Reborn as a Reluctant Demon Lord

Chapter 3 - Our First Fight

Now at this point, you may be thinking, "A party of nine? Isn't that a bit excessive? Aren't most parties four to six people?" To which I have to say, yes. You are totally correct. 9 is definitely excessive. We can only blame Jake, our over-eager self-proclaimed party lead, for the fact that we had such a huge party (it's definitely not because Jake, Garrett, and I all being melee completely off-balanced the party from the get-go. Nope).

Anyway, we finally get to the adventuring of this chapter! It's about time, ain't it?

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Before setting out, we made sure to go over everyone's classes, skills, equipment, and magic. Unfortunately, the only skills we had at this point were Jake's [Eye for Talent], Megan's [Steal], and Lindsey relayed through Sam that she had acquired the [Martial Arts] skill. That one sounded promising, but it turns out that it would only help if she was attacking without a weapon (which we all agreed seemed a silly thing to try). In other words, we had no skills that would be useful for a fight.

When it came to equipment, everyone except me had a single health potion along with their weapons. That meant we had health potions, a [Hero] with a special sword, a [Berserker] with a two-handed ax, a [Knight] with a regular sword and a shield, a [Rogue] with a knife, a [Ranger] with a bow and a knife, a [Cleric] with a mace, and a [Sorcerer] and a [Wizard] with wands. Oh, and a poor sod who was stuck with his fists.

In regards to magic, the rest of the party, again excluding me, all had access to a low-level spell called [Identify]. After trying it out and getting such useful information like "level 1 human" (when cast on Jake) we determined that it wouldn't be much help (and yes, I panicked when I found out people could [Identify] me. Fortunately, I showed up as [Half-Demon] just like I told the party I was).

The only offensive magic was [Mage Bolt], a zero-cost spell that Tim and Sam had access to. It didn't seem like it would do much damage, but ranged damage for free was nothing to sneeze at.

The final magic, and our only defensive one, was Andrew's creatively titled spell [Heal], which did exactly what it sounds like.

During this time, we found out that, unlike everyone else, I didn't see the party's HP, MP, and SP listed on the top left of my screen (and they didn't see mine). Since the party interface was greyed out on my status screen, I assumed this meant that the [Demon Lord] was really not supposed to be in a party. Needless to say, I kept that last piece of info to myself.

After setting up a basic plan, we set off into one of the many tunnels leading out of the main cave and looked for our first fight.

We found it soon. It was almost a complete disaster.

The surprising thing was that we actually had formations planned, we knew what everyone's role in fighting was, and everyone, Megan and Andrew included, had at least a bit of a background to understand our tactics. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Our first fight started just as we planned. Megan and Emilia were scouting ahead as [Ranger] and [Rogue] since we assumed that is their main role. Jake, Garrett, and Lindsey formed our frontline with Jake leading the way (he insisted since he was the party leader). Following them were our spellcasters; Andrew, Tim, and Sam (with Andrew sticking very close to Tim). And then me in the very back.

Why a melee in the very back? The politically correct answer to that question was that I was "watching the rear" and was to "engage any threats that got in melee range of the casters." The honest truth? Nobody, me included, was very ecstatic about a class with no weapons, no skills, and no magic. What I did have was an HP bar that read 100/100 (tied with Garrett, Jake, and Lindsey for most HP). As such, I was the designated meat-shield for the casters since I had no other role I could fill, and they didn't want me in the way of the people who actually had melee weapons.