Demons

A blade cut through the air, approaching the neck of a purplish creature, it looked as if death was about to grasp the creature's life only to be pushed away by a dagger infused with mana.

Demonic mana. 

These purplish creatures were demons.

Although the demon had escaped death, it could only look on as death approached once again, piercing straight through its heart. But it did not stop there. It cut through the vile creature's chest and came out of its shoulder before returning to claim the head it was unable to previously. As a fountain of blood spurted from the demon's body, its head collided with the earth which was strewn with the heads of other demons. 

Flicking his sword to rid the black blood that stained it, a tall man clad in white armour surveyed the current state of the battle, his men were currently dominating the battle, however, he was not pleased at all. Despite the weak enemy, they still suffered casualties due to overconfidence.

One would understand the source of this overconfidence if one carefully looked at the many demon corpses scattered on the battlefield. They looked like goblins. Though these demons had purplish skin, they possessed the same scraggy build and used the same daggers. The reason for this was quite simple. These demons were goblins, more specifically, demonised goblins.

These goblins had most likely come into contact with demonic wisps, which were strands of demonic mana which had gained sentience. These wisps were like viruses, if the body were too weak or not purified, the wisp would transform the host into a demonic being. The process of demonisation usually starts with aligning the host's thought process with that of a demon, so that the host would not attempt to reject the conversion of their mana core into a demon core.

The armoured man's eyes narrowed at the demon corpses that lay on the battlefield, his attention directed towards the glowing runic markings on the chest of the demonised goblins. When he had fought with the goblins, he had realised that they were significantly more intelligent than the average demonised goblin, they were able to read some movements but most importantly, they were able to scheme. Whether using hidden weapons or leading him to an ambush, these demons possessed intelligence on par with humans.

But this intelligence only allowed them to survive a little longer, after all, in the face of overwhelming strength even the greatest of plans would collapse. The strength enhancement granted by demonisation was decent but it was not enough to bridge the gap between Knights and Nuisance-level creatures.

The runic markings were the only difference in appearance between a typical demonised goblin and this intelligence-type variant, but it was enough to identify this demon variant. When returned to the kingdom, the first thing the man would do was report the existence of the new variant to the higher-ups, so that other soldiers wouldn't die in such an embarrassing manner as the soldiers in his company. 

"Captain, I believe this was the last wave of these demons, the numbers in this wave were significantly lower than the other waves", a man called out. He wore similar armour to the Captain, however, there were two differences between the Captain and his men, and this was the red feather plume that was attached to the top of his helmet and the shoulder cape of the same colour that flowed out from his left shoulder pauldron.

Pulling down his visor, the Captain turned towards his men who were slowly regrouping around him. These men were part of his scouting unit that was sent out to determine the conditions of the unoccupied lands to the southwest of their kingdom. Their exploration had been vastly unhindered until two days ago when they ran into their first group of this demon variant. At first, the members of the unit thought this was simply a wild demon group until they ran into multiple demon groups one after the other. 

The Captain had been observing every group they had come across, and he had come to one conclusion after analysing the demon's method of attack as well as the areas in which they were concentrated: they were protecting something and they were getting closer to this something. This could be worked out by the fact that the demons had started attacking in waves like the group they had just cleared.

"Samuel", the Captain called out, his eyes searching for the man that this name belonged to. Soon, a short, bald man wearing significantly less armour than the other soldiers came forward and lowered his head when he reached the large Knight.

"You know what to do, find out what lies ahead of us" he ordered before turning his head to the rest of the soldiers, "Set up camp, rest for the time being but don't let your guard down lest you want to end up like those other fools"

The instant the order was given, Samuel set off towards the river that was tens of metres from the battlefield, while some soldiers started to gather the demon corpses into a pile. Supply carts were brought onto the plain by the men in charge of protecting them before they moved to help their fellow soldiers clear the field of the corpses that were scattered upon it.

By the time the field had been cleared and a makeshift camp had been set up, the bald scout, Samuel, had returned from his mission. Without thinking about else, he moved towards the centre of the camp, where a dark-skinned man with a face marred with scars sat on the ground, cleaning his claymore with intense concentration. The scout stood in front of this man with his head lowered in silence, he was waiting for permission.

"Report", the scarred man spoke without moving his eyes away from the sword before him.

Hearing the order, Samuel straightened his back and began his report,

"Captain Edin, as you ordered, I scouted ahead and found a small village, from what I could see, it was a human settlement, other than that there was nothing else of significance"

Edin stopped wiping his sword upon the information his scout brought, he waved his hand to dismiss Samuel before thinking about the conclusion he had made and the information about the village.

'Could it be that something is hidden in this village?'

'Demons protecting a village in the middle of nowhere'

'I can only think of two reasons, either the village is a cult hideout or...an apostle candidate was born in that village'

'We'll find out tomorrow'

With that thought, Edin returned to cleaning his sword, preparing it for the events of tomorrow.

A being watched the makeshift camp with rapt attention, before nodding its head in approval.

'Everything is moving according to plan'