Chapter 21 TSH Vol. 1 Chapter 4 Part 4

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Meanwhile, the Cordelia Squad—

“Princess, what’s the status!?”

“I’ve finally spotted a 100th-generation! Let’s push through!”

“Roger that!”

The princess and her guard were riding hard for the demon’s point of emergence. They avoided fighting the demons they encountered whenever possible, focusing all their efforts on finding the original individual.

Princess Cordelia was wearing the [Mirror of Truth], the appraisal artifact she had borrowed from the High Grand-Priest. By appraising the demons, she could determine which generation each clone belonged to.

The first ones they’d encountered were in the thousandth generation, but now they were finally seeing 100th-generation clones. They had to be getting close to the original.

They burst through thickets and raced through the woods, focused solely on reaching the demon’s point of origin. The number of demons they ran into was growing. This was to be expected as they neared the epicenter.

Emma shouted. “Whoa! We’ve got a whole pack of dog-types on our tail! There’s a ton of ’em!”

The princess glanced back. The dog-type demons were closing in at a terrifying speed. She bit her lip, then called out. “Emma, get clear of my back! I’m freezing the ground!”

At the command, Emma instantly steered her horse away from the princess’s path.

Leaning so far out of her saddle she nearly fell, the princess dragged her sword along the ground. She focused, pouring her mana into the blade. It glowed with a pale blue light, and the ground it touched began to ice over. Matching the speed of her horse, a sheet of ice spread rapidly across the ground behind them.

“KYAU!”

“VOGYA!?”

“KUUUUN!”

The dog-type demons, having slipped on the ice, yelped pathetically as they tumbled over one another. Their cries grew fainter and fainter, until at last they were gone.

Emma reported, amused. “They’re slippin’ and slidin’ all over! Piled up like dumplings! That was awesome, Princess!”

The princess nodded and shouted. “There’s a 50th-generation! We’re close. Stay sharp!”

“Right!”

The demons appearing ahead of them grew more numerous, and their forms, larger. The demons closer to the origin point had been born earlier. While their mimicry wasn’t as advanced, they had grown much larger. They dodged and sometimes plowed through the demons, racing through the woods at a breakneck pace.

They broke through the tree line, and the view suddenly opened up. A withered plain was crawling with an enormous number of demons. There were so many, they seemed to cover more ground than the plain itself.

For once, Emma was speechless.

An expression of despair flickered across the princess’s face, but she gritted her teeth and poured mana into the appraisal tool. The more mana she poured into this artifact, the farther she could see. The princess quickly scanned the horde, checking their generations.

There! A 10th-generation! It has to be close to that one!

The princess pushed even more mana into the mirror, appraising every demon in her line of sight, scanning their generations.

Not that one… not that one… The one just beyond them is…!

The princess fixed her gaze on a single point. There, protected by a swarm of smaller demons, sat a massive one.

The appraisal result: Generation Zero.

The princess’s eyes flew wide.

—Found it.

“Eleven o’clock! That giant spider-type is the original!”

At the princess’s cry, Emma spurred her horse.

“I’ll be the decoy! You take it down in the meantime, Princess!”

“E-Emma!?”

Emma charged toward the swarm, then veered sharply, changing direction. A massive wave of demons immediately gave chase. With the swarm diverted, a path to the Generation Zero demon was now open.

The princess’s face twisted in pain for a moment, but she couldn’t let the opening Emma had risked her life to create go to waste.

Thank you, Emma! —Here I go!

The princess spurred her horse, weaving through the remaining demons and firing off several [Ice Shots]. The ground froze, creating a staircase of ice. The princess leaped from her horse, gripped her sword in two hands, and dashed up the frozen steps. She leaped from the top step, and the spider demon’s back was directly below her.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

With a piercing cry, the princess raised her sword. The blade pulsed with a pale blue light. A blast of absolute-zero cold erupted from the blade.

“Magic Sword—[Frost Blossom]!”

The princess’s sword plunged into the spider demon, and she poured every last drop of her mana into it.

“—Burst!”

At her cry, countless blades of ice erupted from within the spider demon’s body. The attack from within completely shredded the demon’s body.

“QRYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

The giant spider demon writhed, spraying black blood.

The princess immediately leaped from the demon’s back, firing an [Ice Shot] to create another foothold, which she used to distance herself from the creature. She whistled while running, and her horse, which she had just dismounted, galloped to her side.

“Good girl!”

The princess smiled at her horse, grabbed the reins, and mounted, immediately leaving the scene. From engagement to escape, the entire maneuver had taken only ten seconds.

“Emma, rendezvous! Emma!”

“R-Right behind ya!”

Emma shook off the pursuing demons and managed to regroup with the princess. She was injured, but thankfully, it looked like nothing serious.

“That was amazing, Princess!”

“I’m just glad you’re safe, Emma!”

Reunited, the princess stared back at the original demon. Its giant body toppled with a great crash. A black mist puffed out of it, and then, starting from its extremities, it dissolved into particles and vanished.

Seeing this, the princess squeezed her tear-filled eyes shut.

I did it… I defeated it! I defeated the original demon! What about the others!?

She looked around. All the other demons had stopped moving. Their glowing red eyes had gone dark. They were perfectly still, as if time itself had frozen.

Emma broke into a wide grin. “Princess, we did it! Mission success! I’ll fire the signal flare—”

“Wait!”

The princess held up a hand, her eyes still fixed on the demons. She had defeated the Generation Zero demon, but she hadn’t felt the distinct sensation of destroying a Demon Core.

After a long moment—

“…ZZZYYYYY!”

“GYAGGGY!”

“QRWAAAAOOO!”

The light returned to the demons’ eyes. They began to move again—and this time, they were even more ferocious.

At the unbelievable sight, the princess’s face crumpled in despair.

Oh, no… The researchers’ hypothesis was wrong…

She turned to Emma, her voice heavy with sorrow.

“Mission failed… Fire the signal.”

“…No way…”

Emma muttered in frustration, then fired a red signal flare—the sign for mission failure. Watching the red light flare in the sky, the two quickly fled from the demon horde. With the mission a failure, they had no choice but to retreat.

The princess shouted, as much to rally herself as her guard.

“We’re pulling back! We have to regroup with the knights!”

“R-Right!”

The two fought back their sinking despair and raced back toward the city. By the time they managed to regroup with the Knight Order, they found that the knights were also being forced into a full retreat.

And so, the first battle against the demons ended in a crushing defeat for Ecclesia.