In the camp Ark had just fallen asleep when something happened, all of a sudden there was a mass influx of purple Mana gathering at an astonishing speed not far from where they were. Ark instantly noticed this and woke up immediately. He felt his hairs stand almost straight on his back, he was shivering, and he didn't even know why. He didn't know what was going on since he wasn't really sure what those purple Mana particles actually did, he only knew one of the functions. He wasn't the only one who noticed though since Annette also ran out of her tent.
"DEMON ATTACK!"
Ark suddenly heard her and multiple guards who had been woken up start shouting, he was very confused, but he could guess that there were demons who was the cause for the disturbance of the purple Mana. Since that purple Mana was supposed to be able to manipulate space, Ark had a guess, he thought that they might be warping it to teleport, but he didn't really know if it was possible or not. If it was then it would be pretty awesome, but also kind of terrifying.
"Get ready for battle!"
"Get into formation!"
After seeing them get organized and get into formation Ark started go get ready himself, at first he didn't really know if he should help them, but at the same time he still wanted to go the palace, and he didn't know if they were able to beat these demons, and he still didn't want to see them die. But he would probably bail if the fight was impossible to win, since he didn't want to die, and he didn't know them good enough to fight to the death with them, he barely knew them at all.
The princess had a total of 12 guards and 2 assassins, the 12 guards strength was not that great, but at the same time, they weren't weak, at least by the palaces standards. The 2 assassins, however, were 2 masters, and they were both incredibly powerful. Ark had tried to inspect them all earlier but he couldn't inspect the assassins at all since they were too powerful, the guards, however, had a level range from about 19-24.
Even though that's not too bad, they weren't that powerful since they didn't have much magical talent, good skills or a bloodline. So Ark would probably be able to beat a single one pretty easily. It would be a whole other story though if a person who was around level 20 had any of those skills, or all for that matter since your power would grow a lot more each level if you had any of those. If that was the case then Ark was not that confident in his abilities.
Both Ark and Annette had felt the Mana fluctuations, but not one of them truly knew what they were getting themselves into. After a second everything suddenly turned quiet, and then there was a massive explosion of Mana in the place where all the purple Mana had been gathering. When the group felt this Mana explosion they all turned pale, this was an entire squadron of demons! A squadron of demons usually had about 500 soldiers, with one commander. This was far beyond their current capabilities.
Even though Ark had called those assassins masters, they were nothing compared to the Mana that was being emitted right now. It was like comparing a dog to an elephant, whilst Ark was just like a cat. He would barely be able to do anything to the dog, let alone the elephant. The worst part about this whole ordeal though was the fact that they couldn't run away, this wasn't because of some stupid ideals or anything. They just couldn't run because of the pressure that was being emitted from the squadron up ahead.
...
Annette would have never guessed that this would be the way her life would end. She had unexpectedly run into a demon squadron, and in this backwater place at that! She had decided to travel the country to gain experience since it would benefit her a lot if she truly knew what the country looked like, and also try to gain some insight into the commoners' life since she would probably have a position in the future were she would affect a lot of their lives.
On top of that she had suddenly found a possible divine creature, and it wanted to come with her to see how the humans lived, this was great news since her father and her siblings would praise her and be astounded that she had managed to do something of this magnitude. She, however, had managed to make it wary of her since she was too irresponsible and tried to charm it with magic. But none of that mattered right now since she would die anyway. She had already given up hope. Demons were not weak, in general, they were more powerful than humans, the reason why they weren't dominant was because of their lower number, as well as the fact that the empire had summoned heroes from different worlds in the past that managed to turn the tide.
But those heroes soon left after having achieved their goal, the Aries plane consisted of 2 layers, the upper layer, and the lower layer. They lived on the lower layer, but the heroes from the past had already ascended to the upper layer. The power level of the people was supposedly on another level, but Annette didn't know a lot about that, in fact, most people didn't even know there existed an upper layer. She had heard however that the people on the upper layer didn't have levels, she couldn't comprehend how a world would work without levels but that doesn't matter right now.
...
As the whole squadron started getting closer to them, the forest in front of them was set ablaze. When they were about 50 meters away Ark could clearly see the facial features of their leader. This commander of theirs was very awe-inspiring as he was slowly walking towards them with everything burning around him, he looked like a devil straight out of hell. What was even more intimidating was the fact that he had a hoard of soldiers in black steel armor, these warriors stood a little taller than the average human soldier and they were quite muscular, they also had some pretty menacing black horns. Their horns looked like they could be a weapon just by themselves.
The demons had seen Ark and the group of humans a while ago but now that they were getting closer they were starting to grin disgustingly. Ark was really tense, he was scared for his life at the moment, what he had noticed though was that he was starting to get used to this pressure after having withstood it for a while. What ark didn't know was that this pressure didn't come from Mana as he had assumed, this formless pressure was actually just the demons killing intent that was directed against them.
If people weren't used to killing intent then it could do some pretty devastating things, if you were weak-willed and your opponent had a really powerful killing intent then the person could be killed from just the killing intent. Ark, however, had a pretty strong mind so he was slowly getting used to it already. The demon commander looked a little baffled when he saw a wolf standing by the humans, this was mostly because of the fact that the wolf looked really majestic, the aura it emitted was also pretty special, it didn't seem to be that of an animal.
The demon commander had a very hideous face, his jaw looked like it had been dislocated, his eyes were brown and looked like they had sunk in quite a lot, his face also contained a lot of scars, making his face pretty sinister. Another thing that stood out about him was the fact that his skin was releasing a slight metallic sheen, almost like that of a sword. This was because the commander was a [Iron Metal Demon]. The metal demons were graded according to what type of metal they could enhance their body strength with. Thus the harder the metal the stronger they were.
Even though a squadron was really strong in Annette's and Ark's eyes, they weren't that strong, there was still a lot more powerful forces out there, there was a simple reason as to why they thought that this squadron was powerful. And that was because they were both weak! The princess had also not gotten escorts that were that strong since their country was very peaceful at the moment, and the premise of her journey was to check out the lives of the commoners.
But the closer the demon squadron got, the more fired up Ark grew! Even though he was doomed to fail he still wanted to try! He wouldn't go down without a fight! The light in his eyes was getting brighter and brighter and his breath was getting colder, even though he didn't notice it himself his claws also started to glow an icy blue. The confrontation was getting closer and closer, the atmosphere was getting tenser and tenser. When there were just 25 meters between the 2 groups the demons suddenly stopped.
"CHARGE"