The demon threw its head back, tossing Lokus off of it, and another roar shook the cavern, this one decidedly one of pain more than of rage.

Lokus’ landing was much less graceful than the mustachioed man’s, falling on his back and having the air driven out of his lungs as his brain rattled around in his skull.

He groaned as he rolled over onto his side, immensely thankful for his Endurance stat. ‘Need to… stand up,’ he thought, a fog over his mind.

Lokus shakily got to his feet. As soon as he did, he started for his discarded axe and shield. The former wouldn’t be of much help against such a colossal demon, but the latter could spell the difference between life and death.

The demon was still roaring in pain at its blinded eye when Lokus retrieved his axe and shield and swiftly put some distance between him and it. He looked to the soldiers around him, acknowledging the resolve in each: their set jaws, their tight grips on their weapons, the tenseness of their limbs.

While Lokus couldn’t see them with his mask on, he could imagine the stony determination on each of their faces. Lokus had little way of knowing why the death of this demon mattered, but how could they not?

Life underground was even more difficult than one would think at first. Not only did they not have any sunlight for crops, nor fertile ground to grow them, but they had almost no source of food at all.

Going to the surface, so far as they knew, was impossible. Everything they ate, everything they used, had to be found down here. And short of cannibalism, they really only had one option: demons.

The “soldiers” around Lokus weren’t technically soldiers at all. They were hunters, and their sole purpose was to acquire food for the fortress’ people. That was easier said than done, as demons had long since learned to steer clear of their home except in extremely rare circumstances like this very demon horde.

That was why they had been so excited, so eager for this. To Lokus, this was nothing more than a simple battle, but to them, it was precious months of food, of clothing, of beds and armor and weapons.

The lives of not just them, but everyone in the fortress depended on them to bring these demons back for harvest, and none of them planned to go back to their wives, their children, their friends and neighbors empty-handed.

Even though Lokus didn’t know any of this, a similar determination was lit within him. Not out of kinship or empathy, but something decidedly more selfish.

That overwhelming power the demon displayed… That powerful counterattack of the man with the mustache… That hail of ice and lightning like divine judgment from above that the soldiers had conjured…

Lokus didn’t want that power.

He wanted to surpass it.

The dazzling display soon faded, leaving a deafening silence behind, but it wouldn’t last for long.

The demon’s roars were loud enough to wake a whole town as it gripped the bloody stump of one of its hands, but to Lokus, it was the sweet music of imminent victory.

If the beast felt pain, then it could be killed. A simple sentence, but one no less true because of it.

“It appears we’ve angered the giant baby,” sneered one of the soldiers, his eyes darting to the craters containing his dead comrades. “A shame that its parents aren’t around. I suppose it’ll be up to us to discipline it. Eh, Ballad?”

The man with the mustache wiped off the last remaining flecks of blood from his face before taking a step forward. “Discipline? Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Although its punishment will be far more permanent than it likely expects.”

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“Then let’s kill it already. For Horus!”

“For Jallen!”

“For Endan!”

One by one, the soldiers yelled the names of their fallen friends and allies, people they had eaten and trained with for years, as they charged forward with their weapons brandished.

The sense of comradery they held surprised Lokus as he chased after the group. They trusted each other with their lives, watching the others’ backs with impeccable teamwork, as demonstrated by the formation they used against the demon horde before.

He had never expected something like this in the bowels of hell, and yet here it was. To anyone else, it might have been inspiring, incredible, even. But to Lokus…

It only reminded him of what he lacked.

Lokus ran forward silently, shield and axe at the ready as he and the soldiers approached the giant demon.

It was only now shaking itself out of its pain-ridden stupor, its head swiveling about wildly as it tried and failed to see with its destroyed eye. Its roars died down to menacing growls, which permeated the air like a demonic command on the world itself.

It vibrated Lokus’ bones in his body, as well as the stone beneath his skin, a slight chill creeping up his spine as a sense of incoming danger came over him.

Suddenly, as the demon’s five remaining hands moved towards the rocky ceiling above, Lokus realized something.

The demon’s eye wasn’t its main method of seeing. It was a crutch, an evolutional oversight that made the demon forego something else in favor of the convenience of sight. What was that something else?

A Domain.

The demon’s fists came hurtling down like meteors, decimating the ranks of the surviving humans and cutting their previous number of twenty-seven down to a mere fifteen in an instant.

The rest were thrown back, landing in heaps. The truly unlucky ones landed on their own weapons, further cutting their numbers down to twelve. Everyone else jumped to their feet as fast as possible, narrowly missing a swipe from the demon’s massive paws.

“Starting to realize that this thing is too big to take down with the twigs we have!” shouted a soldier. “Sir, what do we do?”

The man with the mustache, Ballad, had his brow wrinkled in thought as he ran and jumped around the demon’s attacks. Now that it wasn’t relying on its eye, it seemed to be much better at attacking different targets with each of its hands, as opposed to the single-minded, targeted attacks of before.

This left him with little breathing room, but knowing that a plan was expected of him, he risked some coordination and reaction time to come up with one. However, none came.

Lokus, likewise, was searching for ideas, but nothing he could think of seemed to be enough against such a powerful foe. The lightning and ice of the soldiers might as well have been a light pitter-patter of raindrops on the demon’s skin, and their weapons, as that one soldier had pointed out, were far too small to do the job.

A rumble echoed through the caverns, reaching the ears of both the demon and the humans, who all spared some of their attention to turn in the direction of the noise.

Lokus looked back, but with his mask on, he couldn’t see whatever it was. What he noticed soon after, though, was that Ibmund was in that direction, and was swiftly approaching.

‘Reinforcements,’ Lokus thought, finding it hard to be happy about it. Would they be enough? Or would they only delay their defeat by a few more minutes?

A searing bolt of lightning answered his question, streaking past him and toward the demon. It was as thick around as he was tall, crackling with energy so volatile that the very air was set on fire, spreading the smell of burnt ozone along with a spectacular display of fireworks.

Lokus’ Domain hardly even registered it before it zipped past him, coiling above their heads and impacting the giant demon square in the chest.

It roared out, falling backward and just barely managing to catch itself with its arms. It had just straightened its posture when another bolt of lightning came, then a third.

While the first one only sent it back, the second seared its flesh, that burnt ozone smell in the air being joined by one of burning fat as its roars turned pained. The second hit in the same spot as the other two, melting fat and vaporizing blood.

The demon was knocked onto its back, temporarily dazed as its arms crashed to the ground around it.

Lokus, who expected the next bolt of lightning to be fatal or at least close to it, frowned when another didn’t come.

‘So they can only handle three.’

Nothing else came after the initial volley. No ice, nor water, nor anything else. Whatever methods the reinforcements had used, it had left them completely tapped out.

They rushed across the battlefield to join the others, their faces clearly tired and their movements somewhat clumsy, a testament to just how exhausted they were. Lokus had a feeling that not all of it came from the lightning barrage just now.

“Tanks empty?” A soldier from Lokus’ group asked them.

“Aye,” responded one of them. “Think it’ll be enough?”

“We’ll take it from here,” came a familiar voice.

Vera picked her way out of the crowd, giving Lokus a brief glance before training her gaze on Ballad.

“What do you say, commander? Ready to slay a demon?”