He circled the edge of the engagement at a low angle and intercepted it before it could fully commit to a direction.

The compass had been tracking the weak points in hide like this for the duration of the walk, compiling information Adrian had not consciously requested but absorbed regardless.

The strike landed in the gap between the neck and the upper shoulder, where the plating thinned to almost nothing.

The demon staggered.

He did not give it time to recover. The follow-through dropped it.

The second kill came within moments.

A demon that had been moving to flank Alfred turned when Adrian shifted and committed to him instead.

He stepped inside its reach before the swing could develop and put the blade through the soft joint beneath its jaw.

It folded.

The two remaining demons pulled back.

Alfred exhaled in a controlled rush.

The soldiers were breathing hard.

One man was down against a tree with a hand pressed to his side, out of the fight but alive.

The other four held their ground with the stubborn quiet of professionals who had decided that the shape of the situation had changed but not the job.

And then the forest shifted again.

She came through the tree line without any of the noise the others had made.

No crashing of trunks, no rhythmic drumming of heavy footsteps.

She simply stepped out of the shadow between the trees and walked forward with the unhurried pace of someone who had never once had reason to approach anything cautiously.

The demon was not built like the others.

She was tall, but lean, her proportions closer to a person’s than the broad slabs of muscle behind her.

Her skin was a deep and vivid red, almost luminous in the filtered forest light.

Her eyes were the color of embers in the moment before they died.

She wore no armor, carried no weapon, and somehow those absences made her more difficult to look at directly, not less.

She studied Adrian with an expression that sat somewhere between mild curiosity and the specific kind of contempt that came from someone who had not been surprised in a very long time and was already measuring whether this qualified.

"A human child," she said.

Her voice was low, unhurried, carrying an accent that suggested she had learned the language because it was occasionally useful rather than because she had needed it.

"You killed two of mine."

"They were moving toward someone under my protection," Adrian replied.

The corner of her mouth shifted. It was not quite a smile.

"Principles," she said, as though cataloguing a curiosity. "From a child."

She moved.

The speed was on another level entirely compared to the others.

The distance between them collapsed in under a breath and the force of her first strike was enough to send Adrian back three full steps despite bracing for it.

She pressed immediately, each hit landing with a weight that felt less like an attempt to end the fight and more like a deliberate evaluation of how much he could absorb.

He took what he could not deflect and repositioned after each exchange, keeping his guard from breaking, buying himself the fractions of a second that actual thought required.

Then the system spoke.

[Gluttony: Active.]

[Demonic essence is being absorbed. Resistance to demonic energy has been converted to temporary affinity.]

He felt it shift inside him before he finished reading the words.

A warmth that started somewhere in the chest and moved outward through the arms, settling into the blade, into the strikes he had been taking and the ones he had not yet thrown.

Every hit she had landed on him had transferred something.

Not damage alone.

Something the system had quietly been cataloguing and folding back into him, repackaged into a form he could use.

He hit back.

The first strike that carried the demon’s own force back at her landed clean, and the effect was immediate.

The shift in her posture was small but unmistakable, the adjustment of someone who had just discovered that the thing across from her had stopped absorbing and started reflecting.

Her attacks grew slightly more deliberate.

The contempt in her expression had been replaced by something else entirely.

[Instant Heal: Active.]

The bruise along his forearm closed between one breath and the next.

The ache that had been building in his ribs followed it out.

He came back into guard without the accumulated deficit he should have been carrying by now, and she noticed that too.

He read the next exchange a half second before it landed, stepped inside her reach rather than away from it, and pressed the edge of his blade to her throat in the window that opened before she could recover the angle.

She went still.

The remaining demons went still with her.

Nothing in the forest moved for a long moment. Even the wind had the decency to stop.

Then the red-skinned demon lowered herself, slowly and deliberately, one knee to the ground.

The motion had no reluctance in it.

It was a decision she had made privately and was now carrying out with the same composure she had carried into the fight.

"A-rank, first class," she said quietly, her eyes still on his.

"I have not knelt since the day I claimed this forest as mine."

Adrian held her gaze. He lowered the blade but did not sheathe it.

"Your name," he said.

"Kara," she answered. "You have earned the right to it."

He looked at her for a moment longer.

Then, without hurry, he turned his head and glanced back at the compass still held in his left hand.

He already knew this would happen, however, he did not once think it would be in such a way.

According to history, any human capable of defeating the leader of a demon in battle was knowing to have them submit to them.

This was known as the demon lord candidate.

However, not many people could harm demons, as they were considered the strongest race in the world.

Well, only someone with a demonic aura could hope to best them in battle without holy magic.

In this case, it was something Adrian already absorbed from them mid fight.

Which in turns made it easier for them to submit themselves, as they would rather die than bow to someone using holy magic.

The golden arrow on the compass had not moved. It still pointed directly at the patch of ground he had marked before the fighting started.

Behind him, Alfred let out a long and very controlled exhale.

One of the soldiers said something quietly that sounded like a prayer. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Valentina had not moved from where Adrian had placed her.

But her eyes had not left him once since the moment he stepped in front of her, and they were not leaving him now.

There was still work to do.