The enormous Central Mine was like the maw of the Abyss, constantly swallowing any demon soldiers who dared enter. After all the vanguard troops entered the Central Mine, no sound came from them again. Even the messengers failed to return as scheduled, leaving General Corrupt Heart utterly baffled.
In truth, he himself had never ventured deep into the Central Mine. That was not work a general ought to do. His scouts had never paid attention to the mine itself, because there were no soldiers there. Rather than wander through the mine and familiarize themselves with the terrain, it was better to watch for troops along the surrounding border.
The vanguard had failed to achieve anything, but General Corrupt Heart could not simply give up. Even if they could not defeat the enemies inside, they should at least have retreated. At this point, he had not yet considered the possibility that they had been wiped out entirely.
So he sent out another force. This attack encountered no particularly fierce resistance. The demon soldiers smoothly broke through the gates and entered the tunnels, only to encounter exactly the same situation as before.
And because General Corrupt Heart had not devised any strategy suited to the environment within the mine, the second force, like the first, vanished into the depths of the mountain.
Only then did General Corrupt Heart finally realize something was wrong. He suspected that the other side had planted some extremely powerful trap. If other Demon Lords were behind this, such magical methods were hardly impossible. They only needed to hide a few mages somewhere in the mine.
So he slowed the offensive and began studying the matter with his advisers and mages, trying to determine what kind of magical trap could swallow two entire forces.
With the attack temporarily