Gellar moved independently of the main expeditionary group. She asked the fronds and bushes to move, and they did. The Monster Wall was magic, after all, a force which demons had native access to. They had no such need of—

Night turned into day and Gellar thought she was going to die.

Only once the quaking had stopped did she realize that it must have been the Princess Knight’s attack. Humans, she thought. No other race in Gaia was more obsessed with power than them. Had they been instead born into any of the demon realms, she had no doubt they would have reigned at the top of the enemy’s food chain of civilizations.

As for why she was there, it was precisely because of the enemy. They were here, somewhere, but she did not know where—she did not know why, but she feared the expedition to be targeted.

The first reason why she didn’t propose to call it off was because of the Princess Knight’s presence. The second reason was that a certain nearby goddess could just resurrect anyone who’d died. Why couldn’t her world have goddesses like that, huh?

She shook her head. The mission came first.

***

The expedition continued their march into the Monster Wall, careful not to dig their feet too deep into the ashen ground. The embers beneath were still hot. “Spread out!” Cage ordered. “Three columns! Fighters to the sides! Protect the mages in the middle! Watch your feet for stragglers! Keep away from the green!”

A fifth of the way in, Kalender stepped on something extra crunchy. He backed up and looked down at the crab-like shell he’d cracked, covered in lime ash. It was the size of a dog, but the legs were bigger.

“Mana spider,” Arpeggio remarked. “They drop down from the trees.”

“How do you defend against that?” Jyn asked this time.

“If you have a shield, keep it raised.”

“If you don’t?”

“Find someone who has one. Or just burn everything.”

They continued on the march, Jyn staying a little closer to Kalender.

Halfway to the end, and grass shoots were already poking out of the ground. Kalender looked closely, and he could see the grass growing by a millimeter in the span of just a few seconds. They weren’t kidding about the recovery rate of this place.

There was a shout to the left. Kalender looked, and there were two fighters spearing a half-cooked corpse of a giant wolf on the ground. It would’ve been tall as a person standing up. It was still struggling, swiping at the fighters, but for the most part, its muscles were cooked stiff, and the fighters struck a killing blow.

There was another shout, to the right this time: another wolf. “Stop,” Jyn said. Arpeggio kept moving forwards as Kalender paused and scanned the area, finally seeing what Jyn was seeing.

There were more corpses of monsters littered around, most of them turned into nothing but husks made of ash, but some remained fleshy, enough for them to keep alive.

“This is too many,” Arpeggio said, having stopped some distance in front of them. This many monsters this close to the edge of the Monster Wall was strange. “I will go to Witch Teller. Both of you, stay here and watch your feet.”

Just like that, she disappeared. The research group, however, nearly passed them by.

“Wait!” Kalender shouted. Captain Artifice quickly placed herself between him and Page. “We are sanctioned by the Lord. Do not impede us”—

“It’s okay. I know him,” Page said, placing a hand on Artifice’s shoulder. She let some of her confidence in Kalender leak through, which did enough to at least get the captain to hear Kalender out.

“We just got told this is an unusual situation,” Kalender said. “It’s better if you wait a moment.”

Artifice eyed him, then Jyn beside him. A quick application of Appraise was all she needed to know roughly why Page knew them. You’re abnormal, the whole lot of you.

“We’ll wait here, then,” Artifice said. She eyed her subordinates, and they all nodded.

Sometimes, good decisions still led to the same outcomes. They didn’t even know it was windy until the air stilled, and the smell of charred remains could not be carried away.

The first thing they saw was its draconic shadow, and then the thing itself, hovering over them with the sun over its shoulder. It was flapping its wings, but it made no sound. No one breathed. It roared.

Arpeggio shot up like a star (-615 MP) and interrupted its roar, hitting its snout, forcing it to face skywards—up at her.

The dragon roared once more, bringing the beasts of the Monster Wall surging forth from the curtains of green on either side of the curtain. The expedition’s recruits, however, were not to be cowed. They were killers and hardened women. “To arms!” “Form a porcupine!” the leaders shouted. They would not falter and break spirit; Leadership existed for this very reason.

Jyn pulled Kalender to stay closer to Page and the research group. “Stay behind me!” she shouted. “Left, center, right; far, mid, close! Call the direction and distance of the enemy when you see them! Use your gun and call what you have killed!”

Artifice grabbed Page’s shoulder. “Scan the area and send Flares at groups with more than three enemies! Don’t forget to announce your Flares!”

Kalender and Page nodded at their respective leaders.

The wolves were the fastest and arrived first. Up and down the column, wolves lost out to spears, and swords lost out to wolves; wolves ripped away limbs before blades ripped away their heads in vengeance. Mages fired volleys of earth, clay, and iron, culling the incoming wave of enemies, only needing to exhaust all but 1 MP before resorting to swords and spears.

The war mages around Page fared a little better. With halberds and greatswords, they struck wolves with magic-propelled blades, eviscerating them and throwing their corpses to the side. Steel darts shot out from their hands at ear-splitting speeds, spilling wolves’ blood before they even came close. Even with such a display, however, the best of them only had 504 MP. Plentiful, yes, but unlike the beasts of this forest, not unlimited.

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Already, some of mages among the recruits, too inexperienced to carefully watch their MP during a fight, wandered the battlefield like lost children, their cries and tears drowned out by the shrill shouts of women fighting to the death. Some wandered right into the fangs of wolves, but they didn’t care—for them, life meant nothing anymore.

“Right, far!” Kalender shouted. “Take care of that one!” Jyn replied. She charged ahead to the left, putting herself between a second wolf and Kalender.

She didn’t want to leave Kalender to it. She was afraid, but she had to trust him, or else they’d both die.

He pulled out a second gun and pointed both at the incoming giant wolf. Thirty meters was just two seconds at the speed the wolf was going, and so he only had two seconds to land a killing shot.

He fired as fast he could, firing seven shots before the wolf went down, skidding across the ground. He only barely avoided the momentum of its body, rolling to the side. He got to his feet as fast as he could, and he caught sight of Jyn holding her sword with both hands—one on the handle, and one on the blade—pushing the blade into the wolf’s mouth as she fell backwards, using the wolf’s own momentum against it and kicking up at its belly, throwing it up into the air. It landed between her and Kalender, spine-first on the ground, momentarily paralyzing it.

Kalender didn’t have a clear shot, but he didn’t need to help. Jyn twisted her body and pulled out a spike in one motion, sinking it into the giant wolf’s skull. She quickly scanned the area and looked to Kalender. “The fight isn’t over!” she shouted.

He nodded. Wolves weren’t coming out anymore, but they were replaced by mana spiders. Each one looked like they could quietly gobble up all the kids in a village over the course of a month. One burrowed upwards beside Kalender, and he had no qualms shooting it where it was.

“Flare!” Page shouted. Kalender narrowed his eyes as far as they could go while still letting him see, and a yellow flare flew overhead. As soon as the flare landed right at the edge of the curtain of green, bursting into something even brighter, more of the spiders came crawling out of there, starting first as a blob before dispersing to attack the recruits.

“We can’t land a hit on them! Too many fighters in the way!” one of Artifice’s mages complained.

Page’s eyes lit up. She fumbled through the wooden plates hanging from her neck and found Kalender’s Laser Pointer spell. She had no idea what a laser was, but it sure did point at stuff.

After badgering Artifice to try and use it, the fighters and mages among the recruits witnessed lines of orange light drawn between gaps in their ranks, painting bright orange spots on the incoming spiders, only to sooner see them blown into bits and pieces by a well-placed iron bullet from a war mage.

Jyn watched a purple-and-orange viper coil up at Kalender’s feet. “Kalender!” she shouted. Good thing she was within sword reach, and her blade swiped the viper’s head and batted it away, to be buried under ash and hopefully cooked by the embers deep beneath.

Kalender kept fighting, standing there, absentmindedly reloading to send the next volley downrange, unaware of just how close he’d just come to dying.

Jyn pushed down her fears. She was his leader. If she faltered, they both would. They’ll both come out of this alive.

***

As the fight on the ground drew out, the fight in the air spanned even the airspace kilometers around.

The mana dragon was a tough bastard. Arpeggio pushed it around with the raw power of Sword Proficiency 32, keeping herself in the air with magic, but with the Monster Wall constantly regenerating the enemy, she was fighting a losing battle.

She could push it around all she wanted, but she only had MP Regen 1, a passive skill only in effect while she’s resting. After today, she’ll be as good as new—if she would see tomorrow at all.

For the fourth time, she boosted forth and scythed past the dragon, cutting it into symmetrical halves. For the fourth time, the two halves barely even away from each other before they came together again, flesh mana-welding to flesh, and it acted just slightly more annoyed.

She gritted her teeth and sheathed her saber—unsheathing a double-handled greatsword from her back, expertly hidden so far with the unnatural powers that Sword Proficiency 32 granted.

She flipped the sword, holding it by the blade. She and the dragon jousted, each screaming violence and feast, and she won out, dodging aside and delivering a murder strike, smashing the pommel into the dragon’s side, throwing it three flight-seconds farther from the main battlefield.

After another five jousts of the same type, all of the same outcome, the dragon was left fuming and spewing wildfire. She was so close, knocking the dragon down into the earth.

Between the dust and knocked-down trees, it stood. It craned its neck up, then stood on its hind legs. It opened its mouth. The space between it and Arpeggio sparked with electrical bursts before a primary torch overpowered even the sun with a screech and a howl all at once, engulfing Arpeggio in a heat of a star’s final hurrah.

The attack only lasted a second, disappearing as fast as it had come. Arpeggio found herself holding only a hilt. Above the ricasso was just a bubbly stump of red hot steel, flopping around like jello.

She tossed it away. The sword itself was of little note, but her battle dress, burnt until the knee, would cost a small fortune to be remade.

For her next trick, she blindfolded her eyes and whispered a simple spell:

{May you glimpse a moment of Creation.}

An infinitesimal portion of the heat of a universe’s birth struck down. There was thunder. There was flash. Yet, there wasn’t a crater, but a hundred-meter-diameter hole straight to hell. The surrounding forest stood still and healthy. Already, vines were encroaching around the edges of the borehole.

Hovering in the air where the dragon had been, between all the steam and mist, was a soft glow. Arpeggio descended into the steam, finally grasping the...medallion in her hands.

Inscribed on it was the mark of the elves of Deramin.

That made no sense.

They were neither stupid nor desperate. They had no reason to be aggressive towards Lyrica. Whoever had set this up must have been desperate. Anyone stupid wouldn’t have otherwise been able to wrangle a mana dragon, of all things.

“Princess!” a voice shouted from the edge of the hole. Gellar’s voice echoed off the walls, and with Arpeggio at its center, she heard the familiar demon’s voice clearer than day.

Arpeggio flew over and set down next to her, feet finally on solid ground. She landed with a bit of a stumble—really, she preferred fighting with at least one foot on the ground. “What is it?” she asked Gellar.

“I’ve confirmed an enemy demon,” Gellar replied. Arpeggio looked her up and down, confirming scratches and dried blood all over her. There were even burn marks.

The enemy demon must have been a proficient fire user—though, Gellar really just neglected to mention that she was inches from being obliterated by Arpeggio’s ultimate attack spell.