Tale Of A Knight

That forest was named the Forest of the Dead.

Within the Forest of the Dead, countless monsters strived.

The human beings that have perished near the forest would somehow rise and be converted into undead beings due to the aura the forest radiated.

But the scariest rumor about the forest was about the demon that has made this forest her home.

Rumors about her bloodl.u.s.t could not have been more exaggerated.

They say that when the full moon is up in the sky, she would attack any human being that is nearby, draining their blood into a bowl, slice their meat up into countless tiny pieces, and uses what is left to create monstrosities by fusing their bones together.

But fortunately, aside from the forest being her home, the other rumors were a complete bogus stemming from misunderstandings.

One time, she simply happened to be picking up bones of the undead she destroyed in order to let it rest in peace, but the human that ended up seeing her got the completely wrong idea, which ended up escalating into strange rumors.

In reality, the demon that lived her was a simple botanist, specializing in medicine that she extracted from the rare plants.

Strangely enough, she wasn"t the one raising the dead, but the one who was actively destroying them to prevent them from harming the city of Loren.

But there were simply too many undead being sp.a.w.ned.

Before she came to live in this forest, it was a popular place for people to come and commit suicide.

She estimated that several million people have ended their lives over the span of a century, if not much more.

To make the matters worse, the forest itself grew on top of what used to be a gigantic battlefield, where countless battles have occurred.

With each battle, more and more corpses ended up resting underneath the soil, one way or another.

If the records are right, there are around half a billion corpses within the Forest of the Dead, so many have acc.u.mulated after several centuries filled with conflicts.

While she destroyed many undead, some would inevitably end up entering the city. With so many undead being sp.a.w.ned, she destroyed as many as she could.

But a single demon could only do so much.

Exterminating undead had become something that she did nearly every day, but unfortunately, more sp.a.w.ned after each time.

If it were not for her efforts, the city of Loren would surely have turned into a city of undead by now.

Strangely enough, the city of Loren is infamous for how many monster problems it faces, even without the Forest of the Dead nearby, the undead sp.a.w.ned from within the city as well, though nowhere near the amount that Forest of Dead produces.

Undead were not the only monsters that City of Loren was concerned with.

For a while now, there was an uncontrollable population growth of monsters.

With monsters, unless they are exterminated completely, they could always come back with higher numbers.

There was an infamous disaster when an adventurer spared ten viverns after killing almost all of their population.

Within two years, the number of viverns rose from ten to thousand, and it kept growing. This is known as one of the biggest blunders made by adventurers up until this day.

Some monsters possessed the ability to sp.a.w.n other monsters, and after a time the sp.a.w.ned monsters would become just as powerful as their makers.

If monster hybrids between different types of monsters were created, they would be even more dangerous than non-hybrids.

By now, the only reason City of Loren is known as the City of Adventuring is because it is also known as the City of Monsters.

That"s just how big of a problem this was.

And the adventurer"s guild was desperate enough to hire anyone capable enough to handle the monsters.

Depending on the level of monster difficulty, the guild would pay the adventurer for each monster slain.

Paying the adventurers was not an issue, a lot of city"s finances revolved around adventurers, with the corpses of monsters being used for different means.

Adventurer"s guild actually profited from all the monsters that are slain and are bought by it, allowing them to sell monster parts for a high price.

The biggest issue was the fact that many adventurers go to the front lines and never come back.

Even the so called low level monsters such as goblins were highly dangerous because they never operated alone.

Adventurers would be up against an entire nest of goblins, and if they are female adventurers, it would end disastrously, with the captured females being used to expand goblin population.

And goblins were not even the biggest concern.

There were countless other monsters roaming the city.

During the night, the city and the villages within it were in most danger as the most of the monsters were nocturnal creatures.

One of the reasons Sword Lord allowed his apprentice to become an adventure is because this city has so many monsters, his apprentice would gain much needed practical experience by becoming an adventurer.

With so many monsters roaming the city, anyone could gain abundance of experience, provided that they survive.

Due to how many monsters are within the city, people try to avoid the Forest of the Dead, more scared from demon than the undead, which they suspected were animated by the demon.

Hilariously, the city is scared of the demon of the forest when she is the one thing preventing the city from becoming a zombie paradise.

With her territory covered in barrier that repelled human beings, she went out for a walk.

Human beings within the city would not welcome her, and that was fine. Demon kind was an age old enemy of humanity after all.

But to her, being able to live a peaceful life in this forest was enough.

As a way of showing her grat.i.tude to the ungrateful human beings, she even made sure that the most of the undead sp.a.w.ned within the forest did not make it into the city.

Using her magic she would actively destroy the undead, but sooner or later, more would sp.a.w.n, requiring her to do it again and again.

But that was a low price to be left in peace.

Due to how much humans fear the forest, she had a safe place to live in, strangely enough.

Otherwise, countless high ranking adventurers would already be after her head.

Walking through her territory, she discovered a body that was lying nearby.

It was clutching a sword in its left hand.

"An undead? How did it get past the barrier?"

As she neared it, preparing her Horn Magic to destroy it on the spot, she noticed that the body was breathing.

"Not an undead, but a living person."

Deactivating the destructive beam that was forming between her horns, she approached the person, looking closely at what race this person could belong to.

He was lying face down, making her unable to see his head.

"A human being? But my barrier should have prevented him from entering. Did they find a way to breach my barrier?" she was a little alarmed at the notion that humans in the city of Loren may come in the future to exterminate her.

But as soon as she rolled the person on his back, she sighed in relief.

A single horn adorned his forehead. And instead of a man, he looked more like a teenage boy.

"A demon kin. So that is how he was able to enter through my barrier. That explains a lot." Her barrier could not repel demons.

She checked his pulse.

"His vitals seem to be stable, he just exhausted his body. Some medicinal tea and herbs, and he should be back on his feet in no time."

Lifting the unconscious boy in her arms, she took him to her hut.

"It has been a while since I have had a guest, and Zenjuro no longer seems to want to visit. I never thought I would find a living demon inside the forest, in my territory of all places…"

Due to the fact that demons are widely hated, many are in hiding, while others have been nearly completely exterminated, so within the Tazak Kingdom, while the monsters were a common sight, finding demons was a quite a rare treat.

This boy was the first demon she saw in quite a while.