The maid squad is too strong, what use is there for me, the Demon King?

"Speaking of which, it seems Princess Philippa has been training even harder lately?"

After resting for a moment, Tarik asked Sophia.

Sophia glanced at Taric and recalled that on the night she met Gray, Taric only answered Philippa once before returning to the inn to rest. It seemed that after a whole day of adventure in the secret realm, he was exhausted and rushed back to rest. He wasn't interested in the love-hate relationship between Sophia, Philippa, and Gray, so he didn't hear the subsequent conversation between Philippa and Gray.

I don't know why Philippa is training even harder now.

“Ah…” Philippa replied, “I was slightly stimulated, which is why I trained even harder.”

"As expected of a hero...constantly applying pressure..."

It's a good thing that the squad leader's hero is becoming more ambitious. The faster he improves his strength, the sooner he will be able to gain the power to face the future Demon King crisis.

Exercising too intensely is bad for your health; you might collapse or something...

This doesn't seem to apply to the brave.

A true hero is one who can become stronger through hard work and is unlikely to collapse from exhaustion.

After several days of adventure, Philippa entered the realm of seventh-tier professionals far ahead of Sophia and Taric.

Upon reaching the seventh rank, Philippa immediately proposed to explore unexplored and highly dangerous secret realms.

For a brave person, the best way to train is through actual combat.

Philippa, who has already advanced to the seventh rank, needs to fight against monsters of the same rank to be considered as having received proper training.

The secret realms they usually participate in are mostly explored by previous adventurers, with few treasures and high-level monsters. These are ordinary secret realms with low danger levels, open to the general public and weaker adventurers.

In such a secret realm, encountering one or two seventh-tier demons is already considered extremely rare.

While exploring this secret realm, Philippa only managed to find a seventh-tier monster after a long time, and she could only exchange a few blows with it, making it far too inefficient for training.

Therefore, after reaching the seventh rank, when Sophia and Taric were able to deal with seventh-rank monsters together, the three of them decided to change to a high-risk, unexplored secret realm.

This swampy environment, rife with poisonous miasma, is a highly dangerous secret realm.

The poisonous miasma obscures people's vision and is also toxic. In addition, the secret realm is frequented by a large number of high-level monsters, which is why this place is classified as a high-risk secret realm. Not many adventurers are willing to explore such a secret realm.

The danger of the poisonous miasma was actually nothing to the brave team.

Miss Sophia, a saintess of the Holy Light Church, is skilled in light magic, including spells specifically designed for detoxification and illumination, which are natural counters to poisonous miasma.

Princess and Heroine Philippa also learned this type of magic from Sophia.

Due to factors such as strength and the need to overcome the poisonous miasma, the Brave Squad split into two teams to divide the tasks in the secret realm.

Philippa formed her own team, while Sofia and Tarik teamed up as a team.

The two teams are not too far apart, which makes it easier to provide timely assistance to the other team.

It truly lives up to its reputation as a high-danger realm; you run into seventh-tier monsters every few days, causing significant trouble for Taric and Sophia's combined efforts, only to be easily dealt with by Philippa...

Even among the members of the hero's party, the gap between them and the hero is terrifying.

In the swamp shrouded in poisonous miasma, pale golden holy light enveloped Sophia and Taric like a thin veil, keeping out the pungent poisonous fumes.

Taric swung his giant axe, cleaving through the poisonous vines that entwined him. The force of the axe blade caused the nearby miasma to briefly disperse, revealing two seventh-tier Poison Swamp Crocodiles hidden behind the vines.

"Leave the left side to me!" Sophia raised her hand and chanted an incantation, a dazzling ball of light condensing in her palm.

The beam of light precisely struck the giant crocodile's hard scales, demonstrating the effectiveness of light magic against monsters—the giant crocodile let out a painful roar, white smoke rose from its scales, and its defense was instantly weakened by more than half.

Tarik seized the opportunity and charged forward, his giant axe cleaving through the air as it struck the crocodile's wound. Dark green blood splattered into the swamp, creating bubbles.

Meanwhile, Philippa wandered alone through the deeper poisonous miasma.

Her petite figure leaped nimbly through the mud, the longsword in her hand occasionally flashing with a faint light—a technique she used to imbue with light-attribute magic, allowing her to easily sever poisonous plants.

She had just dealt with a level 7 swamp lizard and was preparing to head towards her teammates when the swamp beneath her feet suddenly began to churn violently.

"Huh?" Philippa suddenly stopped in her tracks, looking around warily.

The poisonous miasma was forcibly dispersed by an invisible force, and a monster the size of a small mountain slowly rose from the mud.

It was covered with dark purple, rhomboid scales, each scale edged with a ghostly green, poisonous glow, and half-rotten swamp plants clung to the gaps between them.

Its robust body resembled a giant python covered in armor, yet it possessed four webbed claws, the venom dripping from their tips carving small pits into the muddy ground.

The most horrifying thing was its head, which resembled both a crocodile and a lizard. Several bony spikes protruded from beneath its wrinkled skin. Its gaping maw contained two rows of fangs that were interlocked, with undigested monster remains stuck between them. The stench it exhaled was mixed with poisonous gas and could almost freeze the air.

The long tail behind it, covered with barbs, was twice the length of its body, and at the end grew a fleshy, tumor-like venom sac that pulsated slightly with its breathing.

“Eighth rank…” Philippa’s hand gripping the light sword trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the overwhelming magical energy fluctuations within the other party’s body—a pressure far exceeding that of a seventh-rank monster, as if the air itself was frozen by its aura.

She had been easily dealing with the seventh-tier monsters, and the few seventh-tier monsters no longer posed much of a threat to Philippa.

Philippa had been hoping to encounter more Tier 7 monsters, feeling that dealing with a dozen or so Tier 7 monsters at once would cause her some trouble and serve as a training exercise.

Unfortunately, such high-level monsters rarely appear in groups; at most, only two or three appear at the same time, so they don't pose much of a threat to Philippa.

She couldn't stray too far into the secret realm to search for more monsters, since she still had to keep an eye on Taric and Sophia's team; they weren't as adept at dealing with seventh-tier monsters as she was.

The team's established strategy was to provide immediate support to the other team whenever they encountered danger. Philippa couldn't abandon the other two and venture into the secret realm alone just because she wanted to deal with more and stronger monsters.

But now, even more powerful monsters have arrived.

The formidable adversary she needed to help her improve further has arrived!