“That would make sense,” Cy muttered. “Anyway, allow me to explain the badlands because that is the one place I am desperate to never see no matter what,”

As he shivered in his seat, our eyes hungrily grazed over him, wanting to know what this scary challenge might’ve been.

Cy wasn’t one to jump into any battle, but he always considered it with his newfound strength and knowledge.

On top of that, there has never been a challenge he had never even wanted to think about until he opened his mouth about this place.

It was almost as if he were about to talk about some ghostly rumor that nobody knows whether it actually happened or was just a regular old lie.

“So, get to it,” Luna sighed, and Cy visibly gulped down a drop of saliva before lowering his head and piercing his lips so only a light whisper could escape.

“The badlands are something that existed before Tartarus. I don’t know how it was created, but from what I’ve read, it’s where Hades was thrown into and eventually became strong enough to stand against the Olympians… and that’s where the demon lords were raised. Each and every single one of them,”

“So… what are the details?” Findir asked before sipping on his tea.

“Ugh… Apparently, it was primordially a mountain of corpses with rivers of flowing lava. The air is so thick there that anybody who wasn’t born and raised upon that pile of corpses would suffocate in an instant. Absolutely horrifying monsters that don’t even have a shred of consciousness will tear you apart if the atmosphere doesn’t first,”

“It doesn’t sound that bad….” Bella sighed.

“If you saw the painting that was with the book I had been holding, you all would’ve to ** your pants. It was something I could barely comprehend, and that was just a painting… imagine what the real place is like,”

A swift silence befell us all as we waited for somebody to talk first.

“Excuse me, but would you like your check?” The waitress asked, making all of us nearly jump in our seats from fright.

“Geez… uh, we’ll just pay in coin,” Cy muttered before flicking a single silver coin at her. “Keep the change,”

If he wasn’t stupid enough, he winked at the woman who silently stared at him with a bit of a creepy vibe coming off her.

“Excuse me? Is there something wrong?”

“Everything together was two silver coins… sir,”

“Oh, my bad,” Cy blushed in embarrassment before running out of the cafe, which we eventually swiftly followed upon apologizing to the waitress several times.

…

“Now, you all have been gathered here again because we wanted to send you right off in order to adjust to this new world. You all will be given drastically different missions within your groups, but first, we shall hold a group selection. Group up with anybody you would like to work with,” The demon lord announced, his strange kindness sending shivers down our spines.

Everybody but my own group of friends hesitated, waiting to see if this was a test since it seemed very suspicious.

“I’m just going to say this now, but your groups will be paired with another group. You all don’t realize how dangerous it is out there, and I’m not saying this because I care for your souls… but because I need you to complete these missions whether everybody but one dies, or you all survive… I couldn’t care less,”

The demon lord’s voice cut straight through the tense air, and with a slight threatening glare, everybody grouped up into their own respective six.

“Alright, one group will go with some of my trusty skeletal guards, and that is your group,” The demon lord said, pointing at a group that was made entirely of blacksmiths and essentially just non-combatant demi-humans.

“Are you calling us the weakest?” A dwarven demi-human snarled, only to shrink back upon feeling the deathly presence of a skeleton graze their hand over his shoulder.

“And now, you all will be paired up,”

Our group pair was filled with a bunch of people who looked like dirty bandits, but their expressions were calm and collected, as if they had ditched the bandit life and attempted to become better people.

“Hello, my name is Steven, and I am the group leader,”

The man with a big and burly body mixed with a large protruding smile reached out his calloused hand, which Bella immediately shook.

“Sup’… my name is Bella, and I’m the group leader-“

Cy quickly slapped her across the ear, knocking her to the side and dazing her as he took the bandit’s hand before shaking it firmly.

“Greetings, my name is Cy, but you can call me the leader of this group,” He announced with a slight smirk that was clearly meant to taunt the woman sprawled across the ground.

“Y-You son of a bitch-“

Aisa quicky held Bella back as she attempted to murder the man in front of her.

This scene made us look like a group of immature late teenagers who were unlucky enough to be caught doing terrible deeds by the gods.

And it seems our unplanned act sprouted a reaction from the big and burly man that made all of our eyes go cold just as they looked away from us.

The man who shook Cy’s hand slowly turned to his boys with a slight arrogant smile before snapping his head back towards us upon feeling a terrible claw scrape at the back of his neck, nearly tearing out his spine.

“What’s wrong?” Cy asked as he gave the man a large and welcoming smile.

“Kill them if need be. If anybody gets in the way of your mission, make sure they won’t have the heart to confront you even after I resurrect them,”

I turned my head to face the demon lord, whose eyes began to swirl like a terrible whirlpool sucking in anything and everything around them.

“Then, I hope you won’t mind having a few people that you’ll need to lock away in a mental hospital after this,”

“Oh, don’t worry. Mental hospitals don’t exist down here… and just cause I can resurrect them doesn’t mean I can’t undo that. Souls of sinners are my favorite to eat,”

“Then you’ll be eating good tonight,” I muttered with a slight smile, and Steven, the leader of the group in front of us, began to guide us out of the door.

Walking through town to get to the border of the capital took at least half a day, and by the time we passed the border and walked through the swampy air, the sun was already beginning to set.

“Let’s walk a bit further out before we set up camp. It’s best to make as much progress as possible,” Steven said, and his group visibly chuckled to themselves as if they hadn’t made their intentions clear enough.

As we all rolled our eyes, we kept our pride down and followed him until the moon had nearly risen into the sky.

We passed by a few, such as blood red wolves with hundreds of eyes and more of those trolls who groaned and such… but then, we reached a single monster that the group in front of us couldn’t handle.

“HEY! ALL OF YOU! STOP SITTING AROUND AND HELP OUT!” Steven shouted as he tanked for his entire group, draining nearly all of his stamina with each block.

A mass of flesh that gurgled and groaned appeared before us. Hundreds of tendrils sprouted from it, and its thousands of eyes that locked onto a single person made them freeze up for a second—most likely a skill.

“We’re rooting for you, dude!” Cy shouted as he pumped his fist in the air.

Two of the swordsmen, who were actually pretty good at their class, split from behind Steven and attempted to scissor the core of the monster from both sides.

It was presented right in front of them as if to taunt them, but their feeble and weak weapons could just barely scratch it… only for those scratches to heal nearly instantly.

But, the archer that had been charging up a massive arrow of fire from behind the entire group released it, and it shot straight through it, using the monster’s arrogance to his advantage.

“Hoh… He’s pretty good,” Cy muttered as the entire group placed their hands on their knees and began to breathe heavily.

The fire spread to the rest of the flesh, causing the thing to wriggle and burn alive until its entire core disintegrated into absolutely nothing.

What **ty monsters… but at least we know its weakness.

“Hey! What do you all think you’re doing!” Steven shouted, and we immediately put on our best scared and frightening act.

We all took a few steps away from the man as he quickly approached us, only to catch Cy and hold him by the collar.

“EVERYBODY! WE’RE JUST GOING TO KILL THE NOW!” Steven shouted, and as the rest of the group saw our pitiful stances and expressions, they all smiled before wiping their weapons and quickly approaching us.

But, just as they stepped towards us, our mouths pierced into massive sadistic smiles that sent shivers down their spines.

“Kekekeke… KAHAHAHAAHAHA! YOU!? KILL US?! WHAT A JOKE!” Cy shouted.