Volume 1 Chapter 22 - In the Midst of Ground Dragon Hunting

Deep within the Unnamed Forest, a small party of adventurers had encircled a giant [Earth Bear] and were engaged in combat. [Earth Bears] were classified as a C-class monster by the adventurer’s guild, it was a fierce earth-type monster that could use several earth type magic. Most adventuring parties would walk the other way as soon as they came into sight of one, because [Earth Bears] were quick to anger and could enter a berserk state during which its attack power could reach the level of a B-class monster.

But currently, this [Earth Bear] that towered at around 3 meters in height was being beat into submission by an adventuring party comprised of only eleven girls, four of which were knights, two swordswomen, an archer, a cleric, and what seemed to be three little priestesses just standing around and providing moral support.

If there was a pill to undo an action that one regretted, this [Earth Bear] really wanted one. It found its way into this mess because it couldn’t resist the fragrant scent of the roasting [Deep-sea Serpent] and had come out of its den to forage for food, but quickly regretted it. Even though the adventuring party was small and completely made of girls, the [Earth Bear] would have picked a larger adventuring party to fight any day, as long as it didn’t have to face this party. The knights of this party were like unmoving steel walls that had boxed it in.

The [Earth Bear] was completely unable to escape the encirclement, every time it tried, the knight in whichever direction it tried to break through was able to use their shields to block its path. The furious [Earth Bear] swung its massive paws against the knights’ shields to no avail, no matter how much strength it put into its strikes, it couldn’t break through the knights’ defensive stances, not even moving them from their spot.

The two swordswomen hid behind the cover of the knights looking for their opportunity to strike, whenever the [Earth Bear] began an assault on one of the knights, the swordswomen would take advantage of the gap in its defences to strike. While the black-haired swordswoman wasn’t much of a threat, the silver-haired swordswoman was able to strike six to nine times in the blink of an eye, and her sword was unusually sharp, each of her strikes was able to pierce through the bear’s thick skin and draw out large amounts of blood.

Even the magic attacks of the [Earth Bear] magic attacks were suppressed by the adventurers, whenever it began charging up its magic, the party’s archer was always able to accurately place arrows so that it would be forced to stop charging magic unless it wanted to trade its life. The female cleric kept buffing the four knights, further shifting the balance in their favour, this was no longer a battle, this was completely one-sided abuse!

Of course, Bella wouldn’t care about the thoughts happening within the thick skull of the [Earth Bear], she was enjoying the process of this battle. Previously, she had let her subordinate dark suzerains take the rein in the slaughter of monsters in this area, not giving Bella and the others chance to show their abilities. When faced with a swarm of dark suzerains, even A-class monsters would be unable to escape death, while S-class monsters could only run for their lives before they got swarmed.

The current Bella was experiencing a strange sort of pleasure that even playing Monster Hunter VR on Earth hadn’t given her. It was quite easy to get passionate when fighting such a large monster that she knew couldn’t hurt her. As the party didn’t have any high-damaging range units like mages, Bella and the others were engaged in melee with the [Earth Bear], and each time it struck her shield, Bella was able to feel the shock travelling from the shield.

Every time the [Earth Bear] charged, it was repelled easily by the knights. It had also entered berserk state several times already, but even while under berserk status, its power that had been multiplied several times was still unable to budge the female knights in front of it; they even conversed with each other with smiles on their face!

I’ve had enough! If you all are so fierce, why don’t you go and fight an S-class monster, instead of bullying my C-class ass? With a roar, the [Earth Bear] entered berserk state again, this was its final surge. Its body had already reached its limit and even if Bella and the others didn’t attack, it would collapse soon enough.

Right at this moment, Annie sent an arrow through the eye of the [Earth Bear], piercing through its skull. The [Earth Bear] was immediately silenced and collapsed like a ragdoll to the ground with its mouth open as if complaining to the heavens about the unfairness of life. From the beginning, it didn’t have any chance to survive, Annie’s first arrow would have been able to pierce its skull, the only reason why she didn’t was to let Bella and the other close ranged members of the party practice and improve their cohesion.

The berserk state of the [Earth Bear] was a joke to Bella and the others, not even being able to budge an unmoving knight. After felling the giant [Earth Bear], Angel and Mia went up to harvest, due to Ivy and Susan’s presence they were currently only able to do miscellaneous work.

Ivy and Susan looked at Bella and the other knights emotionally, each monster hunting group’s priority was having a strong knight. If the knight wasn’t strong enough and wasn’t able to block the attacks of the monster, the rest of the party would be in danger. Many groups of monster hunters had been slaughtered because their knights had been killed before the party managed to severely damage the monster.

Although Bella, Eleanor, Dolores, and Roland didn’t carry the mark of a holy knight, Susan estimated that their abilities were definitely higher than that of a normal holy knight. Normal human knights would use “Dou Qi” that they gained through their cultivation to help supplement their defences but Bella and the others hadn’t used any during their fight with the [Earth Bear], meaning that they had repelled attacks of what was effectively a B-class monster with their own strength.

Susan wondered how much strength and endurance it would take to directly defend against a C-class monster that was renowned for its strength. So far, this [Earth Bear] was the one that had lasted the longest, all the other C-class monsters that they had ran into didn’t last more than a couple slashes from Kriss.

All this party needed right now was a good assassin and it would be perfect, although Annie had talent in the field of archery, she was like Roland in that they still had human bodies that would still get tired in long fights. In the fight previously, Roland actually wouldn’t have lasted that long.

It was just that every time the [Earth Bear] attacked Roland, Noesha secretly used time magic to slow it down, causing the force behind its strikes to largely decrease. It seems that Bella needed to have a talk with Roland and Annie; each demon king was able to bestow power on an exclusive maidservant whose power would skyrocket until it reached about 60% of the demon king’s who bestowed power on her.

As the demon king’s power increases, the power of the exclusive maidservant will as well. This was much better than the power that demon kings bestowed to their subordinate evil beings, as if evil beings wanted to get more power than that was bestowed on them initially, they must have enough achievements and merit needed for that amount of power. While the exclusive maidservant only needed to receive power from her demon king once and then their power would be able to keep growing without interference from the demon king.

Bella was currently trying to formulate a plan that would be able to make it so that Kriss wouldn’t be on her opposing side in the future, according to Noesha, Kriss had a chance of ‘darkening’{1}. Should Bella make Kriss ‘darken’ so that she can no longer be a Saviour? This wasn’t the best choice and had a lot of uncertainties, Bella wasn’t sure how likely she would be able to beat dark Kriss if they came to odds.

The current Kriss seemed to love the clothes that Bella designed for her, this might be something that could be useful in the future, it wouldn’t hurt to build up a good relationship first, Bella decided. The party continued on their journey, perhaps it was because of how loud the death cry of the [Earth Bear] was, Bella and the others didn’t run into any more monsters on the way.

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Not long after Bella’s party left the area, another party of adventurers soon reached the area. This party numbered in the hundreds with many cavalry mixed within. They were lead by a female knight with a tall figure and golden locks, her features looked similar to that of Felia and Lisha but it seemed that she was slightly older than those two and gave off a more mature air.

Octavio Irene, 1st princess of the Octavian Empire(Knights), first of the ‘Four Royal Beauty Holy Knights’, with Felia, Lisha before becoming a dragon knight, and the 3rd princess, Octavio Luce, making up the other three. Irene had come to the Gabriel Empire(Swordsmen) this time to hunt [Ground Dragons].

The feelings in Irene’s heart were complicated, too much had happened in the past few months. First was Felia being sent to survey the Alfred Continent but then disappearing and was probably dead; then Lisha’s Anti-Demon Knight Corp was heavily hit by an explosion caused by evil beings, while Lisha and the other heroes that followed her were fine, she seemed to have taken quite the mental blow after.

No matter how humble Felia and Lisha’s origins were, they were still my little sisters. Right now, Irene was regretting how she avoided Felia and Lisha in the past because she was afraid of people gossiping about them together. Now that one was missing and the other was low-spirited and not willing to see her, the only person remaining in the royal palace that Irene could confide in was the 3rd princess, Octavio Luce.

However, Luce’s body hasn’t been very well recently, she had been too careless while killing a necromancer a year ago and had been hit with the necromancer’s rebound magic, 《Withered Life》. Luce was now too weak to even leave the bed, Irene didn’t want to lose this last little sister of hers, after hearing that the heart of a [Ground Dragon] was able to expel a necromancer’s magic, she had come to the Unnamed Forest to try her luck.

At the adventurer’s guild, ground dragons were always A-class at the very least and most large-sized adventurer parties were afraid to mess with any. Originally, Irene had wanted to invite Kriss to help but after she arrived in the Gabriel Empire(Swordsmen), the empire’s prince Leonard and noble Edwin told her with frightened faces that they didn’t know where Kriss was.

Seeing the two with their faces pale from fear and their stuttering speech, Irene hurried here as soon as she managed to hear where Kriss was seen last. As the fighting between humans and beastmen had escalated, most mercenaries in this area had left as there was no longer any lords in the area to hire them or were scared off by the beastmen, forcing Irene to bring her own personal guards with her.

On her way, Irene saw many monsters who had been brutally killed, from the footprints it seemed that there were only about 11 adventurers in the party that had killed them, there were no signs of magic on the corpses, meaning that the party who had killed all these monsters had done it with brute strength alone and that these adventurers should be pretty strong.

She further reaffirmed her thought after seeing the body of the [Earth Bear] which was a rather well-known monster in these parts, the ability of the party who took it down was undeniable. Irene right now just wanted to hurry and catch up to this mysterious party of adventurers and see if she could acquire their assistance.

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Bella and the others didn’t know that they were being trailed, Angel couldn’t use her powers as there were no spirits nearby, Tanpur had gone god knows where. The usual methods that Bella relied on for intel on the surrounding environments were gone. Bella was confident, however, as Kriss was currently part of her party, even if they ran into Lisha’s party, Bella believed that her party would be able to go toe-to-toe with them.

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The zombies that Bella had summoned earlier had all disappeared and Irene’s party didn’t encounter them, they had been summoned by several mysterious figures in grey robes using a normal undead summoning magic.

On an empty field somewhere deep within the forest, a large number of zombies were gathering. A group of grey-robed figures were surrounding a strange magic formation, they seemed to be summoning undead. Seeing the swarm of zombies heading their way, these mysterious figures were unnaturally excited and didn’t discover that many of the zombies coming towards them were those that had been summoned by Bella earlier.

The zombie commander that Bella summoned had pretended to be responding to the mysterious figures’ summons, it was highly intelligent as it had been initially summoned with some essences from 【Devil’s Wisdom] and if it wanted, it wouldn’t have been summoned by such low-level magic.

However, this zombie commander had been taking lessons from 【Master of Faces] Clement and had learned several things from him, insidiousness being one of them. Seeing that there was someone performing this magic, it had brought its subordinates with it and pretended to be controlled.

Seeing the prideful summoners in front of the magic formation, the zombie commander decided to wait a little while longer; its subordinates were stealthily nailing ‘Corpse Controlling Nails’ on the other zombies, it wouldn’t be long before all the other zombies would ‘jump ship’ and become puppets of the zombie commander.

All that it needed to do know was quietly follow these summoners until they reached a place with many big chests. Then would be the time to end them then take the chests and tribute them to demon king-sama, then it would be able to receive more power and start its path to the pinnacle of an evil being! The summoners didn’t notice this strange existence at all, it was unheard of for such an intelligent evil being to be summoned with such a low-level spell.

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It was very easy to track [Ground Dragons], Bella realized that all she had to do was follow the strange and giant footprints and eventually they would lead her to the [Ground Dragon]. Within the adventurer guild, [Ground Dragons] were rated A-class as they were pseudo-dragons with high physical attack and defence, the magic core of a [Ground Dragon] had only appeared on the market three times in the past, and even those belonged to juveniles, there was no information of anyone seeming to have killed an adult [Ground Dragon].

The [Ground Dragon] that Bella was tracking wasn’t too far from the center of the Unnamed Forest, it might have been forced out by a monster stronger than the [Ground Dragon] and had either been outcompeted, forced to go elsewhere for food; or it was no match for the other monster and had fled for its life.

At their destination, Bella finally saw their target for this expedition, a group of [Ground Dragons]. Looking at the group of what seemed to be 8 meters long, enlarged monitor lizards, Bella was a little speechless, the intel that they had gathered previously said that [Ground Dragons] were solitary animals, but now they had run into an entire group of them. If they had to fight all these [Ground Dragons], their party size was definitely not enough, unless they disregarded Susan and Ivy and show their demon king abilities but even then they might need to call for some dark suzerains and their subordinates to come and aid them.

—TL NOTES—

{1} Darkening [黑化] is a righteous character becoming evil, can’t find a better word for it