Chapter 18: What Are The Minotaurs Protecting?

Chapter 18: What Are The Minotaurs Protecting?

"A force for evil, how could they call me such a petty thing?" Admiring her nails atop a mountain of corpses, the demi-human minotaur queen chuckled to herself. Entranced by her beauty, she couldn't take her eyes off of her own brownish-red skin.

Adorned with the shiniest breastplates and a lush tunic taken off of dead adventurers, she spent her time musing over her own future. To be the lord of all monsters, not just minotaurs, she hoped not to be one of the demon lord's army, but the demon lord herself by trampling everything that stood in her path.

'Even my mother couldn't stop me, what chance do these squishy humans have?' Swiftly shifting her gaze from herself to the crown carved from her own mother's head, she picked it off the armrest made of human bones and brought it in front of her face. Hollowed at the top with the jaws missing, the crown was embedded with rubies as red as her skin.

"I resent you from the bottom of my heart, but had you not raped a human perhaps I would've never been born," with a smile, she placed the crown on her head right between her protruding horns.

Leaning back onto the throne, she looked around her room decorated with her sisters' corpses. Skinned to the bones and pinned to the wall, the entirety of the place was drowned in a pool of blood and guts. And yet, not repulsed but finding glee at the sight, she laughed out loud while dreaming of expanding her conquest.

'Athenia, was it? Perhaps time for my army to march through that putrid town!' Grinning eye to eye, she slapped herself on the knee as if the deaths of countless humans would be a mere joke. But what could you expect from a monster who'd slaughtered every female in her clan just so she could reign as the only queen for the male minotaurs.

Moving through the darkness, he stayed close to the walls making sure not a word left his mouth. After all, even a peep could break his invisibility, and uttering something on accident before the preparations were done would be nothing short of suicide at this point.

'Just bats so far...' Looking around as he kept going, he was reminded of his distant fey ancestry as even through the dark his eyes strained not the least. 'Last time we killed the slimes, goblins, and other creatures, maybe that's why there's nothing else? No...The minotaurs probably claimed the rest of the cave for themselves.'

Crossed with that thought his eyes laid on the first minotaur since his entry. Possessing the face of a bull with a humanoid body, it carried a heavy club in its hand as it moved with authority strong enough to ripple the earth. Wearing just a leather tunic too short to hide much of anything, the monster was ten times Raven's size, and yet instead of dread or fear, the sight of the monster simply angered him.

Reminded of his moment of death as they tore him apart, his fist clenched tight until a glass boating shattered a crack. The sound of the glass snapped Raven out of the mindless rage, and realizing how easily he'd lost control, he shook his head and kept following the minotaur as it patrolled the cave.

After a while of following the minotaur, Raven finally arrived where he wanted to be. An opening where the majority of minotaur were stationed inside. Deciding to watch their movement for a while, he slipped into a corner to time the hell flames to get all of them at once.

'This seems to be their hub, but...' Just behind the clearing, two heavily armored minotaurs seemed to be guarding a small room. Whatever it was, Raven had no clue, but once he was done with these creatures, he knew he had to check out what was waiting for him inside. As for now, all he could do was wait...until it was time to paint the sigil for the hell flames in the ground with his mana.