The demoness walked toward them without urgency or hurry, and as she did, she raised both arms above her head and stretched with a lazy gesture, as if she had just woken up from a particularly long nap.
Her bones cracked audibly and she let out a satisfied sigh that echoed through the hall.
"Ahhh... it’s been a while since I moved like that," she said, rotating her neck from side to side with a couple more pops. "I have to admit that last attack caught off guard."
Her eyes settled on the group with an expression of amusent and mild disappointnt.
"But tell ..." she continued, letting her arms drop to her sides. "Is that any way to treat your host?"
Nobody answered.
"First you break into my ho without an invitation..." she continued, raising one finger. "You wake up from my beauty sleep..." a second finger. "You throw that disgusting slimy thing at my face..." a third finger. "And to top it all off, you attack with second-rate dark magic..."
She shook her head slowly, like a mother disappointed by her children’s behavior.
"Looks like I’m going to have to teach you so manners."
Mark instinctively took a step back, keeping Vorax pressed against his chest.
The sli was still trembling in his arms, clearly exhausted from the effort of trying to absorb that woman’s energy.
’Co on, Rose, hurry up...’ Mark thought, resisting the urge to look back at her.
Yuki positioned herself in front of Mark with both daggers raised.
Alice stood beside her with her fists up, and her companions ford a line behind them, blocking the path to Mark and Rose.
But the demoness didn’t look impressed, in fact she didn’t even seem to be looking at them, since her eyes were fixed on Mark.
Then she finally reached the dungeon exit and stepped one foot outside.
The tip of her bare foot touched the grass marking the boundary between the dungeon’s interior and the outside world.
And the world changed.
The sky, which until a mont ago had been clear and sunny, darkened in an instant.
"What the..." Mark whispered, looking up.
A blanket of black clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon in under a second, plunging everything into an unnatural gloom that had no business existing at that hour of the day.
And then everyone felt a growing sense of dread spread through their bodies.
"This... doesn’t look good at all," Mark murmured as he felt the air grow heavier with every passing second.
Mark glanced at Yuki, she who normally maintained a neutral expression now had her eyes wide open, and her hands, which always held her daggers with firm steadiness, were visibly trembling.
Then he looked at Alice, whose jaw was clenched so hard the muscles in her neck were standing out.
’We’re screwed,’ Mark thought.
Whatever that woman was emanating was so powerful it was affecting even the undead.
’What kind of monster is this woman?’
The demoness lifted her second foot out of the dungeon and stepped onto the grass with both bare feet.
The grass beneath her feet withered instantly, turning black and dry in a radius of several ters around her that expanded slowly like an ink stain spreading across paper.
She breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with the outside air, then released it in a long, satisfied sigh.
"Three hundred years..." she murmured to herself, looking at the darkened sky. "Three hundred long years without seeing the outside."
But then her eyes shifted away from Mark and ca to rest directly on Rose.
The vampire was behind everyone, both hands outstretched before her, tracing runes in the air at a frantic pace.
"Well..." the demoness said as a different smile ford on her lips. "The last thing I expected to find when I finally stepped outside after so long..."
She paused deliberately, almost as if savoring the mont.
"...was a descendant of the filth that decided to abandon my army."
Hearing that, Mark watched as Rose’s face tightened noticeably.
And seeing that expression on Rose, the demoness tilted her head with a look of false concern.
"What’s the matter, little one?" she said in a tone dripping with condescension. "Cat got your tongue?"
Rose still didn’t respond.
"HEY!!" Mark shouted with every ounce of air his lungs could hold, stepping forward.
The shout made the demoness shift her gaze from Rose to Mark with one eyebrow raised.
"We’re your opponents!" Mark shouted, pointing to himself and the others. "So stop ignoring us!"
She stayed silent for a mont, and then burst out laughing.
She laughed so hard she brought a hand to her stomach and threw her head back, the force of it making Mark feel like the most pathetic joke in the universe.
"Opponents?" she repeated between laughs, wiping a tear from her eye. "You? A low-level little necromancer and his little sex dolls consider themselves my opponents?"
She stopped laughing and looked at Mark with undisguised condescension.
"Oh, sweetheart... that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a very long ti."
Mark knew he couldn’t win and that he had no real chance, but he didn’t need to win, and apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought the sa.
"The Wrath of God in All Its Fury!" Alice shouted, invoking a miracle.
The nun lunged forward with explosive speed, materializing her gauntlets in midair as she closed the distance between herself and the demoness in under a second.
Yuki materialized at the sa mont from a different angle, appearing from the left with both daggers aid at the demoness’s side.
Even Alice’s five companions launched their attack from behind, moving in unison like a coordinated wolf pack.
But Alice stopped dead half a ter from the demoness, not because she wanted to, but because her body stopped responding.
An invisible force caught her in midair as if a giant hand had seized her completely, immobilizing her with her fists extended and her eyes wide open.
Yuki t the sa fate.
The assassin hung suspended in the air with both daggers inches from the demoness’s side, close enough to almost touch her, but completely unable to move a single milliter further.
The five won also stopped at the sa ti, frozen in attack poses like dolls whose strings had been cut.
"How boring," the demoness said, letting out a small yawn.
Then she raised one hand with a casual flick of her wrist, and the invisible force holding Mark’s subordinates moved them.
Alice was first, her body was driven downward with brutal violence, slamming into the grass with an impact that sent dirt and withered grass flying in every direction.
Before she could even attempt to get up, the force lifted her again and slamd her into the ground a second ti, then a third.
Yuki and the others suffered the sa fate.
The demoness just moved her hand in lazy, almost bored gestures, and with each movent Mark’s subordinates’ bodies were hurled against the grass like tennis balls being bounced off a wall.
"What was that you were saying about opponents, sweetheart?" she asked with open mockery.
"...shit"
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