The pale moonlight revealed completely the appearance of the monster.

Members of the party were vomiting violently, exposed to any attack.

Enri was terrified by the most horrid thing she ever saw in her life.

Luke heard stories about them, the commanders, and the high tier forces of the demon lord.

It was shaped like a horse, with a smaller deformed head beside the main one.

Deformed teeth extended from one side of the head to another side, but it had no ears so they extended almost all the way around.

It had six legs attached to were the two back legs would be and those were human cadavers piling up forming them, and instead of the frontal legs, it had... arms.

For its middle body, it was just its torso where its bones could be seen, with a bit of muscular mass —if it had to be called somehow—.

Just like a horse, it had a long mane, like an old horse whose mane was never cut before since it was born but, when looked closely there could be recognized jaws and teeth, hundreds of them in different mouths.

When finally Alaric piled up all the courage he gathered for a couple of minutes, he spoke.

“What... is that?”.

Luke was terrified. Being the leader of a party has attached to it a high level of responsibility.

He was in charge of leading the group under any kind of situation... but he couldn’t move.

“Luke!!”, Alaric said hoping whatever that thing was, wouldn’t go after him.

Luke turned his head to Alaric’s position.

“What is that?”, Alaric said pointing at the thing.

“That is... an Apostle”, Luke replied.

“Apostle?”, Alaric asked, confused.

“Y-Yes”.

Enri recovered what she had left of composure, and tried to explain.

“Apostles are Inhumans who at a moment of despair surrendered what they had left of soul to the demon lord....”, she said. “They are also called his disciples“.

“How can we slay them”, he asked.

“Are you mad?”, she said. “There’s no way a guild of copper rank adventurers could kill a minor apostle... and you want a party of four copper rank to do it?”.

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The apostle snorted.

It sounded nothing like how a horse would sound but there was no other way to describe that sound.

Suddenly after the snort, it spoke.

Its voice sounded deep and distorted, kind of what a normal human being would expect a demon to sound like.

The party couldn’t understand what the apostle was saying but in the blink of an eye, it rammed against them.

Alaric was fast enough to dodge the attack. Due to the adrenaline, his senses were as sharp as they could be and the reinforcement spells that he applied earlier boosted them even more.

Enri barely dodged the attack but Luke and Misa were hit directly.

“ENRI!!”, Alaric yelled at the top of his lungs. “RUN AWAY!”.

Alaric was in that kind of situation before, in fact, it happened quite often. However, this time he wasn’t willing to let another member of his party die in front of him.

Enri saw the bleeding bodies of Luke and Misa just to realize that there was no hope for them anymore, so using her assassin agility she ran as fast as she possibly could into the woods.

The apostle ran after her and its speed was unimaginable, folding and breaking trees in its wake.

In the glance of an eye, the apostle was next to Enri and it punched her at a speed that according to the laws of reason it shouldn’t be possible for a monster of that size move that fast.

Alaric was shocked to see that something of that size could move faster than an assassin.

Not only it was fast, with a single punch Enri’s body was thrown so hard against one of the trees that was still standing and judging by the sound her body made it should have broken some of her limbs and scratched her body, she passed out a couple of seconds after landing due to the unbearable pain.

The beast turned slowly towards the only enemy that was still standing.

One of the leaves from one of the trees was falling slowly because of the wind.

The beast’s body was making strange sounds as it was getting ready for the last encounter.

His purple eyes connected with the beast’s eyes.

As the leave touched the ground they approached each other and the fight started.

Alaric was clearly at a disadvantage. Not only he was fighting something he never fought nor seen before, but he was also doing it as a low-intermediate user of magic without a weapon.

As the fight went on Alaric was trying to find an opening to run away.

After a few minutes of babbling and grunts, the beast spoke

“Opponent... strong”.

Alaric was managing to dodge most of the scratches and hits until one he heard some voices coming from outside of the woods.

“HOLD THERE A LITTLE LONGER!”, a female voice yelled at the top of her lungs. “We’re here now”.

Alaric moved back and in a second two male adventurers jumped from his right side and left side running towards the apostle, screaming.

Arrows flew across the sky coming from behind Alaric.

He heard a soft voice behind him so he looked back rapidly he noticed the golden, long and thin, cylinder-shaped necklace proving that she was a gold rank adventurer. She was a blonde-haired girl, her almond-shaped, light brownish colored eyes.

The girl ran towards Luke’s and Misa’s bodies to find they were lifeless.

Alaric pointed to where Enri was laying and the girl ran towards her.

Enri’s body was weak but she was still alive so the blonde-haired girl started casting a spell.

Oh merciful goddess Hestia, borrow me your immense power so I, thy servant can heal on thy name.

Enri’s body was covered under what it seemed to be a yellowed looking semi-sphere and some of her scratches and wounds started being healed.

The two front line adventurers were managing to synchronize themselves to each other’s pace and with the arrows so neither the beast nor the arrows could touch them.

The apostle started making sounds proper of a beast until it hit one of the adventurers with one of its legs which interrupted their synchronized attacks.

The other adventurer, the red-haired one tried to get to his partner and the horrendous beast landed a hit followed by grunts.

“YAMATO!!”, the healer screamed.

His body flew due to the strength the apostle applied to the last hit and landed after I few seconds.

The other adventurer’s leg was broken when the enormous monster stepped on it followed by a scream.

Until that moment all Alaric did was observe, observe how a party of a golden rank and two silver ranks came to rescue him and they seemed destined to suffer the same fortune his party suffered.

In a split second two “shadows” came from outside of the woods to land next to the apostle.

“Excuse us”, one of the creatures said.

Next to each side of the apostle, there were two more creatures.

One of them was wearing a mask, one that Alaric had never seen in his entire life.

One of the adventurers who happened to be conscious at the moment used all the strength he had left in his body to go back to where the healer was, and after he entered the semi-sphere his wounds started healing.

The other creature seemed much like a woman. A pale, red-eyed woman.

“Hello humans”, the creature with the mask said. “My name is Uroboros, the name of my gorgeous female partner is Annalise and the name of my friend who was fighting against you is Yaldabaoth”.

The monster’s name that appeared to be Yaldabaoth grunted.

“Oh, it’s that what you want?”, Uroboros asked.

Yaldabaoth grunted.

“I see”.

The Yamato was almost fully healed so he started to stand up, slowly. Followed by that, Uroboros started speaking.

“My colleague here has a proposal... He wants a duel with the purple-eyed man”, he said while looking at every one of the conscious adventurers who were present. “If he wins every one of you that dares to stand against our demon lord’s will, will perish instantly.

Yamato stood up completely and ran towards them while he grabbed his lance from the ground.

The pale lady looked at Yamato right after he grabbed his weapon.

“Freeze”, she said.

Yamato’s body completely stopped moving as soon as he made eye contact with her scarlet eyes.

“You miserable humans”, she said, the despise she felt at the moment could be noticed by the tone of her voice. “You should be grateful that we are willing to kill you all with instant death, you are just a bag of blood for me".

“There are two options, surrender to us or fight on a duel”, Uroboros said.

“So my choices are either die kneeling or die fighting?”, Alaric asked.

“Yes, indeed...”, Uroboros replied. “But at least there’s a chance you can be reincarnated as undead to serve our lord”.

“Okay”, Alaric said while he started walking towards Yaldabaoth. “Let’s dance one last time”.