It was a terrible day for the knight squire Lucas, a young man that had enlisted in the Golden Knight Order through his connections thanks to his nobility as a member of a small noble house. Since he was a child that he always dreamed about being a knight.
When he acquired the [Squire] Talent at the age of 5, his future was more than set, and he worked hard every day to acquire the skills of a knight. However, because the requirements to increase the power of a person was not only resources but also slaying monsters and demons, his growth was greatly stopped due to the overprotective nature of his parents.
Being born with the Silver Shelled Snail Spirit, which was not good at fighting but was a rather defensive spirit made him put even more effort into his training.
When he finally reached the age of 12, he enlisted in the knight academy, where he was taught the basics and managed to learn Swordsmanship and Shields Manship, the ability of his snail allowed it to transform into a big shield that could help him at defending in battle, but it was very heavy and his small frame made it hard to carry such a big creature around.
However, due to this efforts, at the age of 15 he was finally given a quest alongside his group of knights, commanded by General Clancy, the group moved into a nameless village with over a thousand people and a few nobles. The mission was simple, exterminate the demons overrunning the forest surrounding the village.
The duke was recently given a report that an Oni was found and defeated by the efforts of many brave hunters, thankfully with none of them dying. The knights felt pumped up, especially because they were all newbies and needed to gather more experience at defeating demons, the so-called "enemies of humanity".
After having heard the horrors that demons were capable of doing after learning what they did with the nearby nation of Silvertide, Lucas was filled with the conviction of stopping them before a new Demon Lord were to be born from this new breeding nest of fiends.
Things the first days went well, small groups went into the forest and slain the Imps scattered about, sometimes big groups of Imps would show up, but they were able to fend them off with minimum damage. They underestimated them, those that managed to escape came back with more Imps, they learned their patterns, their strategies, and how they fought.
Each day that the knights came to slay more demons, they were surprised by traps and tricks, until one day, they learned that Imps… were not as simple as goblins or other "intelligent" monsters they had defeated in the past.
Demons are malicious by nature, tricksters, schemers, and above all, they valued each other highly, like humans do. Each lose was taken painfully, and their resentment drove them to seek ways to defeat foes they couldn't defeat normally. Despite being weak, they had brains and numbers over the knights, they had to find ways, to abuse their environment and then… to strike them all down!
It was only midday when they went into another hunting session led by General Clancy, but this time things went badly. Using the same route they always used, the knights were suddenly ambushed by several traps, pitfalls leading to holes filled with spears, a handful of them died agonizingly through this way, the general included.
General Clancy, who taught Lucas all he knew died so suddenly that the young squire was still processing his lost.
But he had no time to do so, right after that, another group of Imps showed up after they managed to fend off the one that ambushed them, mounting Gray Wolves and led by a demon they had never seen before mounting a giant wild boar, the knights were chased deep into the forest, going up into a nearby mountain, desperately calling for help but receiving no signals of anybody coming for them.
As they were young and unexperienced, one by one, they began to fall by the traps and tricks of the Imps, until only seven of them ended surviving, the seven of them were chased and then… ultimately surrounded. Filled with fear in their young and unexperienced hearts, the knights desperately fought.
In just a few minutes, two of them died gruesomely, and Lucas himself, out of mana, was unable to fight at 100% his strength, with his snail already having died some time ago, it would take a long time for his spirit to be capable of being summoned again. Left desperate and without much to do against these terrible odds, he started to regret having become a knight.
It was a terrifying job, he should had listened to his father who ran a store in the capital, he should had just studied to become a merchant, even without a merchant-related talent, inheriting his father's knowledge and the store would be more than enough…
"I should had listened to my father…"
However, as the five surviving knights were already drowning in despair, a mysterious wolf howl shook their hearts, filling them with even more fear, so fearful was his heart that he felt completely paralyzed.
The knights saw a group of wild black wolves entering the battle out of nowhere. At first, they believed they came for them, but it was the opposite.
The black wolves began ravaging the Imps and the Gray Wolves, biting their necks savagely by abusing their swifter movements and stronger jaws alongside bigger sizes, each black wolf was around double the size of a gray wolf, the imps and their weapons were also futile, the wolves showcased incredible intelligence and coordinate, evading lethal attacks, or taking them in non-lethal areas of their bodies, tearing apart their foes mercilessly.
And leading such a big pack of black wolves there was two… children, wearing black masks and mounting the bigger of all the black wolves, at their side, three medium-sized wild boars being mounted by tiny walking mushrooms also showed up.
"What on earth is happening…?"
Lucas couldn't help but wonder if he was dreaming.