I'm a Immortal Tavernkeeper, But My S-Rank Daughter Doesn't Know That!

As he entered the Gravisk demon’s aura alone, Victor felt the atmosphere around him become extremely denser.

It had been a long time since he had last felt a sensation like this. It was almost as if the air in the room had become unbreathable and a smell of sulphur completely dominated his sense of smell.

That way, even if Elban hadn’t warned him, Victor would have known immediately that he was dealing with a demon.

However, Victor wasn’t afraid of that. He walked deeper into the forest without any problems, and the dense supernatural fog around him began to dissipate after a few steps, allowing him to finally see beyond three meters.

After walking a few meters, a voice echoed in Victor’s mind: 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"You are brave, human, to enter my domain alone. However, your bravery before me is the mark of your foolishness, for here I am the absolute being, and you are just another prey for my insatiable hunger."

The Gravisk demon’s voice was deep and full of malice, echoing through the forest like a distorted echo.

Despite this, Victor wasn’t intimidated in the slightest.

A demon with sealed power was no more worrying than the Blights Victor had to face earlier.

So Victor continued walking, without even trying to talk to Gravisk.

"Oh, I see you’re not the type to cower easily. I like that. Do it, come to me, human. At the end of this forest, I’ll be waiting for you."

Again, Victor ignored Gravisk and advanced through the forest as was his initial plan. He walked for a few minutes, and the closer he got to the end of the forest, the more the surrounding trees looked curved and crooked. What’s more, the previous silence was replaced by strange sounds, such as screams, howls and grunts. This side of the forest was crawling with monsters.

Victor was sure that he was no longer alone when he saw silhouettes wandering around from afar, probably looking for intruders like himself. So, from that moment on, Victor began to be more cautious.

On high alert as he approached the place where Gravisk was sealed, Victor also had to get closer to the creatures that had been corrupted by the evil power that permeated the region.

There were Skeletoids, a type of undead different from zombies, which were made only of human bones, and also Blights wandering near him. And to make matters worse, the bodies of the men Elban had lured to defeat the demon were also standing around, patrolling the area.

"Shit, Elban was right. The demon is a necromancer." Victor muttered to himself, hiding behind a tree. "I can see the entrance from here, but it’ll be impossible to get there without being spotted."

So Victor tried peeking again and looked right into the mouth of the cave, which was on the side of a mountain.

Looking carefully, Victor mentally calculated the distance between where he was and the mouth of the cave where the demon was sealed. It was about thirty meters, a distance he could cover quickly but not without attracting the attention of the creatures patrolling the area.

To make matters worse, as he watched, a zombie suddenly appeared in the straight line between Victor and the cave. Its pale, putrid skin was torn to shreds with bloodstains and its lifeless eyes scanned the terrain.

This zombie wore a long, torn cloak and dragged a staff. It was the zombie of a cleric, probably the same one that Elban had mentioned belonged to the group that had accepted the other mission earlier.

Victor ducked and a moment later this zombie looked in the direction of where the hunter was standing.

Victor tried to remain as still as possible while the zombie cleric looked in his direction.

It was possible to smell the odor emanating from the creature, a nauseating mixture that almost made Victor cough.

If he were discovered now, his entire mission would be in jeopardy.

The zombie didn’t even have a trace of intelligence or memories in its mind. It was just a brainless, wandering corpse, but it still had its most basic senses and saw something moving to its left. So it started walking towards where Victor was.

The way this zombie moved was slow, like a tortoise, and clumsy like a baby who had just learned to walk. With every step, the zombie’s sense of balance was strained to the limit, so it was almost a miracle that he was keeping up.

However, when the zombie got close enough to Victor to smell him, the zombie’s eyes glowed an intense shade of crimson and his whole body stiffened. The cleric’s zombie closed his right hand tightly around his staff and squeezed it hard as his spine stood upright for the first time.

In that world, zombies had these peculiarities.

Most of the time, they just wandered around, reacting to almost nothing. However, when they sniffed human blood, they completely changed their behavior, as if they lived for the sole purpose of killing humans. So, when they finally smelled their prey, they became faster, stronger and even smarter, sometimes regaining some of the intelligence they once had.

So, when the cleric’s zombie smelled Victor, he raised his staff, which began to glow, and on instinct muttered:

"Let... the arcane winds..." He grunted the words in a slurred manner, as if he was struggling to form each sound. "expose the hidden..."

However, Victor Shieldman had never made the mistake of underestimating the strength of zombies, so as soon as he saw this zombie coming towards him, he had already thought of a plan of action.

Before the zombie’s magic was finished, he suddenly appeared behind the monster and swung his sword.

The cleric’s zombie was forced to stop speaking the last word of the magic chant halfway through when a sword pierced its neck. In that same movement, Victor swung his sword, taking off the zombie’s head.

"... enemy." The head fell to the ground and muttered, but it was already separated from the rest of the body and, above all, from the staff, so the magic didn’t work.

Without mercy, Victor stepped on the head and drove his sword through it, ending the cleric’s torment.

"Rest in peace, mate." Victor said regretfully.