"This is why I can't go to Konrad," Lilith screamed, tearing a golem apart.
With bare hands.
She danced across the battlefield like an angry little flame.
Cute but deadly—and fast enough to miss in a blink.
But all she had left behind was burnt corpses and destruction.
"I'm sooooo pissed right meow," she moaned, in case it wasn't obvious enough.
But Soap, that reincarnated kid, finally conjured an ice ring around the portal.
That's where the latest invaders poured through.
He isolated them, while Roach decimated an enemy formation with his steel balls.
"This'll only get worse now, Lady Lilith," the child claimed, stopping for a breath. "Saturation tactics. The Master wants to overwhelm us with mooks before the main attack."
The half-demon warrior grunted in agreement.
"Smart ones, those heavenspawns," he said, recovering his ammunition without moving. "I do the same with stronger opponents. Is one throw not enough? How 'bout five?!"
The demoness rolled her eyes, looking over the field of destruction.
The main formations were already broken. It was high time they wrapped things up here.
"Still annoying," she said, casting a fireball a hundred times her size. "Send me something tough to deal with, then let me take a break and check how Konny does."
She threw that miniature sun as if it were a toy, rather than one of her most devastating spells.
"That's the whole idea behind saturation attacks," Soap pointed out, flying up to get the hell out of her way. "They'll never give us time to rest now. Not until we win or die."
Ugh. Annoying little kid.
Lilith hated that he was right. But what could she do about it?
Early on, Lucifer sent one or two agents a day to probe for blind spots.
Given a week, they couldn't deal with the influx anymore.
That fallen angel managed to open two portals at once, on the opposite ends of the continent.
They had to split their forces, and she got the one closer to Kasserlane's borders.
With Soap and Roach, because of course, she'd get the more problematic half of the team.
Gabrielle got Stella, Meow Midori, and even Zoltan, while Lilith had to babysit these two.
That said, they weren't half bad.
"I've cut off their reinforcements," Soap claimed, turning to his half-demon pal. "Roach, deal with their caster. He's been working on that spell for too long."
"On it," the red-eyed ball maniac grunted, launching a barrage of steel.
They were strong enough to be a problem.
Right now, they have fought well, but what if they had changed their minds?
"Saturation tactics, huh?" Lilith muttered.
What if Lucifer overwhelmed them, and then these two switched sides?
It could've been their plan all along, given how fierce they resisted them back on Earth.
The steel balls devastated another formation, taking out the enemy caster behind.
Soap squeezed the portal shut, and all that remained was to clean up the remaining golems.
Oh, because right. Rather than sending endless waves of weak mooks now—
The fallen angel had switched to mechanized infantry.
Golems, elementals, and warforged creatures. In the last three days, Lilith tore more of them apart than she had seen before, in her tens of thousands of years.
She could only imagine Gabrielle's team would face similar numbers.
"How the hell could he amass so much power in so little time?" she muttered, casting another fireball. She was about to release it when a portal—a much smaller one—opened behind her.
Lost in her thoughts, she almost let it explode in the elderly mage's face.
But thank the spirits, she had recognized him from the king's ensemble before it was too late.
"Would you look at that," she chirped, her expression transforming. "The Silver Mage."
She dropped her fireball on the last enemy formation, trying to mask her frustration.
Only molten metal and a smoking crater remained.
"You're doing God's work, I see," the old sorcerer flashed a weak smile, leaning on his staff. "And I bet this wasn't even the first army you defeated today. We detected it from the capital, but—"
Yeah, she could feel their eyes on her back for a while now.
"Sorry for the inconvenience," Lilith forced a smirk. "We have everything under control."
For now.
But it seemed the mage was aware of the deteriorating situation, too.
"New friends of yours, Dragoness of Crimson?" he asked, nodding towards Soap and Roach.
The latter recovered his molten balls, while the kid sealed the big portal away for good.
Right. They didn't exactly let Ronald von Kasserlane and his court in on their plan, did they?
Helena knew about it for the most part, but she still tried to convince her brother to make peace with Konrad. Like, for resisting the nomads first, then taking them all in, and—
Whatever other political shenanigans existed that she refused to deal with.
The actual Konrad wasn't even in this world, and it drove her crazy.
"We tamed these as we did with the Demon Lord," Lilith explained, keeping it short. "Don't worry about a thing, Great Mage, we do keep everything under control."
But for how long?
She didn't want to ask for help or cause panic.
But as the kid put it earlier, things would only turn uglier from here.
"Yes, yes, you already said that, Ancient Dragon," the Silver Mage noted. "And I trust your judgement. But now that the king is aware—what should I tell him?"
Lilith sighed.
Where was Gabrielle when she needed her?!
She was the one to deal with politics, make pacts with spirits and saints, and—
"Tell him that Lord Konrad von Halstadt and his wives are the only thing to stand between his kingdom and the chaos." And speak of the devil, the archangel arrived through another portal.
The old mage smiled, bowing to the duchess in blue, and took a careful step back.
Yeah, no wonder.
Lilith wore her usual tribal garb. Little coverage. Already ragged materials.
The dirt and the blood would only add to her wild charms, but—
She didn't recall ever seeing Gabrielle this torn and disheveled.
Blood caked her wavy, brunette hair. Her dress was a complete loss, eyes glinting with a cold fire that caught even the demoness by surprise.
'Everything fine on your end?!' she asked via telepathy.
'Do I look like things are fine?!' the angel scoffed back.
Fair. She did not.
But neither Lilith nor the old mage wanted to point that out.
"If the king wants to help us," Gabby said. "Make sure the country stands united. We aren't fighting Konrad's enemies, but ones who'd destroy the entire world. If we have to deal with—"
"Don't you worry, Dutchess Schwertburg," the old mage interrupted with a bow. "He knows that."
He pulled out a sealed scroll from his sleeve, offering it to the angel.
"This document will reinforce Lord Halstadt's position in Halaima," he said. "The king accepts the expansion of his domain. Helps with the legislation of the tribes and nomads. But—"
"This is a summons to the capital," Gabrielle noted, looking at the seal.
It wasn't even a question.
"For next week," the Silver Mage confirmed. "So that it can become official in front of all the other dukes as well. I know your father, of all people, gave him quite a headache earlier."
Yeah. This was great.
The exact thing that they wanted.
Except that Konrad was still not in this world, and they couldn't even contact him for a while.