I look over the edge of the carriage, the light array I created painting the world in black and white.
The creature in the distance looks like what you would get if you asked a child to draw the combination between a porcupine and a mongoose.
Truly a monstrosity.
And it doesn’t end there. Dozens upon dozens of monsters start flooding the area, hungry and extremely violent.
Strangely though the monsters don’t seem to have any interest in attacking each other.
“Why the hell did we immediately run into a fucking stampede!?”
Monster stampedes occur for many reasons. However, one reason stands above all the others as the most lethal.
They are being hunted by something stronger.
I can feel it in the distance, the horde was chased all the way to the border and now has nowhere to go.
Who knows how long they have been fleeing this beast, I just know that they seem to see us as a quick snack before the end.
“Everyone! Big one incoming, take care of the small fry as quickly as you can!”
I begin shouting out orders left and right.
First things first, we need a clear area free of distractions for when the real fight gets here.
Prim moves out first and starts to use her mind magic to make the monsters start attacking each other.
Nice! She is killing it with the crowd control.
Sec and Tern move in after the chaos starts and begin cutting down monsters left and right.
Sadly they don’t have access to magic yet as they need to consume a Mana Core first.
“Quan and Timmy, cover the sides and don’t let any of the monsters get behind us!”
Alice hops in as well to start giving off commands, her long lifetime granting her a wealth of knowledge on combat formations.
I order the Lesser Demons to back up the main group and take orders from their respective leaders.
Cutting another monster down with my spear I try to conserve my mana.
Shit!
I duck under the deformed tiger that swipes at my head and ram my spear up through its skull.
They just don’t end!
I don’t know what the monsters were fleeing from and I want everything I have at my disposal when it arrives. If this many Class 3 creatures are running for their lives, it must be one hell of a threat.
“Lua, your golems!”
Alice calls out, reminding me that I don’t have to rely on just demons.
Golems only require a tiny amount of mana after the cost of converting the Mana Cores into Golem Cores.
Nodding my head I reach into my shadow and throw out dozens of the Class 2 cores we had collected along the way.
“Boom.”
The ground explodes as the golems wrench the dirt from beneath our feet to form countless spikes.
Monsters scream and cry out as the spikes impale them.
Not enough to kill too many monsters as the Class 2 cores can’t strengthen the earth enough to penetrate too deeply. But it is more than enough to slow them all down.
Spikes continue to erupt, blocking off their paths, stabbing the slow and injured, killing anything not paying attention.
It is a blood bath.
No newly minted Class 3 should be able to cause this much carnage to a horde of Class 3 monsters. But here I stand.
Despite our devastating thrashing of the monsters, I still can’t help but stay overwhelmingly tense.
“30 seconds until arrival!”
I am mapping out the entire area with my magic and can see it coming. I really need to set up a proper alert system with this thing since I have to pay attention to it manually.
A lapse in attention is what nearly lost me my head when we arrived.
I would rather not test Alice’s theory in such a precarious situation.
“What is it? You got a visual on it yet?”
“Yeah… If I were to describe it, I would say it is a giant humanoid bunny that looks horribly feral.”
The thing stands taller than the trees of the first ring. It is charging forward at an incredible speed, picking up monsters and chowing down on them like they are a bag of trail mix.
It has arrived.
The beast bursts into view as the rest of the monsters scatter.
“It is Class 4, be careful!”
We fan out around the thing, Timmy takes up the role of taunting the monster, hopping around and just barely avoiding attacks to keep it distracted.
Prim moves in and channels her mind magic to make sure the giant rabbit man can’t concentrate enough to land a hit or target anyone else.
“Alice, can you stun it for a moment?”
“Without a doubt!”
Her voice reassures me that she has everything covered.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Alice moves around to the back of the beast and activates her Life Magic, the mana seeps into the distracted monster and wraps around its heart.
Blood erupts from the monster's body as its overwhelming magical strength fights against the attack.
I stand with my spear aimed right at its head as my mana constructs a sphere of compressed gamma rays right at the tip.
Now that I have that lovely curse resistance, I can access this rather dangerous end of the electromagnetic spectrum. And I intend to use it to the fullest.
“Eat this you overgrown crazy toons character!”
I launch my attack at the moment the beast is too focused on repelling all of my team's continued assault.
The invisible sphere, even wider than the thing's head, instantly passes through its target as it travels at the speed of light.
The repulsive smell of burnt hair fills the air as the fighting stops.
The whole thing's head is completely roasted.
“Anyone up for cooked rabbit?”
“Didn’t you say that radiation infects things and is dangerous even after the attack ends?”
Alice has a rather disgusted look on her face. I can see many things to be disgusted about in this situation, but I reassure her about the effects of my magic.
Because I can directly manipulate radiation with my magic, I only need to remove any of the leftovers from the attack and we are all safe to eat our hunts.
“I really don’t want to eat that thing.”
“We have enough provisions to last us a while, but rabbit will surely taste better than the abominations scattered around us.”
Honestly, I would much rather eat the rabbit. The Class 3 creatures all look like shit out of the deep sea. Deformed and adapted to highly mana dense environments, even a certain blade handed nightmare would be running from these things.
“... Fine, but we should try to procure food from towns before resorting to the rabbit.”
“I will do my best on that front.”
I also would still rather not eat the rabbit if I don’t have to.
…
..
.
We spent the next few hours cleaning up.
There were a lot of monsters dead and that meant lots and lots of cores!
I can make tons of Golems and Demons with these.
“My lord, what kind of magic should I acquire?”
“Oh, me, me! I want Wind Magic!”
“Calm down Timmy. We don’t even know what magic these cores can give us.”
“If you are talking about the one in your hand Sec, then it's Fire Magic.”
Everyone stops their work at my casual statement.
Alice then turns to me with a baffled look on her face.
“And how do you know that?”
Now it is my turn to freeze up.
“I… uh…. I don’t actually know to be honest.”
I can just tell by intuition when I look at the core. The information just exists in my mind, like a memory you don’t have to think about to remember.
“You think it is another hidden Demon Lord skill?”
“It is only natural that my lord would know the magic types! She needs to be able to grant the correct powers to her loyal servants after all.”
“Oooh! So that means I can have Wind Magic?!”
“My lord! Is there anything that would fit a magical girl like me?!”
“Ha, in your dreams Tern.”
“That's it Sec! I want Dream Magic! Please my lord. Please, please, please!”
“Wait, that is not-”
Great, now everyone is going crazy…
I am glad everyone seems to be getting along well though.
It is kind of like having a big happy family.
…
A new experience for me…
Alice claps her hands and starts shouting.
“Alright calm down kids! We can discuss what magic everyone gets once we catalogue all the cores.”
I snort a bit at that.
“Is there something you find funny?”
Alice lightly glares in my direction.
“I just think it is cute. You, acting like their mother and all.”
“Wha-?!”
She stumbles at my comment and nearly falls from her shock.
I can see a rather serious blush forming on her face from the implications of my statement.
She is just about to say something when Tern cuts her off.
“I like that! We should call Alice, mom from now on! Yep!”
“Yes, she is the wife of our lord and creator after all. It seems appropriate.”
“Wife?!”
Alice is losing it and I can’t say I am much better anymore.
“Very well, I shall call her dear mother as well.”
“Mommy!”
Sec and Timmy decide on their own variations of Alice’s new title while Quan silently nods along to the whole situation.
With the overload of emotions, Alice collapses to the ground out of pure embarrassment.
I sneak over and rub her back until she can calm down. Meanwhile, I try and drag the crazy demons back on track.
“Okay! We now have plenty of cores, I will start a list and send it to you all with light magic so you can decide for yourselves what you want. Does that sound good to everyone?”
They all happily agree and get back to work collecting cores from the scattered remains.
…
..
.
In the end, Sec chooses Blade Magic, Tern luckily finds a single Dream Magic core, Quan picks Earth Magic, and finally Timmy, after going back and forth many times, decides on Beast Magic.
“What now?”
Alice, having recovered from sudden motherhood shock, looks to me so that we can decide on our next course of action.
“Well, we have a load of new Class 3 cores, and even a Class 4 core! As for why a Class 4 was in the third ring… Something we will need to look into.”
According to the books I have read, monsters always move into the next ring as soon as they ascend Classes. Apparently something at the center of the forest draws them in.
This one however, was heading in the opposite direction.
I was originally thinking of heading for the fourth ring for this idea, but if all Class 4 monsters are like that then we may have a difficult time with defense until I can build up our weaponry.
“I think we should set up a proper base of operation.”
Tern looks at me with her shining eyes.
“Demon Castle?!”
“Demon Castle.”
I respond with my arms crossed and a confident nod.
“The more I hear of these ‘isekai novels’ the more I worry about them affecting your decision process.”
Alice looks over at me and sighs.
“But… I am glad you seem to be feeling better recently.”
“Yeah. Thanks. If it weren’t for you… I don’t know if I could have held it together through everything.”
“You did, and that is all that matters.”
We smile at each other and I take her hand.
“Suddenly my coffee is not bitter enough.”
“Oh, shut up Sec. You don’t even have coffee!”
“I think they are really cute together!”
“Yes indeed Tern. Our lord and her mistress are truly adorable.”
“Yep, yep!”
“Okay, enough guys! You will kill your mother with embarrassment if you keep this up.”
Alice glares at me once again and starts hitting me on the arm.
I laugh as I declare that we should all head out and start looking for a place to build our castle.