A bold statement at odds with his timid demeanor. It should have been shocking, but Cadel was not at all surprised.

This boy was a High Demon the Knight Order would have to deal with in the Inte Snowfields. What was unexpected was the direction the boy had come from.

He had expected the demon to break through the seal. However, the boy came from the opposite direction of the seal. Furthermore, there was still no sign of a crack in the seal circle.

Where did he come from? Was he a demon that had been hiding in the human realm instead of the demon realm? That was the only question Cadel had.

“Leader. Don’t tell me this guy is…….”

Cadel glanced at Lumen, his hand on his scabbard, and nodded slightly.

“A High Demon. His name is…… Elvie. Right?”

“Don’t, don’t you dare say my name……! Disgusting……!”

Elvie gagged as if he was genuinely disgusted that Cadel knew his name and had used it, but his expression remained timidly contorted, which was unique.

Cadel had revealed the boy’s identity, and yet the group surrounding Elvie hadn’t rushed to attack him. Aside from his youthful appearance, it was Cadel’s demeanor that contributed most to their hesitation.

Cadel realized Elvie’s identity before anyone else, but he didn’t attack him. He didn’t put any distance between them, didn’t put up a barrier, and was as relaxed as if he were a kid in the neighborhood.

It was incomprehensible, but Cadel always had a good reason for his actions, which was why none of them acted before him.

Of course, it was just not acting.

“Darling, why aren’t you fighting him? Are you fooled by his looks into thinking he’s weak? You can’t be seduced. Look at my face! Isn’t it much cuter and prettier?”

Now that Lydon had confirmed that Elvie wasn’t human, he wanted to fight him right now. Cadel didn’t have any intention of stopping Lydon, but he didn’t even give him permission. Because there was no need.

“We could fight to the death here, and it wouldn’t leave a scratch on his body, and vice versa.”

With that, Cadel shot the fireball he had created in an instant into Elvie’s face. It was a small fireball, but its power was immense. With a thunderous boom, Elvie’s body was lifted into the air, and he fell back down.

The plume of smoke from his face was quickly swept away by a powerful snowstorm. And what was revealed was.

“That’s…….”

Transparent ice beneath the scorched skin. The ice hadn’t been melted by Cadel’s magic, and it was glistening without a single scratch.

“What happened to his body?”

Elvie, hastily pulling himself to his feet under the gaze of the Knight Order, groped frantically for his face.

“You, impudent, impudent, impudent……!”

His deer-in-the-headlights eyes met Cadel’s as he mumbled in a seizure. It was a passive gaze, but Cadel could feel the dark murderous intent in it. No blow, of course.

‘I’m still grinding my teeth thinking about all the trouble I had in defeating you, you *sshole.’

Wasn’t that the rule of all games? Despite his youthful appearance, he was as strong as an old man. Cadel couldn’t tell if Elvie was a child prodigy or a pervert who insisted on taking on the appearance of a boy since he couldn’t tell his actual age.

‘Until that bastard creates a stage of his own, we can’t attack him and do any damage, so we’ll just have to force him to fight quickly.’

Elvie didn’t have the ‘free deal time’ that most bosses have, which meant he didn’t greet you gracefully, and if he did, the deal didn’t work.

“How do you know him so well, Knight Commander? Have you ever fought him before?”

Garuel stared down at Elvie, arms crossed. His initial worries were for naught, as Elvie didn’t seem cold at all, even though he was rolling around in the snow bare-chested. Not surprising, since his body was made of ice.

Cadel shuffled his feet in the snow and answered vaguely.

“Ku, Kunra told me, and I’m still going over it in my head.”

“Mmm, good, like a guidebook.”

It was a good choice, even if Kunra’s role as a demon guidebook had been relegated to that. It was much better than the lame excuse of having read it in a book somewhere. Cadel thought he heard Kunra snicker from somewhere, but he ignored it.

‘The only time I can talk to Kunra is when I call him or he focuses his consciousness on me. Well, there’s no way my subordinates would know that.’

Just as Cadel was getting the hang of his new possessor.

“Commander. Stand down.”

At the sound of Van’s wary voice, Elvie began to act strangely. He was poking his thin fingers into the snow. What was at first just a tiny hole became line after line at an uncanny speed.

His head was jerked up toward the sky, his eyeballs white. It was an eerie look as if he had received a revelation.

“Sis, Sister Emilia told me to kill you all, to clean you all up. I’m gonna…… I’m gonna kill you all..….”

What he made was a magic circle. After completing the magic circle in an instant, he activated the formula.

Rumble—

A tremendous vibration shook the snowfields. With Van wrapped around him, Cadel searched for the source. It was not Elvie’s magic circle.

The seal circle.

From beneath the still-unbroken seal circle, a massive column of ice was rising. The column grew thicker and wider as it broke through the snowfields, soaring for what seemed like an eternity.

When the vibrations that echoed through the space ceased, the Knight Order realized that it was no ordinary pillar, but a huge tower.

“Get, get inside. If you don’t go in, the seal will be broken. It, it’s good for me then, but…….”

With a sinister laugh, an ice spear flew toward Elvie. The ice spear pierced right through Elvie’s abdomen, but it didn’t kill him in one hit.

“Hmph, what? Is he trying to imitate my illusion techniques?”

The attacked Elvie immediately vanished like an illusion. Lydon cleared his throat briefly, staring at the ice spear in the snow.

“It’s not an illusion.”

Cadel pointed to the tower that stretched high into the sky.

“That tower is his body. Somewhere inside the tower is his heart, and Kunra…… says we can only kill him by finding it and smashing it”

“As expected of the Scarlet Dragon. If possible, I wish Lord Kunra could melt that tower himself.”

“I don’t think it’s possible with just the power he gave me.”

Cadel looked back at his subordinates as he relayed Kunra’s inaudible words.

“Let’s hurry. I think it’s true that the seal will be broken if we don’t get in.”

* * *

[Main quest ‘Tower of Demon Realm’ accepted!]

[Complete the quest to progress through the story. Rewards will be given.]

[On failure, the entire Knight Order dies.]

Faced with an unimaginable penalty, Cadel’s expression did not change. He absentmindedly checked the system window and turned his gaze to the door in front of him.

A door made of ice stood at the entrance to the tower. It was carved with ornate decorations around the edges, but what stood out more was the presence of the number ‘5’ in the center.

“I don’t think it’s a meaningless number. It’s the entrance to the first floor, after all…….”

Garuel frowned as he stroked the embossing on the door. Beside him, Van was slamming the ice door with the handle of his greatsword. A series of murderous blows rang out, but the door did not shatter or make a hole.

“How are we supposed to get in, Commander? It has no handle, and it’s not breaking.”

“I wouldn’t want the seal to break while we’re here trying to figure it out. Leader, can’t you melt it with fire magic?”

Direct damage to the door was impossible. The tower was Elvie’s body, and unless his heart was broken, it wouldn’t leave a single scratch on his body. It could be seen as a superior compatibility with Ergo.

‘I don’t remember struggling with the entrance to the tower, and the number on the door is a hint that doesn’t matter now. Unless the cutscene at the beginning of the stage had some sort of story clue…… I’ll never know.’

Thinking in the brain-freezing cold was not very efficient. Cadel considered his options, short of force, and finally settled on the most common sense course of action.

“Let’s try knocking.”

Pushing his way through his subordinates, Cadel knocked on the door with his reddened knuckle, and as if in anticipation, a young voice came from the other side of the door.

[Vi, visits should be polite……. That, that’s common sense, you savage.]

It was quite unpleasant to say everything he had to say in a timid tone, but after Cadel knocked, he was allowed to enter the tower. The huge ice door rose upward, revealing the interior.

The interior was an empty hall, its walls, floor, and ceiling all frozen white. Bright light streamed from ice lights carved into the shape of chandeliers, making it as bright as daylight inside.

No Elvie, the tower master, no enemies, nothing but cold air. Cadel halted at the door before leading the members inside.

“Of course, I want you all to be on your toes. We can’t afford to have a single failure.”

In the battle with Elvie, individual skills were the most important factor across all the stages that Cadel had cleared, and the death of one meant the death of all.

The penalty for failing the quest was the lives of entire the Knight Order. As always, it was only a foreshadowing of the catastrophe that would ensue if they failed.

“Even if we have to die, let’s not die.”

With that, the entire Order entered the tower. The only entrance to the tower became a completely seamless wall, isolating them.