The Elven Avenger Attack on the Demon King turns a routine effort to defend Leafel into a test of whether Malthios can meet violence without answering it with slaughter. When Elven attackers ambush him and Hayden in the woods, Malthios has the strength to overwhelm them; the harder task is to do so without setting the forest alight or killing his enemies. Theo’s presence within him makes that restraint an active negotiation rather than a given.

Causes and Background

The encounter begins during a return to Leafel’s borders. Hayden asks why they must walk the boundary again, and Malthios explains that he is setting up alerts. The sigil he carves into a tree with one of Theo’s knives also wards against demon creatures, joining practical warning with magical protection. Malthios would rather have had another adventurer show him the defenses, but Hayden is the party’s leader and knows Leafel and its safeguards best. The patrol therefore places the former Demon King beside the person most familiar with the town’s defenses, in work intended to protect the community that has accepted him.

That acceptance exists alongside a recent public judgment. At the trial, King Alexis sentences Malthios to life in prison while declaring Theo free of all charges; the people of Leafel have appeared through a mirror spell to demand Theo’s release. Later, Malthios is again in Leafel, helping protect its borders. The attack exposes the limit of that local welcome: to the Elven assailants, he is not a neighbor or a former ruler but the Demon King, a threat they claim must be purged from Algeya.

The Ambush

Malthios senses danger before the attack fully unfolds, his magic sparking blue around his hands. An arrow flies from the trees and clips the feathers at the edge of his wing. Roughly twenty dark-clad figures appear, their faces covered and their weapons divided among bows, short thin blades, and mage staffs. Hayden draws his sword and challenges them, asking why they have brought violence to peaceful lands. A male voice answers by condemning the person beside him as the King of the demons and declaring the attackers’ intention to rid Algeya of its perceived filth.

Hayden moves between Malthios and the crescent of enemies and urges him to flee, get Theo to safety, and summon help. Malthios refuses to abandon him. Instead, he pushes Hayden into the shadow of a tree and magically transports him to the Leafel Watchtower. The intervention removes Hayden from the immediate fight, but it also leaves Malthios facing the attackers alone. His choice reveals a priority distinct from simple self-preservation: he will protect his companion, even while refusing to retreat himself.

Fighting Without Killing

The attackers’ speed and agility identify them as Elves, and Malthios recognizes that their opponents are badly outmatched: only a Hero would ordinarily have a chance against a Demon King. Yet overwhelming force is not a clean solution. Malthios avoids using fire because it could harm the attackers or burn down the forest. Instead, he channels magic associated with Aym, shaping it into blue vines that tangle his enemies and disarm them. He concentrates first on the archers while keeping a shield ready against magical attacks.

One spell strikes with the force of lightning and sends Malthios spiraling before his wings catch him; the air around him smokes. In the distraction, an attacker reaches him with a blade. He turns aside so that it enters his thigh rather than his chest, kicks the attacker away, and Theo’s magic rises to heal the wound. Theo warns internally that the fight cannot continue this way. Malthios snaps back that he is already more handicapped than Theo is during a fight, a sharp exchange that makes their shared body a site of competing judgments as well as shared danger.

Restraint and Aftermath

Rather than continue trading blows, Malthios builds up enough mana to knock the attackers unconscious instead of killing them. He releases a pulse of magic, and the Elves collapse across the forest floor, some more slowly than others. Theo observes that Malthios could have done that from the beginning; Malthios explains that he needed to accumulate the mana to make incapacitation possible. His restraint is therefore neither effortless nor merely symbolic: he chooses a method that requires enduring the fight and taking a wound before he can end it without deaths.

With the attackers unconscious, Malthios spreads shadows over them and transports them away, as he had transported Hayden. The woods are left empty of combatants, with only wildlife audible. Malthios and Theo then turn their attention back toward town, anticipating Hayden’s alarm. The attackers’ defeat ends the immediate danger, though Malthios hopes that being overcome so easily will discourage them from returning; the text does not confirm whether that hope is fulfilled.

Significance

The ambush puts Malthios’s contested identity into physical form. The Elves define him entirely by his past power and the title of Demon King, while his actions in the woods show a different use of that power: he protects Hayden, avoids fire, accepts injury, and deliberately incapacitates rather than kills. His conduct does not erase the danger he represents, but it distinguishes capacity from choice.

The scene also gives Theo’s influence concrete force. Theo asks Malthios not to kill the attackers, and Malthios follows that constraint even as he objects to Theo’s commentary during the fight. Their coexistence is not presented as frictionless agreement; it is a shared-body relationship in which one can set a moral limit and the other must find a workable way to honor it. The attack thus extends the novel’s question of whether a former enemy can belong in a community: acceptance does not prevent hostility, but Malthios’s response offers evidence that power once associated with terror can be turned toward defense and restraint.