Scarlet

Right after the first amongst the few changelings that transform back into their human forms leave their human skins, shocking the humans around us, I knock that changeling out and turn around while shouting, “Fire away!”

And the many Guardians that the general had prepared around us immediately attack the changelings I had previously pointed out, the majority of which are still in their human forms.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting more than one to change forms at my order. Having four of them change forms was a rather large surprise.

They also seemed to act differently from what I was expecting. Instead of devotion and awe when they transformed back, these changelings seemed to resist it at first and then let go of their transformation.

Almost as if I had somehow forced them magically to do it.

“Well, that would make sense,” Tar comments, making me blink in surprise before I rush to kill the remaining changelings, most of whom are trying to escape.

Why would it make sense?

“Well, the Demon King’s ability that lets him order any demon to do his bidding is a skill called Demon King’s Rule that gives him that Title, and I would be shocked if he didn’t etch it,” Tar answers, almost making me pause mid-kill, only for me to continue killing off the changelings again.

That’s… I didn’t think about that.

So what, does the etched skill give me a much weaker version of it?

“Probably,” Tar says right as I finish off the last changeling, leaving the storage hub in silence again.

It takes nearly an entire minute before one of the workers that had been pushed to the side of the room after being protected by a barrier speaks up, whispering, “What… what the hell?” And his whispered words immediately shatters the silence, leaving everyone else to begin speaking as well until the general raises his voice, shouting, “Attention!”

Then everyone goes dead silent again.

A few seconds pass as I walk over through the changeling corpses till I reach the one I knocked unconscious. Then I grab it by the neck and begin dragging it with me to the general.

“Her Highness came here to sniff out any of the changelings we had suspected were infiltrating the base,” the general begins, pausing only slightly when I toss the changeling up against the wall behind him before leaning against the wall myself with my arms crossed. “But we were worried that some of you might not believe her.” He looks around at the dead changelings. “So here we are.”

Silence fills the storage hub again. And after it stretches on for too long, I begin to feel bored and grab the changeling again while saying, “If no one’s gonna say anything, I’ll just take my leave.”

No one says anything. So I just begin to walk down the hall, only to pause as I open my terminal and send a message to Allen for the teleporter to come back. And he does right away, startling me for a second before I pass through the portal into Allen’s base again without another word to the general or anyone else here.

“Was that the only base holding supplies?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “Then bring me to the next one.”

This might take a while.

I glance at the changeling I’m dragging along with me. A changeling that the teleporter whose name I still don’t know completely ignored as if it weren’t even here.

“I’m starting to pity that demon,” Tar mutters, but I ignore him as I toss the changeling into the hallway and tell the teleporter, “Would you mind telling Allen to pick this guy up while I’m gone? He might make for good intel.”

The teleporter guy just nods his head and types something into his terminal. Then he opens another portal and we both walk through, leading to me ending up in another supply area. Albeit a smaller one this time.

Probably because the first one was the supply hub in the capital whereas this is not.

Well, time to deal with a bunch of changelings.

After several hours of clearing out supply hubs, I collapse onto my bed with a sigh of exhaustion.

All of the supply hubs were just like the first one, just with a smaller number of changelings in them. And I deal with each in the same way.

Unfortunately though, there were a couple hubs amongst them that had their military officer in charge replaced by a changeling. Which… made things messy. But since they were already suspected by the Guardians, they weren’t the ones contacted to meet me and deal with the problem alongside me.

It would’ve been nicer if I didn’t have to repeat the process each time, but it wasn’t like we could just let the people in the bases I cleared the changelings out of tell the other bases about what I’m doing. That would’ve warned the changelings too.

“It got you some EXP at least,” Tar points out, making me nod my head in agreement.

I’m still surprised there were so many adult changelings at Class IV. From what Earth used to know, there shouldn’t have been any Class IV changelings. Meaning the demons hid that very well.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Gramps actually fed the Knights false information about that before they came back to Earth.

“He probably did,” Tar mutters while appearing as I roll over, letting him lie down on my chest.

I wonder how Amelia feels about that? Probably not happy.

Tar doesn’t say anything, making me glance down to find that he’s already fallen asleep.

Is it just me, or was he more tired than I was?

Tar obviously doesn’t respond.

I watch the tanuki for a few seconds before looking up at the ceiling again.

Well, now that the changelings have been cleared up from the supply hubs, the supply problem should be gone. At least until they try to replace those changelings.

Although there’s always the chance that one of the changelings happened to be missing, but I smelled the entire city around each of the supply hubs for changelings and didn’t find any more. And while that isn’t exactly the most accurate as my senses get worse the further away the thing I’m smelling is, not to mention the other distractions amongst them, I can at least hope the problem is temporarily gone.

It should at least be significantly reduced now.

Which means it’s time to go back to the frontlines again.

I can’t help but feel like I’m forgetting something though.

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