Cassandra

Year 820 | Month 5 | Day 15

So this is an unexpected sight. A very unexpected one.

I sit on a tree branch with my arms crossed as I look out over the cliff at the rather large fortress located down on the edge of the island. Directly on top of where one of the rope bridges connects to this island.

There’s actually a civilization here in the Borderlands.

I never heard about that when passing through the cities. Which is really weird.

Unless the Demon King doesn’t know about it?

The only other reason could be that he doesn’t sanction it, or it’s not supposed to be here.

From what I can tell in terms of their Wrath energy, all of the demons down there are mostly lower ranking ones on the hierarchy. Specifically a lot of mid demons and warrior demons.

Meanwhile the strongest ones there are a couple of high demons.

All that said, none of them are beyond Tier 4. Every single one is within the bounds of Tier 4.

None of them are Tier 3 or below or Tier 5 or above.

Something I find bizarre about these demons though. Or multiple somethings, to be exact.

They don’t seem to care about hierarchy at all. Not a single bit.

Other than that, they’re also a lot nicer to each other. Acting like regular humans would back on Midgard. And they’re working together rather well judging by the hunters I see dragging in monster corpses through the fortress walls.

They even have some civilians.

Maybe they’re demons that are rebelling against the dystopian society outside of the Borderlands?

That thought makes me curious enough to put up my hood and go down to check it out.

Only for a swarm of four dozen Tier 4 warrior demons to rush out with weapons in hand and begin attacking me immediately. With all of them shouting and swearing about archdemons being evil and all that.

So I immediately retreat without even attempting to fight one on fifty.

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Especially since at least half of said fifty are a few levels above me.

I purse my lips as I fly away, only briefly glancing back to see half of the fifty chasing me and the other half staying to guard their fortress. Meanwhile the demons inside of the fortress are all acting like the world is coming to an end.

After a brief hesitation, I go ahead and slow down to a halt when I reach the edge of the island to let the twenty-five or so demons still chasing catch up to me. Because I’m honestly rather curious about these demons.

What are they doing here? And why are they all freaking out at the sight of an ‘archdemon’?

Fortunately for me, it doesn’t take me long to get my answers.

“I didn’t know there were archdemons this weak,” one of the demons at the front of the group of twenty-five says with a grin on his serpentine face. “With you, the fall of the archdemons’ reign may finally come to a fruition!”

That has me raising a brow, but they all just start attacking me while shouting some gibberish about taking down the archdemons and bringing the Demon King’s rule to an end. And other such stuff like that.

I listen for a little bit longer before sighing and using my Wrath lightning to shock several of them. Then I jump off the island and begin flying away without a care.

Because as it turns out, most wingless demons can’t fly like me. And only about half of the demons attacking me had wings. With several of those being the ones I shocked.

And while my lightning wasn’t strong enough to kill them in one blow by any means, it still injured them. Enough that I get away rather easily.

Then I go ahead and search for some demons that are not with that group to gather some information on them.

But even without that I pretty much piece together everything I need to know.

The intel from the other demons does help though.

From what I figure out myself and learn from other demons, this fortress is just one of many in the Borderlands. The demons inside of the fortresses are all rebelling against the Demon King and the hierarchy, and they absolutely despise any and all archdemons. Which was why I was attacked at first sight.

Rather rude of them, to say the least. But at least they’re not fighting for a bad cause or anything.

At the end of the day though, their fight is theirs alone. Not mine.

So I’m going to avoid them as much as I can.

I just hope they don’t bother me. Which seems likely that they may very well do that.

Just because I’m a Tier 4 ‘archdemon’ in their eyes.

Which makes me a perfect target for these annoying rebels to vent their frustrations with the hierarchy. Not to mention show that it ‘is possible to defeat an archdemon’ by killing me.

I let out a sigh at that thought.

This is annoying.

And the reason I never heard anything about this outside of the Borderlands is because the Demon King keeps knowledge of it to a minimum. Plus the fact that the Borderlands themselves are rather closed off, so the demons even have a saying that they use about it.

What happens in the Borderlands stays in the Borderlands.

So it’s not hard to hide the goings-on inside of it from the rest of hell.

But putting all that aside, I begin heading in the opposite direction of the closest fortress using the map. Deciding to at least attempt avoiding getting into conflict with them.

Especially because there are some powerful demons amongst them from what I was told. And just from the sight of those two high demons I glimpsed while at that first fortress.

So without hesitation, I return to my hunting spree. Except now with me looking around to make sure I’m not being followed by demons.