Chapter 41

1 THE RESS SNOWFIELD Demon country. Located beyond the Algardia Valley, and then past two mountains. After leaving the land of the succubi, Bash and company ascended the flooded Algardia Valley and entered the land of the demons. Though their entry had been unregistered, they left a note at the border and hoped that would suffice. A snowy plain stretched endlessly before Bash and Zell. The people called this place the Ress Snowfield. It was once uninhabited land, covered as it is in snow for most of the year. A barren land where nothing green grows. But shortly after the Demon Lord Geddigs ascended the throne, the demons established a base there. As to what exactly led the Demon Lord Geddigs to choose this particular spot… One can only speculate. After all, strategically speaking, it wasn’t a very well-situated base or anything. Neither the humans nor the elves, nor even the demons who were his direct subordinates, knew the significance of this spot for his base. A pointlessly located base. That was what had been built here, on the Ress Snowfield. But that same base proved very useful only after Geddigs’s death. Then the demons came under fierce attack from the Alliance of Four, and the front line went into retreat. Eventually, even the capital city fell. Driven out of their familiar lands, they fled to this place. It was then that the base that Geddigs had built finally proved its worth. The pursuit stopped. The base, surrounded by valleys and mountains, was surprisingly well-defended and had no strategic value. The Alliance of Four didn’t really see any need to go and attack it. The leaders of the Alliance decided that the terrain wasn’t suitable for an attack anyway and decided that if they just posted some troops at the only bridge across the Algardia Valley leading here, then that would be good enough. Anyway, the demons were helpless by this point. They were out of the amount of strength that would be needed to push the line of battle back again. The war ended with the demons and the Alliance glaring at each other, with the Algardia Valley and the Ress Snowfield in between them. And so the demons were trapped on these snowy plains. All demons were forbidden to leave the area, with only conditional access permitted to those of high rank who needed to conduct matters of international diplomacy. The only access point was that one single bridge over the Algardia Valley. There, the Alliance had built a fort, guarded by elite troops, and strict checks were carried out on anyone wishing to either enter or leave the country. That was how isolated the demons were. Just as isolated as the succubi… If not more so. Nowadays, barring a few exceptions, very few people came to visit the demon lands. Bash and Zell, our two warrior veterans, were an example of those few rare exceptions. “There’s nothing here! Nothing! And I’m freezing my wings off, to boot!” “Are you?” “We fairies are as delicate as petals in flight! This cold is like a poison to my body! Flowers are sensitive to cold, you know! They can only bloom under warm sunlight, in toasty climates! Then, when the time comes… Poof! We float off into the sky!” Unusually, Zell wasn’t zooming around and flitting through the air while delivering this speech.