Ever since driving off that self-proclaimed Demon King with the flat-chested pink hair, Satahia had been plagued by a lingering sense of unease.
Though she had learned that this so-called current Demon King was weak in strength and her forces were only just beginning to take shape
Far from the fearsome Demon Kings recorded in history books, which explained the current fragmented state of the dark faction—she still couldn’t shake her worries.
“Ughhh, she may seem weak now, but with that wretched monster assistant, she’s bound to grow into something ferocious. This is a huge crisis, a huge crisis!”
Satahia felt an urgent need to deal with this so-called Demon King as soon as possible.
While the enemy was still in her early stages, Satahia could rescue her from the clutches of “giant cannonism” and instill the correct ideology of the “proletariat.”
More importantly, the Demon King’s lineage had always possessed deep reserves of power.
By seizing their resources, Satahia was confident she could quickly restore her own strength.
She knew such a plan required careful preparation, but causing some trouble for the enemy in the meantime couldn’t hurt.
“Occupy the nearby collection point and capture the elementals as well,” she ordered the red-eyed skeleton warrior, commanding it to lead a group of monsters to the dark element collection point.
In truth, this skeleton warrior wasn’t the boss that I or Sly had speculated it to be—it was merely under Satahia’s mental control.
Her obsession with capturing elementals stemmed from the fact that the dark elements they gathered could help her regain her strength.
However, before the skeleton warrior reached the collection point, I had already withdrawn most of my forces, leaving only five elementals behind.
This allowed me to continue collecting some dark elements during this time—meager amounts, but enough to bolster my troops.
Satahia wasn’t surprised by this outcome. In fact, capturing those elementals was already a decent achievement.
With eight elementals and the energy crystals she had accumulated, she could create a formidable skeleton army.
So, Satahia wasn’t in a rush. She decided to rest and regroup for the time being.
What she hadn’t anticipated, however, was that before she could launch her attack, the enemy struck first.
“The enemy is attacking?”
When she received the report from the skeleton warrior, Satahia’s first reaction was confusion.
But as she controlled the skeleton warriors at the open-pit mine and saw that the attacking force consisted of only a few hundred dark bats, she realized their plan.
“So, it’s a sneak attack.”
Satahia’s thinking was straightforward.
She assumed the enemy was simply trying to harass her while her forces were split toward the collection point. She promptly issued orders to the skeleton warriors.
In truth, her command wasn’t even necessary.
The skeleton warriors, superior in both quality and quantity, easily repelled the enemy’s assault.
Though she had sent some warriors to the collection point, they accounted for less than a fifth of her forces, hardly affecting the overall battle.
Seeing the dark bats being pushed back by the skeleton warriors’ counterattack, the hidden Demon King—wherever she was—issued a retreat order.
The bats scattered, fleeing the open-pit mine.
“Think you can just come and go as you please? Not so fast!”
Infuriated by the sneak attack, Satahia didn’t hesitate to order all the skeleton warriors in the mine to pursue.
“Since it’s come to this, I’ll just take down the Demon King’s castle in one fell swoop. Losing a few minions is no big deal.”
As she commanded the skeleton warriors to chase the enemy to a plain about a kilometer from the mine,
Satahia spotted the Demon King leading her monstrous minions, waiting far off on the other side of the plain, hundreds of yards away.
There were a few hundred dark bats, joined by nearly a thousand green-skinned creatures wielding clubs and shovels, looking dim-witted, alongside soft, squishy slimes that seemed to serve only as mascots.
“Is this a final stand?”
Seeing the enemy’s formation, Satahia naturally assumed as much, and the words of that pink-haired only confirmed her suspicions.
“You jerk! You’re bullying my minions again, you big meanie! I’m going to take you down!”
What a childish tantrum.
No strategic foresight at all.
But it wasn’t surprising—Satahia was clearly superior in both experience and “that area,” wasn’t she?
“How immature. With such pitiful strength, you dare to declare war? Don’t come crying later.”
Feeling smug, Satahia confidently ordered all her skeleton warriors to attack.
This ragtag bunch stood no chance against her forces.
Though she wondered why the enemy insisted on fighting here, the sight of the opposing forces charging forward dispelled her doubts. It seemed they were truly desperate.
On the other side, watching the hundreds of skeletons surge forward like a tidal wave, I hadn’t expected my plan to unfold so smoothly.
But regardless, it was time to spring the trap.
The Vol Plain, stretching between the open-pit mine and the Demon King’s castle, was made of soft, ashen meadow soil.
A shovel or hoe could easily dig through it, especially after days of rain, which left marks even from small creatures like fluff rabbits.
If you hollowed out the soil less than fifty centimeters below the surface and used slime to glue the top layer of grass back together, what would happen when an army trampled over it?
The charging skeleton warriors answered that question perfectly.
As their weight hit the disguised grass, it collapsed without warning, revealing a massive, terrifying pit.
The skeletons, disadvantaged in both reaction speed and agility, couldn’t stop in time.
The front rows plunged headlong into the pit, unable to move.
The dozens in the first row at the bottom shattered instantly, returning to the embrace of the Dark Goddess.
Even the slightly rearward rows that managed to halt were pushed into the pit by the oblivious skeletons behind them.
As someone once described, a charging army is like a frenzied machine—individual parts can’t resist the momentum of the whole, stopping only when the button is pressed.
This proved true.
In mere tens of seconds, nearly half of the charging skeleton warriors were gone.
“So despicable! They even set traps!”
Only then did Satahia, the “button” of this machine, realize what had happened.
She hurriedly ordered the remaining skeleton warriors to stop their charge.
But what she didn’t expect was that the enemy had even more devious tricks up their sleeve.