The Pain That Ceased
It was the day that marked four weeks since they had arrived in this place.
If everything went according to plan, the Second Expedition would be arriving soon.
Yurin felt a pang of guilt toward Mina.
Once all of this was resolved and Seon-a was reclaimed, either she or Miel would be the one to take him away. Of that she was certain. Having lost him once, neither of them would ever let him leave their arms again — would never show him to anyone else.
Not Miel. Not herself.
When that time came, Miel would surely shift from ally back to rival.
The thought of it made her a little sad. Losing the only companion with whom she could share her memories of Seon-a would leave a hollow ache. But losing Seon-a himself would hurt far more.
In the end, neither of them was in a position to choose. She even had the unsettling sense that this story would end with one of them vanishing entirely.
The Second Expedition and Mina would be here soon. She could not afford to let any of these feelings show. Mina — Seon-a's mother — had instincts sharper than Yurin had expected. Sharper, even, than those of Seon-a himself, the one she cherished most.
One week after entering the Gate, Miel felt the pleasure that had been flowing through her Yin Crest simply vanish.
What on earth had happened?
Anxiety clawed at her. And yet she felt no pain of any kind either. Every so often, a soft sensation would brush against Seon-a's body through the link, and each time it did she felt a rush of relief — proof that he was still alive.
Please, she thought. Please let him be safe. The desperate wish made it impossible to focus on the work in front of her.
At this rate, she would never be able to save him. She forced herself to clear her head and ran through the tasks she still needed to complete.
Considering the size of the First Expedition, the fact that a force of this scale had managed to slip past the Black Minotaur Lord's scouts and establish a base camp deep in these woods was nothing short of a miracle. She was certain of that.
The Black Minotaur Lord, true to his origins as a knight, had poured so much into his domain's military that nearly forty percent of his territory's budget went to armaments. The resulting security was excellent — so good that countless demons conducted trade and ran businesses within his lands. His scouting forces were several times larger than those of any neighboring domain. Ever since the wound to his leg, old trauma had driven him to maintain a near-wartime military posture, and yet the tax revenue from commerce kept the territory running smoothly.
In the entire Demon Realm, places with security this strong could be counted on one hand — the royal capital excluded.
But whether that same luck would hold this time was another question entirely.
Please. Don't let them be discovered this time either...
Mina finished the Second Expedition's departure ceremony and oath, then turned her gaze toward the Gate.
How dangerous was the world on the other side — the world where her son was? The thought of what kind of monster might be violating him right now, of the pain he might be enduring, made her chest seize tight.
The cheers of the crowd at the ceremony sounded, for a moment, like Seon-a's screams. The applause and the shouts of encouragement felt like the mocking laughter of succubi defiling her son. She thought she might be sick.
It was as if his voice might reach her ears at any second.
The pain would not stop. She felt the invisible ache inside her heart and, carrying it with her, led the Second Expedition through the Gate.
To take her son back.
To keep the promise she had made to Hyuntae.
Miel waited near the Gate with the scouting forces for the Second Expedition to emerge.
Her assigned role was to assist the scouts with reception and guidance — specifically, the moment the Second Expedition crossed over, she was to stabilize the minds of its commanding staff officers and its commander. Using her mental-type Hunter abilities, she would calm them so the troops could be moved to the base camp as quickly as possible.
Before long, the Second Expedition's forces began pouring through the Gate. Confirming they had arrived at the same location where the First Expedition had first crossed over, Miel and the scouts moved in to meet them.
Just as they themselves had on arrival, the newcomers were suffering under the Demon Realm's air. Their entire bodies would feel impossibly heavy. Miel knew — she and the others had been the same at first.
There was no time to wait for them to recover on their own. According to Operations Staff Officer Park Yurin, this land was ruled by a monster lord who fielded military forces on a massive scale, and scouting parties came through frequently. They had to get these people into the hidden camp at once. If their trail was discovered, the lord of this domain might dispatch an army to wipe them out.
Miel stepped forward first, placing her hands on the heads of the staff officers and of Mina, the Second Expedition's commander, and began stabilizing their minds. The crushing pressure on their bodies could not be erased, but psychological calm would settle over them, leaving them far more at ease. Once they could speak more freely and hold onto their composure, commanding the troops would become significantly easier.
A scouting party serving the Black Minotaur Lord spotted an anomaly from a distance.
Armed strangers of unknown origin had been sighted. Their equipment showed no uniformity, which suggested mercenaries. In the Demon Realm, mercenaries were a particularly vicious breed — the kind who, when work dried up, manufactured their own. Many of them treated turning into bandit gangs and plundering nearby villages as a basic professional skill. The larger the group, the more freely they ignored the authority of local lords and did whatever they pleased.
The force's size was assessed at roughly regiment strength. Armed groups of that scale were not common in the Demon Realm, but they were far from rare — hundreds of them existed if one looked hard enough. Thirty years after the Demon King's death, public order had deteriorated so badly that lords everywhere were scrambling. The vacuum left by the king, the infighting among the royal bloodlines, the factional wars of the nobility, and the imbalance of the sexes had left the Demon Realm more unstable than at any point in living memory.
Everywhere, that is, except the domain ruled by the Black Minotaur they served.
The scouts quickly realized they could not handle a force of that size. They turned on their heels and raced back to report directly to the lord's office. This was an emergency — the situation had to be delivered to the lord himself.
When Mina returned to the base camp, Yurin and Expedition Commander Maria were waiting to receive her.
"Welcome, Commander of the Second Expedition. Now that you've joined us, I'll be changing your post. From this moment on, you are appointed Vice Commander of the Expedition."
The moment the Second Expedition linked up with the First, the two forces were to be consolidated into a single command. That meant the Second Expedition's commander would step down to vice commander. The arrangement had been set in advance — both to prepare for the possibility that the First Expedition might be annihilated before establishing a base camp, and to prevent confusion in the chain of command upon a successful rendezvous. Mina accepted it without protest.
"All seven hundred and eighty members of the Second Expedition have joined the expedition without incident."
Watching Mina deliver the report as though she had already absorbed the new command structure, Maria looked thoroughly satisfied.
The Second Expedition numbered only about half the First for a simple reason: it had been assembled primarily as a combat force. Should the First Expedition come under attack while establishing the forward base, the Second was meant to replenish those combat losses. On top of that, Park Yura — the representative of the Hwaryong Guild, which had organized this entire project — had spoken highly of Lee Mina as an exceptionally capable Hunter. Maria's expectations were high. Even without her own presence, she had the sense that this woman would fulfill every role required of her.
Maria looked to be in her mid-thirties, but she had in fact already passed sixty. She had long since handed her guild over to other members, and she had come to the Demon Realm in pursuit of a glory that would endure on Earth forever. Even if she died here, if some stretch of land or a line in the histories bore her name, she would be remembered not merely as S-Rank Hunter Maria, but as a pioneer of the Demon Realm.
As an S-Rank Hunter who had run a guild and cleared countless Gates, money had long since ceased to mean much to her. After a lifetime spent as a Hunter, she had arrived at a single truth: when a life ends, the only thing that remains is honor.
She had joined an expedition that might well end in failure. Even if it failed, she knew her name would stand as that of the first explorer of the Demon Realm. Because she craved honor, she invested enormous meaning in being the first.
That was a large part of why she rated Yurin so highly as a subordinate — the woman already held the title of the first person to return from the Demon Realm. And since arriving here, Yurin had proven herself more than worthy of that title, rising in Maria's estimation from a good subordinate to an exceptionally capable one. Irreplaceable. The most competent subordinate she had.
She expected Mina would measure up in much the same way. For the sake of her own hunger for glory, she hoped Mina would push herself even harder — and she resolved to cherish this new subordinate with genuine pleasure.
Maria gathered every soldier from both the First and Second Expeditions. To eliminate any confusion in the chain of command, she named each of the Second Expedition's staff officers and officers in turn, emphasizing their promotion to deputy positions in their respective fields.
For Maria, it was a moment of pure satisfaction. At last, the preparations for a true exploration of the Demon Realm were complete.
All that remained was the beginning of a war of conquest — a campaign of occupation that would carve her name into history.