke to Alex, Erin moved with blinding speed. Her gumiho state boosted her physical abilities far beyond normal.
'If the enemy shows an opening, strike without hesitation. Otherwise, you'll die.' Eunhyeon's training had ingrained itself as reflex.
She slipped into Lira's blind spot in an instant and slashed at her neck.
Clang!
"Ngh…?!"
A black curtain erupted from the ground, blocking Erin's path and halting her attack.
"This is…."
"Shadow…?"
Alex muttered at the familiar black barrier, while Erin voiced her impression of the rising dark form.
"That's right. Shadows. The black magic your brother Elvin used—Shadow Puppetry."
"B-Brother?"
Lira's mention of Elvin made Erin tremble visibly, shaken.
The demon wouldn't miss that gap.
"Don't touch it!"
"Ngh…!"
Erin jerked back at Alex's shout, widening the distance from Lira in a flash.
Lira narrowed her eyes at Alex, having lost her prime chance to drain Erin's mana.
"You… You know about me?"
She could say that because he clearly knew her abilities.
"I've never seen you before, and our races haven't crossed paths…."
Lira pondered deeply, then her face lit up with realization.
"Someone told you about our kind, didn't they?"
"……."
Alex stayed silent, but his stiff expression and quiet confirmed her guess.
"Who could it be? I could just peek into your head and find out."
"If you can take me down. Then yeah."
"Oh my, such confidence you'll never lose? How cute."
Lira giggled as if amused by Alex's words, but a chill settled over her face.
"Makes me want to kill you."
With that, she spread her bat wings wide and soared into the air.
Alex sensed danger as she began channeling massive mana from above. He kicked off surrounding buildings, leaping up to her altitude in a blink and swinging at her—
"I, the dream demon, as a member of the dream world, request the forest's manifestation here."
"Grant me the chance to give these frail creatures sweet repose."
⟨ Succubus Unique Barrier ⟩
⟨ Dream Forest ⟩
To whom was that prayer directed?
Before doubt could form, dark crimson energies gathered around Lira and churned violently.
The raging demonic mana engulfed Alex and Erin as they lunged.
"Urgh…!"
"Kyaa…!"
They slashed wildly at the fog-like dark red mana, clearing it—only to gape at the drastically altered surroundings.
"Where's…?"
"This place…?"
No sensation of flight or teleportation—the background had simply changed.
It felt akin to Eunhyeon's Illusion World reconstruction of the past, but the filthy brothel stench assaulting their noses and the cold, sharp wind proved it real.
"This is our dream demons' forest—succubi only."
Dense foliage and air murkier than Fernin's.
Most alien was the mana permeating the atmosphere.
Normal natural mana was blue or green, but here it was dark red, infused into the air. Just breathing it soured their moods.
"This is the Dream World, a space only our kind can enter."
They induce hallucinations in humans, abducting their spirit bodies here to imprison them.
Trapped here, Alex and Erin's hollowed souls would slumber eternally, unable to wake unless Lira released them.
"Why bring us here?"
"Curious who sold you info on us. And fighting there risked bystanders—my future meals. Can't have that dying prematurely, right? Hehe."
She claimed concern for humans, but it was no affection—just viewing them as livestock or fodder for her mana absorption.
Like humans raising cows, pigs, or chickens for food, Lira saw them as valuable mana resources.
"This country's great! Nobles cover up incidents to avoid scandal—even if demons infiltrate the capital, they'd hide it to prevent national damage! Lets me harvest mana so easily. What's better? Kyahaha!"
"What did you do to my brother?! You… you turned him into a black mage, didn't you?!"
Seeing her demonic nature, Elvin's mention, and use of his black magic, Erin easily pieced it together.
"Huh? Oh, think you're mistaken? I raised him to be a mage and gave him the black grimoire, sure—but the final choice was Elvin's, his will."
"Wha…?"
"He needed power to protect his sister. Said a commoner like him had nothing, and even after joining the court mages—Magers, was it?—treatment stayed the same as at Aiter."
Elvin had outshone many noble children with remarkable achievements, yet post-graduation and Magers enlistment, nobles still hounded him relentlessly.
Unable to stomach a commoner stealing spots, outpacing them, or rising above, they pressured and oppressed him.
Despite his feat of entering the court mages as a commoner, independence from his father Lenion, and dreams of success to save his abused sister Erin from home and school for a happy life—it all drifted further away.
"So he craved greater power and turned to black magic."
Elvin's root reason for becoming a black mage was Erin's salvation.
"Because of… me…."
"Weird, though. I figured once you knew all about Elvin, you'd crave revenge on those knights who killed him or the kingdom. But you're surprisingly fine?"
"……."
"Wasted effort framing you as the assailant in these attacks—mimicking your style with that silly vigilante act. Kingdom's useless, though. Targeted your connections, but never suspected you? All for naught…."
Prior noble who robbed the clothing store Eunhyeon and Erin visited, spouting nonsense supremacist entitlement without paying.
Father of the Aiter student infamous for brutally beating a commoner janitor.
Baron Berman, who aided father Lenion Hersha's embezzlement by falsifying accounts—and father of Marva Berman, Erin's worst bully at Aiter.
All deliberately targeted by Lira to link to Erin.
She'd infiltrated humans since Elvin's school days, gathering intel over years to exploit society's underbelly perfectly.
But Riod, investigating the assaults, knew Erin stuck to Eunhyeon all day—never suspecting her.
"Did you manipulate my brother too?"
Alex shielded the dazed Erin—shocked by Elvin's tale—and questioned Lira about Ashton.
"Brother? Oh! That inferiority complex lump!"
"Thing is, his mentality held up better than expected. Used that guy to shatter him into vengeful fury, but failed. Why?"
She tilted her head, genuinely puzzled.
Lira didn't know Eunhyeon intervened at the warehouse where Ashton kidnapped Erin, averting disaster.
Alex was certain: Lira's schemes never accounted for the variable Eunhyeon.
That's why she still didn't grasp her plans' derailment.
"Erin. Snap out of it. Forgot what she said?"
"…I know."
"That guy?"
Lira cocked her head.
Hearing Alex, Erin gritted her teeth and regripped her rapier.
The guy Alex meant—Eunhyeon—believed she could take this demon, staying alone in that prison.
She had to repay that faith. Abandon the self-pitying, despairing past self.
"Staying here's death anyway. No matter your mana, you're human-category. This is our dream demons' world. Unless I send you back…."
Crack!
"You'll never…."
Cracks spiderwebbed through empty air. A small rift forced open, then shattered fully as a massive crimson fireball emerged.
⟨ Six-Digit Upper Magic ⟩
⟨ Prominence ⟩
Boom!
"Kyaaaak!"
Mid-haughty death sentence for Alex and Erin, the fireball engulfed her, screaming.
It detonated, unleashing the contained heat storm to ravage everything.
The backlash scorched Alex and Erin too.
"Kyaaaak!"
"Urgh!"
A woman's faint tongue-click echoed in Erin's mind.
As scorching heat threatened to cook their skin, a barrier formed before Alex and Erin—shielding their faces with crossed arms.
The fierce gale subsided after seconds. From the shattered rift stepped a woman.
Clad in dark-toned, form-fitting clothes and a black hat, the witch scowled upon entering the Dream Forest.
"Why's the air here so murky?"
"Wh-What… What the hell are you?!"
The witch wrinkled her nose at the tainted airborne mana, spotting the babbling succubus hovering cluelessly.
"Found you. You're the one stirring up weird incidents in Fernin."
"I-Iliana Kenifer…!"
Lira, who infiltrated Fernin gathering kingdom and noble intel, knew the kingdom's mightiest mage—the Black Witch.
How she entered this succubi-only space, why here—questions swirled, but irrelevant now.
Critical: this spell specialist stood before her.
"You caught Hyun and planned to suck his essence dry, right?"
"Wh-What're you…."
Hyun—who? Lira puzzled.
Precisely, Eunhyeon let himself be caught to extract info by striking the succubus's weakness—but Iliana, hearing shocking details from Riod, distorted it gravely.
"Whatever."
Iliana tapped her staff's end on the ground. Three magic circles spun up around her.
Lira's face twisted in horror.
Triple Casting—rare even among high-rank mages. Iliana's expression boded ill.
She looked utterly furious.
"Know your place. Who the hell do you think you're eyeing for essence?"
"……."
"Get over here. Right now, you bitch!"