A large crowd had gathered around the main temple in the capital of the Valkyria Kingdom. Their size was estimated to be in the tens of thousands. While most of them were spectators, citizens of the capital, the closer you got to the centre, the more knights you could see guarding the temple.

Inside the temple at the centre of the main hall, a woman was kneeling down on a slightly elevated platform. Both of her hands were clasped in front of her chest forming a praying gesture. Her eyes were closed and her head was tilted upwards facing the sky, well or rather the ceiling of the building, causing her open, long and blond hair to touch the ground. Her name was Fran. She was the current High Priestess of the temple.

Around her, approximately a hundred knights were watching their surroundings. Among them was Vice Knight Commander Milia. Over the last week besides saying goodbye to her family and friends, Milia spent nearly the whole time guarding High Priestess Fran during her ritual and tending to her daily needs. The ritual to open the portal to the world where the hero candidate was, was about to be completed, so the security was especially tight today.

Next to her stood Knight Commander Rick. While Milia's knight attire primarily contained clothes with a leather patch around her chest area, as her fighting style with her rapier was focused on speed, Rick wore full-plated armour. His fighting style was to tank hits from enemies and decapitate them with his huge two-handed sword on his back with one slash, so his full body armour made sense. Milia concluded for herself that the only reason he had a higher rank than her was that he was the perfect counter to her style as her light, speed-focused thrusts dealt no damage to him. Thus she stood no chance against him in a one-on-one fight. Well, that and the fact that he was a bona fide noble with a hereditary title.

“Hnnggh!”

With a light groan, Fran drew all eyes of her surrounding on her. A massive amount of Mana left her body gathered in front of her. Normally only those who are sensitive to magic could see the Mana flow of a magic cast but with that amount, even an untrained civilian eye could perceive the Mana. Fran did not reach the top of the temple despite being a commoner for nothing after all.

After swirling around for a few seconds the Mana slowly formed a slightly transparent, dark-coloured gate. It was about three meters high and two meters wide.

Rick looked around and when he confirmed that nobody was moving, he made his way to the portal, closely followed by his vice. When he crossed the portal, Milia stopped and glanced towards Fran. She was breathing hard from having to uphold the portal. Seeing that Milia suspected that the longer the portal stayed open the more detrimental it would be for Fran's health. She and Rick had to find the hero candidate as fast as possible.

She turned towards the gate again and as she was about to step in, she heard a commotion around her. Before she could perceive what was happening, someone had grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the gate. The person who also wore a knight attire but with a helm sprinted towards the gate and stepped in. Panicking, she looked around to see that the knights were also confused about what had happened.

Milia approached the gate again while inwardly cursing her colleagues for not stopping that knight beforehand. Now that two persons had already passed the portal, it could only carry two more. One of them should of course be the potential hero while the last one the knight commander. But now as an unknown person was on the other side instead of her, Milia had only two choices.

The first one was to stay back and hope that the unknown intruder was actually a nice person who just wanted to spare Milia from the gruesome fate of being stranded in the other world for the rest of her life. It was clear to her, however, that that knight had malicious intentions. It was possible that Rick could kill the potential saboteur and carry out their plans alone, but was it worth risking the fate of the world for that hope?

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No, they had to bring the candidate to this world at all costs.

So the second option was for Milia to enter the portal nevertheless stranding both the knight commander and herself in the other world. With no choices left Milia entered the portal,... or rather tried to enter the portal as somebody once again pulled her back and jumped into it. This time the person was too fast as Milia could only perceive a shadowy blur crossing the gate.

As she looked around again she could only see dumbfounded faces. This time however she could not reproach them internally because that figure was even for her eyes too fast.

Now she, the surrounding knights and the world can only pray for Knight Commander Rick and hope that he would see their mission to the end successfully.

***

After stepping out of the portal Rick placed his right hand on the handle of the two-handed sword on his back, carefully observing his surroundings. There were four walls around and a ceiling above him which indicated that he was in a room. Noticing a man standing in the corner with a knife hiding a woman and two little children behind him while trembling, Rick could only smile fondly under his helmet. He also had a family at home and could imagine himself doing the same. Well, it was not needed anymore as his children were already adults and had offspring themselves.

He let go of the handle, raised both hands into the air, and slowly walked up to them to show that he had no ill will. When he wanted to speak up to see whether or not they could understand him, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. Looking down he saw a magic-infused sword coming out of his stomach. Before he could grab the sword with his hands, it disappeared causing him more pain.

Afterwards, he was kicked on his back which resulted in him tumbling forward. With his combat and pain-handling experience, he managed to prevent himself from falling over and turned around to see a person in a knight attire holding magic infused sword that had sliced through his armour like butter. Leaving no openings, the assailant thrust the sword forward piercing Rick's chest, who had barely managed to tilt his body resulting in the sword missing his heart by only a few centimetres. Clenching his teeth to bear the pain, with his left hand he quickly grabbed the hand of the assailant while gripping his two-handed sword on his back with his right hand. Summoning all his strength, the Knight Commander swung his right arm down and split the attacker in half.

““Kyaaaaa!””

Ignoring the scream from probably the children or the woman Rick slumped down while fighting over his pain. He had to prevail here and bring back the hero candidate to save the world where his beloved family lived. As he was about to calm down and tried to get up to leave the house in search of the hero candidate, a female voice rang behind him.

“Hoho? As expected of the Knight Commander of the Valkyria Kingdom, the strongest human alive. You are tough ~...”

“!!!!”

Rick reached for his sword but before he could swing in backwards, a hand burst out from his chest. He only managed to look down to see a hand grasping a heart before he lost consciousness.

“...~ but unfortunately not tough enough.”

Pulling the hand out of the corpse of the former Knight Commander the figure glanced at the present people confirming they were cowering in fear in the corner of the room. She then concentrated her Mana in her hand and formed a small seal on her palm. Afterwards, she slammed her hand on the floor and pasted the sigil on it. Without any comments, she made her way to the window and jumped out.

Landing outside she walked away from the house for a while before...

*Kabooom*

…it exploded leaving only debris behind.

After concentrating on her sensory senses she confirmed that no souls were left in the ruins and continued with the mission given to her by the demon lord.

As it was currently dark outside she concluded that nobody here could recognize her exact form so she put off her invisibility cloak revealing a pair of black wings and a thin tail with a heart at its end to the world. In her world, she belonged to a special demon race that was famous for its sensor skills, the succubi.

Once again she concentrated her Mana on her sensory senses, this time she searched for a soul that had the potential to kill her master. Fortunately, there was only one soul in this world that met the condition, and it was nearby, so she quickly jumped onto the roof of the nearest building and made her way to the soul.

A few minutes of roof-to-roof jumping later, she was standing on top of the building facing the house where the soul she was looking for resided.

Spying through the window she could recognize a somewhat plump woman on a chair relieving herself. In contrast to her actions though, the eyes of that woman did not reflect any pleasure at all. In fact, they reflected nothing at all. It was as if they were the eyes of a dead fish. The strangeness caused the succubus to activate the second layer of her sensor skills which allowed her to see the attributes of souls. Upon seeing them the succubus' mouth formed into a wide, fierce, and thirsty grin.

“Milady will be very satisfied by this”, she murmured while wiping out the drool from her mouth.