Kestrel came to the cliff edge beside him in silence.

They were both silent for a short while. The mountain air had changed again, turning colder and heavier as the light shifted, and even here at the summit Lancet could feel a faint pressure dragging at the edge of the world ahead.

Kestrel narrowed her eyes slightly.

"I wondered if you were feeling it too," she said at last. "The aura of Gloom from there."

Lancet followed her gaze. The land beyond the storm line looked wounded, the colors of the sky bruised into red and black where the clouds hung low over the broken earth.

"Is it a Demon Citadel?" she asked him.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Well... it’s about to be."

Kestrel turned her head a little, one eyebrow lifting.

Lancet kept looking toward the horizon. "That place is called Deathrock. For years it’s been a half citadel."

Hearing himself say the phrase, Lancet’s mind played the memory of reading the light novel’s lore. A half citadel was a place where Earth and Gehenna supposedly reached a truce; the second world would stop attempting to conquer the land, and Earth would stop attempting to reclaim the part of the land already conquered.

Simply put, the fighting stopped — or rather was postponed. The common reason was because both sides had lost too much and needed to redirect their forces somewhere else.

It had always sounded almost civilized on paper, almost reasonable, like two armies deciding they were too tired to finish what they started.

But that wasn’t how things played out in the light novel.

Lancet’s jaw tightened as the thought sharpened in his head.

The second world had lied all along. They had not truly made a truce, they had formed a trap. In the novel, once the upcoming war began, all of Earth’s attention was on the Demons and Beasts infiltrating their world, and they forgot about the half citadel — a demon citadel that was the closest to the world’s capital: Aethelgard.

Deathrock fell almost instantly and all the nearby civilizations were slaughtered by Demoms. Awakeners and Kingdom Rangers had to scramble, regroup, and pour themselves into defense lines just to keep the next wave from reaching Aethelgard and claiming the king.

It was yet another display by the Second World that their masters, the Demon Lords, were greatly deceptive and purely evil. After that war, humans never trusted any arrangements with Gehenna, and Renan Falconhart fully began his conquest against them.

Lancet could already see it in his mind: the alarms, the smoke, the emergency formations, the desperate call for reinforcement. If he walked away now, that future would happen again. But if he cleared it while he was here, before the point of no return, then the Demons would lose their foothold and their plan would fail before it could fully unfold.

The Kingdom Council might not be thrilled if he interfered with outer-political matters. He knew that much too. They liked their borders tidy, their authority respected, and their future warfare managed through a thousand controlled decisions.

But Lancet would rather be reprimanded than have the death of a hundred people on his conscience because he had chosen caution when he had the chance to do something useful.

Besides, this was exactly the sort of thing he needed right now.

Something to kill using the new Sword Skills he’d just mastered. Ah, the sound of his blade tearing that stretchy demon flesh was already too appetizing.

Kestrel watched him for another moment, then let out a tiny breath of decision. "I am very much inclined to clear it if you are."

Lancet turned toward her, a small spark of surprise in his expression before it gave way to a grin. "I sure am."

She looked back at the horizon, gazing into the red clouds. "Then let us stop wasting time."

Lancet did not need to be told twice.

He turned from the cliff edge, extended his hand, and activated his Summon skill.

A pillar of gold crashed down onto the summit first, bright enough to wash the mountain stone in warm light. The gold lingered for a breath, then resolved into the familiar shape of Astensia, standing straight-backed and composed as always, her armor catching the last shine of the summon in clean, noble lines.

Before anyone could speak, a sharp crack of lightning split the air and struck the peak with a thunderous roar, scattering sparks across the stone.

From the flash stepped Thor, her arrival carrying the force of a storm in miniature, a fierce expression on her face as she looked around and took in the mountain, the cliff, and the gathering tension.

A burst of red smoke exploded beside the others, thick and curling, spilling across the summit in a low, devilish haze. From within it emerged Spectra, her posture elegant and dangerous, her smile already half-formed as if she had expected all of this and was pleased to find it waiting for her.

Finally, a pair of dark moth wings appeared and spread outward, transforming into the delicate, luminous wings of a butterfly. Out of that gentle transformation stepped Espel, looking around with a startled blink as the last traces of the summoning shimmer faded behind her.

For a second, all four of them simply stood there, gazing in between Lancet and Kestrel.

Lancet smiled at them, the wind moving around the summit while Kestrel stood beside him with folded arms and a knowing look.

"Hey guys," he said.

*******

Twenty minutes later, everyone sat around the mountain face, safe for Spectra whose elegant ass could never touch something so rough — as she said. She was sitting on a floating cloud of red.

Lancet had filled them in on everything from his training to his plan to stop the Demon Break and reclaim the city of Deathrock.

"So," Lancet regarded Astensia, his first Summon, "what do you think?"

Astensia, sitting beside him, gave him a remarkable smile. "It’s a bit of a dilemma. Going against a truce and the decision of the world rulers. But... reclaiming a city for the people who lost it seems like the right thing to do."

"Of course it is the right thing to do," Thor chimed in. The Valkyrie cared less for rules. When it came to slaughtering the agents of the Second World, Thor was never second in line. "The truce was made with Demon Lords. I can not even believe the world rulers would reduce themselves to such repressive acts as dealing with Demons."

She paused, then looked at Spectra. Everyone looked at Spectra. The Demoness rolled her eyes with arms folded.

"Don’t look at me," she said with an unbothered tone. "I have nothing against your hatred for the Demon Lords. I hate them too."

"So you’re up for this then?" Lancet asked. "Clearing the citadel? We’re going to be killing Demons you know."

Everyone looked at her, expecting the Mother of Demons to take great offence to that. Spectra almost did, but she understood why it had to be done. Narrowing her eyes, she gave Lancet and everyone else the response they were waiting for.

"You do what you have to do, Lancet. I’ll do mine."

Lancet looked at her for a moment, though he fully understood what she meant. While they would be killing Demons, Spectra would be doing her best to save as many as she could, adding them to her army of loyal children.

Lancet turned to Espel. "How about you, Espel?"