Chatterbox

With the little bits and pieces of the breadcrumb trail leading us around the forest, we somehow bump into some of the other groups of my men and eventually, all of us congregated together.

When starting my head count, I notice something is off...it may be just me, but we are much less than we started with.

In the beginning, there were 4 groups of 50 pluses my group which had 20 men; 21 if you counted me. All in all, we started this journey to find the demon king with 221 men. It isn't a bad number.

In fact, that's a great number. This is over a quarter of my personal militia. This would be like Restinasia sending nearly 120,000 men to search for the demon king.

However, by now, it seemed like I only asked for 1 group of 50. My 21 man group was cut down to only 18 which was a very good result.

On the other hand, the first group of 50 was reduced to a measly 21. The second group did a little better at 26 and the third group had 30 people left.

We lost over a group of men. To be exact, 76 men lost their lives today. It's an utterly disgusting number that almost made me throw up my lunch.

Seriously, are my men this incompetent that they can't even kill stupid beasts properly? Since when did I start handing my cigarettes to babies in the army?

I thought they were trained. "but maybe my cigarettes rotted their brains" you ask. Well, look at me. I've been smoking this shit for nearly a year and I'm pretty fine.

Restinasia's soldiers are pretty disappointing compared to how people make them out to be. It gives me...confidence. This means that they are lax.

Lax means that they are in a state where peace is basically a guarantee and their people are so used to the peace. The garrisons are sleeping on the job and the commanders and playing around.

I realize that I'm thinking too far ahead and I need to focus on the now. On the horns. On MY horns.

We start walking to the next known cave that we didn't search yet and this looks much more promising. Even though there are no visible trains of footsteps or movement, that's from far away.

You need to look up close and when you do, you'll see that the ground is much lower down and more compact. As if...as if someone was trying to hide their tracks.

Now, this could be the work of an extremely intellectual superior beast such as pure demons, mana mutants that mutated their brains or maybe some absorbing slime that takes the intellect of their prey.

This could be, but I don't buy it. This is a human's or demons's work. If it's really a mutant or pure demon, I'll be pretty pissed off. Well, pure demons do have valuable horns and blood so that's something.

As we enter into the cave, I immediately get dissatisfied with the defenders of this cave.

"Keeeeehhhh!!!"

"Gruhhhgruuuuu!"

They are pure demons. Pure demons isn't necessarily bad for me, but it isn't the demon king. I don't know his powers so maybe he's controlling them? It's possible.

King isn't given to just anyone, after all.

As me and my men make our way deeper and deeper into the cave, it starts widening and widening the deeper we go, maybe from water eroding the space.

The little drip-dropping of water is enough to drive a person crazy if you listen to it long enough, so some of my men start whispering about random topics.

The deeper we go, the harder it is to breath for my men, so I'm forced to take only 10 men who are fairing much better than the others. They follow me into the depths of the cave and we stumble onto something fascinating.

Well, if my hero buddies were here, they'd probably get some sort of PTSD.

In front of us was a fairly large wooden door that was easily 3 people tall and 2 people wide. It had huge iron knockers and was previously guarded by some pure demons; was meaning that I killed them.

"So.....we push"

""Aye!""

As they all start pushing with their full strength on the door, I buff them with some strength spells and continue to watch them. Hey, I've been in this situation before.

Hell no that I'm stepping into that room.

For all I know, he could be Michael's brother or cousin and would absolutely demolish my half-Phoenix ass. Maybe it's a friendly, but I'm not taking chances.

After a few minutes of the door budging, we finally fit inside and fortunately, there isn't any big boss that we have to fight.

It isn't invisible and it isn't hiding in the dark according to my fire that we are using as a torch.

I send the sparks up into the air and what we see shocks us and delights me.

A group of women and men, each having about 20 of their numbers fully armed for combat. They are stances like they were brought up as nobles or something.

Behind them are 5 more women wearing some Knight gear and finally, in the back, is the person I assume to be the demon king. They were wearing some blacked out armor and had amazing horns sticking out of them.

We both have a stare to see what the other will do first and after a few seconds of waiting, one of my men throws a sharp stone right into the face of the one of the front goons.

They drop down crying and all hell breaks loose.

There's spells flying everywhere, blood spilling and some horns being chipped. Despite being the demon king, he joins in on the battle to help out his subordinates. How cute.

Soon enough, nearly 20 of his men are down while I already lost every single man I took with me. By now, we are having a stare down with each other.

"You...you fucking human. Why do you want my horns? Tell me honestly"

"I want them because I was told to get them. They are valuable, so I want them. It's like rhino hunting"

"What is a rhino?"

The deep voiced demons king tilts his head hearing me mention a "rhino" ahh, right. They don't exist here.

"Don't mind that. It's a species with very valuable horns far far away. We tend to hunt them for medicinal purposes. Anyways, enough rambling?"

"...you are going to pay for your eternal sins, filthy human. Forgive me, father and mother, for I'm going to stain my armor with some muck and grim...grim of the human"

Hearing him talk to the sky, I smirk a bit at the weirdness of the line. Really? Muck and grim of the human? Just fight me.

Deciding to tease him a bit, I respond back.

"Forgive me, mother and father, for I'm about to be a very, very wealthy man after this demon get decapitated"

"!!!why you!!!"

As he charges at me, I quickly dodge out of the way and shoot a quick fireball at one of his goons. They fall down, burnt to a crisp and his impact echoes through the cave after he just slammed into one of the walls.

"Pulling his fist out of the shattered stone, he eerily looks at me with his dead eyes and speaks like I'm talking to the devil...oh wait.

"So you caused that fire? I'll pay it back a thousand times when you burn in heaven!"

"Bring it, chatterbox!"

And so, we continued the fight.

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(A.N) yo! Another chapter for you guys I hope you had a wonderful time reading this!

Please do consider supporting this novel with your powerstones and by commenting. Thank you so much to those who do and for now, peace ✌️! Love ya!