Chapter 10- The Survivors

Rather than playing with the demon, Zack transformed the three bullies into humans and eradicated the demon.

Infected bullies suffer from demon corruption, which is the gradual loss of mana and deterioration of one's body.

Then he teleported back to the academy.

In the cave where Zion is, he senses a powerful demon looming all around him.

At the same time, Zack wants to watch his younger brother grow stronger by himself. However, he is afraid the demon is stronger than him by a little bit.

Thus, he decided to hide near the demon's cave so he could deal with it if it became a problem or overpowered Zion.

Many bodies were mangled, some boneless, some organs hung from the roof with bite marks, and some bodies had been half eaten, leaving some alive. Bodies of all ages ranging from mangled bodies to dried bones were scattered everywhere. A putrid smell emanated from the decaying corpses with guts splattered on the entrance hall of the cave.

There had been a report before Zion came to the village that people were missing from the four kingdoms surrounding the cave. The cave is in two kingdoms, but two more kingdoms border it.

While Zion walks through the red hallway he kills everyone who still lives to end their suffering since their already corrupted with demonic energy. A person infected with demon corruption will slowly rot their flesh and eat their mana or qi.

When you sell your soul to a demon, it corrupts your mind and slowly kills you, creating a soulless body that can be taken over by demons.

Then he walked deeper into the cave.

There are people who are lucky to be alive, but they are terrified because most of them are tortured to be played with like dolls. In addition, they are traumatized to the point that restoring them to their normal state would take years.

Zion ordered his soldiers to use illusion magic in order to make them look like the royal guards of Archi City where the Academy is located.

Some of the people in the cages fell asleep when they saw them, and some were overjoyed to see a familiar face.

A summons was sent to Zion to find Celestia with the guards and bring the survivors back to the city.

Until the guards arrived, Zion and his summons tended to the sick, amputated, and performed surgery, while other summons fed and provided water to the survivors.

10000 plus survivors were missing from 4 kingdoms, and only 1295 survived after checking and counting.

While still waiting for the knights and raiders to arrive, Zion wrote up a report to hand in to ask for more reinforcements from veteran raiders.

Zion is waiting outside with the survivors while the summons is inside checking if there are more survivors and securing the area.

Celestia with the Knights and Raiders was spotted in the bushes approaching the cave.

When they arrived Zion handed over the report to Celestia and said to pass it on to the chief to pass on the message to the city.

Since all of the survivors are treated and fed, there was no rush to transport them to the city.

Scouts proceeded ahead to see if there was any problem with the road or an ambush.

They sent an empty bus with a puppet driver and passenger to see if demons or bandits would attack.

A little over 30 minutes later, nothing happened. However, the Scouts wanted to be safe and searched the perimeter of the road for nearly a mile to be safe.

A small camp of bandits with stolen armor and weapons from knights.

One of the scouts headed back to the cave to report to Zion about the stolen armor.

Zion understands because some knights were suspicious.

Zion called them in front of him, they did the salute but when it comes to formations they were off by a lot.

Zion outed them and the bandit group leader outed himself and removed her helmet. As she explained, we wanted to become knights, but we were unable to enter the city due to the fire that occurred 2 and a half years ago in the far West called Blue Moss City. After heading east to Archi city, we attempted to join the fight against demons, but the knights refused to let us in and would not renew our citizenship or give us another copy to prove our identity, so we ended up stealing food and hunting to survive and built a camp more east to the mountains. All of them are refugees like us who were not given a chance to prove their identity and place of origin.

Zion connected the dots and it made sense since he and his brother were there.

Zack appeared out of nowhere and told Zion that I had seen her at the attack. She was one of the knights there.

Zion immediately saluted and hugged his brother.

Upon Zion's return, Zack hugged him back and patted his back because he was getting choked from the hug Zion was giving, then saluted him after he backed off.

I think I remember her name as Zack said, "It was Lara Hoff, I saw her prioritizing the civilians while the other knights including us fought off the Demons that came from the middle of the city.

Yes sir, Lara replied and explained that her captain of the squad was responsible for the attack on the city. He was executed shortly after by a magic barrage.

Zack asked, did you leave the city because you remember him everywhere you look?

Yes, since we grew up together I didn't think he would do something like that when he was afraid to kill an ant when we were younger. He joined the demon army as a result of his greed and hunger for power, which led him to lose sight of what was present there. Since we didn't need anything because we were well off, we even bought our own home close to the palace which was a hefty price. We feuded for minutes when I headed out, a demon lingering over him ( when a demon is lingering in or close to you, you can easily fight it but when you give in you can't be helped anymore). I tried to get his sanity back but nothing worked he already gave his body and soul to the demon and he ran out of the city I tried to catch up but he was too fast. The higher-ups did not believe me when I reported it to them. A couple of hours later demons poured from the center of the square where hundreds of businesses gathered. A mass slaughter of almost a million civilians was carried out on the east side of the city. We have called for reinforcements from the most talented Squadron in Archi City has to offer and defeated them. As a result, I was blamed with my colleagues in our squadron( he was their captain of the squad and Lara is the vice-captain), and I fled to Archi. As a result, we banded together to form a group of refugees who were denied entry and were not allowed to enter, so we became a bandit group and stole food, water, and weapons.