A few hours later of keeping watch, nothing of particular note happened. Only a few Dark Beasts that approached, but nothing that would require waking up the group, or spending any more effort than what I initially had to spend to dispatch them. Bo’guth as well had been something similar to me, throwing his hammer into anything that approached and then recalling it to wait until the next thing appeared.

I had been thinking about those loud weapons that the bandit had and people were using in the academy, and thought that perhaps I could do something like that. I didn’t have a weapon or rounded arrow tips to use, but I could use magic rocks coated in magic to try to imitate what they did.

And so, when the next Dark Beast appeared, I created a few tiny rocks, coated them in a small amount of mana, and launched them from mid-air as fast as I could, like those loud weapons would do. The only issue I found from doing this is that regardless of how much mana I tried to use to throw them, the rocks wouldn’t go nearly as fast as the arrow tips fired by those weapons. Because of this, when the tiny rocks landed on the Dark Beast, it would only cause it to turn its eyes on me, not a scratch on it.

I tried condensing even more mana into the tiny bits of rocks, but they weren’t big enough to increase the amount by much, so the results would only be that of a small hole on the Dark Beast, and a furious charge our way. I gave up on the idea of trying to reproduce what those weapons did and just summoned a large boulder to crush any incoming Dark Beast.

I could feel Bo’guth looking at me from time to time when I was trying things out, but he just chuckled and refused to comment on it, and I myself wasn’t interested in arguing with the demon.

An hour or so later—at least what I felt was an hour—I heard a low rumbling sound coming from one of the people sleeping. I turned to look at what that was and saw the man with the spear waking up while patting his body all over. I worried that there was something wrong, but he just took out the phone and with one eye open he pressed his fingers on the glowing painting.

The rumbling stopped and he stretched before reaching for the other group members to wake them up. They all quickly woke up, much faster than the man with the spear. They picked up a couple of rations that they had left before reaching for their gear and getting ready to keep going.

“You all ready?” Bo’guth asked while scanning with his eyes at the group of people.

“Yes, no problems here,” the one with the spear said.

“Alright then, we’ve still got some distance to go before we’re out, so I hope you don’t have to take a leak or anything like that, ‘cause we ain’t stopping!” Bo’guth proclaimed before laughing out loud.

“U-um, I might need a second…” the woman with the shield warily said before turning her eyes to me. “Can you accompany me?”

* * *

After accompanying the woman to relieve herself, and dealing with a couple of Dark Beasts that dared interfere, we kept going back to the caves. The group of people insisted on taking the lead while both me and Bo’guth took it easier. Neither of us complained about it and we allowed them to do as they pleased.

Luckily, there were hardly any Dark Beasts on our way back, so it didn’t take as much time as we thought to finally reach the entrance of the Tainted Land. I took notice of something that Bo’guth said before, and realized that we still hadn’t met any other groups of people either coming or going so I approached him while thinking about that.

“We still didn’t see any other people even while coming back,” I said to him.

“Hm?” he thoughtfully replied, turning his head to look at me for a moment before looking again at the veil of the Tainted Land. “Well… this was the only group we had registered for entrance that day while the other group we had was lost to the Dark Beast horde before we met this one, but… I think I know why there weren’t any more groups coming after.”

I tilted my head. “Why is that?”

“Well… we’ll see soon enough…”

I still didn’t understand what he meant by that, but I decided not to ask further until we were outside of the Tainted Land. The group of people seemed to be yet again exhausted and were picking up the pace as they made their way to the veil.

With a heavy sigh, the one with the spear stood one step away from the entrance. “We’re finally out of here.”

“Yes, and we got a nice amount of Magic Stones for our hard work!” exclaimed the man with the shield while giving a couple of taps at a bag hanging from his side.

The old man and the woman with the shield stood some distance away while looking at both me and Bo’guth. The woman took a step forward and smiled brightly at us.

“Thank you, once again, for helping us so far. We might’ve lost our lives if you hadn’t shown up back then.”

I smiled and wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a big deal, but Bo’guth wouldn’t allow it as he laughed with his booming voice. “We were just doing our jobs, isn’t that right, Hero?”

He looked at me when he said that, and both the old man and the woman with the shield looked at me with surprise in their eyes. I shook my head in response, but refused to deny or elaborate on what he said, only taking a few steps forward and closer to the veil of the Tainted Land.

“Let’s go home then,” Bo’guth continued.

The first ones to pass the veil were the one with the spear and the man with the shield, followed soon after by both the old man and the young woman. I was going to step out of the Tainted Land, but I noticed that Bo’guth wasn’t moving, so I stopped to look at him.

“Hey…” he said in a low voice, unusual for his normal loud self. “I must say that I didn’t expect any of this.”

“What do you mean?”

He scratched one of his horns for a moment. “The Hero of the Holy Gods, not raising her blade right away to split a demon in half, and instead working with one.”

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I frowned and glared back at him. “I can’t say that the idea of cutting you in half hasn’t stopped crossing my mind.”

He laughed for a moment before smirking down at me. “And why haven’t you?”

“Because…” I trailed off for a moment. I couldn’t really confess that I didn’t have the power to simply do that anymore, but… “This is a strange world. A different world, where I can’t just act based only on what I feel or what I’ve been told. There’s many things that I don’t understand and some of those things…” I looked at him again. “Are Salrak’s creations.”

He leaned forward to have a closer look at me while still keeping a few steps away from me. “Well… that’s even more unexpected,” he said before turning into a wide smile. “It can’t just be because you don’t have the same power from before?”

I turned to look away into the veil of the Tainted Land. It was clear he had figured out that I didn’t have nearly the same amount of power as I did just a few days ago—years for him. But I could at least appreciate that he wasn’t taking advantage of that fact. Regardless, I kept quiet, since I still didn’t want to confess that out loud.

“Or could it be because you don’t have any money?” he continued with a chuckle.

“Ugh,” I grunted and felt my cheeks flush slightly. “We should go back now.”

He laughed out loud this time and didn’t say anything else. I felt somewhat ashamed to have been seen through like that by a demon, and somewhat worried that he might use that against me later, but I wasn’t going to give him the chance now, so I decided to quickly step into the veil and leave the Tainted Land behind, but I stopped for a short moment to look back at Bo’guth.

“It's not ‘Hero of the Holy Gods’. It’s Althea.”

* * *

Once I stepped outside the Tainted Land, I was expecting to find the group of people we had been traveling with so far, but what I found was a group of people heavily armed and armored with all sorts of weapons—mostly the loud kind of ones—and next to them another group of people wearing black elegant clothing. However, despite the shock that they gave me, the most shocking one was the being standing in the middle, towering over everyone. I frowned when I looked at her, but decided not to confront her, for she was yet another demon.

She was much taller than everyone else around her, wearing a long black dress that covered her from her neck to her feet, where I could see the tip of a dark-red tail poking on the side. She had an ashy skin color, and most importantly, a pair of large horns at the side of her head—the same dark-red color of the tail—that would cover half her head, protruding to the side before curving forward and downwards. Those horns were large enough to make it seem like they were her hair, and from where I was standing, I couldn’t see a single hair on her, which meant that they indeed covered most of her head.

I couldn’t help but frown when I looked at her face. Her facial features were similar to those of a beautiful woman with sharp features, but her eyes were completely black, with only a dark-gray iris that would let one know where she was looking: me. It was an extremely cold look that was exacerbated by the black lips which had a small line crossing them from top to bottom.

“Is this the one?” she asked with an alluring and raspy tone of voice that matched her cold look.

“Y-yes, ma’am!” quickly replied the same woman that had asked me to write my name in a paper before I went into the Tainted Land.

The demoness hummed for a moment, her eyes never leaving mine before she started approaching me. Each one of her steps was slow, and the silence of everyone around made it so the tapping of her steps was all that could be heard. People swallowed when they saw her coming my way and I could tell that the men were trying to avoid looking at her, since her movements would attract their desires when combined with the curvy figure that her dress hardly hid.

I could feel hostility from her cold gaze the more she approached, so I thought about defending myself if she did any strange movements, but once she was a handful steps away from me, Bo’guth popped out from behind the veil.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, “What a pleasant surprise!”

He didn’t take any time before going straight for the demoness. However, her eyes never drifted from me, only twitching slightly when Bo’guth was a step away from her, which was when she stretched her arm and pushed Bo’guth’s face with her clawy hand. He stopped himself, despite the fact that he could easily move her hand away, allowing her to keep him at arm’s length.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked, and I noticed that her mouth not only opened normally like a person, but also slightly vertically on the marks that I thought were tattoos or some mark like that.

“Whatever do you mean?” Bo’guth asked back, his face still behind the hand.

“Not only do you go off into a Magic Red Zone without saying anything, but you go with… This,” the demoness replied, almost spatting when she referred to me.

Bo’guth chuckled and slowly lowered the hand that was covering his face. “Well… it was quite unexpected, and I wanted to see for myself if she was the real deal or just looked like it.”

“It is obvious that she is. Not a single citizen from our nations could ever forget her face, even if she’s lost that horrible golden aura that she carried,” she replied before her cold look turned to a frown as she faced Bo’guth. “And you would go off alone with her?!”

Bo’guth turned to look at me with an unreadable expression on his demonic face before it turned to a slight smile. “Well… I chose to believe in the words of our Dark Lord, and so far, I think he might’ve been right.”

The demoness scoffed, almost with a mocking laugh. “He is gone, and we lost it all to…” she paused for a moment to turn her frown into a glare in my direction before looking back to Bo’guth. “You should’ve disposed of her in there.”

Bo’guth laughed out like he usually did while shaking his head. “I sure could have done that. But that is not the way of our people.” He took the demoness’ hand and caressed it a couple of times. “I want to give her a chance.”

The demoness frowned while looking at Bo’guth for a moment, but he simply smiled back at her. She eventually gave up and sighed heavily. “Okay, I’m going to trust you, but”—she turned to glare at me again—“I’m not as lenient, and I won’t hesitate to deal with you if I have to, even if it costs me everything.”

Right after she said that, I felt a powerful pulse of dark mana exploding from her body. It shook the walls slightly and the light orbs hanging from the ceiling flickered a couple of times, while some of the armed people gasped and the ones that didn't have much magic power fainted on the spot—like the lady that worked at a desk. I, however, was used to this and much more, so I simply glared back at her while staying my ground.

“I would like to see you try, demon.” I replied, not backing away from her hostile glare.

Again, the people in the hall didn’t react, all of them hesitant to do anything. But judging from the way they had been standing before, they were more likely to act against me than the demons in front of me. I currently didn’t have the power to deal with either Bo’guth or this demoness, so it was better for me not to act if they didn’t.

“Now, now,” Bo’guth calmly said, “Let's relax and take it easy for now, there’s no need to kill each other—at least, not anymore.”

Both me and the demoness sustained a glare at each other before she turned away, giving her back to me and walking away. “Come, let’s go now.”

“Wait a moment, I still owe the loot from this expedition to Althea,” Bo’guth said, causing the demoness to stop mid step.

“She doesn’t deserve it,” she said without turning.

“Well…” Bo’guth awkwardly said while scratching one horn and I worried that he might not give me anything for all that hard work. “It’s still my job and I can’t deny these things to anyone—regardless of who they are.”

The demoness humphed and kept on walking. “I’ll be waiting, don’t take long.”

Bo’guth awkwardly laughed before turning to look at me. “Come on, let's get your money.”

“Who is she?” I asked as I started walking next to Bo’guth.

“Oh, heh heh,” he said with a silly laugh. “That’s my cute little wife.”

“Huh?”