The Assault
Three days had already passed since the Second Expedition Force joined them.
The expedition intended to remain holed up at the forward base until the newly arrived personnel had grown reasonably accustomed to the Demon Realm's environment. They also needed to convene and plan their next moves. When the expedition commander, her staff officers, and the ranking officers gathered for a council, the staff officer Yurin's proposal determined the first territory they would seize in the Demon Realm.
Yurin argued that they should target the domain of the Succubus Lord who had once held her captive. The land was rich in resources, and she knew its terrain and internal layout intimately — advantages that would make holding the territory far easier than conquering some unfamiliar fief. She further explained that they could use the Gate she had once passed through to reconnect with Earth, recruiting more personnel and receiving supplies. She herself had returned to Earth through that territory's Gate; whether other domains even possessed Gates was anyone's guess. Expedition Commander Maria threw her full support behind Yurin's recommendation.
A connection to Earth through a Gate was a matter of life and death. It meant proper resupply, and a line of retreat if unknown enemies attacked. The mere existence of a Gate linking them to Earth was reason enough to take that territory. With Yurin's knowledge of the local geography as a bonus, the conquest would be considerably smoother than any alternative.
After further discussion and debate, they resolved to spend one more week at the forest outpost so the Second Expedition Force could acclimate — then they would depart. The council adjourned.
When the Black Minotaur Lord received the scouts' report, he gathered his weapons and armor. Then, leaving only the bare minimum of troops needed to maintain order within his domain, he mustered nearly his entire army. Matching the enemy's numbers was a necessity he could not avoid.
He would lead his forces to confront the armed group presumed to be mercenaries, then attempt negotiation. The Minotaur Lord knew that only when troop strengths were roughly equal would the other side feel genuine pressure. When two armies of comparable size clashed, the casualties on both sides would be considerable — and that meant they would likely accept a parley if one were offered.
After briefly considering his plan, the Lord led his forces toward the forest where the invaders were said to be hiding.
Everything was different from Earth — the grass, the trees, all of it. Three days in the Demon Realm had made that painfully clear to Mina. This was not merely another country. It was another world entirely, and the reality of that fact had settled deep into her bones.
Thinking of Yurin and Seona, dragged into a place like this and made to suffer, left a bitter ache in her chest. Seona was still enduring every kind of humiliation this world could inflict. The thought tangled her mind until she stepped outside for a walk.
Dark waves filled the night sky, and the forest was thick with cold air. Mina breathed in the chill wind and replayed the day's events. She remembered Yurin arguing at the council that they must seize that territory — for her sake and for Seona's — and the expedition commander's ready acceptance of the proposal.
She wanted to reach the place where Seona was being held as soon as humanly possible. From the moment Maria accepted Yurin's counsel, a fragile hope had begun to rise in Mina's heart. A twinge of conscience whispered that countless soldiers might die for her selfish desire — but she could not abandon the last hope she had left. Even if everyone else had to be sacrificed.
While Mina stood lost in thought, drinking in the night air, the Minotaur's army came crashing into the forest. Sentinels of the expedition force, catching sight of the vast host, shouted emergency alerts in a continuous stream, warning the entire camp.
Expedition Commander Maria summoned the expedition's forces — organized into team units — and began assessing the enemy. Humanoid forms. Uniformly equipped monsters. In the darkness their builds were hard to make out, but they looked like orcs. Dense undergrowth made an accurate count impossible, yet their numbers were clearly enough to pose a real threat.
Maria immediately deployed the combat teams to the front and pulled supply personnel and staff officers back so they would not face the enemy directly. Then she watched and waited. The enemy, too, showed no eagerness to attack. First she needed to learn what they wanted — why they had come armed against her people.
A black Minotaur of considerable size stepped forward, a massive double-bladed axe gripped in one hand. More than a dozen ogre soldiers, clearly his escort, ringed him protectively. The ogres' equipment marked them as elites — armor forged from rare ores that only occasionally appeared beyond the Gates, covering them from head to toe.
Maria had heard of this black Minotaur before. Yurin, one of her staff officers, had mentioned him once. He was almost certainly the lord who ruled the surrounding territory. The elite guards surrounding him were proof enough of his importance.
The monster presumed to be lord of these lands spoke first.
"How did humans cross into the Demon Realm?"
The commanding monster sounded genuinely astonished. Come to think of it, they were likely the first humans ever to invade the Demon Realm. His surprise was only natural.
"We have no reason to answer you."
There was no need to confirm it. Now that they had encountered these creatures, battle was inevitable. Monsters regarded humans as an inferior species — Maria judged they would never simply let her people walk away after seeing them here.
"I had intended to negotiate," the Black Minotaur Lord said, as if resigned to the inevitable, "but if I resolve an emergency like this through talks alone, the Council will hold me to account..."
There would be no avoiding a fight.
"These foolish humans who dared invade the Demon Realm are our enemy! Advance, all of you! Capture anyone who looks like a staff officer or noncombatant! I will interrogate them myself!"
With that thunderous bellow, the enemy raised a roaring battle cry, drew their weapons, and charged the expedition force. In an instant, the forest — so dark that not even moonlight reached the ground, where one could not see a hand's breadth ahead — transformed into a battlefield.
The battle seemed both disadvantageous and favorable at once.
Whenever the Black Minotaur and his elite troops clashed with the expedition's small squad-level combat teams, those squads were shattered by his axe in mere seconds. But aside from the Lord and the ogre elites, the bulk of his forces were ordinary orc soldiers. Every time an A-rank combatant faced those orcs, the creatures became corpses in an instant.
The monster Lord and his elites were formidable, but in overall quality of troops, the expedition's hunters held an advantage of two ranks or more. The monster Lord could see that at this rate, his forces would be bled dry. For now his soldiers were pinning the enemy down, but if too many fell, he and his remaining elites risked being surrounded.
The thought decided him: he had to take the enemy commander. He drove into the heart of the opposing lines, orc troops flooding in behind him to keep his rear from being cut off.
Maria, an S-Rank hunter, was already moving toward the same place — intent on bringing down the enemy's commanding Lord. If she left him free, combat teams would keep being annihilated under his axe. She would deal with him herself.
Two different situations. The same conclusion. Cut off the head and end it quickly.
Maria raised the blunt weapon she carried high and charged the Lord, bringing it down in a crushing arc. The ground shuddered as if struck by an earthquake. In that single blow, six ogre elites who had been serving as the Lord's living shields were reduced to bloody pulp and collapsed into the dirt.
The remaining four ogre elites, who had been guarding the Lord's flanks and rear, shifted forward — clearly intending to serve as meat shields. But the Lord waved those four back, sending them to support the orcs instead. It was not the gesture of a man resigned to death. It was the gesture of a man overflowing with confidence.
The Minotaur Lord was a battle-hardened veteran who had once served as a royal knight, recognized by both the royal family and the Council. The number of enemy heads split by his axe was beyond counting; the cities he had destroyed after crossing Gates outnumbered the fingers on both hands. He had crushed rebel armies deemed enemies of the crown dozens of times over — a veteran among veterans.
Unlike other minotaurs, his strength was several times greater, and the skill honed through countless battles formed the foundation of his combat. The moment he felt the human commander's power, he was startled to realize she was stronger than he was. But her movements themselves looked crude. He had faced opponents stronger than himself many times before — rebel forces had even included giants among their ranks. Had he been unable to handle that, he would not be standing here now.
When Maria raised her blunt weapon again and brought it down, the Lord angled his double-bladed axe and tilted his upper body slightly to the side. He deflected her strike, letting the weapon glance off. His grip on the axe trembled, but as the blunt weapon slid away, an opening appeared in Maria's guard.
Maria stared at the Minotaur who had redirected her power, astonished. That a monster could employ such advanced technique was genuinely remarkable.
The Lord did not waste the opening. He spun his body in a great arc, the double-bladed axe scything toward Maria's neck. She hastily raised her weapon to block, but the deflection of her own attack had already cost her balance. In the end she chose evasion over defense, rolling sideways in the direction her balance had broken.
The Lord did not miss the instant his enemy was nearly prone against the ground. Seizing the opportunity, he swung his axe from horizontal to vertical, denying her any chance to properly rise, hammering her with continuous attacks.
The fundamentals of combat: break the enemy's stance, then take the opening. No matter how great one's strength, it was useless without the chance to strike. He was overcoming the difference in raw power through pure skill.
Maria could feel it — this Minotaur Lord's fighting method was no ordinary thing. Attack after attack came that would deal fatal wounds the moment they landed. He allowed no counter, chaining strikes she could only dodge, and it was killing her by degrees.
Their exchange stretched on for a long while, until at last Maria's patience snapped and she chose mutual destruction.
Her breathing was growing ragged. The Demon Realm's air made every muscle in her body scream, and she could not properly recover. If this continued, her muscles would stop obeying and her stamina would fail — and that axe would find her. If she was going to die anyway, she would not die like this. She launched an attack the enemy could not possibly anticipate or avoid.
Even as the axe swept toward her neck, Maria swung her blunt weapon at the Lord's lower body. Caught off guard by the unexpected strike, the Lord raised a leg to block it.
In the end, Maria lost her head, and the Lord's leg was reduced to shredded meat. The two commanding figures' duel was over.
The Lord looked down at the leg that had throbbed with aftereffects and was now simply gone. He understood: he would never fight again. He had won — but at the cost of a catastrophic injury. He had planned to defeat the enemy commander and then deal with the rest of the humans, but the wound was far worse than he had expected.
He knew perfectly well how low the quality of his remaining troops was. Orc soldiers alone would not be enough to handle these invaders. At least, having fought the invaders this hard, he could avoid the Council's interrogation. With that thought, the Lord ordered his forces to retreat.
Mina was among the uppermost tier of A-rank hunters. Through her physical-type ability — Sensory Enhancement — she could control her body so completely that nearly every movement obeyed her will. She could freely regulate all five senses, and under the right conditions, even tap into something that might be called a sixth sense, a perception that should not exist.
Against the four ogre elites before her, none of it mattered.
These were A-rank monsters whose strength rivaled her own — and they had been outfitted with that extraordinary equipment, and there were four of them. She could barely manage to dodge. As her breathing grew more labored, the Demon Realm's air pressed down on her body with crushing weight. It meant nothing to the monsters, but the longer the fight dragged on, the more it disadvantaged the humans. The air of this place was steadily draining her stamina. At this rate, every last reserve would fail, and an ogre's weapon would cleave her body in two.
If she died before finding her son — it would be the same as condemning him to eternal suffering.
So Mina watched relentlessly for a chance to counter, blocking and dodging and deflecting, clinging on with stubborn ferocity. The single thought of saving Seona filled her mind completely. She could not give up.
But her stamina kept falling. Her lungs refused to take in more air, screaming that they could not. Her muscles shrieked. The limit was closing in. In Mina's heart, the longing for Seona only grew fiercer. If not for this Demon Realm air, it would at least have been a fight she could stand in — but the environment itself had her by the ankle.
And then, in the instant death stood before her —
Suddenly, Mina's body began to ease. She did not think she was dying. Vitality surged through her without warning. She felt as though she had adapted to the very air of the Demon Realm.
Among ability users, it was one of the rarest cases in the entire world.
Mina had reawakened.