It wasn't the Queen and her minions who greeted them as they traveled to the ice castle to capture the Frost Queen, but an orc.
"Ma, this is ridiculous. Orcs are that strong?"
To the Knights of Naju, the orcs were mobs of men who had been mercilessly hated and slaughtered by Leon.
Of course, the Orcs themselves were a warrior race with innate strength, but they were always compared to Knights of the Lionheart like Leon.
But this---is this really real?
They were overwhelmed by a single orc and cowered in fear as the destructive red glow stared at them.
"Huh, retreat---!"
It was only then that Chun So-yeon finally came to her senses. She ordered her troops to retreat while supporting the wounded Holy Knights.
"------"
The orc watched for a moment, then turned away as if he had lost interest.
* * * * *
"You will not pursue?"
The old orc asked, and the orc smirked.
"Do you miss your experimental material, Kran?"
"A little, High Khan."
The old High Khan called Kran looked at the wreckage of the destroyed Yappy.
"An unexpected harvest, indeed."
Kran dragged the destroyed Count-class airframe grimly with his hands.
Though it had been completely destroyed, the old orc dragged the hundreds of tons of weight with the ease of an old man picking up a penny, and at the end of it was a throne of ice.
The body of a beautiful woman, her throat slit, her entire body crushed, resting on the throne alongside the remains of the Queen's loyal frost giants.
Kran reached for the remains of the Frost Queen, the top of her shoulders obliterated.
-Pooh!
Kran's hand dug into the Frost Queen's flesh and pulled out a frosty heart. The Frost Queen's heart, which was said to freeze S-class Hunters at the mere touch, was in Kran's hand at that moment──
-Heh!
The Frost Giant that should have been smashed lunged at Kran.
"Stop."
-------?!
Kran's words froze the Frost Giant like a frozen image. Holding the Frost Queen's heart, Kran quickly gained control of the Frost Giant.
"Well, I can do better than that."
Epic Item: Frost Queen's Heart.
Kran smirked as he held the heart of the queen who had been the bane of Russia's existence.
"I've come all this way just because you said you wanted it. It must be worth it."
"Of course, High Khan. Great Murka Balak."
With a wave of his hand, space cracked. It was gate technology, learned from the demons.
"Rigardo, too, he came from the west--what was it? I hear he's been hunting some pretty strong humans, and I hope he does well."
"He'll have to pay for his food."
The gate opens, revealing the landscape beyond.
Dark-skinned orcs, like Murka and Kran, greeted them.
"Welcome, High Khan!"
Balbaza, the great warrior of the Orc fighting god Helkan.
"Master, is that the Heart of the Frost Queen?"
Maghar, champion of the orc shaman god Gokrok.
"Be still, the High King is coming------"
The ferocious giant boar Dothraki grunted as it was weighed down by Murka's energy. Skira, the champion of the orc hunting god Skunik, worked hard to calm the Dothraki.
The Black Orcs.
Two hundred years of wandering the realm, exposed to magic, made them a demon's nightmare.
They were not alone.
"Murka! Murka!"
"Murka, Murka, Murka!"
Down the hill, the endless green beasts chant the name of the Great Khan.
[Murka, Murka! Smash those tin can bastards!]
[Ignorant thug, hunting is about going all out when you're sure you've got them.]
[What?! A guy who whispers like a kitten!]
[That's enough. I'll have to study the stars first.]
Three Orcs.
Fighting god Helkan, Skunik, the hunting god and Gokrok, the shaman god, each and every one of them is a fierce and powerful orc god. And------
"I am the judge."
The greatest orc warlord of them all.
The gaze and voice of the Orc High Khan, Murka Balak, growled ferociously.
* * * * *
The Archdemon Skazakari, who was resurrected in Shanghai, declared the surrounding area a demonic fiefdom upon his resurrection.
Though not on the level of the Frost Queen, powerful demons of slaughter and destruction emerged through the Demon Gate, and their presence demonized the surroundings.
The world was tainted by the terrible miasma, this is why the once largest economic city in China has been so thoroughly abandoned.
Every time the Skazakari resurfaced, Shanghai was torn apart.
He and his minions are the nightmare of the Chinese continent, the greatest killer of mankind, responsible for millions of deaths. This time, he would claim more lives and be repelled again.
However, during his recuperation period, when he was repelled from Earth and regenerated his body, no one told him.
-Uh, you guys are in the portal to Earth, right?
-???
Demons of murder and destruction, these fierce demons, whose only stigma is murder and destruction, opened the gate to Earth without asking, as soon as their bodies were destroyed and recovered.
[Hahahahahahaha! Earth is mine!]
In the Demon World Invasion, the more primates you kill, the more shares you get.
In that regard, Skazakari who won the Earth Invasion lottery and had a gate in his territory was considered lucky.
In reality, if he resurrected, he'd go straight to Earth, kill a bunch of humans, get repelled, be ejected into the demon realm, resurrect again, and so on, and his stake would continue to grow.
-Didn't anyone tell you?
-No, they just left without telling me.
Skazakari and the demons didn't realize what was happening to Earth or what awaits the demons on Earth.
[Killing! Destruction! Conquest! Expanding the territory of this Skazakari---huh?]
The sky is red. Is the terraforming already complete?
-GRARARARARARARARARARARA────!!!
With a terrifyingly huge roar, a meteor of flame falls and at the same time──
-Kaaaaaaaah!
-Kaaaaaaaaaah!
A barrage of missiles. Anti-ship missiles---no, not attack missiles, they are round and thick, as if they were carrying several people.
[------what, that one?]
The unwary demon dies first.
* * * * *
"Guh, guh, guh, guh!"
The demons were just trying to get out of this place.
But the Holy Knights, poured in by plagues from the sky and 'transportation' missiles fired across the sea, slaughtered the demons in one fell swoop.
Holy Knight Vulcanus and Flaming Sword Knights, considered the most powerful knights in the Lionheart, are infamous even among the demons.
If it were just them, Skazakari and the slaughter demons would have thought to line up and face them but there was another being who came firing at them.
-Lionheart!
Leon Dragonia Lionheart.
This man is the true enemy of evil, the terror of countless evil species and the Demon Slayer who slayed the Demon Lords.
The lesser demons crumbled in the face of such a terrifying presence.
[Hey, you bastards! Fight! Fight! Fight!]
Skazakari urged, brandishing his flaming whip, but the Demon Slayer's stern gaze was more frightening than the Archdemon's lash.
As the corpses of demons littered the city, the Burning Sword Knights did something they never did.
"Stop, you bastards!"
"If you don't stop now, I'll extinguish you with a single blow!"
The Flaming Sword Knights rode their horses, driving the demons back.
Their armor was soaked with demon blood as they began to take some of the demons prisoner.
"You! How dare you touch my armor with your skin? Die, you demon!"
"I can't bear to look at this abomination! Die, you demon!"
Of course, the Burning Sword Knights' ability to take prisoners was extremely inefficient.
"Hah~ so inefficient."
Beatrice sighed softly as she looked at the dying demons the Knights of the Burning Sword had captured.
"I asked you to take as many prisoners as you could, as I need information on the demonic world lately------"
"I apologize, Your Majesty------."
"I just can't stand to see their evil faces---!"
Beatrice asked for the demons to be captured so she could interrogate them and get the latest information on the demon world.
Since the defeat of Rakshar, Lord of Chaos, the demonic incursions on Earth have diminished.
The gates themselves continue to spring up, but there is no sign of the daemonic gates or the demonic tricks that have been used to create them.
With even their lord defeated, the demons' next move is inevitably an all-out war.
Therefore, the appearance of the demons in Shanghai like this was a good opportunity.
As the demons of Shanghai were being thoroughly annihilated, Beatrice frowned as she realized that the information she had gleaned from the demon captives was less than satisfactory.
"Not going well?"
"Yes--- these demons have more outdated information than I thought."
Beatrice had gotten less up-to-date information from the demons in Shanghai than she had expected.
"These guys--they've been rushing to Earth ever since the Demon Gate appeared in Shanghai, and the demons have territorial boundaries, so there's been less communication than I thought."
"What are the chances they were lying?"
"In my experience, demons who tell lies are surprisingly discriminating. It's a woman's intuition."
Leon glanced at the bodies of the dead demons and was convinced. Beatrice was a master demon torturer--no, interrogator.
"But there's something familiar in the old information."
"Familiar information?"
"'Black-skinned orcs'. They're called Black Orcs."
"------"
Leon frowned at the information.
While Leon and Vulcanus had been cleaning up Shanghai, they had heard about what had happened in Siberia.
The Holy Knights had been wounded by a black-skinned orc and retreated.
When they besieged the Ice Castle once more, the orc were said to have disappeared.
Beatrice picked up on that information and confirmed with the demons that the black-skinned orcs were known by quite a few of them.
"That's a lot to take in. Hear for yourself."
Beatrice summoned one of the demon captives. The demon prisoner, who was not yet dead, stood before Leon and Beatrice and began to tell them the story of the Black Orcs in a voice filled with fear.
"Two, two hundred years ago, we began a two-front war on Your Majesty's planet."
Their first target was, of course, the Lionheart Kingdom.
The Lord of Chaos, Malus, was defeated, but in the process, the Lionheart Kingdom lost many Holy Knights and Templars.
The demons realized that the Lord of Wisdom, Carakael, would be able to destroy Lionheart, and the most powerful legion of demons, the Lords of Slaughter and Destruction, invaded the Eastern Skylands.
"That's where they encountered us, and------"
They were running westward, ravaging the great Eastern Kingdom. As if they were trying to reach the end of the world.
Laughing at them, the Lord of Slaughter and Destruction collided head-on with a horde of orcs, and──
"He was annihilated---his soul was absorbed by the orc gods."
In the process, Akasha, the Archduke of Slaughter and Destruction, was also disembodied by his blows but Akasha managed to open the gate and escape with her sword, only to find that they had reached the Demon Realm.
"They have reached the Demon Realm. They killed every demon they could find, especially that one------"
"Him?"
"The leader of the orcs, yes. His name was------"
The demon shuddered, seemingly afraid to even mention the name but in the end the demon spoke the name with difficulty.
"Murka. Murka Balak, the Orc High King."
The great war in Leon's world. In the midst of that fierce struggle, the demons had to fight a war in the demon world as well.
"They struck the Lord of Sloth first."
Demon Lord of Sloth and Dullness was the Demon Lord who froze Vulcanus and the Burning Sword Knights in the Frozen Continent for two hundred years.
"Battle after battle was fought, war after war------"
They were beasts that embodied war itself.
"For the first time in the history of the Demon Realm--for the first time ever--we were invaded, and we were defenseless."
From then on, Murka traveled across the realm, stealing their resources and sometimes even subjugating demon followers and demons to expand his power.
"Well, we had two great enemies to deal with--the Lionheart and the Orcs."
Of these, the Lionhearts were driven to the brink of destruction--nay, de facto destruction. Only one man, Leon, could not be defeated.
However, on Murka's side they suffered repeated one-sided defeats.
Even when the Lord of Sloth and the Lord of Agony united, their immense power could not overcome Murka.
When the Lord of Sloth and the Lord of Agony were smashed by Murka, whose skin was blackened by long exposure to the demonic realm that he came to be known as the Black Orc, the demons of the realm were forced to take extraordinary measures.
The remnants of the two demon lords' legions were unilaterally slaughtered, tearing apart the dimension of the realm in which Murka and the Black Orcs existed.
And that's it.
It was the Great Khan of the Orcs who came to this Earth right now, and he was the Great Khan of the Orcs, Murka Balak.
Leon remembered the enemy gaze he had once felt.
At the gate where Jerea holy relic convoy had been given as a quest, the event that had led to the ascension of Jerea the Holy Knight of Dreams and Death in the original history.
The fallen prelates of the Empire were behind it, but it was the beast-god barbarians and---Orcs---who executed it.
"The one Lord Spinner warned of, the one who shot down the satellite."
Also, the "giant being" that the goddess Meriel saw in America when she predicted Leon's fate.
A mighty beast of ego that took offense at being confronted by the goddess as she divined the fate of others and told her to "get lost."
Maybe his true nemesis was not the demons, Leon thought, but him.