Chapter 1: Invasion
Chapter 1: Invasion
JUST as Phon’kaven’s town of Dragontan had identified a horde of Barbarians in the distance, some among the Barbarians were licking their lips while observing their far-off prey.
“Flamin, hath the Demon Lord given his orders?”
Hill Giants, Goblins, Orcs, and various demons made up the horde. A single block of ice spoke amid the monsters typically categorized as Barbarians.
Nay, it was a living creature, not an inanimate one.
The strange man covered entirely in ice had a huge body twice the size of an adult male and carried a giant axe to match his size. His appearance was too warped to describe as human—it’d be more apt to view him as compressed ice crystals with a will of its own.
This man, who was clearly in a league of his own within the horde, had directed his question toward the man standing next to him as he observed Dragontan.
“Kihehe! He sure did, Ice Rock. ‘Go at it the same as always,’ he said.”
The man who’d answered was equally strange-looking. Unlike the man of ice, he stood around the same height as a typical Human or Orc. However, his sickly thin body and the unceasing flames encasing him from head to toe highlighted his abnormality.
The man of ice was Frost General Ice Rock.
The man of flame was Flame Demon Flamin.
Both were generals in the Demon Lord’s Army and key boss characters in the role-playing game Brave Questers.
Frost General Ice Rock’s body creaked as he opened his mouth that didn’t look like a mouth. “Is there any intel on what kind of world we, the Demon Lord’s Army, hath been suddenly summoned to?”
“Hm? Ah, yeah, ain’t that different from the last one! Kihehe! World’s full of monsters, magic, and endlessly breeding Humans,” Blazing General Flamin answered with a sadistic smile without looking at Ice Rock.
Having already sent his subordinates to scout and investigate, Flamin knew this world better than anyone else in the Demon Lord’s Army.
…It was only just the other day that the Demon Lord’s Army had awoken in this strange new land.
In their previous world, they had an archnemesis known as the Hero. The Demon Lord had set out to fight the final battle with this Hero who was powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with the entire Demon Lord’s Army alone.
On that day, the two generals, who’d been revived by the Demon Lord after being defeated by the Hero once before, were confronting the Hero who was coming for their lord’s head. They had waited in the Demon Lord’s Castle Hall, their last and final stronghold, to intercept and finally bring an end to the hateful Hero, hoping they could at last offer victory up to the lord they served.
The final battle had begun at long last. Swords clashed in an exchange of blows and spells launched every which way.
Angry roars, screams, war cries.
Many of their companions were once again slain by the overwhelming power possessed by puny humans. But then what happened next had been obscured from their memories as if a fog rolled in and blocked it out.
As they watched their comrades get torn apart like scraps of paper, the remaining demons raised their voices and charged in to retaliate, when—they suddenly found themselves standing in the middle of a barren field.
It was just their master, the Demon Lord, and a few of the named high-ranking demons who found themselves there, surrounded on all sides by a wasteland. They were left with neither a glorious victory that would let them lead the world into darkness nor a humiliating defeat at the hands of light.
All they had were themselves and nothingness.
…That all transpired just about a week ago.
The Demon Lord immediately brought the confused demons under control, and they were quick to act after that. First came surveying this new land. Then came calling their subordinates with a summoning skill and constructing the Demon Lord’s Castle to be their base of operations. Finally, they turned their sights to building and maintaining an army.
Their objectives hadn’t changed. Even if the world and rules it was governed by had.
They had swiftly laid down the groundwork necessary to achieve their sole goal.
And once the stage was set at lightning speed, they moved to overrun this world just like they had tried to do in the last.
◇◇◇
“‘TIS a beautiful world, indeed,” General Ice Rock muttered to no one in particular, slowly raising his cold eyes to the heavens above.
He could see birds comfortably soaring through the cloudless, blue sky. The land itself was so vast it seemed endless, and the breath of resilient life could be sensed even from the barren wilds.
Ice Rock didn’t understand why he was in this peculiar situation or what he was supposed to do in this world.
All demons were driven forward by the Demon Lord’s orders. They always wielded their full power, following the instincts raging within them like a flooding river. Everything was done to fulfill their almighty Demon Lord’s wish: to annihilate humanity and create a paradise for demons. Such ambitions were what allowed them to live how they pleased and were also the reason for their existence.
“Our mission is to conquer the world. We’ll annihilate humanity and build our paradise.”
The Demon Lord’s orders were to “Conquer.”
Just as they had been in the last world, so they were in this one.
Ice Rock would turn himself into a mighty hunting dog per his lord’s wishes. He would once again trample countless cities and extinguish human activity as he had before. The world may be different, but his actions remained unchanged. And so, to fulfill his role as hunter, he set his sights on the town assigned to be his first prey in this world.
“…Is that the first sacrifice? A human town that’ll become the cornerstone of our supremacy.”
“Hehe! Apparently, it belongs to a kingdom called Phon’kaven. One of the beasty scouts I caught real nice in my snare was awful quick to tell me everythin’!”
“Hmph. Distasteful as always.”
Unlike his fellow general, Ice Rock had more of an honorable warrior’s disposition. That nature of his despised Flamin’s brutality and took form in his critical remarks.
Beastmen scouts had been sent out from what should’ve been a human town. Beastmen tend to be closer aligned to demons and monsters. Some races dislike conflict, but they’re generally incompatible with humans.
What in the glacial fields is one doing scouting for humans? That doubt crossed Ice Rock’s mind but dissipated as quickly as it came. He likely didn’t have the ability to think for himself.
Acting solely according to the Demon Lord’s orders was what defined the Four Generals of the Demon Lord’s Army. Nay, Ice Rock believed that defined every demon and monster alike who served the Demon Lord.
At the same time, some vague discomfort he couldn’t put his finger on was niggling at the back of his mind. Of course, he didn’t have the time to analyze and confirm the feeling in detail. The Demon Lord had ordered him to “Conquer the world,” and taking action took precedence over everything else.
Ice Rock shook his hard head to shake off his concerns as indecipherable unease took root in the pit of his stomach. Before long, his inorganic ice eyes shone with his resolve, and he put another question to Flamin to place the mission at the forefront of his mind.
“…It is what it is. Did the Demon Lord say anything about how we should conquer the town?”
“Anything goes! We’re free to use whatever monsters and strategies our wicked hearts’ desire!”
“‘Tis fortunate the Orcs and Goblins joined our army. World conquest will be much easier with them.”
There was one reason why their forces had grown this large in such a short span of time. A stroke of good luck befell them when they were still worried their army wasn’t strong enough with just their summoned underlings. This luck came in the form of the local monsters offering their allegiance to the Demon Lord and applying to join his army. What they lacked in strength, they made up for in numbers. It was a fortuitous situation indeed.
Then again, more than half had been expended during the several reconnaissance missions they’d conducted to get a feel for their prey’s strength… In any case, it was a cheap price to pay to obtain information on the humans. These monsters were never a part of their original army, anyway. As the one in charge of scouting out Phon’kaven’s strength, Flamin was happy with these results that netted them a decent amount of information on the local humans.
“Kihehe! It reminds me of the good ol’ days waging war on the ol’ world! Of those first days when we demons invaded human lands and destroyed an unmemorable kingdom in a single night!” Flamin enthused with disturbing glee.
Ice Rock also remembered those days of yore. The day everything started. The battle over the world with humans—with the Hero. Those days he swung his battle-axe to bring all to their knees before the Demon Lord. And he remembered the decisive battle with the Hero. An avalanche of information cascaded into Ice Rock’s mind with the flood of memories racing through him like a raging river.
That disturbing, niggling feeling grew more prominent.
“Flamin, this is an odd query, but…”
“Huh? What is it?”
“…What of our original ambitions? How fare they?”
“Huuuh? Why do ya care…?”
Ice Rock couldn’t forget the concerns he’d tried to shake off and voiced them instead.
Those final moments—Ice Rock vividly remembered participating in the battle that would decide the world’s champion. He remembered the moment when the Hero easily defended against his Ultimate Attack and shattered his ice core with his return blow. Ice Rock remembered how he fell back and stared through his hazy consciousness at the Demon Lord fighting the Hero.
Everything that followed was vague.
He had assumed he’d perished after that, but that answer didn’t check out with the fragments of obscured memories he had pieced back together. In which case, had they been summoned to this world before the battle with the Hero was decided?
…No, that didn’t check out either.
After all, Ice Rock had definitely seen the Hero’s blade pierce the Demon Lord in his final moments…
Thus, he endured his shame to ask Flamin. He chose to borrow his serpentine wisdom despite knowing that Flamin was scheming to outsmart the other three generals to become the Demon Lord’s closest aide. He hoped he’d find the answers to the discomforting doubts surging within him.
However…
“Meh! Doesn’t matter! Gettin’ the prey in front of ya comes first, doesn’t it?! Am I wrong, Ice Rock?!”
“…You’re not.”
Unfortunately, Flamin didn’t give the answer he was hoping for. Actually, Flamin did seem to pause and think about it. He was likely experiencing the same conundrum as Ice Rock.
Things started to get noisy around them. The monsters’ excitement and thirst for blood had reached an uncontrollable high. With unintelligent growls and strange cries filling the air, they didn’t have time for idle chitchat anymore. Ice Rock sensed the time had come without finding the answer to his questions.
“Move out the monsters. We’ll start by destroying this Dragontan town and offer up the suffering and despair of its humans to the Demon Lord.”
The adjutant waiting beside him, a demon clad in a robe with a wand in hand, nodded respectfully at his orders. The demon drew letters in the sky with some sort of magic spell. The unintelligent monsters slowly began their forward march on cue with that spell.
“What’ll ye do, Flamin?”
“Ah, I’ll sit this one out. You can have the lead. You’d better be grateful, Ice Rock!!”
“Is that so? You have my gratitude.”
The ice giant drew the enormous battle-axe from his back and brandished it with both hands. This was the thick and heavy weapon he had proudly slaughtered many an enemy with. None had stood before him and this battle-axe and lived to tell the tale—except for the Hero.
Ice Rock took a step forward. The earth shook, the dirt sinking and freezing under the giant’s unbearable weight. He marched toward the town of Dragontan, aware of the gaze on his ice-cold back.
Flamin couldn’t be trusted. Ice Rock couldn’t understand what the man of flame was thinking.
But that was no excuse to stop in his tracks.
All was well if the Demon Lord obtained the world in the end. And Ice Rock had the power to make that dream a reality.
Everyone but us can perish.
So decided Ice Rock with the arrogance and short-sightedness of one of the Demon Lord’s Four Generals.
◇◇◇
FLAMIN spit on the ground with utter boredom and disinterest as he watched Ice Rock and the monsters march toward the town, kicking up dust and dirt in their wake. But his expression instantly shifted when a bird-shaped monster covered in flames landed beside him and gave its report.
He turned his gaze toward the northwest with his lips twisting up in wicked delight.
Insubordinate, uncooperative, sadistically cruel.
If Ice Rock had an honorable warrior’s disposition, then Flamin would be the living incarnation of a venomous snake.
Flamin gave the bird-shaped monster some sort of instructions. The bird took flight to loyally fulfill its master’s orders.
Blazing General Flamin’s gaze remained locked on one location, a faint smile tugging at his lips. His sadistic grin belonged to someone who didn’t doubt he was an absolute being in the universe and a destroyer about to trample on innocent life.
“Hehehe! Guess I’ll go snag us another town! To get one step closer to my goal!”
His sights were set in the direction of the Accursed Lands.
