This is a story that took place perhaps eight years ago, around three years before Astaroth turned the wilderness of Eskaria into a nation.

Long before Luciel, Goddess of Light, started summoning Heroes, the world was broken into three realms. The demonic realm, Gehenna, the mortal realm, Atlas, and the heavenly realm, Akasha.

In Akasha, split into several divine realms, lived the goddesses.

In Atlas lived the mortal creatures. Broadly speaking, the sentient folk were split between ‘people’—humans, dwarves, the like—and ‘demons’. Though there was often conflict, this was just as often between different races of people as it was between people and monsters, or even monsters and other monsters. In a sense, monsters and non-monsters were roughly equal.

In Gehenna lived the most fiendish of monsters. Most of them fell under the umbrella term ‘Devil’, used to refer to monsters capable of sustaining themselves on mana and mana alone—in other words, manavores.

Oftentimes, these monsters lived in groups or tribes.

One such tribe was the Bral’goch tribe.

Like many other tribes of humanoid Devils, the Bral’goch tribe had a shaman. This shaman, in turn, had a daughter, whose name was Lilith.

This story will be focused on her.

Her father—the shaman in question—had, from a young age, taught Lilith various spells and rituals she would need to succeed his position. As a result, on top of the naturally-learned [Devil Magic], she gained the skills [Hell Magic] and [Devil Ritualism].

She was an only child—no brothers, no sisters. She didn’t particularly mind this or anything, but still, occasionally, she felt as though it might have been nice to have… an older sibling, perhaps. Some manner of other family.

This was the result of the personalities of her father and mother. Her father was reliable, and a good teacher, but terribly lacking in the interpersonal department, to the point where he’d never once ‘won’ an argument with his wife.

Her mother, meanwhile, though very loving, was absent often, given she was a huntress. Of course, when she was around, she showed unbelievable amounts of love to both Lilith and her father—though she’d never been all that lady-like.

This unbalanced upbringing lead to an unbalanced child. For example, she never really learned manners.

In addition, it lead to cravings within Lilith. Cravings for a person to teach her those manners, a person to reproach her faults and praise her accomplishments, a person to quarrel with over nothing, only to later laugh it off as the nothing it had been the whole time.

In her early youth—that is, when she was only around twenty years old—there was a human man, eyes black as ebony, who would occasionally come visit and talk to the chief. He wielded powerful magic, and Lilith looked up to him—he, in turn, was fond of children, so he often played with her. It was from this man that Lilith learned of the faith of Lady Entropy.

For reference’s sake, when Astaroth founded the nation of Eskaria, Lilith was around 1.300 years old.

In any case, one day, without warning, this man stopped coming.

Despite Lilith’s wishes and the man’s sudden disappearance, it could not be said that she was unhappy. Eventually, she evolved into a 6th grade Devil Shaman herself and took over her father’s position.

For quite a while, she maintained this position, and she was rather skilled at it, to the point where the chief often praised her on her work.

This is the story of a randomly occurring day, a number of years after Luciel started summoning Heroes from another world.

Lilith slowly sat up, followed by a stretch and a lazy yawn, as she woke up.

After a few minutes of doing approximately nothing, she got off her bed, got dressed in a Devil Shaman’s typical outfit and headed to the living room with slow, groggy steps, where she found her father.

“Yo, dad.”

“Ah, good morning. Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough, I guess.” Though she opened her mouth to say more, she was interrupted by the house’s front door, opening with quite an impact.

With a few steps, the culprit was in the living room. “Lady Lilith, you have to help!” the devil said, desperation marking his face. He was just a regular Devil Hunter, but Lilith recognised him as one of several Devils in the tribe who had once tried to court Lilith, aiming for her body.

As though by instinct, a frown took over her features, like that of a person looking at a pile of garbage.

“Can it wait? I just woke up,” she said, despite the fact that the time was approaching noon. She didn’t try in the slightest to hide how little she liked the Devil in front of her.

The Devil shrunk back a little, but soon got over Lilith’s scowl and stepped forwards once more, and then proceeded to kowtow on the spot, pressing his forehead to the ground with fervour. “Please! It’s an emergency!”

“Grhk, this is…”

Somehow, Lilith was able to prevent herself from vomiting, though it required her to lift her hand up to her mouth.

“Please help!” the Devil pleaded once more, putting his hands in front of his chest.

“Alright, fine, I got it, leave it t’ me.” Barely, Lilith managed to hide the distaste in her voice.

In front of her laid the village of the Bral’goch tribe, normally a peaceful hamlet. Yet, in its current state, there was no one who would be so insensitive as to call it “peaceful” or “lively”.

Scattered across the streets lay the bodies of the village’s inhabitants. Although without a doubt, none of them were dead—if a Devil was killed, they would return to Gehenna, and these Devils were already in Gehenna, so essentially immortal—they were gravely wounded, many of them seemed to be in great pain, and the others had no doubt fainted.

There was no apparent culprit, but it was certain that there had been no small amount of combat.

Lilith stretched her body once more and produced a paper talisman from some pocket before promptly chanting a spell. With her index finger, she traced the symbols on the talisman, and then she voiced out the spell’s name.

“[Ritual of Restoration]!”

The talisman went up in flames, and with it disappeared the wounds on the Devils in a fair area around Lilith. As far as healing spells go, this wasn’t the fastest or most practical, but rituals consumed little mana for strong effects.

Lilith kneeled down at the side of one of the Devils, peering into his face with concern in her eyes. “ ‘Ey. You alright?”

“Thanks to you, lady Lilith.”

“Right, right, tha’s good. What happened ‘ere? Can ya tell me?”

“A human did this. Called himself a ‘Hero’, I think? He didn’t save anyone. He just attacked and attacked… Damn, if only I’d had a sword…”

“A human? What’d he look like?”

“Golden hair, golden eyes, terrible bedhead… Ah, and he kept going on about things called ‘Ar pee gees’ and ‘beat-uhm-ups’?”

“Gold? There aren’t any goddesses with that colour, but humans don’t have that colour naturally…”

Lilith fell into thought, mumbling to herself as she closed her eyes. Soon, however, she found herself interrupted by a voice she didn’t recognise.

“Huh? Didn’t I pass by this area already?”

Lilith turned her attention to the male, unfamiliar voice, and locked eyes with what must have been the human in question. Malevolent golden eyes, a twisted grin and, as described, a terrible bedhead.

She recognised the hand gesture he made, and shuddered at the unpleasant sensation of the unfamiliar man using [Appraisal] on her.

“A village this small, ‘n it has a Shaman? I guess that’s what you’d expect of Gehenna… Well, maybe the existence of a fifth-grade monster will make this a little more exciting.”

“Ah,” Lilith said with a twitch of her eye. “So you’re the one who did this.”

“Yes!” A loud ‘clang’ resounded through the village as he struck his chestplate with his gauntleted hand. “It was I, the Barrier Hero, Yxon!”

“Some ‘Hero’ you are, going around attacking innocent people.”

“What are you saying? This is simply Lady Luciel’s divine providence!”

“Luciel? Who the fuck izzat?” Lilith narrowed her eyes at the name she did not recognise.

The answer did not come from this Yxon, but instead from a female voice, which Lilith also did not recognise. “Naturally, Lady Luciel is our most honourable Goddess of Light, praise be to her.”

The voice’s source rounded a nearby corner, revealing herself a woman, golden-eyed and golden-haired. Unlike Yxon’s full-body armour, she was wrapped in sisterly garb—not that Lilith would have recognised it.

“Goddess of… Light? Was there a goddess like that…?”

“Enough talking, you’re just a mob, anyway!” Yxon said, clutching his sword. “That said, even if I hurt them, you’ll patch them right up, and I can’t kill any Devils in here for some reason…”

It seemed he was unaware of one of the defining characteristics of Gehenna.

“Then, I guess I’ll just seal ‘em, instead.”

He planted his fist firmly in the nearest Devil’s gut and activated some skill Lilith didn’t recognise.

And the next moment, that Devil stopped moving in mid-air.

Lilith blinked, mild surprise blotting out the other various emotions swirling around within her.

“Ahahahaha! How do you like that?!” It seemed Yxon was gaining some perverse euphoria of the action, and he soon repeated it, again and again, without giving the Devils time to react—most of them were unconscious, after all.

“Stop…”

“Hm?” Yxon turned to Lilith. “What, did you say something, shaman?”

“I said, that’s enough!”

«You have evolved into the ‘Grand’-grade species Berserker Devil. Physical parameters will increase drastically. Magical and spiritual parameters will increase slightly. Reasoning and mental parameters will deteriorate.»

Lilith, of course, was in no state of mind to listen to some stupid announcement.

The whites of her eyes had gone red, and her face was warped into a scowl so frightening it’d even scare her father—in other words, a picture-perfect Berserker Devil.

Yxon blinked and used [Appraisal] once more. “Sixth-grade… this could actually be a little problem.”

In response to his words, the sisterly woman walked up to him, placed a hand on his shoulder and muttered something, following which he was wrapped in a warm, gentle golden light. She had likely used a skill. Afterwards, she stepped back once more.

Yxon flexed his free hand a few times before raising his gaze once more, looking straight at Lilith.

She didn’t even bother to speak as she growled and glared. Like a wild beast, she leapt to a rooftop with a single jump, and activated three spells in the duration of that jump.

Yxon blocked them with a quick Golden Magic Guard.

“Tch.” Lilith growled once more, and made the decision to focus on spellcasting rather than moving. Thus, she managed to cast at least ten spells in two seconds—if one equates mathematical skill to magical skill, that’s the equivalent of solving twenty relatively simple equations in the same amount of time—yet they could not penetrate the various Magic Guards Yxon erected.

Yxon nodded to himself. “Figures a monster called a Berserker Devil wouldn’t have any sense of tactics.” Of course, this meant he was completely disregarding his own abilities, which were cheat-like as they were and further enhanced by the sisterly woman. “Still, though… A spontaneous evolution caused by emotion, huh? Some event.”

He kicked himself off the ground, launching himself in Lilith’s direction, and performed an entirely unnecessary somersault before lunging his sword at her, his Magic Guards falling to pieces.

Because of that somersault, however, Lilith was able to jump back and dodge.

In such a manner, with blocked spells on one side and needlessly showy assaults on the other, the battle continued for far, far longer than could be considered at all necessary. After a while, it became clear that the effects of fatigue were much more present on Lilith than on Yxon.

“Grr…” she growled, breathing heavily and swaying left to right. Her face was a paler purple than it had ever been, and the markings on it glowed with mana so dense it was practically visible to the naked eye.

Yxon panted, only a little less heavily than Lilith, his face flushed red and his eyes unfocused. Despite this, his grip on his sword had only strengthened as the battle went on, and he carried not a single wound on his face, in contrast with Lilith, who was in a state where it wouldn’t be odd to call her “covered in wounds”.

“Do you see… now?!” Yxon asked, pointing his sword at Lilith. It seemed he could still pull from some mysterious place the energy to perform dramatic threats. “There’s no way… you can win!”

At some point, the sisterly woman had gotten behind him, and she appeared to be using a variety of skills to recover his fatigue.

And yet, despite these circumstances, Lilith could not bring herself to stop fighting. Her instincts screamed at her to flee, to run as far as she could, that she would die if she stayed here, but she found herself unable to do anything but keep attacking.

It only happened the moment she was about to fire what would likely have been her final spell.

“Stop this at once, before I make you,” a voice resounded, powerful, majestic, demonic.

The source of the voice was a figure, painted as a silhouette against the purple, setting sun. The only details that could be made out were that he was a man with pointed ears, some manner of crown, a cape, large wings and at least shoulder-length hair.

“An… acquaintance?” Yxon asked, turning to Lilith.

Lilith had no words, and simply shook her head.

As the man approached, more details became clear—some manner of authoritarian uniform, dark grey hair, dark red gloves and a pair of golden rings…

Both Heroes, from this distance, could see his eyes, as well—black, and deep as an abyss.

Yet to Lilith, only his right eye was such—the gentle, comforting black of the goddess she worshipped, and thus, a sign of hope. His left eye was the same as the ‘Heroes’ eyes—in other words, golden, unfamiliar and aggressive.

Though Lilith couldn’t quite place it, this man seemed oddly familiar.

After a while, she managed to gather the energy to speak. “The fuck are you?!”

Yxon, too, seemed rather interested. “Indeed, who are you? A hidden boss?” His fatigue seemed to have all but disappeared.

The man shook his head. “I hate to tell you I am no such thing. After all, from my point of view, it is I who is the protagonist.”

Lilith, though confused by the unfamiliar vocabulary, decided to ask a question of her own. “So what, then? If you ain’t his enemy, then are ya here to fight me, too? Get in the damn line.”

He shook his head once more. “Even if I waited for this battle to end, there would be nothing for me to fight.”

“You little-!” Lilith shouted out, rushing out at the man.

He stopped her with one hand. Then he pulled her close.

“I will be saving you,” he declared, “so I would appreciate it if you did not resist. After all, you cannot win this battle as you are now. As I am right now, even I could not defeat the two of them at once, after all.” He shook his head, then sneered. “So as your future king, I declare here and now, in the name of Lady Entropy: in the future, I shall grant you your revenge.”

Without giving her—or the Heroes, for that matter, who had been paralysed due to the magnitude of his magical aura—a chance to respond, he picked her up under his arm and leapt away. If one was willing to ignore the massive, towering magical gate he was heading towards, they might think he was fleeing.

Well, that said, the gate’s presence essentially confirmed that this was the intended plan from the start.

«You have been rescued from a certain-death situation by Demon Lord Astaroth. Due to his [Saviour] skill, you will forcibly calm down, and your mental resistance will increase.»

«Because you have become mentally composed, you no longer meet the conditions to be a ‘Grand’-grade Berserker Devil. You will revert to a ‘Greater’-grade Devil Shaman. The changes to your parameters will revert.»

“If yer gonna save me, at least tell me yer name.”

“I am the Demon Lord, Astaroth. Remember it well.”

“Lilith Bral… Nah, just Lilith. Nice to meetcha, uh… Yer Majesty?”

“ ‘Your Grace’. That said, call me what you will.”

“Gotcha.”

Like this, the Devil girl had her first(?) encounter with the Demon Lord she would later come to serve.