The group pressed deeper into the forest, and the trees closed in around them the further they went.

The five soldiers moved at the front in a practiced spread, hands resting on their weapons, eyes sweeping the undergrowth with the quiet wariness of men who had been briefed on where they were going and had chosen not to let it show too plainly on their faces.

Adrian walked in the middle of the formation, Valentina at his side.

Alfred, as always, had positioned himself close enough to reach the young lord in a single step.

He had said nothing about it and made no performance of it.

He simply stayed close, and that was enough.

In the meantime, Adrian kept his attention on the object in his hand.

The treasure compass was a peculiar artifact, its face etched with faintly glowing lines that shifted in response to the world around it.

Rather than a single needle, it carried several arrows, each one tracking a different kind of signal.

The golden arrow had been pointing in the same direction since the moment they entered the forest, steady and fixed, burning softly against the pale light that filtered through the canopy above.

He had sourced it from the system shop during his early research into the territory core.

The logic behind the purchase had been straightforward.

If Ashmere’s hidden resources were going to serve as the foundation of everything he intended to build, then locating them with precision was not optional.

The compass had been eight hundred system points. He had considered it a fair trade.

As he walked, Valentina shifted slightly closer and raised a hand to her mouth.

"My lord, I do not mean to question your judgment. But are you certain we are heading in the right direction? We have been walking for several hours."

Adrian let out a quiet breath.

"You do not need to worry. I am leading us along a clear route. The worst we are likely to encounter is a handful of monsters along the way."

But what kind of monsters?

"I have heard the creatures in this forest are A-rank and above," Valentina replied, and the unease beneath her composure was difficult to fully conceal.

She was not wrong to be concerned. That was simply the nature of the place.

Monsters in this world existed within a clear hierarchy, each species more or less fixed within its tier by nature.

Forest goblins were generally considered D-rank, manageable for even a lightly armed patrol.

Hobgoblins sat considerably higher, around B-rank, with the strength and cunning to match.

But demons were something else entirely.

They occupied the upper end of the hierarchy as a baseline, with A-rank as their starting point and no verified ceiling that anyone had successfully confirmed and lived to document at length.

Greymoor Forest had earned its reputation because of them.

Before Adrian could reply, his attention dropped back to the compass face.

The golden arrow still burned ahead, pointing at something not far off now.

But it was not the golden light that had sharpened his focus.

It was the red indicators scattered across the face of the compass, several of which had been stationary since they entered the forest.

Several of which were no longer stationary.

’We are not far from the golden marker. But a fight is going to be unavoidable at this point.’

He came to a stop.

The group halted almost immediately after him, the chain reaction moving from the soldiers to Alfred to Valentina in the span of a breath.

The lead soldier turned back, his expression sharp.

"Is something wrong? Why have we stopped?"

"We have arrived," Adrian said.

Everyone looked around.

What surrounded them was no different from everything else they had passed through for the past two hours.

Trees, stone, shadow, undergrowth.

"It is here?" one of the soldiers asked, making no effort to hide the skepticism in his voice.

"There." Adrian pointed at a section of earth roughly twenty feet away, unremarkable in every visible sense.

Then, without dropping his gaze from the compass, he added,

"But that is the least of our concerns at the moment. The monsters are already moving toward us."

The sentence had barely finished settling before the forest responded.

A sound built from somewhere beyond the northern tree line.

Low and rhythmic at first, like something too dense to move with any natural grace.

Then the trees themselves began to shift, not bending in a breeze but being pressed aside by sheer weight, trunks groaning and cracking as something enormous shouldered through them without slowing down.

The first demon broke through into the open.

It was massive.

Well over seven feet, its frame broad and heavy in a way that made the space it occupied feel smaller.

The skin was the color of dark ash, pulled tight over muscle that had no interest in proportion.

It carried no weapon.

It appeared not to need one.

The hands alone were large enough to close around a grown man’s skull with room to spare.

Behind it came two more from the same direction. A fourth emerged from the east, cutting off the cleanest angle of retreat.

The lead soldier raised a fist, and the formation tightened without a word being spoken.

Then the demons opened their mouths.

The sound that came out was not a roar in any conventional sense.

It was something lower, something that bypassed the ears and landed directly in the chest, a vibration that reached instinct before it reached thought.

Two of the soldiers took an involuntary half-step back before steadying themselves.

Alfred’s hand closed around the hilt at his side. Valentina made a sharp, involuntary sound and stepped closer to Adrian before she caught herself.

Adrian felt her close in against his back.

He reached back without looking and took hold of her wrist firmly, pulling her behind him and stepping in front of her in a single motion.

She said nothing and instead chose to stay where he placed her.

"Hold your lines," he said to the soldiers, his voice carrying an evenness that had nothing theatrical about it.

"Engage only what reaches you. Do not chase anything into the trees."

What followed was not clean. Real fights rarely were.

The demons hit the soldier formation with force that sent the entire line skidding backward three feet on impact.

Metal ground against hide.

One man was thrown sideways and struck a tree hard enough to lose his footing.

The others compensated, falling into the improvised spacing of men who had trained together and were now discovering what training actually prepared you for.

They were holding. But only just.

One of the outer demons broke away from the main cluster and began angling toward the middle of the formation, toward Valentina, moving with the patient certainty of something that did not need to hurry.

Adrian moved first.