In a desolate, jagged canyon flanking the northern borders of the Puppet Nation of Jistav, the remaining military might of the late Demon Lord Clayman stood assembled. The air was thick with the scent of sulfur, dust, and the restless shifting of thirty thousand armored monsters. Yet, at the absolute apex of the command tent overlooking the canyon, the atmosphere among the leadership was anything but unified.
The four remaining members of the elite "Five Fingers" stood in a tense, rigid semi-circle.
Yamza, the Frozen Sword, stood near the edge of the overlook, casually polishing the pommel of his enchanted ice blade. A sneer played across his features, his aura radiating a suffocating level of unearned confidence.
"Listen to me carefully, all of you," Yamza barked, not even bothering to turn around and face his peers. "When the brat arrives, his head belongs exclusively to me. Do not dare step into my line of fire, and do not interfere with my blade. I will be the one to sever his windpipe."
For Yamza, this mobilization had absolutely nothing to do with mourning or avenging their fallen master. Clayman's death was merely a convenient stepping stone. By executing the crowned Demon Lord who had supposedly "sneaked" his way into the Octagram, Yamza's notoriety, reputation, and global prestige would instantly skyrocket across the Western Nations. He would no longer be a mere subordinate; he would be a legend.
Adalman, the skeletal wight archmage, clenched his bony fists within his tattered crimson robes, the hollow sockets of his skull flaring with a violent, fanatical purple fire.
"Your arrogance is entirely distasteful, Yamza!" Adalman hissed, his voice echoing with the hollow resonance of the grave. "Lord Clayman was our savior! He provided us a sanctuary when the hypocritical Holy Church cast us into the darkness! To treat his tragic demise as a mere theatrical stage for your own vanity is an absolute blasphemy! I will reduce this Demon Lord Loki to ash and offer his soul as a grand penance to our master's memory!"
Standing slightly apart from the bickering executives, Mjurran leaned against a stone pillar, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as her sharp, analytical eyes scanned the canyon. A deep, unsettling knot of anxiety was forming within her stomach.
"You are both being incredibly foolish," Mjurran spoke up, her voice calm but dripping with a heavy, cautious friction. "Does none of this feel completely fishy to you? We are blindly throwing our entire remaining military infrastructure into a meat grinder based entirely on the testimony of a single human. I do not trust that Yuuki guy. Not even a fraction."
She knew, through whispers and hidden political configurations, that Yuuki Kagurazaka might very well have been Clayman's true underlying benefactor or boss. But something about his easygoing demeanor felt entirely hollow, like a beautifully painted mask hiding an absolute void.
Furthermore, Mjurran possessed absolutely zero internal motivation to avenge Clayman. That sadistic, narcissistic tyrant had held her physical heart hostage for decades, treating her like a disposable piece of trash on his global chessboard. If anything, she felt a profound, unspoken debt of gratitude toward Demon Lord Loki. By utterly obliterating Clayman at Walpurgis, Loki had shattered the master curse binding her soul, effectively handing her back her freedom. She was only standing here now to ensure the innocent monster civilians of Jistav weren't completely slaughtered in the crossfire.
Pirone, the diminutive master of poison and espionage, giggled deceptively from the shadows of Adalman's robes. "Oh, Mjurran, always so excessively paranoid. The Grandmaster provided us with absolute, verified data. Loki is a fraud who relies entirely on his Primordial maid to do his heavy lifting."
Suddenly, Yamza's eyes snapped wide open as a violent, frozen pressure erupted from his body. He looked up toward the highest ridge of the canyon, a twisted, predatory smile stretching across his face.
"He's here," Yamza whispered gleefully, his hand tightly gripping the hilt of his ice sword. "The prize has walked right into my trap!"
Without waiting for a single word of tactical coordination from Adalman or Mjurran, Yamza kicked off the stone ledge with absolute force, leaping directly into the rocky valley below like a blue streak of lightning.
---
On the highest, windswept ridge overlooking the canyon, Loki stood with his hands casually tucked into the pockets of his traveling cloak. The heavy fabric whipped violently in the mountain breeze as he looked down at the massive, undulating sea of thirty thousand armored monsters arrayed in perfect battle formations below.
"Well, well, well," Loki murmured to himself, tilting his head with a look of mild, detached amusement. "Thirty thousand troops... in terms of sheer visual aesthetics, it definitely looks pretty imposing. The banners are a nice touch."
He let out a soft, completely relaxed chuckle, shaking his head.
"But seriously... what exactly is the structural point of throwing an army of this caliber at me? These are enemies I could literally erase from the face of the earth with a single attack. Are they genuinely this desperate, or are they just completely lacking a basic understanding of magicule density?"
Before he could finish his monologue, the ambient temperature around the ridge violently plummeted. A sharp, whistling sound sliced through the air as Yamza descended from the sky, slamming heavily onto the rocky earth a mere twenty paces in front of the Demon Lord. The impact shattered the stone beneath his boots, sending a shockwave of localized frost rippling across the dirt.
Yamza drew his glowing ice sword with a grand, theatrical flourish, pointing the tip directly at Loki's throat. His expression was a masterclass of unadulterated, blinding hubris. Thanks to the absolute, meticulous lies fabricated by Yuuki, Yamza truly, entirely believed that the demon standing before him was a fragile, weak intellectual who had stolen his title through political theater.
"So, you're the pathetic little rat who calls himself Demon Lord Loki," Yamza sneered, looking down his nose at the demon. "You look even more fragile in person than you did in the intelligence reports. I honestly can't believe a magnificent lord like Clayman fell to a cheap, unprincipled demon like you."
Far above the canyon, completely hidden behind an advanced, multi-layered optical camouflage and magicule-suppression barrier, a spectral viewing screen hovered in the air.
Yuuki Kagurazaka sat comfortably on a levitating stone bench, a small, playful smile resting on his face as he watched the confrontation unfold through the magical transmission. Beside him stood Kagali, her arms crossed, her expression deeply furrowed with a mixture of profound confusion and growing frustration.
"I still do not comprehend the ultimate strategic value of this play, Yuuki," Kagali admitted, her voice low as she gestured toward the screen. "Yamza is incredibly powerful compared to a standard high-tier monster, but against a certified member of the Octagram? He is completely outclassed. You are essentially throwing away Clayman's absolute best remaining assets for a fight they cannot possibly win. What does this accomplish?"
Yuuki's smile didn't fade; instead, his brown eyes turned incredibly cold, fixed entirely on Loki's casual posture.
"Every single step of this deployment is an explicit, calculated test, Kagali," Yuuki explained softly, his tone completely devoid of its usual boyish warmth. "Like I told you seven days ago, I need to definitively determine whether Demon Lord Loki truly possesses the absolute 'script' of this world. If he is an omniscient transmigrator who already knows my identity, my plans, and my history, then this unprovoked ambush by the Five Fingers will be an absolute anomaly to his data. It forces an uncalculated, chaotic variable onto the board."
He leaned forward, his chin resting on his interlaced fingers.
"I want to see exactly how he reacts. Does he look surprised? Does he follow a predictable path? Or does he act with the absolute, terrifying confidence of a man who already knows the ending of the book? Just sit back, relax, and watch the show, Kagali. The data we gather from Yamza's death will form the foundation of our entire future strategy."
Back on the rocky ridge, Loki didn't even bother to take his hands out of his pockets. He merely blinked at Yamza, an expression of profound, genuine intrigue spreading across his face.
"A coward who used cheap, underhanded tactics?" Loki repeated, his tone thoroughly amused as he tilted his head. "Wow. That is a seriously creative spin on what happened at Walpurgis. Tell me, blue guy... where exactly did you happen to hear that highly specific piece of historical fiction?"
Yamza let out a loud, boisterous laugh, his aura of frost expanding outward. "A dead man has no need for references! You used cowardly mental manipulation and surprise ambushes to overwhelm Lord Clayman when his guard was down! In a true, face-to-face duel of martial honor, an unprincipled demon like you is absolutely nothing!"
Loki let out a soft, pitying sigh. "You know... I should probably remind you that underestimating a literal, fully awakened Demon Lord usually ends exceptionally poorly for your demographic. You might want to re-evaluate your life choices right about now."
"Die, you arrogant parasite!" Yamza screamed.
With a burst of speed that would have completely vaporized a lesser high-tier majin, Yamza lunged forward. His ice blade transformed into a blinding, hyper-accelerated blur of silver slashes, unleashing a violent cascade of freezing crescent shockwaves designed to slice Loki into clean, frozen ribbons.
Swish! Slice! Snap!
The blade tore through the mountain air with terrifying ferocity but it struck absolutely nothing but empty oxygen.
Loki moved with a level of fluid, effortless perfection that bordered on the supernatural. He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't activate a visible defensive barrier. He simply shifted his weight by a fraction of an inch to the left, ducked his head a millimeter to the right, and stepped backward with a casual, rhythmic grace that made Yamza's ultimate sword techniques look completely static.
While Yamza was wildly executing his absolute highest-tier martial arts, screaming in absolute fury, Loki was calmly conversing with him without a single microsecond of strain or panic.
"So, let me guess," Loki said casually, effortlessly tilting his torso to let the freezing blade graze past his collar. "The guy who gave you this 'secret intel'... did he happen to have brown hair? Maybe a really energetic, overly friendly kid-next-door vibe? Liked to talk about peace and cooperation while his eyes stayed completely dead?"
"Shut up! Shut up! Stand still and fight me!" Yamza roared, his breath hitching as he unleashed a frantic, desperate overhead strike.
Loki simply spun lightly on his heel, the blade crashing uselessly into the stone ground, creating a massive fissure of ice. Loki leaned in close to Yamza's ear, his voice a calm, mocking whisper. "Yeah, definitely sounds like Yuuki's handwriting. You really shouldn't believe everything a human tells you, kid."
Heavy, freezing beads of cold sweat began to violently pour down Yamza's face. His lungs were burning, his muscles screaming from the sheer output of magicules, yet he hadn't managed to scratch a single thread of Loki's traveling cloak. A wave of raw, primitive panic began to claw at his chest. 'What... what is happening?! Wasn't this guy supposed to be a fraud?! Why can't I even perceive his micro-movements?!'
Loki suddenly stopped dodging. He stood perfectly still, his charismatic smirk slowly dissolving into an expression of flat, unadulterated boredom.
"Yeah, alright. The novelty of this conversation has officially worn off," Loki sighed, looking down at Yamza with cold, dead eyes. "Let's wrap this up. I've got a schedule to keep."
Before Yamza could even attempt to leap backward to establish a defensive perimeter, Loki's hand snapped out of his pocket with lightning speed. He firmly gripped Yamza by his armored shoulder.
"What... let go of me—!" Yamza choked out, his eyes widening in pure horror.
"Here's a little parting gift," Loki whispered.
Instantly, Loki unlocked the absolute floodgates of his internal magicule reservoir. He didn't channel a complex spell; he simply utilized his hand as a direct conduit to force a massive, cataclysmic torrent of pure, uncompressed mana directly into Yamza's physical magicule pathways.
It was a level of raw energy that transcended the capacity of a high-tier majin by a factor of thousands. In an instant, Yamza's internal circuits completely shattered. His veins turned a blinding, glowing purple through his blue skin, his muscles expanding violently as his entire body began to warp and crack under the sheer, ungodly density of the forced energy.
"Gah... Ah... AAAALLLLGGHH!" Yamza screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony echoing across the ridge as his eyes completely rolled back into his head.
BOOM!
With a deafening, localized shockwave of pure magical energy, Yamza's physical body completely exploded, disintegrating into a massive cloud of residual purple mist and scattered magicule particles that violently dissipated into the mountain wind. The Frozen Sword was entirely erased from existence in the span of a single second.
Down in the vanguard lines of the command tent, the remaining three fingers stared at the scrying crystal in an absolute, paralyzed state of catatonic shock. The silence inside the tent was deafening.
Pirone broke the silence, let out a nervous, highly defensive giggle as she tried to forcefully rationalize the horrific display. "T-Tsk! I knew it! Yamza was always a loudmouth, arrogant fraud! He clearly lost because he was far too weak and careless against a weak opponent! Yes... that's exactly what happened!"
But Adalman didn't speak. And Mjurran stood completely frozen, a wave of cold, absolute dread flooding over her entire soul as she watched Loki casually brush a speck of dust off his cloak on the screen. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably.
"No..." Mjurran whispered, her voice cracking with pure terror as she clutched her chest. "Pirone, you absolute fool... close your eyes and look at the magicule reading. Yuuki lied to us. He completely set us up... This Demon Lord isn't a weak fraud... he is an absolute, unspeakable monster."
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