Phelmina
My name is Phelmina.
Just Phelmina.
There was a time once when I had a family name as well, but no longer.
I was born into a distinguished demon family and wanted for nothing in my life.
My father is the head of the ministry of finance as well as the Tenth Commander of the demon army, a rock-solid position by any measure.
To be precise, I should say he was the Tenth Commander, but it was still the case when I lived with my family.
There was no actual Tenth Army, so it was a paper title, but it still paid well enough that our family was quite affluent.
But while we wanted for nothing, my family was accordingly harsh.
Those who stand at the top must be in possession of the corresponding amount of strength and spirit.
I’m sure all noble demon families raise their children with such beliefs, not just mine.
The rumors that my family is far harsher with its children than the others are entirely unsubstantiated.
Rote learning, training, etiquette lessons.
From a young age, that is how I spent my days, and I believe I became a proper young lady who would not shame my family name.
At least, I used to believe that.
Because after a certain incident, my family disowned me…
Under cover of my hood, I cast a stealthy glance at the person next to me…
“What?”
…only to be noticed right away.
This person, who is now frowning at me, is Sophia Keren.
She is the cause of my expulsion from my family.
Even now, just thinking about what happened makes my blood boil.
“Oh, nothing.”
“I see.”
A brief exchange.
We are not close enough to carry on a friendly chat, nor is now the time or place for it.
Right now, we are hiding in a forest, waiting to ambush the enemy.
Looking around, I see other members of our white-cloaked band hidden around the area.
Since all of us are using a high-level Stealth skill, it would be nigh impossible to see any of them without knowing beforehand they were there.
This small group of exceptionally talented soldiers is the Tenth Army.
When my father was in charge, the ranks were solely filled with our family’s private soldiers, most of them of little use in battle.
But those days are over.
When my father stepped down from the position of commander and a new one took his place, the Tenth Army was reborn as a small but incredibly elite force.
Compared to the other armies, ours is scarcely even a tenth of the size.
But each individual can fight as well as a hundred from any other.
I would even be willing to wager that we could hold our own in a head-to-head battle with one of the other armies.
That is how powerful the Tenth Army soldiers are.
The most terrifying part is that these elite soldiers were trained over the span of just a few years.
I can hardly pass judgment, since I am one of them.
But the other armies do not know the true strength of the Tenth Army.
It hasn’t been long since we were established, and we are quite small as armies go, so we haven’t yet had a chance to demonstrate our power.
But we’ve been working that much harder behind the scenes, under the orders of our commander: gathering information, carrying out assassinations, and other various missions.
As such, people seem to assume that we specialize in this sort of subterfuge.
They’re not entirely wrong, but in reality, that is merely one aspect of our talents; we excel just as much in normal combat.
Sadly, we haven’t yet had a chance to prove this.
Nor will today be an exception.
The other armies are all boldly invading the human territory, but we are still lurking in the shadows.
I am sure the fact that we cannot boldly display our prowess in battle is the reason for Sophia’s foul mood, too.
Sophia has a powerful desire to be in the spotlight, and she also simply loves fighting.
However, in a way, this is the most important battlefield of all.
Which is exactly why we’re here.
“……”
Pure silence.
The entire Tenth Army shifts to take their positions and make ready.
Our senses, sharpened by our skills, have detected footsteps of people moving through the forest.
So we still our breathing and wait.
Since all our members have the Silence skill, no one will detect us from our breathing or heartbeats, and the Odorless skill will prevent us from being detected by smell, too.
In addition, we’ve undergone all manner of training to avoid detection.
The only possible way to spot us would be with a skill like Clairvoyance.
There is no real way to defend against it, but with skillful use of skills like Stealth and Concealment, we can minimize the risk to a certain extent.
I doubt our target is constantly using detection skills, so as long as they do not know we are here, they almost certainly will not spot us.
And as we quiet our breathing, we wait for our targets to pass underfoot.
We do not look in their direction, for even the slightest of motions might be enough to alert them.
The footsteps come closer and then begin to pass by our hidden unit.
Judging by the sound, there are likely about a hundred of them.
The only paths through this forest are animal trails, so it’s hardly suited to marching through with a large amount of troops.
Consequently, it’s that much harder for anyone to monitor it.
Such is the nature of the no-man’s-land that lies between the human and demon realms.
There are human forts positioned anywhere it might be possible for an army to march through.
The areas in between are known as no-man’s-land, where small skirmishes between humans and demons frequently occur.
This forest is one such area.
And it would appear that while the majority of the demon forces are marching into battle, the enemy has been planning to pass through the no-man’s-land to invade demon territory instead.
As the Tenth Army, our job is to annihilate that incursion.
Our other members have been positioned at the other sections of the no-man’s-land as well, tasked with destroying any enemies who attempt to make their way through, as well as any humans who already lived in those areas.
But the main thrust is right here.
I hold my breath and wait for the signal.
Before long, it arrives.
A thread so thin that the eye can scarcely see it is wrapped around my finger.
I feel a tug.
On that signal, all of us jump into action at once.
We emerge from our hiding places and attack the enemy as one.
My specialty is a throwing weapon called a chakram.
I hurl it past Sophia as she charges straight ahead, and it embeds itself in the skull of my target.
A moment later, Sophia slashes at another enemy, and after that, the rest of the members strike as well.
Our first surprise attack is a complete success, leaving our victims no time to defend themselves.
We press the attack against a stunned enemy as they try to figure out what’s happening.
Less than half of them are able to counter the second wave of attacks, so it deals a significant amount of damage as well.
Only when we begin landing our third round of attacks does the enemy finally understand that they’ve been ambushed and begin to defend themselves.
By this point, they’ve already taken heavy casualties.
The fact that they were advancing down a narrow trail in single-file works in our favor as well.
We struck their thinly stretched line from both sides in a pincer attack, dividing them up and defeating the isolated elements.
Besides, it’s difficult to move on the narrow trail even at the best of times.
There’s no hope of mounting an organized defense here.
The fighting will come down to a pure contest of individual strength.
Unfortunately for our enemies, our initial attack has already thinned their numbers, and they still haven’t recovered from their confusion.
Not to mention our sheer strength.
Truly, I do not see how we could lose.
“Ambush! We’re under attack!”
“What?! Damn it!”
While the enemy panics, the Tenth Army soldiers simply attack in silence.
“POOOTIIIMAAAAS!”
Correction: all except for one, who’s bellowing as she swings her broadsword.
“So you were waiting for us, hmm?”
Standing opposite the bellowing Sophia is an elf man with a nasty gleam in his eyes.
Our primary target: Potimas Harrifenas.
Him plus the elves under his command.
“You have my permission to use your weapons. Kill them.”
Potimas gives an order in a calm yet piercing voice.
Immediately, the elves begin to change.
Some of them transform their hands to reveal something called a gun barrel.
Others draw similarly shaped weapons or produce glowing blades in their hands.
Right away, the guns begin to chatter as they spit out bullets.
But since we expected all of this, we react without panicking.
Some of us create magic walls to shield ourselves, while others predict the paths of the bullets and dodge them.
“Wha—?!”
As the elves recoil in surprise, it’s time for our counterattack.
Even Potimas seems taken aback by this development, judging by how his expression becomes fractionally darker.
That’s right—we know all about you.
How you elves use strange weapons called machines.
Because the Tenth Army Commander is none other than the master herself.
“Hmph!”
Sophia’s broadsword bears down on Potimas, who blocks it with his right arm.
I’m sure that arm is made out of some kind of machine or something, but Sophia’s sword cleaves through it easily.
“Tch.” Potimas clicks his tongue. “I have no choice. Anti-Technique Barrier—”
The elf leader’s words cut off mid-sentence.
Because his head and neck have abruptly been separated by the person who suddenly appeared behind him.
“…Would you mind not interrupting just when things are getting good?”
Sophia looks sulky that her opponent has been stolen from her.
But the culprit doesn’t respond, instead silently crushing Potimas’s severed head.
At around the same moment, the destruction of the elves’ forces is complete.
Zero escapees. Zero survivors. And zero casualties on our side.
As soon as I confirm this, I kneel.
“Mission complete, Master.”
The rest of the unit follows my example and kneels toward Master as well.
Only Sophia remains standing.
Master simply nods silently without sparing us a glance.
Our master, the Tenth Army Commander…Lady White.
If you were to ask where my life went off the rails, the answer would be simple.
The day that Sophia appeared at the academy.
From then on, everything was wrong.
Aside from undergoing strict training to ensure I wouldn’t bring shame on my family name, I lived a life without any difficulties.
Never had I experienced events so far out of my control.
My parents chose a fiancé for me, so I suppose my future was not for me to decide.
But my fiancé, Sir Wald, was a perfect gentleman, and it is the duty of any noble to live out whatever future has been chosen for them, so I wasn’t particularly unhappy with this arrangement.
In fact, I was rather fond of my fiancé, Sir Wald.
But those feelings were more akin to friendship than romance.
Or perhaps, since I knew I was engaged to marry him in the future, it was an almost familial affection.
At any rate, my feelings were not romantic.
And I believe it was the same for Wald.
But this was not an issue; even if we did not have a tumultuous love affair, I was confident we could build a family on the basis of mutual respect.
Until Wald fell in love with another woman and betrayed me.
Yes, you guessed it: The woman in question was none other than Sophia.
When she transferred into the academy, Sophia immediately captured everyone’s attention.
The high society of demons is a small world.
Since the overall population is so tiny, it stands to reason that the number of nobles is even tinier.
Naturally, I had met most of the other noble children long before we entered the academy.
Even if I didn’t know them personally, most were at least acquaintances or friends of friends, so I had a basic understanding of their character through word of mouth.
But Sophia was an exception.
Her origin was unknown, and no one had ever met her before.
The only thing we knew for certain was that she was staying in the mansion of Duke Phthalo before she came to the academy.
As such, the speculations ran wild: “Is she the illegitimate child of Duke Balto Phthalo?” “Is she the daughter of the previous Demon Lord who disappeared?” “Is she related to the current Demon Lord?”
Now that we know the truth, it’s obvious that none of those theories is correct, but at the time, no one knew how to approach the mysterious new transfer student.
So in a way, it was only natural that Sir Wald would be the first to approach her as a representative of the class, since he has the highest social standing in our year.
But Sophia turned out to be more exceptional than I expected, and since Sir Wald is quite competitive, I believe he soon forgot his original goal in establishing contact with her.
Yes, that’s right.
Despite her horrid personality, Sophia is quite gifted.
And while Sir Wald appears friendly, the truth is that he’s extremely prideful and competitive.
Since I’ve spent many years with him since a young age thanks to our betrothal, I know him quite well, but most are easily fooled by his appearance and flowery words.
Wald has a talent for building up his following by pretending to be nice while making it clear that he’s superior. He’ll casually mention his own talents in such a way that most come to believe I can’t beat this person, while also acting friendly so that they’ll think But he’s so nice!
Quite a character, I must say.
Although knowing that side of him is exactly why I couldn’t develop romantic feelings for him.
Still, Wald’s scheme assumes that he is in fact superior to the person he’s trying to impress.
He comes from a high-ranking noble family and makes a great deal of effort accordingly.
But Sophia outstripped him in every way.
Sir Wald, who has always been at the top of our class, lost to someone.
Naturally, this lit a fire in him.
It didn’t help that Sophia was obviously smirking and looking down her nose at him.
Yes, they’re quite a pair, all right.
From then on, Sir Wald’s one-sided battle began.
He started challenging Sophia whenever he got the chance and lost every time.
Whether it was test scores, sparring practice in our combat classes, or even dance lessons, Sir Wald fell short of Sophia in every category.
“You really are amazing, Ms. Sophia.”
He would smile lightly and compliment her, but I could tell that on the inside, his sense of rivalry only blazed even brighter.
I doubt anyone else noticed that somewhere along the line, his compliments became genuine.
Maybe even Wald himself didn’t realize it right away.
Wald had always come first in just about everything. I don’t think he’d ever had so much trouble winning at anything before.
On occasion, I didn’t hold back enough and bested him by accident, which always led him to work that much harder to come out on top again next time.
That’s the sort of person Sir Wald is.
I know that he constantly works hard to keep up his position of first place, so I’ve put in effort to stay in second place as well.
Hee-hee. As clever as Sir Wald is, he never noticed that I was carefully restraining myself to ensure he remained first, you know.
But I still respected Wald a fair amount for his work ethic and lofty ambitions.
I thought that together, perhaps we could help lead the demon race out of its decline.
We are high-ranking nobles, the leaders of the future.
We could not tolerate failure. We needed to always stand at the top.
But Sophia, who knows nothing of such struggles and difficulties, continued to win without mercy.
And Sir Wald, who has always constantly won and gained the admiration of the losers, began to admire the one who was constantly defeating him.
…Rather simpleminded logic, is it not?
Wald began to spend increasing amounts of his time and money on Sophia, and it only worsened as the years dragged on.
She was already beautiful when she first arrived, but her appearance only grew more beautiful and her aura somehow more bewitching.
Most of the male students had long since started serving her.
That wouldn’t be so bad if they were simply developing crushes on her.
It would certainly not be ideal if all the noble young men around our age fell in love with the same woman, but it wouldn’t be the first time boys were entranced by beauty.
As long as they eventually snapped out of it.
But the situation was far more serious than that.
Sophia had sunk her fangs into them.
There are few skills that can induce the Charmed status effect, but they most definitely exist.
Victims will begin to worship the person who charmed them.
And now most of the young men meant to lead the next generation of demons had been spellbound by one woman and obeyed her every command.
And that I certainly could not overlook.
Not only that, but when I say she sunk her teeth into them, I mean it literally.
As it turns out, Sophia is actually a vampire, the stuff of fairy tales.
At the rate she was going, I was genuinely concerned she could very well take over the entire demon race.
Fortunately, Sophia seems to have no such intentions and didn’t even appear to be consciously creating the Charmed effect.
But she was still dangerous, so I consulted with my father to find a way to deal with her.
Unfortunately, she caught wind of my plans.
I suppose I might have been in more of a panic than even I realized.
Sir Wald and the others turned on me, showering me in false accusations.
No, I suppose not all of them were false.
I really was planning to do away with Sophia if I could manage it.
Thus, I was chased out of the academy, and to make matters worse, my father declared that he was disowning me.
I will never forget his disinterested face when he told me so.
As I later learned, since Sophia is connected to the Demon Lord, Wald’s father and some of the other nobles came to the conclusion that I had to be cast out.
Sir Wald himself was behind this manipulation.
I have always deliberately held back to ensure that Sir Wald could have first place, so perhaps I was overestimating my own strength.
Deep down, I thought that if I went all out, I could do anything.
But before I could get rid of Sophia, Wald got rid of me instead.
If you were to consider this a contest, you could say I lost to Sir Wald.
This might’ve been the first time I gave it my all against Wald and still lost.
There was a time when I hoped that Sir Wald would become stronger so that I would no longer be able to defeat him even if I tried my hardest.
But this was hardly what I had hoped for.
Nor did I ever imagine that my defeat would result in my expulsion from high society…
Even if we were not in love, I thought we at least had a certain degree of trust in each other.
But I was betrayed by my fiancé, disowned by my family, and plunged into the depths of despair.
Fortunately, my father did not kick me out without a single coin to my name; he arranged for some money to take with me and a place to go.
Namely, the Tenth Army.
Nearly at the same time I was disowned, the Tenth Army changed hands from my father to its current commander, Lady White, and began recruiting troops.
My father knew Lady White, since she was his successor, and recommended me. She was kind enough to take me in, and that is how I became a soldier of the Tenth Army.
Ever since, I have served Lady White.
I feel nothing but gratitude toward her.
I was but a young girl at the time, so if she had not made a place for me, I am sure I would have died a dog’s death long ago even with the money my father gave me.
Moreover, Lady White never treated me like a mere child and always entrusted me with jobs and training.
Those were days of madness—erm, I mean hard work and bizarre, that is, unique training methods. At any rate, every moment was filled with…excitement.
Since I was too busy running around all the time to wallow in despair, I started feeling better before I knew it.
I don’t know if that was Master’s intention, but either way, I was able to make a complete mental and emotional recovery.
It probably helped that I got so painfully beaten up and broken down every day that being betrayed by my fiancé and kicked out of my family seemed to hardly compare.
But thanks to that, my stats got far higher than I could ever have imagined.
I learned that people can surpass their limits.
Before Lady White took me in, I believed I was training to the best of my ability as the daughter of a noble family, but I’ve since discovered through personal experience that while anyone can work hard, not just anyone can surpass their limits.
My fellow trainees, now fellow members of the Tenth Army, all gave up a part of themselves to become this strong.
Master calls it power-leveling.
The bonds connecting those of us who went through the same hell of power-leveling are very strong.
And through the course of serving as Master’s hands and feet in the field, we’ve learned some of the darkest secrets of this world.
As the daughter of a noble family, I thought my future was to help lead the demon race.
But those plans vanished in an instant, and now I walk a much weightier path on the heels of my master.
You never know where life might take you, I suppose.
Or when your ex-fiancé who ruined your life, as well as the vampire who prompted him to do so, might enlist in the Tenth Army alongside you.
“Sit.”
As Sophia frowns at Master for stealing her prey, Master says a single word.
Suddenly, Sophia is kneeling facedown on the ground.
“Nnngh…grrr!”
Sophia trembles with the effort of trying to stand, but instead, her forehead keeps pressing into the dirt.
I’m told this is a curse that Master placed on Sophia as a punishment that forces her to prostrate herself.
Master placed this curse on her on the very same day that I was disowned.
In other words, she did it for me!
…Or so I’d like to think, but in truth, it was more likely intended to teach Sophia some manners.
But for me, that curse feels like revenge.
So indulge me in saying this:
Serves her right!
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