“Shh… Don’t make any noise,” said Ani in a low voice.

It had already been a week and a half since the group of twenty consisting of Esperanza, the Progenies, as well as Ani and her warriors left Agus-Bas. In that time, they had journeyed out of the region that used to be the no-man’s land between the Human Kingdom and the Demon Territories. While their journey so far had been uneventful – what monsters crossed their paths ended up as their dinner instead – they started to take more caution once they entered part of the Demon Territories proper.

While the group definitely had the power to settle most demons they ran into without any issue – it was unlikely for any location other than large cities deep in demon territory to have enough power to handle twenty fourth-tier combatants after all – they chose to hide their presence because of the plan they had in mind. If they left traces of their passage heading to the frontlines, then that would likely give a clue to the demons that they were not from the human side.

As such, the group avoided any villages or towns they spotted on their way through the Demon Territories, at times taking detours to make certain that they were not being seen. A couple times they had to act when some hunters ran into them in the forests, but on those occasions, it was easy enough to make it look like those hunters ran into mishaps with the local wild beasts instead.

While a couple hunters going missing or never returning from their hunts wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, however, if a military patrol was to go missing as well, that would be noticed.

It was the reason why Ani led the rest of the group to quietly sneak around a small camp built by such a patrol in the forest that night. They happened to be taking a route that passed through a small forest located between two towns, and just by happenstance, saw the military patrol making camp ahead of them.

A detour would have taken a bit too long in this case, so instead the group chose to quietly sneak past the patrol’s camp while they slept. Some amongst the group had little issue sneaking past, as they had skills designed to help with that, but others could only rely on being quiet while hiding in the cover of the night. For the most part, the group had passed the camp without incident, until one of the demons on watch seemed to have noticed something and started walking towards them.

Esperanza didn’t wait until the demon noticed someone or raised an alarm. The moment the small-bodies Tesh’ka walked outside the sight range of the other watchers in camp, she pounced on him, making sure to cover his mouth first so he could make no noise as he struggled. The demon scout likely died without having any idea what hit him.

She then had Gordy drag the demon’s body deeper into the forest, leaving trails behind on purpose that suggested that the unfortunate scout was attacked by a predator. After some distance – and mauling the corpse to an extent that made it look half-eaten – they dropped the dead body and continued on their trip, with no signs of their passage evident.

Chances were that the demon’s death would be attributed to bad luck and some innocent predator in the forest. They knew that there were plenty of those around, though none of the predators dared to approach the group, as they were able to tell instinctively that the group was more dangerous than they were.

Ani led the group to rapidly distance themselves from where they ran into the patrol, so as to disassociate the mishap that happened to the demon from them. After another week of journey and no pursuers in sight, the group was relieved to have made a clean getaway. They would have noticed some form of pursuit otherwise.

While there were no witnesses to the kill, the more experienced Ani had told Esperanza and the rest that some classes were capable of discovering the cause of death just from a corpse, with a few of the more specialized ones even able to portray the victim’s last moments clearly. Of course, such classes were rare and very specific in purpose that their likes were usually kept by the royal families, or the nation’s intelligence departments.

The group had made their getaway rapidly just in case they had the bad luck to have a fledgling form of that sort of class amongst the patrol or within the populace of the towns they passed. While it proved unneeded in the end, none in the group had anything to say about the caution they had chosen then.

As they approached the front lines, targets of opportunity started to appear before their eyes as they journeyed. That said, Ani and Esperanza both advocated caution at first. Neither wished to make their first strike too deep into demon territory that it was implausible for the humans to have done it, so they left the easy targets they passed untouched for the time being.

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Instead, the two of them decided that a distance of around three or four days away from the frontlines should be plausible enough for the humans to be able to reach, if with some effort. They intended to portray themselves as such a human strike team sent into the depths of the Demon Territories on a dangerous mission to sabotage the demons’ war effort.

Once the group had journeyed through the Demon Territories for nearly four weeks, they decided that they were close enough to the frontlines to enact their plan. The increased flow of messengers headed to and fro their destination definitely hinted at that. To be safe, the group took out a couple messengers who took more dangerous routes and gleaned every bit of information they could out of them and the missives they carried.

They were less worried about being found out this time as sending multiple, sometimes up to a dozen or more messengers, were apparently the norm, especially this close to the frontlines. Far too many messengers simply never made it to their destination to do otherwise and expect prompt communication, while people who had skills that could facilitate such communication were far too rare.

Once they determined that they were roughly around the area they aimed for, the group started to look for a suitable target.

Esperanza couldn’t help but think of the military movies she had watched in her previous life. They made it all look so easy and seamless back then, but then again, the heroes in those movies were operating with good intelligence and knew what they were going for before they even left to do it. Her group had nothing of the sort, only a crude map they were definitely looking to supplement with more recent ones they hoped to find in the Demon camps, as well as a lot of power to brute force through the complications this sort of operation usually brought with it.

Eventually, after half a week of carefully prowling and scouting around – something relegated to those who had actual skills to scout things out from a distance, as Esperanza could out-prowl many of them but lacked those skills – Ani called their attention to a small Demon base located to their north-west. She felt that it might be a suitable target for them to hit.

For one, there weren’t that many demons in that camp, maybe a hundred or so at a time at most, other than when some logistic teams were visiting the place. The place itself was a supply camp, one where the demons stored consumables like foods, arrows, and other things. It was only one of many such camps that were used to keep the supplies flowing to the frontlines, but it sufficed for their intended purpose.

The hundred or so defenders of the camp were no issue. From the scouting the group had determined that there weren’t any fourth-tiers in the camp, with most of the guards still in the second tier, anchored by a couple dozen third tier veterans. Even with a logistic team added to that number, it was still well within the group’s capabilities to handle.

Even so, they preferred to play it safe, and Esperanza chose that time to try out the idea she had for infiltrating the base.

First they waited until a patrol from the base that included a large-bodied Ma’Varok – a Ragah-fiq would have worked too, but the Ma’Varok came out first – passed through the forest. By chance or happenstance, the Ma’Varok in question felt like answering a call of nature while on patrol, and went out of his partner’s sight to do so.

That was when Esperanza pounced down on him.

Likely to no small amount of horror for even the rest of the group watching the process, Esperanza then squeezed herself inside the Ma’Varok – who was fortunately far too dead to feel anything by that point of time – until she wore his corpse like a meat suit. It took her a few moments to get used to moving her “disguise” around her, then she returned to continue the patrol as if nothing happened.

To an outside observer, they likely wouldn’t be able to tell that the Ma’Varok was long dead, his corpse being used like a grotesque combination of puppet and disguise by something inside his body.

That said, Esperanza knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep the disguise for long. Although a Ma’Varok at the late second tier had greater vitality than normal people do, the body would still rot after a week or so. That, and she didn’t believe that she could keep up the charade for too long, especially if there were people close to her victim at the base.

Still, it was an acceptable risk, considering the power of the people in the base. Shortly after Esperanza made her move, the rest of the group had encircled the base, positioning themselves to make sure that nobody would be able to escape or bring word outside should things come to light prematurely. They had agreed that Esperanza would try to find whatever useful intel she could in the base for the next three days, and should that time pass – or if she was found out – then the rest would strike and burn the base down to the ground.

Fortunately, the partner that the Ma’Varok was patrolling with wasn’t too close to the dead man. A few annoyed grunts to the tune of stepping on animal dung by accident brushed them off without too much issue, and they continued their patrol without any incident, returning to the base by sundown.

The base itself was a simple construction, mostly an open area with several large warehouses ringed by fences that were clearly meant more for repelling wild animals than people. At a glance, it felt like an irresponsibly insecure setup, but on the other hand, given the location of the base days away from the frontline, and the fact that neither walls nor palisades would do any good against higher tier combatants, it made some economical sense to do things that way.

It was a rather relaxed atmosphere in the base itself, with the guard not taking their duties all too seriously. They were secure in the knowledge that the fighting was days away from them, and that even if anything happened, they would likely be warned of it beforehand. Perhaps they were just being complacent, or just had poor discipline.

Esperanza didn’t really care either way, as all it did was to make her work easier. She went around and took a good look at the lay of the base without anyone noticing her oddity. Apparently the victim whose body she used to infiltrate the base was a rather taciturn one, so the others weren’t too surprised at him being quiet most of the time.

After two days she had identified the tent where she assumed the base’s commander lived, the most likely place for important documents to be stored, and started to plot for the attack to come.