8 Wolf

Noel led Luna out of the zombie pub and headed towards the north gate of the city. This would be their exit and the true start of their journey to the capital.

Once they bypassed the guards without any trouble, they saw dull green grass outside the gates. This truly amazed them. After all, all the way from the burnt village to the insides of the city, they only saw grey grass. It was the same with other plant life in the vicinity.

Although their colors weren't as vibrant as could be found in the Mid Plane, it still didn't change the fact that they had actual colors instead of the monochromatic palette they were used to.

"Noel-sama... This is...?" Luna sounded uncertain and excited at the same time. She had obviously treasured the Empire she had made in her past life. She had spent a long time trying her hardest to establish a place where all of demonkind could co-exist. Even if she knew she would have to leave it behind and forget it someday.

"I'm not completely sure... Maybe it was simply due to the passing of time."

"It could be..."

They continued forward on a dirt road that led to the faraway Capital north from them. Luna only vaguely remembered the Capital because she spent her last years on the battlefield in the war against the humans.

They decided not to run to the Capital this time so they can do an Investigation on the current situation of the Demon Plane. While the lilac-colored sky slowly turned to a dark purple, they had stopped by a large dark oak tree and stayed there for the night.

They didn't prepare any beddings of the sort and they didn't start a fire either. They weren't even planning to sleep. The dark night wasn't a problem for most demons since a lot of them had some kind of night vision, whether weak or strong.

Noel instead spread out a map made out of parchment paper. The map was a medium scale one and was heavily detailed. There seemed to be four main land masses that served as the Four Continents of the Demon Plane and there were 7 Great Seas as well.

The Four Continents were placed at the four main directions on the map. One of them was located at the east and largely resembled Asia was called「Dariyug」which was currently in the middle of a stalemate between the three main authorities of the continent.

They had a vastly different culture from the other continents. The people of the continent were also known to love rice a lot. Although Luna wasn't sure if the continent was still stuck in that stalemate.

The one at the southern part and was basically Africa and was named...「Akrifa」 It was known to be an extremely rich continent and its main inhabitants are usually tanned or dark-skinned and have very unique traditions and customs.

The Northern one was a continent that looked like a sword sideways and was named「Banshee.」Not much is known about the continent due to a lot of demons throwing in the towel due to them nearly being frozen by the climate.

And lastly, the western one was shaped like Germany and was called「Kaiserreich」after it was conquered by Luna together with Pride and Wrath. Yeah, they conquered an entire continent. That is a lot larger than the ones on the Mid Plane due to the Demon Plane being 4x bigger than the Mid Plane.

But that's a thing of the past now. And Luna now had to accept that time does change many, many things. From what she could remember, there used to be five continents and six seas. The fifth continent used to be in the center where the ocean known as the「Abyss」was now located.

She didn't know much about things overseas due to her being too busy maintaining an empire and trying to save it at the same time.

"I'm guessing you've already noticed on the many things that have changed in the world."

Luna simply nodded as a form of agreement.

"Okay, that doesn't matter though. I only opened the map so you would notice these. And to remind you that we would still have to pass through「Schwarzwald」to get to the Capital."

Noel then pointed his gloved hand to a section circled in red on the Kaiserreich. It was a largely forested mountain range and had words on top of it that read「Schwarzwald.」Schwarzwald was also known as "The Dark Forest."

It was known as such due to it being filled with loads of different kinds of soul energy causing all the Fiends in it to either mutate or to evolve into abnormally strong fiends.

"Grrrr..."

Just as Luna was recalling information about Schwarzwald, she and Noel heard a deep growl coming east from them. They went on the alert and Noel swiftly kept the map and pulled out his AF2011. He also brought out the black eye patch he got from Gary and made Luna switch it with her old one.

When Luna put it on, the eye patch disappeared and in its place were two pairs of crystal clear blue eyes. But Luna felt something changed in her. She didn't feel excessively cheerful or happy at the moment.

She felt a sense of calm and coolheadedness arise from her. It was something she was familiar with from the time she had to be a country's elite force, from the time she had to deal with being held hostage over and over again when she was some rich family's daughter.

It felt as if everything had a way in and way out to her. As if everything was just a bundle of data in her eyes. Her emotions calmed down and her brain started working at two times faster than usual.

She then laid her gaze on the creature that was coming towards them. It was a creature about 4 meters in height and it was a dark blue wolf with red eyes that glowed in the night. It had a scorpion tail instead of the bushy ones that you would be familiar with and its black claws were reflecting off the moonlight.

This was a fiend. It was named「Scorpion Wolf」for its features and had toxic venom that could be excreted from its fangs, claws, and tail. It had eyes that could see in the dark and was the main cause for the death of citizens(mostly goblins) that had little to no night vision when they blended in the dark with their fur.

Their main weakness was their head, heart, and their scorpion tail. All this information was processed in Luna's brain from her past experience with fiends from her adventures in conquering the continent.

Noel set his aim for the fiends' forehead, he didn't even need to tell Luna what she needed to do due to their lifetimes worth of experience with each other. Luna made a whip sword made out of bluish-black flames imbued with the properties of Envy, which dealt with curses and usually had effects of debuffing the enemy.

"RAAAAWR!!!"

With that, Luna disappeared and emerged again from behind the Scorpion Wolf and then immediately went for the scorpion tail and had her whip coil around and restrain it.

The Scorpion was enraged at its tail being restricted and tried to turn around to snap at her but couldn't with Luna being firmly planted on the ground.

It couldn't even try to shoot out poison from its mouth before its brain exploded due to a two bullet blasting through it. It immediately stopped resisting and laid lifelessly on the ground. Noel put his gun back and Luna dispersed her whip.

The entire fight only took a second.

Noel stared at the giant wolf carcass and only spoke out one sentence in response to it.

"Well, that's dinner."