However, the village they were in was ruled by a dark demon, and so the words sounded as if they were filled with nothing but malice.
“Oh ho, what a warm welcome. By the way…do you plan on burying that knife in our backs while we’re sleeping?”
Mira did a complete one-eighty and dropped the whole naïve-young-girl act. Her eyes flashed sharply like a detective who’d just cracked a case.
In truth, she simply looked as if she were very full of herself. And yet, because she’d indeed made an accurate assessment, a look of visible dismay washed over the villager’s face.
“Show us who you really are! If you do that, then we’ll wait until you use your demon’s crystal!”
Mira was cross-examining her foe from the advantageous position of knowing the whole situation. And yet, this rather predictable exchange must’ve been moving a tad slow for Meilin, who was drawing closer to the villager as if there was no longer anything to hide.
“I don’t know who the two of you are, but it sure was bad luck to come here!” the previously peaceful-seeming villager cried.
Abandoning its disguise and assuming its true form as a lesser demon, it then shot a red ball of fire into the sky.
And, wouldn’t you know it, all the surrounding villagers flew toward them at the sight of this signal, instantaneously surrounding Mira and Meilin.
“Now what’ll you do? Everyone you see around you are innocent villagers that I’m controlling. Would you really hurt them?” the lesser demon said, a cowardly sneer stretching across its face.
Had they happened to just be passing through the village and managed to deduce the lesser demon’s true identity after speaking with them, then this tactic might very well have worked.
And yet, they were already well aware of the village’s secret.
“Yup, sure can,” Mira said, partially summoning a dark knight and cutting down one of the villagers right away.
Seeing the way in which she’d cut down one of them without a moment’s hesitation, the lesser demon’s eyes grew wide. Its gaze fell on the villager who’d been cut down, now back in lesser demon form since their disguise had worn off.
Next, when the vengeful spirit pouring out of its corpse failed to find someone it could possess, it dissolved and melted into the night.
“You just got luck… No, you must’ve known from the very beginning!” the lesser demon said.
He’d been about to say that Mira had just gotten lucky to have cut down a demon and not a real villager, but when he noticed the fearless look on Mira and Meilin’s faces, he looked at them once more and seemed to realize the truth: They already knew all about the village.
Immediately, all of the lesser demons reverted to their true forms. And then, just as Mira and Meilin were thinking that it was finally time to do battle, the lesser demons flew off in every direction.
“Hrmm, so far, everything’s going according to plan.”
Alone, lesser demons weren’t terribly powerful. Generally, they were mildly strong, just about as much as a C-rank adventurer. But Mira’s partial summon seemed to have shown them just how powerful she was.
Seeing that they were at a disadvantage, they’d fled. And yet, Mira and her companions had already predicted that they’d do just this.
Therefore, Wallenstein had surrounded the village with a barrier which no lesser demon could break through.
Now they just had to hunt down and exterminate them.
But just as they were about to split up and give chase to the lesser demons…
“Hmm…?”
The lesser demons began acting in a way they hadn’t predicted.
They’d predicted that they’d attempt to flee outside the village and then get stopped by the barrier. And yet, for some reason, the lesser demons were running into their homes rather than out of the village.
“I feel like this isn’t going how we’d planned!” Meilin said.
Did they perhaps have an escape door in their homes? Had they set up some sort of underground tunnel for such situations? Or was there something else going on that they couldn’t even imagine?
While things were no longer going according to plan, Meilin began watching with intense interest, as if anticipating some super-powerful foe to make an appearance.
And yet, even if they did attempt to escape underground, Meilin’s [Biometric Scan] was effective enough to catch every one of their movements. What’s more, so long as they didn’t go too far underground, they still couldn’t evade Wallenstein’s barrier.
In short, it didn’t matter what they tried; they were caught like rats in a trap. And so, Mira and Meilin’s plans remained unchanged.
“Well, whatever…”
Figuring they might as well make their way to each and every house, they were starting to move out when something happened.
So, what happened? The lesser demons weren’t attempting to hide or flee. Instead, they came out from their houses.
“Hm? Huh?! Could those be…?”
Why on earth were they doing this? Wondering and glancing around at the demons, they noticed something quite unexpected.
Each of the lesser demons who’d exited the homes had something in their hands.
They were all holding black crystals. Indeed, they were none other than the demon’s crystals that were rarely carried by lesser demons.
But this time, even though they were so rare, every single one of the lesser demons was holding a demon’s crystal.
Being that they were operating out of the village, the dark demon’s forces also seemed to be quite well prepared. Without a second thought, they then used their respective demon’s crystals and began summoning.
Demon’s crystals summoned a random fiend. That said, about half of them or so were duds that only summoned one or a few monsters.
But given the number of lesser demons here, they would definitely be facing a fiend.
Even the weakest fiend would have no trouble easily razing even a rather well-fortified village. If dozens of them were to appear, it would likely take a considerable amount of time to deal with them all.
“Once again, it looks like this is gonna be a serious pain…” Mira muttered.
What’s more, they couldn’t forget that they needed to deal with the lesser demons as well. Indeed, handling their vengeful spirits was going to be an issue.
Considering just how many demon’s crystals they were dealing with, they’d quite likely be facing a high-level fiend as well. Were one of the lesser demon’s resentment-filled spirits to possess a high-level fiend, their troubles would go from bad to worse.
And so, Mira stood smiling bitterly to herself while thinking all of this as fiends appeared all around her. Half of the crystals had been duds and had only summoned monsters, but the other half had all summoned fiends. What’s more, while half of them were lower-level fiends, there were quite a few intermediate-level as well.
And, sure enough, there was one that stood out clearly from the rest. It gave off extraordinary power and intensity, and the earth shook as its tree-trunk-sized legs crashed down.
It had a torso like a mammoth, a head like a goat, and it stood well over thirty feet tall.
But what stood out the most about it was the black horns atop its head. Looking as if there was something horribly wrong with it, the scorched-looking horns branched out from its skull in such a twisted way that it looked almost as if it had two heads.
It seemed most apt to call it a monster, not just from the way it looked at first glance, but from its tremendous ferocity and power.
It was a fiend known as a “reichengiebel.”
Faced with these fiends—and in particular, the reichengiebel—Meilin cried, “Just what I’ve been waiting for!” while breezily stepping forward.
Her eyes were fixed on the powerful foes before her.
“Well, I knew this was what’d end up happening…” Mira groaned.
Though there was a whole slew of things she’d wanted to try out against powerful foes such as the fiends, Mira kept her promise and headed over to deal with the monsters.
When working alongside Meilin, one pretty much had to let her take on the strongest foes. When it came to this, she wouldn’t budge an inch.
Therefore, Mira shifted her focus to testing out ways of utterly annihilating her foes.
Mira and Meilin were tasked with taking on the dark demon’s combined forces, which consisted of lesser demons, monsters, and fiends.
As soon as the two faced down their respective foes, the battle began.
Aiming for the reichengiebel, Meilin began pummeling the other demons head-on.
“There are loads of fiends to the front and back. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun!” Meilin cried.
Her fighting was, in a word, magnificent. Listening to her go, one heard an unbroken series of blows accompanied by wave after wave of pained howls echoing unceasingly through the air.
Meilin was in the zone.
Meanwhile, Mira, who was tasked with handling hordes of monsters, had sent in an experimental force to unleash havoc on the front line.
“Perfect, now it’s all coming together!” Mira cried.
This experimental force was made up of armor spirits that used different elements.
Using holy knights to defend her, she’d formed a team of dark knights, five in total, which had either fire, water, electric, or wind power.
This particular test was to determine whether it’d be more effective to focus on imbuing her armor spirits with elemental power, rather than just trying to summon as many as possible.
And while they were currently surrounded by a great many monsters, they were working together quite well. And so, considering it was her first time trying this in a combat situation, the results were fairly impressive.
“Now, how about this!”
Once again, Mira was using herself for an experiment.
That said, it wasn’t a very complicated one. She was equipping herself with her sacred frame to figure out just how well she could handle it and just how responsive it was.
Fighting by herself and not with the armor spirit team, she slew the monsters one after another.