Adaptation
Mina had originally been an A-rank hunter, but through her reawakening she had come to realize that her physical abilities had grown even stronger.
On top of that, through her sensory enhancement ability she had turned her awareness inward and discovered something powerful circulating inside her body — a force of considerable intensity.
The quantity was not great, but in a situation this desperate she could not afford to be selective. The moment she instinctively wrapped that energy around herself, her physical capabilities surged dramatically.
She swung the sword in her hand in a wide arc toward the body of an ogre elite. Through a gap in the rare-metal armor, she severed the creature's neck in a single stroke. Riding that momentum, she reduced the remaining three to corpses in exactly the same fashion.
The ogre elites had never anticipated speed and power of a kind that, only moments before, should have been impossible. They could not withstand it. In an instant, they were nothing but corpses.
When she surveyed the surrounding situation, the orc forces were already in retreat. Confirming that the battle was over, Mina began assessing the damage among her own ranks.
The battle had ended with the enemy's withdrawal, but the losses were devastating. Though the enemy had retreated, the most critical figure of all — Expedition Commander Maria — was dead, and far too many combat personnel had fallen to the ogre elites and the minotaur.
What remained was five hundred non-combat personnel and seven hundred combatants. Nothing more.
Through this battle, most of the hunters would have realized the truth: that prolonged fighting in the Demon Realm was catastrophically disadvantageous to them. There was not a single combatant who had failed to grasp that the air of the Demon Realm drained their stamina far more aggressively, and made recovery nearly impossible.
The price of that realization had been far too high.
With Expedition Commander Maria dead, Deputy Commander Mina assumed her place. Their hideout had been discovered, so the moment the wounded were stabilized they would have to move toward the Succubus Lord's territory. Opening a Gate and returning to Earth, she told them, was the only path left for the expedition to survive.
She took command of the expedition and began the march.
Miel stared at Mina — now the expedition's commander — and found herself astonished.
The powerful energy dwelling inside Mina. The quantity seemed meager, yet the purity of that energy was cleaner than anything Miel had ever known. She recognized it at once.
Magical power. The energy every monster possessed — the energy every resident of the Demon Realm carried as a matter of course. High-ranking demons used that magical power to reinforce their bodies or cast spells.
And yet Mina, who was no demon at all, held magical power of such purity within her. More than that — it was not merely lingering for a moment. It was accumulating, little by little.
Even among royalty, beings who possessed magical power of that caliber were nearly unheard of.
In Miel's eyes, Mina looked almost like the Demon King who had died thirty years ago. Of course, Miel had never seen that figure herself — she had been born after the fact — but the purity of the magical power was so alike that the resemblance was unmistakable.
Christine, First Elder of the Demon World Council, read the report she had just received, crumpled it, and threw it aside.
A report claiming that humans had invaded the Demon Realm. Even if it were true, it stirred little interest in her. Still, she needed at least to confirm why they had come. Public opinion toward the Council had been poor of late, and from a political standpoint, simply ignoring the matter carried a certain burden.
So she drafted orders dispatching thirty elite knights of the royal household — to annihilate the human force and capture its leader alive, so that their purpose could be determined.
After all, the rebel factions and similar powers were more numerous and far more threatening than the human force described in the report.
Thirty years since the Demon King's death. In the vacuum left behind, the number of those hungry to monopolize power had only grown.
The Demon King had not merely been the sovereign of the Demon Realm. She had been the driving force that governed it — a presence that had existed since the very birth of Demon Realm civilization. And there was no demon fit to succeed her. More precisely, no demon existed who satisfied the conditions for succession. Even the royal bloodline that carried the Demon King's lineage could not meet those requirements.
High-purity magical power alone was the condition for becoming Demon King. Many among the royalty assumed that, as bearers of the Demon King's blood, high-purity magical power was theirs by right — but that was already an old story. The purity of the bloodline had thinned with every generation, and now even royalty and nobility scarcely differed from ordinary demons in the purity of their magic.
Moreover, the royal factions had no desire to inherit the Demon King's seat. The reason was simple: when the Succession Ceremony was performed, one did not become the Demon King. The Demon King's soul took dominion over one's body and soul.
Only the truly blasphemous remained.
So this is what royalty amounts to… forgetting everything they have enjoyed, and recoiling from sacrifice…
Even so, a Demon King was necessary. A being of such overwhelming power and knowledge had promised the Council and the noble houses of the Demon Realm eternal glory — and that promise had not been a lie. It had endured for more than five thousand years.
But thirty years ago the Demon King had fallen, and with no one left to succeed her, that promise had grown uncertain. It was a promise known only to the elders of the Demon World Council and the Council Chair — no one else. And so rumors had even begun to circulate that the Council was deliberately refusing to hold the Succession Ceremony.
Was decline all that remained for them now?
First Elder Christine could not set aside her dread of the wretched fate awaiting them.
Seona sat shut inside the room, his appearance growing more haggard by the day, doing nothing at all. Ever since he had learned that Miel had discarded him — that he had been deceived by her — nothing remained to him. He simply wanted to stay like this until he died.
Then came a knock at the door. It had to be the woman the Succubus Lord had said would be waiting outside — the succubus who had brought him here. Miel's older sister. The one who claimed to have studied the knowledge of Earth, and who had written characters upon his body.
He let the memory of her surface for a moment. If not for that woman, he would still be living out happy days inside that false dream. Better to have lived inside that blissful lie than to know a truth this agonizing — and as the thought took hold, hatred for her sprouted in his heart. He wanted to rage at her. Why had she brought him here? Why had she planted this suffering in him?
He wanted to, at least until the door opened.
But the moment he saw the woman who so resembled Miel, he found he could not. Even knowing he had been betrayed, the thought of Miel filled his chest with a tender ache. He knew even that feeling was a lie, and still he could not turn away from it.
He hid that feeling and spoke to her.
"Why did you come in? I didn't call for you… Please leave…"
Days without proper food or water had left his voice drained of strength.
"I was worried about you. I brought something to eat — try a little, at least."
The succubus spoke to him with a face full of concern. Hearing those words from a face so like Miel's made it almost impossible to shut her out — even knowing she was not Miel.
"…Why did you bring me here? If it hadn't been for you, I would still be… living happily with Miel right now."
The succubus said nothing else.
"I'm sorry."
Just those two words. An apology, and nothing more. Hearing them from a woman who looked so much like Miel made it feel as though Miel herself were apologizing to him, and something twisted strangely in his chest.
"There's nothing left for me now. No friends, no parents… no lover — nothing at all. If I don't even have Miel, I have no reason to keep living."
He poured out his story the way one vents a long-held grievance — a story she could not possibly have known. She looked at him with something like sorrow, and drew his body into her arms.
"I'm truly sorry… It was… purely my own greed. If I had known what Miel had done to you, I never would have brought you here."
Hearing that only made it harder — the fact that she was not Miel. The fact that the apology he had just received had not come from Miel's lips. He wanted to know the truth of everything Miel had done to him. No… he already knew she had betrayed him from the very beginning.
The only feeling left to him was revenge.
The greatest revenge he could take against Miel. Against the woman who had doted on him like a toy — he already knew what the greatest possible revenge would be.
He looked at the woman before him. The woman who looked so much like Miel. If he went to her willingly — if instead of being violated he shared love with her — what expression would Miel wear when she came to see him? Would she apologize? Or would she fly into a rage and treat him as her property?
There was no way to know. But if he could neither forget Miel nor abandon the will to take revenge on her, this was the only way to turn that will into action.
"You said you were truly sorry?"
He spoke while looking at the succubus before him, her face still marked with sadness.
"Yes…"
She answered as though she meant it.
"Then hold me… So I can erase every trace of Miel. Ravish me hard. Break me."
This was the only revenge left to him. If he could not settle his own heart, then finding satisfaction through the woman who resembled Miel — and the pleasure he would feel through the Yin Crest — would become, for Miel, a memory more agonizing than anything else.
Looking at the succubus before him, her face startled, he began to remove his own clothes, one piece at a time, with his own hands.