More than an hour of relentless hacking through the forest had passed, and exhaustion began to take its toll on the four Heroes. Mila, the violet glow in her eyes noticeably dimming, shouted toward her leader:
"Korgath! My mana won't last much longer! The curses and healing are draining me to my limit!"
Vrak, wiping sweat from his green forehead, practically insisted on a retreat as he saw his fireballs merely heating the bones of the undead rather than destroying them.
"My skills are useless against these throngs!" he snarled in frustration. "We have to pull back!"
Korgath, however, only grit his teeth harder, pointing a gnarled finger toward a stone wall emerging from between the trees.
"Look! We're almost there!" he roared, refusing to entertain the thought of failure. "This King's strength must lie solely in the number of these servants. He must be as weak as a babe himself if he hides behind a pile of bones! Once we get in there, we'll kill him in seconds!"
Despite her exhaustion, Mila grit her teeth and followed, and the rest, driven by his authority, had no choice. After slaughtering yet another wave of bone-walkers, they reached the barrier itself. Korgath raised his wolf-bone club and bellowed:
"[SKULL CRUSHER]!"
The powerful impact was too much for the stone wall; it buckled and cracked with a roar, creating a breach through which the Heroes and the three surviving ordinary goblins burst inside. The first thing they saw was a terrifying building erected entirely from bones - the BONE HOUSE. It emanated a dark aura, and new ranks of skeletons continued to pour from its interior. The shock on the Heroes' faces quickly gave way to pure hatred as they realized this building was the source of their torment.
At the same time, observing from above, Lilith felt a surge of pure rage.
"What the hell did I build that wall for if it couldn't withstand even a single attack?!" she hissed, looking at the ruined section of her defenses. "Lysandra, we have to strike now, before they destroy my BONE HOUSE!"
Lysandra nodded with icy calm.
"We attack from the sky at full speed," she commanded. "Mina, you and I focus on that goblin woman. We must eliminate her immediately. Lilith, you take the one who turns to stone by surprise before he can activate his skin over his whole body. Then we'll leave the skeletons to deal with the pyromaniac, and the three of us will corner their leader."
Mina and Lilith nodded in silence. The three succubi beat their wings violently, soaring high into the sky, only to plummet a moment later at gargantuan speed toward the unsuspecting invaders.
***
The roar of the breaking wall was still ringing in their ears as the four Heroes stormed the courtyard, trampling the remains of their own army. Before them rose the BONE HOUSE - a macabre construction of bone that pulsed with darkness and spat out more skeletons.
Korgath, wielding his giant wolf-bone club, laughed raspily, crushing the skull of an oncoming undead with a single blow. "Hehe! Look at this!" he threw out contemptuously, surveying the modest territory. "So this is where that cowardly pig produces his toys? Pathetic!"
Grul, whose arms still shimmered with the grey light of [TITAN SHELL], spat on the ground. "Half a week gathering bones just to put up this chicken coop?" he mocked, feeling a surge of pure arrogance. "The Demon King must be shaking with fear inside that pile of trash!"
Vrak, though tired, bared his teeth in a malicious grin, cooking up another fireball. Only Mila stood slightly back, breathing heavily. Her eyes, though weary from healing her companions, nervously swept the surroundings. A feeling of unease choked her throat. "Calm down!" she shouted, her voice trembling. "Something is wrong here. Why isn't he defending himself in person? This is too easy!"
Korgath looked at her with superiority, dismissing her rational fears. "Shut up, Mila! You're just exhausted," he growled, before turning toward the building and bellowing at the top of his lungs: "Hey, Demon King! Stop hiding! You can't run! If you come out now, I promise you a quick death!"
In response, only two more skeletons emerged from the building. Grul laughed, taking a confident step forward. "This is pure desperation. Boss, let me drag him out by those horns," he said with a smile, certain of his invulnerability to blows.
Suddenly, Mila noticed movement in the air. Something was hurtling down from above at gargantuan speed, straight toward Grul. "Watch out!" she shrieked in terror, wanting to rush to his aid, but her body suddenly refused to obey.
She looked down and stiffened in shock. A strange, violet vine had shot out of the ground, tightening around her ankle with inhuman strength and pinning her in place. Korgath turned over his shoulder, losing patience. "Mila, stop hysterics, it's just - "
He didn't get to finish. A volley of ice spikes, long and sharp as spears, plummeted from the sky. Mila couldn't evade the attack, trapped by the plant. The first spike pierced her shoulder, pinning her to the ground; the second, with a drastic squelch, impaled her chest through and through; and the third shattered her hip. Her eyes opened wide in one final, silent scream of agony as life fled her small, goblin-like body.
Two demonic silhouettes landed from the air right next to the dead Mila. One was small and predatory, the other taller, emanating an icy chill.
Before Korgath could issue any command, he heard a muffled gurgle. He spun violently toward Grul and froze. Grul, their most powerful defender, was clutching his throat, but blood was geysering from between his stony fingers. Standing behind him was Lilith in her demonic form.
She looked terrifying and beautiful at once. Her amaranth armor gleamed in the firelight, her powerful, leathery wings were spread wide, and her red eyes burned with hatred for every bit of lost gold.
Her long, black talons had pierced Grul's thick neck through and through, tearing the artery and spine before he could even think to apply his stone skin to his whole body. Grul slumped to his knees, and Lilith withdrew her talons from his body with a sickening squelch, looking Korgath straight in the face.
Korgath stood rooted to the spot, his wolf-bone club - which until now had seemed a symbol of invincible power - trembling in his green, sweaty palms. In just a few heartbeats, his elaborate plan of conquest lay in ruins, and two companions he had considered the pillars of his future power had died in a manner so sudden and drastic that his mind refused to accept this reality.
Lilith stood over Grul's cooling body, slowly withdrawing her bloodied black talons from his torn neck. She looked at Korgath, pure, dark pride mixed with deep contempt burning in her scarlet irises.
"'Fat pig,' was it?" Her voice was low, velvety, yet carrying a promise of agony. "'Weak as a babe'? Forgive me for not meeting your expectations of a 'quick death.' But since you're already here, I'll gladly recover every coin I wasted on those skeletons because of your arrogance."
Korgath took a step back, his breathing becoming ragged. He stared at her with mounting madness in his eyes. "You... you... you are the Demon King?!" he choked out, his voice breaking into a squeak.
In his imagination, the Demon King of this valley was supposed to be an aged lich, a rotting necromancer hidden behind a pile of bones - a being that could be crushed with brute physical force. Instead, before him stood a figure that emanated majesty and lethal beauty.
In the eyes of the terrified goblin, Lilith looked like the embodiment of the darkest myths. Her skin had an unnatural, marbled-violet hue, and her body, with provocatively feminine curves, was encased in natural armor of hard, amaranth scales. Korgath saw her powerful, purple wings with a wingspan of several meters slowly rippling behind her back, casting a gargantuan shadow over him. Magnificent, curved black horns grew from her forehead, giving her face a predatory, ruthless expression.
What terrified him most, however, were her hands. Ten hard, sharp talons, like surgical scalpels, shimmered with his friend's blood. Her right arm, entirely covered in thick, matte scales resembling dragon armor, looked like a tool created solely for rending steel and flesh.
"This... this isn't some necromancer..." Korgath babbled, feeling his legs buckle at the sight of her powerful wings and scarlet eyes that seemed to burn through his soul. "This is a real demon..."
Lilith smiled, revealing rows of white teeth. She relished his fear. Every second of his terror was compensation for the destroyed wall and the gold spent on respawning skeletons.
The moment Grul's blood was still dripping from her talons, two golden notifications flared before Lilith's eyes, cutting through the night's gloom:
[YOU HAVE KILLED A GOBLIN-HERO. HERO SOUL +1!]
[LYSANDRA HAS KILLED A GOBLIN-HERO. HERO SOUL +1! SKILL STONE +1!]
Lilith looked at these words with fascination.
"Souls..." she whispered, her voice now velvety and deep, carrying a note of dark satisfaction. "It seems I really am a succubus who drains the souls of those who cross my path."
She looked at Korgath, but there was no longer just hatred for lost gold in her gaze. Now she looked at him as a valuable resource. She knew this terrified goblin before her wasn't just an enemy - he was another step on her path to power, the fuel that would make her a true Monarch.
Korgath, clutching his wolf-bone club, shook so hard his teeth chattered. He saw before him not a woman, but a majestic predator with gargantuan purple wings and amaranth armor.
"Let's not waste any more of my time or money," Lilith said, her lips curving into a predatory smile. "Your soul will be the perfect restitution for that destroyed wall."
With a powerful lash of her purple wings, which generated a gust that threw back dust and goblin remains, Lilith shot forward. She flew low to the ground, slicing the air at gargantuan speed, her black talons shimmering in the firelight, ready to deprive Korgath of his life in a split second and seize what was most precious within him.