Run, then swing the blade.

I moved like lightning through rain. Even when the Blood-Draining Banshee saw me coming, she couldn’t answer. Even braced, she couldn’t guard.

Scarlet blood fanned out like dawn fog. It refused to scatter. It drifted above the Ironwood Forest, thick and writhing, like some nameless horror breathing.

If you crunch it like a game, you’d give a body numbers: burst, endurance, reaction, coordination. Speed’s not a base stat. It’s full-body control—feet driving, balance held, the whole frame in tune.

I’m sure of my control. In the Demon Realm or among humans, I’m top tier. I’m that kind of brute-force fighter.

But Gloria was faster.

She tuned her body better. She answered quicker. Pure speed, she hit the physical ceiling—the highest pace under steady laws.

She sprinted at every monster like an arrow loosed. She ignored all blows. She dragged the fight into grappling range—then took heads, punched through organs, or just grabbed left and right and tore a Blood-Draining Banshee in half.

Put simply, her physical-domain combat power outstripped mine.

Yet that blood-soaked, god-of-war silhouette didn’t look “Heroic.” She didn’t care about image, only about killing monsters.

Me? I want people calling me “the avatar of light and justice, the envoy of beauty and kindness.” I don’t fight like a barbarian if I can help it.

And who said my record’s weaker than Gloria’s?

On the human side, my job build’s Fighter + Shadow Sorcerer + Magitech Scholar. Fighter’s obvious. Magitech Scholar? I flaunted it to court Raven. Demonfolk love war and blood, sure—but the long-lived tend to be well-read.

As for Shadow Sorcerer—no one thinks it’s just to stash items, right?

“The Saint lifts the Shadow Lance and sings aloud. O Shadow without form or weight—if it be for great good, let this self fall forever into the pit of evil!”

“Grant it shape. Grant it number. Grant it mana.”

From the ring of shadows around me, I wove—

Spears that Sin for the Sake of Good, Ensemble!

Within three hundred meters around me, colossal shadow lances punched up through the earth like a spiking hell. In a blink, they skewered a host of Blood-Draining Banshees.

If these were iron spears, they’d still have strength to tear free.

But they were lances of Shadow. Once they pierced, the mana aligned against light ate their flesh. Those once-mighty banshees couldn’t even struggle. They crumbled into ash.

After my dear brother’s retainers died, their souls got dragged into the Shadow Authority Domain. Slowly, they’ll convert into my lesser retainers, Wandering Trickshades. At least say thanks to Yakfarro.

It all happened in a heartbeat.

“You. Strong.”

Gloria saw my harvest. She paused and said it. Her voice rasped like a machine, like a first attempt at speech.

“To earn praise from the third princess of the Steel Nation is an honor. But…”

I slapped a leaping banshee with the flat. It smashed into two of its sisters and tumbled. The impact alone snapped bones like dry twigs. Even if they lived, they couldn’t fight.

“Thorns of Desire. Directive: free attack.”

High-tier shadow magic. Five shadow brambles whipped from my shade. They carried brute force and speed. They lanced the nearby Blood-Draining Banshees like black vipers striking.

I kept batting corpses away with my blade. If we stopped moving, they’d swarm. If bodies piled, the fight would bog down.

“Your Highness, notice anything? These Blood-Draining Banshees don’t end.”

Lesser retainers are like summoned creatures. They sleep inside their Authority Domain. A Demon King and his upper retainers can call them freely. Mid-tier retainers must burn all their mana to summon.

“Shouldn’t there be a leader? Like in storybooks—drop the boss, the rest disperse.”

“Boss?”

“It means the monster leader. Monster ecology class says, most monsters fight under a commander. Kill the head, mess up the attack order.”

Gloria tipped her head, slate-stiff and blood-drenched—zero cuteness in it.

“But killing the monster leader will only make the rest fight even more madly. No stop. No rest.”

That’s true.

How do I tell her this is Yakfarro’s split-off assault? If his top retainer dies, that shows he can’t fully suppress the Ironwood students. Yakfarro will abandon this front fast. He won’t waste his lesser retainers for nothing.

When an upper retainer dies, the Demon King senses it. But unless you’re close, you don’t get much more than that.

“Andor Mephy. Your monster ecology score. How much?”

“Thir—thirty-five.”

I’ve been reading Magitech Department tomes lately. For Raven, yeah. Also I know Demon Realm monsters. Human-world monsters evolved in parallel. So failing isn’t weird.

“I. Score. Sixty-eight. So. Listen to me. Do as much. Damage as possible. To these monsters… you call them. Blood-Draining Banshees? Make them. Retreat themselves.”

Barely a pass yourself!

Dragging this out isn’t ideal. If we do it Gloria’s way, it becomes a war of attrition. I don’t know how many lesser retainers Yakfarro can feed in.

Raven’s side worries me too. Sure, our school still has the vice principal, Radiant Dawn, Gugwen. But he’s not a match for a Son of the Demon King who can converse with an Authority Domain.

Stini worries me as well. Her wounds aren’t healed. She’s at seventy, eighty percent tops. Still, Heroes—even when they’re unreliable—fight with tragic steel when facing a Demon King.

Worst case? Raven dies. Stini dies. I have to team up with Gloria and go kill Yakfarro. We might face both of them as puppeted undead.

That’d be bitter as winter rain. I don’t want months of planning going to ash.

Gloria’s treating it like a normal Monster Tide. She won’t aim for a leader. Then I will.

While we fought, I felt it. That unhidden, rabid mana.

“Your Highness, I’m going to use a high-tier spell. Can you hold for ten seconds?”

She glanced at me. She nodded. Then she became a storm at my back. She began Slaughter around my center.

Shadow’s hallmarks: formlessness, secrecy, erosion. This spell leans hard into erosion.

“That blade drips blood, hanging from an evil hand,”

Gloria melted into blood-fog, flinging violence like a red gale.

“No one looks back. No one returns. All drown in the dream of mist,”

Her motions weren’t graceful. Just mechanical running, cutting, running again.

“In the tomb of dusk, I saw stars fall,”

Why fight, how to fight—none of it was a question to her. It never was.

“The saint laments, the fool howls, only the shadow road to the end remains,”

High-tier Shadow magic—the Road of Ever-Lost Reflections.

“Rest now. Rest in my tears and blood,”

I cut my forearm. I let blood run like a crimson thread.

“Upon this road without end!”

With the last word, a long road of shadow unfurled before me, endless as winter night.

A thousand Blood-Draining Banshees screamed. Their bodies shattered inch by inch like glass under a hammer. At the swell’s peak, they were sucked into the shadow road, shrunk to a pin, and went to nothing.

The entire Ironwood Forest trembled. Something felt twisted. Shadow gnawed at the space around us like frost creeping over window glass.

“What. Is this?”

Gloria asked. Her tone stayed stiff as iron.

“Something was already nesting in Ironwood before we came. Your Highness, be careful. We didn’t stumble into ordinary monsters.”

Not a stumble.

I used the Road of Ever-Lost Reflections on purpose, to flush that thing out. It’s a spell almost no one uses.

It’s an unspeakable malignancy. A being of the same grade and station as Vega.

My dear brother Yakfarro’s only upper retainer—Zrolar the Chaotic. The Circus Wraith, born from the Ocean of Darkness’s circus and its negative idea.

Those born directly of the Ocean of Darkness are, in some ways, closer to it than a Demon King.

More savage. More terrifying. More mad.

“Eee-hee-hee-hee. Fun. So fun. How did you find me?”

He wore a clown’s suit. His face was twisted and ugly. His outfit was absurd, a collage—from a knight’s mantle to a lady’s dress. That nauseating creature perched on a branch and cackled.

“How did I—didn’t you jump out yourself?”

“What. Are you?”

Gloria and I spoke over each other.

She wasn’t shocked at the weirdo appearing. Maybe her stiff nature simply didn’t show it.

“Who am I? What am I? Eee-hee-hee-hee. Even if you know, so what? You’ll kill me? Can you kill me?”

“Was it you. Who planned. This attack?”

Gloria kept at him like rain wearing stone.

“Nope. Nope. I said no. Why don’t you listen? I said it wasn’t me. Maybe it’s the one beside you. Maybe this ant by my foot. Maybe my brain-dead master. Maybe you don’t know—you’re a split-personality killer who forgot you slaughtered a classmate last night. Eee-hee-hee-hee. All possible, right?”

Zrolar wriggled theatrically. Disgusting. This is why I hate clowns.

“It was you. Who planned. This attack…”

One stiff-born. One madcap. Next second they might brawl. Or babble nonsense till dusk. I cut in. Raven and Stini are both in bad spots.

“Don’t ask, Your Highness. I can feel it—this guy is the leader.”

“Why?”

Knowing details won’t help. He’s clearly Demonfolk. Just kill him clean.

“Because his mana matches the Blood-Draining Banshees.”

It’s filth from the Lust Authority Domain. Gloria’s a warrior. Her senses aren’t high. I’m giving her the ping.

“I see. Then…”

Gloria jumped and chopped at Zrolar with a hand-blade. It fell like a peerless sword—

It sliced only air. No bite. No edge meeting flesh!

Zrolar lays a web of phantoms. His real body stood behind me.

A grotesque claw speared into my back like an iron hook. Yeah. Liver and lung, probably clipped.

As planned, I tightened muscle like a steel trap and clamped his nails. He couldn’t move.

“Your Highness—now! Kill him!”