Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 18: What Are The Minotaurs Protecting?

"A force for evil, how could they call me such a petty thing?" Admiring her nails atop a mountain of corpses, the demi-human minotaur queen chuckled to herself. Entranced by her beauty, she couldn't take her eyes off of her own brownish-red skin.

Adorned with the shiniest breastplates and a lush tunic taken off of dead adventurers, she spent her time musing over her own future. To be the lord of all monsters, not just minotaurs, she hoped not to be one of the demon lord's army, but the demon lord herself by trampling everything that stood in her path.

'Even my mother couldn't stop me, what chance do these squishy humans have?' Swiftly shifting her gaze from herself to the crown carved from her own mother's head, she picked it off the armrest made of human bones and brought it in front of her face. Hollowed at the top with the jaws missing, the crown was embedded with rubies as red as her skin.

"I resent you from the bottom of my heart, but had you not raped a human perhaps I would've never been born," with a smile, she placed the crown on her head right between her protruding horns.

Leaning back onto the throne, she looked around her room decorated with her sisters' corpses. Skinned to the bones and pinned to the wall, the entirety of the place was drowned in a pool of blood and guts. And yet, not repulsed but finding glee at the sight, she laughed out loud while dreaming of expanding her conquest.

'Athenia, was it? Perhaps time for my army to march through that putrid town!' Grinning eye to eye, she slapped herself on the knee as if the deaths of countless humans would be a mere joke. But what could you expect from a monster who'd slaughtered every female in her clan just so she could reign as the only queen for the male minotaurs.

"And if I like a human maybe it would finally be time to birth many more like myself!" Being the only demi-human minotaur, she'd seen what her species were lacking. Intelligence, something that had been the doom of every prospecting queen who stood before her.

Tall as a tower the males were the size of a dozen humans, but for that mass, they sacrificed intelligence. The women were much shorter, yet their minds were sharp enough to keep the men in check, both through their command and the ability to make them cum. However, being an exception amongst exceptions, the nameless minotaur king was the size of a human, but through her cunning, she'd managed to turn her much stronger sisters against each other until she was the only one standing. As for her mother? She gutted her herself with a sharp dagger left behind by an adventurer.

And now, left as the only one capable of keeping the clan going, the men followed her without question, not just for her brutal measures, but also for the prospect of being able to have sex with her one day.

But perhaps that day would never come, as making his way through the cave she resided in, was Raven, ready to take down all the minotaurs before the day ended. In his hands was the box of magic scrolls as well as a bag full of glass bottles to burn the minotaurs' hide.

'Invisibility scroll, I should use it.' Taking out the scroll of invisibility, Raven tore it up and the words inscribed on it sparked through the air. The shimmering dust that remained encapsulated Raven's body before turning him and everything he was wearing completely invisible. Not even able to see him or the scrolls, Raven hoped he didn't mess up while applying the sigil required for the hell flames to erupt through the ground. 'Okay, take a deep breath and remember what you need to do.'

Trying to stay calm, he drew a long breath to ease his heart and mind. Soon after he repeated his thoughts that he'd been internally parroting all this time.

"Put the sigils everywhere inside the cave, use mass blinding scrolls to blind the minotaurs before throwing the bottles of coating on their hide, and the last...Well, hope they burn to death and you finally figure out why they're nesting in this damned place," recounting everything, he took yet another deep breath and started marching forward.

Moving through the darkness, he stayed close to the walls making sure not a word left his mouth. After all, even a peep could break his invisibility, and uttering something on accident before the preparations were done would be nothing short of suicide at this point.

'Just bats so far...' Looking around as he kept going, he was reminded of his distant fey ancestry as even through the dark his eyes strained not the least. 'Last time we killed the slimes, goblins, and other creatures, maybe that's why there's nothing else? No...The minotaurs probably claimed the rest of the cave for themselves.'

Crossed with that thought his eyes laid on the first minotaur since his entry. Possessing the face of a bull with a humanoid body, it carried a heavy club in its hand as it moved with authority strong enough to ripple the earth. Wearing just a leather tunic too short to hide much of anything, the monster was ten times Raven's size, and yet instead of dread or fear, the sight of the monster simply angered him.

Reminded of his moment of death as they tore him apart, his fist clenched tight until a glass boating shattered a crack. The sound of the glass snapped Raven out of the mindless rage, and realizing how easily he'd lost control, he shook his head and kept following the minotaur as it patrolled the cave.

After a while of following the minotaur, Raven finally arrived where he wanted to be. An opening where the majority of minotaur were stationed inside. Deciding to watch their movement for a while, he slipped into a corner to time the hell flames to get all of them at once.

'This seems to be their hub, but...' Just behind the clearing, two heavily armored minotaurs seemed to be guarding a small room. Whatever it was, Raven had no clue, but once he was done with these creatures, he knew he had to check out what was waiting for him inside. As for now, all he could do was wait...until it was time to paint the sigil for the hell flames in the ground with his mana.