Under attack X the woman

The woods east of Caro Town.

Seven years ago, this had been part of Caro Town, but most of the area had been reduced to ruins by Qliphoth's rampage.

With Qliphoth taking root here and affecting the land, the area had turned back into dense woodland in just seven years.

Anyone who was not extremely familiar with the area could easily get lost inside.

That was why they had brought Sonia along. As a local, she was the only one who knew where Caro Town's church had once stood.

Slash—

A flash of sword light cut the last thorn remaining around them in two.

Sonia pushed aside the bushes where she had been hiding and stepped out. "There really are far fewer roots now. It looks like Mr. Yuri's plan is working."

"Yes, we need to hurry too." Erza, who was clearing the way with her longsword, asked, "How much farther to the church?"

She was a little worried about the situation over there. She knew Yuri was strong, but if they took too long to resolve things on their end, even he would eventually be worn down, no matter how strong he was.

"We're almost there. Once we get through these woods, we'll be able to see the church."

Erza breathed a sigh of relief. She was about to call Sonia along and set out again when a soft, rapid rustling suddenly sounded all around them.

Already on edge, Erza frowned and raised her sword, shielding Sonia behind her.

"Who's there?!"

"..."

No one answered Erza's shout. The only response was the rustling, growing louder and louder.

Pressed for time, Erza had no intention of waiting any longer. She strode up to the bushes where the sound was coming from and cut them apart with a single stroke.

"Roar!!!"

As the bushes broke apart, a deafening roar slammed into Erza's ears, while a foul, fishy stench assaulted her nose.

Disgusting slime dripped onto her armor, and only then did Erza get a clear look at what had come.

It was a huge mouth full of serrated teeth, ringed by cherry-pink petals and attached to a stem that led off somewhere out of sight.

"Is that... a man-eating flower?"

Erza hesitated in confusion for a moment, then abruptly remembered Sonia saying that Qliphoth had three man-eating flower clones unlike its ordinary thorns.

Unless she was mistaken, this had to be one of them.

During that brief moment of hesitation, the man-eating flower nearby suddenly attacked. Like a ferocious giant python, it opened its bloody maw and lunged at her.

Erza quickly came to her senses. Tensing her legs, she leaped into the air, and the flower's head darted beneath her, exposing its unguarded stem.

Seizing the moment, she spun through the air like a rapidly whirling top, using the force of her rotation and fall to slash at the flower's stem.

It has scales?!

Erza watched in surprise as her blade scraped across the scales, throwing off trails of sparks.

Just then, a hoarse roar came from behind her.

Startled, Erza turned, only for a huge mouth covered in serrated teeth to fill her vision. She hurriedly braced her longsword upright in front of her to keep herself from being swallowed.

But the man-eating flower's massive bulk and the tremendous force of its charge still drove her far back, her legs plowing two long furrows through the ground.

She finally slammed into a boulder. The pain in her back made her tense body suddenly go slack, and the flower seized the chance to swallow her whole.

The man-eating flower let out a well-timed burp. Though it had no facial features at all, a smug expression could clearly be seen on its face.

But before it could gloat for long, a piercing pain came from within.

A ring of sword light flashed, and the flower's head was cut clean off. Only a severed stem remained, thrashing on the ground and spewing disgusting slime before quickly retreating along the stem behind it as if admitting defeat.

Longsword in hand, Erza stepped out of the man-eating flower's mouth. Before she could breathe a sigh of relief, Sonia's frantic cries for help came from nearby.

"Miss Erza, help!"

Sonia was being held in the air in the jaws of another man-eating flower, desperately bracing herself with both arms. She was on the verge of being swallowed.

She had no armor to protect her, nor did she possess strength like Erza's. If she were eaten, she would be as good as dead.

Erza was still some distance from Sonia, and reaching her in time was nearly impossible.

Erza acted decisively. Holding her sword in a reverse grip, she aimed between Sonia's legs and hurled it with all her strength, then immediately raced after it.

The sharp longsword flew as true as an arrow, cutting through the air and passing between Sonia's legs to pierce the man-eating flower's throat.

The intense pain provoked an immediate, violent reaction. The flower tossed its head up and down, flinging Sonia high into the air, then retreated in pain as well.

Hanging upside down in midair, Sonia squeezed her eyes shut and screamed as her head hurtled toward the ground.

A figure suddenly came sliding in and caught Sonia securely.

"Good, I made it in time."

Erza wiped the sweat from her forehead and let out a long breath. "Sonia, are you all right?"

Dazed from landing on Erza's armor, Sonia spoke with her eyes spinning. "I... I'm... fine... Miss... Erza... D-don't worry."

Erza: "..."

Although there had been a bit of a mishap at the end, things had worked out well enough. After resting for a short while, Sonia recovered her spirits.

It had to be said that although she had no real fighting ability, the demonic power flowing through her body still made her considerably stronger than an ordinary person in every respect.

"Let's go, Miss Erza. I'm fine now."

Erza supported Sonia, looking a little worried. "Can you manage? Do you want to rest a little longer?"

"Don't worry, I'll be fine."

Although Erza knew Sonia had not fully recovered, she also knew this was no time to rest.

She was about to get up when she felt something hard pressing against her hand.

"Huh? This is..."

Erza picked up the object in her hand. It was a pendant, though it had come open.

She glanced at it instinctively, then hurriedly snapped it shut and returned it to Sonia beside her. "Ah... sorry, I didn't mean to peek!"

Sonia shook her head with a faint smile. She accepted the pendant and put it back around her neck. "There's no need to apologize, Miss Erza. If you hadn't saved me just now, I'd probably have been eaten."

"So I'm the one who should thank you." Sonia stood and bowed solemnly in thanks.

"Uh..." Erza stood and scratched her cheek, looking a little flustered.

The people in her guild were usually a bunch of thick-skinned idiots who only knew how to rush into trouble. Being thanked so formally all of a sudden left her at a loss.

The atmosphere fell silent for a brief moment.

Before long, Erza spoke. "The person in the photo... is she your mother?"

Since arriving in Caro Town, she had not seen Sonia's mother or anything connected to her, and Sonia herself had never mentioned her.

It was clearly a part of her past she did not want to remember, so Erza and Yuri had both tacitly refrained from asking.

But now that Erza had seen the photo, she could hardly pretend otherwise, so she decided to ask.

Sonia laid the pendant in her palm and opened it. In the photo was an elegant woman with a smile on her face, holding a little girl by the hand.

The girl was young, around six or seven, and bore a strong resemblance to Sonia as she was now. Even with the influence of demonic power, it was not hard to guess their relationship.

The dark clouds gradually dispersed, and moonlight quietly emerged, spilling its delicate, gauzy glow over half of Sonia's face and revealing a trace of longing.

She gazed at the photo in a daze and nodded gently. In a somewhat subdued voice, she said, "She stayed behind seven years ago, in that disaster..."

Erza fell silent. "I'm sorry..."

Click.

The soft sound interrupted Erza's guilt as Sonia closed the pendant again.

"Didn't I say you didn't need to apologize? Honestly, Miss Erza." The dejection vanished from Sonia's face, replaced by a gentle smile, just like the woman in the photo they had seen.

"This isn't the time to be sad. Mr. Yuri is still waiting for us."

Looking at the smile blooming on the resolute girl's face, Erza was momentarily stunned, and a trace of envy flickered involuntarily in her eyes.

Then, as if infected by her mood, she smiled too. "Ah, you're right. Let's go."

People often said that the gap between one person and another was greater than the gap between a person and a pig.

Even among members of the same species, there were still differences in rank, and sometimes a world of difference between them.

In this world full of magic, such differences were magnified without limit, making the distinction between the life levels of higher and lower beings plainly apparent.

In the sewers of Caro Town—

As the demon king with Sparda's blood flowing through his veins, how could Yuri possibly be stopped by a bunch of weeds?

Contrary to what the two girls had imagined, Yuri only had to release his magic power, and the demonic aura unique to Sparda was enough to cow these low-level monsters, who barely had the intelligence to speak of.

Even the pressure caused by releasing his magic power was like the sky falling and the earth collapsing to these thorny branches, which had nothing but instinct. It crushed them flat against the ground without the slightest suspense.

That terrifying magic power, like a raging flood or a savage beast, seemed capable of freezing space itself, and the aura it gave off made demons shudder.

They were like servants debased into the dirt. Invisible fear drove them to prostrate themselves, trembling uncontrollably like sieves.

Yuri unhurriedly uprooted the thorny branches, which were powerless to resist once they had been crushed, while following their growth toward the church.

Although the church was now occupied by Qliphoth, that did not change the fact that it had once belonged to Caro Town.

Thus, there had always been a passage connecting Caro Town to the abandoned church: the sewer where Yuri now stood.

It was only because the sewer had been filled with countless thorny branches for years that no one used it.

Yuri might have looked as though he was having an easy time, but if anyone else had come, even an A-rank mage would have risked disaster.

After all, mages were not warriors. Most mages in this world were more traditional, long-range spellcasters.

People like Yuri and Erza, who drew their swords and rushed in to slash at the slightest disagreement, were the minority.

That said, if Erza had entered the sewer instead of him, even though the girl was strong enough to match the vast majority of veteran B-rank mages, she would definitely have found herself in a bitter fight.

And that conclusion assumed she had her Heaven's Wheel Armor, which excelled at long-range attacks against multiple enemies.

Otherwise, she would most likely have ended up exhausting her magic power.

But back to the matter at hand...

Yuri had realized that the sewer and the church were connected, which was why he had followed the sewer instead of staying where he was and waiting for everything to end.

He did not seem to be moving quickly, strolling along at an elderly man's leisurely pace, but every inch of ground he covered looked like a lawn that had been run over by a mower. Not a single thorny branch remained.

No one knew how much time had passed or how far he had gone, but the thorny branches in the sewer had vanished without a trace. Yuri had apparently cleared them all out.

That, however, raised another question: how was he supposed to get out?

Until now, Yuri had relied on the direction in which the thorny branches grew to find his way. But with the thorns completely cleared away, he was now thoroughly lost.

Caro Town might have been a remote little town, but it had a history of nearly three hundred years. Generations of people had altered and expanded its sewers, so their complexity was easy to imagine.

To put it in a song...

"May I ask where the road lies? The farther I walk, the more lost I become."

Yuri hummed softly, failing to notice a shadow lurking quietly around a corner not far away.