Following Garuel’s words, everyone rushed ahead, but it wasn’t easy to keep running. The ground kept wriggling incessantly. Running on the shaking ground was a challenge even for those with good physical abilities, and for magicians like Cadel and Jeriel, it was almost impossible.

“Come this way, Commander!” 

Van quickly grabbed the struggling Cadel and lifted him up. Cadel naturally wrapped his arms around Van’s neck and threw a fireball to illuminate the path behind them. What was revealed was.

“Yellow liquid! It’s that strange liquid that sent us here!”

“Does that mean if we touch it, we’ll be moved somewhere else?”

“Hmm, I don’t think so. Just look at those monsters.”

Garuel, who had been running desperately with Jeriel, suddenly pulled him by the back of his neck and carried him on his shoulder. He pointed to a spot behind them. There, a monster that hadn’t managed to escape was covered by the rushing stream of liquid. Drenched in the liquid, the creature squirmed in agony.

Its fur and skin seemed to be slowly melting away. The bigger problem, however, was the insects feeding on the monster. While the creature struggled in a daze, a giant insect opened its mouth wide and devoured its head.

The insect’s body expanded uncontrollably as it shoved the monster’s entire body into its maw. Cadel grimaced at the horrific scene.

‘It doesn’t seem like it’s sending us to another place. Is the liquid like acid that melts things on contact? Why has it suddenly turned so aggressive?’

Everything seemed strange, but the biggest concern was how long this acidic liquid would keep flooding them.

‘Jeriel can’t change the terrain here. If this liquid keeps flowing, we’ll eventually……’

They would either melt away or become the insects’ next meal. After finishing that grim thought, Cadel quickly assessed the situation ahead. Even while running, insects were swarming around them, so Lumen, who was leading the way, was cutting through as many as he could.

Cadel shouted to the knights around him to escape, while firing fireballs at the enemies ahead, looking for a safe area. However.

“What is this place? It’s like a long tunnel.”

As Jeriel had said, the space stretched endlessly like a deep, long tunnel. There was no room to slip through or any slope to avoid the rushing liquid.

“Commander, hold on tight. The ground is shaking even more now……!”

To make matters worse, the ground was becoming increasingly unstable, making it harder to even stand. Cadel tightly clutched Van’s neck and bit his lip.

“This is bad, we’re getting closer!”

The ground was slowing them down. The distance to the liquid, which was rapidly closing in, was growing shorter, and a cold sweat broke out on Cadel’s forehead. Even if he used wind mana to push the group forward, it would only make it harder to maintain balance.

‘I need to set up a barrier……’

At this rate, being overtaken was only a matter of time. It was better to prepare for what would happen after they were overtaken. Just as Cadel was about to create a barrier, he heard a familiar voice.

“That’s enough.”

With that voice, a wall of dark energy rose up behind Van, blocking their path.

“Yozen?”

“Stop running and halt.”

The sudden appearance of Yozen caused the group to freeze, as he set up a barrier in front of Lumen, who had been leading the charge. The members, surprised by his sudden appearance, obeyed without question. Jeriel, still visibly shaken, had no choice but to remain silent, unable to urge Garuel to keep running while being carried.

As the rushing water reached right up to the halted group, it suddenly slowed down in front of the dark energy wall Yozen had created. The liquid, which had been surging violently, was absorbed into the ground and disappeared.

Cadel, who had been watching this, hurriedly jumped out of Van’s arms and ran over to Yozen.

“Yozen! Where have you been? Were you escaping too? Are you hurt?”

Cadel quickly grabbed Yozen by the shoulder and checked him over, but there were no visible wounds. He appeared completely composed, almost as if he had been resting somewhere leisurely.

Yozen, gently brushing Cadel’s fringe aside, shook his head.

“I was establishing the outline of this space as soon as I arrived.”

“Outline of this space?”

“This is the inside of a massive insect’s stomach.”

Yozen’s blunt statement caused all eyes to shift toward him.

“The inside of an insect’s stomach……?”

“The forest we passed through, that vast forest, is actually one giant insect. It surrounds the battlefield in a circular shape. It devours any living beings that try to enter.”

“The forest…… was actually an insect……?”

“Yes, the body of the insect, the forest paths, are part of it. The magic circle we saw was used to lure prey inside.”

“We saw that too. But we were dragged in right after encountering the yellow wave…… If this is the insect’s stomach, does that mean the liquid is something like stomach acid?”

With several clues piecing together in his mind, Cadel continued.

“The yellow wave we saw from outside is a type of magic. The insect can only unleash its full power inside its stomach, so it uses external magic to send creatures inside. The magic circle was an additional trap. Do you know who cast that spell?”

“……I have a good guess.”

“If that person casts the spell again, a passage will form between the inside and outside of the stomach. At that moment, we need to find the passage and escape. If that’s impossible, we’ll have to create the passage ourselves.”

If the wave was magic, and everyone had been forcefully summoned by that magic, then as Yozen said, using the caster’s magic to escape was the most certain way out.

However, there was a significant problem with this plan.

“……But, Commander, isn’t Lydon the one fighting the demon outside?”

Could Lydon possibly figure out where the missing members were, and realize that their escape depended on Kash?

‘He’s most likely trying to capture and kill Kash himself.’

Cadel knew that Lydon couldn’t possibly know the escape method that he had only just learned from Yozen. The chances of escaping through Kash’s magic were extremely slim.

With a heavy sigh, Cadel nodded gravely.

“We can’t just sit here. Let’s move and gather everyone. We can’t leave everything to Lydon.”

* * *

“Where did you take Cadel? Answer me, you fool. Huh?”

“Ahh! Don’t shoot the ice! It’s dangerous!”

“Maybe if I just kill you, I’ll get some answers.”

“Hiik!”

He flew so high, desperately trying to escape. Lydon, who had been chasing Kash, only realized the situation on the ground after his entire group had been submerged by the waves.

It must just be water. The barrier must have blocked the waves, so once the water recedes, they will reveal themselves again. Watching with desperate hope, he saw that beyond the water, which disappeared like an illusion, the humans had vanished.

“Kash, you filthy, ugly demon, answer me! Where did you take my Cadel?”

“You think I’ll tell you? If you kill me, you’ll never find the place I hid him. If you want to know, stop throwing ice!”

“If you want to stop getting hit, then speak up.”

“If you keep bothering me, Toto might kill the humans! No, he’s probably already killing them!”

Toto. Kash kept mentioning the name ‘Toto’. Ignoring his warning not to attack, Lydon quickly scattered ice shards around him, blocking his vision and forcing him to change his flight path.

“Ahh! It hurts!”

Rather than avoiding the ice, the shards stuck to his body and burrowed into his skin. His hands and feet started to freeze, turning bright red as though he had suffered frostbite. Kash, horrified, looked back at Lydon.

“You don’t care what happens to the humans, do you?”

Kash’s wingbeats noticeably slowed, and the ice shards steadily dug into his skin, emitting a chilling cold. Lydon swiftly closed the distance between them, coming right in front of the terrified Kash.

Mockingly, Lydon leaned his face close to Kash’s, grinning playfully and flashing his eyes.

“Did you hide Cadel somewhere I could never find out if I killed you?”

“Ye, yeah, that’s right! So right now…….”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to kill you then. Right?”

“……What?”

A dark madness hovered above the glowing red eyes. Madness, mixed with fierce anger, was enough to send chills down the spine of even the most cowardly of High Demons.

“……I, I think I’m going to fall.”

The gap between their once equal eye level widened. Kash flapped his wings in desperation, but the ice crystals on his wings made it difficult to even flap once.

Reflexively, he reached out to grab the hem of Lydon’s robe, but Lydon lightly sidestepped his touch. A numb face stared at Kash’s face as he watched the horror of the fall.

“No, I’ll just kill you. Maybe if I kill you, something will work.”

“No, no. I can’t die. You can’t kill me!”

“Ugh, no. Keeping you alive would make me feel sick. That’s too horrible.”

The longer Cadel’s whereabouts go unaccounted for, the longer the ramblings of the cause. Lydon’s patience quickly ran out. Lydon stomped down on Kash’s slowly descending crown, weighing him down.

“Get this off me! Now!”

“We’re high enough. If you keep falling, they won’t recognize you.”

“If I die, it’s the end of the humans! I swear!”

“When your body explodes, I’m going to spit on it, and that will make it better, won’t it?”

“You crazy fairy……!”

Lydon was serious about killing Kash, and his joking murderous intent was clearly conveyed. Even with his wings completely frozen, and his fall gaining momentum. There was nothing Kash could do.

He was a High Demon with no combat power without his familiar, Toto, so he had always used the advantage of flight to carry his enemies from the farthest reaches of the world to Toto’s stomach, since his main enemy, humans, were flightless.

But now, his opponent was a fairy. He had never imagined facing a fairy before, and meeting one so relentless and unrelenting was his worst misfortune.

“Get off me, ugly.”

The force pressing down on his head grew stronger, the gravitational pull on his body more tangible. Kash’s mind raced with fierce survival instincts. Each inch of ground that came closer amplified his fear to no end.

His breaking point came when he saw the jagged rocks at his drop-off point.

“Sa, save me! Help me, and I’ll show you how to get the humans out!”

“You’re lying.”

“It’s real! It’s real! Aaahhhh!”

It was almost over. The ground beneath him was ready to crush him flat at any moment. Kash screamed and thrashed about like a seizure, and Lydon, who had been holding Kash’s head down with a stern look, said.

“Make it quick, you’re wasting time.”

Just before Kash’s body touched the ground, Lydon grabbed him by the back of the head and lifted him back into the air.