Jaysha had given me freedom to do as I pleased as an adventurer.
My primary objective had always been Elena’s safety. To ensure that, I wouldn’t hesitate to fight a dragon—but I sensed deeper meaning in Jaysha’s words. Kushum had been murdered by the Reezan, and the town’s powerful dark elves had disappeared. Now, to top it all off, there was a monster stampede...
It had all started because I’d antagonized the Munza and punched holes into their defenses. Most people believed the Reezan had taken advantage of this, but in my opinion, they’d already been waiting for a chance to act.
Jaysha thought something was going to happen in this town. The father and daughter I’d run into recently had also warned me to leave as soon as possible.
I wasn’t sure if the stampede was related to the Reezan, but it didn’t seem to be advantageous to them in any way. So what was their goal? The town itself? Did they just want to crush one of the other factions?
The missing dark elves likely knew the answer.
I put on my cloak again and ran through town to return to the watchtower. I hadn’t heard anything on my way in, but talk of the stampede had to have reached town, as I saw several merchants closing up shop in a hurry. No adventurers were milling about—the guild had probably called upon them to handle the monsters. Residents were on edge, weapons at the ready, as though they could sense the danger.
My feet came to a halt halfway through town. Something wasn’t right.
The Kiluri were merchants and prioritized profit. They wouldn’t fight. The Hogroth and the Munza would be sending their forces to deal with the monster rampage.
So who were the armed people lurking around that corner?
I slowly approached them. Maybe they were just sensing something was off and had their guard up. But where had they gotten such quality spears and swords? Even low-ranking adventurers in this town wouldn’t own those.
“What do you want, brat?” a sun-kissed Krus man asked, scowling.
One hooded figure and five Krus people. The hooded figure was the slimmest of them but had the strongest presence.
Keeping out of range of their weapons, I said, “Not much. Just wondering what a dark elf’s doing here. Thought they’d all vanished.”
At that moment, the hooded man’s presence turned hostile, and the others all readied their weapons.
I’d guessed right.
✦ ✦ ✦
The hooded man was a dark elf, and he’d grown visibly agitated the instant I figured that out. The others surged forward, weapons drawn—single-edged swords and thin spears, now evidently meant for killing rather than self-protection.
“Raaah!”
The stern-faced Krus man I’d first spoken to slashed at me with a cutlass. I wrapped it with my cloak to deflect it, and the man gasped in shock.
“Who are you, woman?”
“Who are you?” I retorted. “Why are you attacking me? What’s so bad about mentioning dark elves?”
“Shut up!” the man snapped, trying to yank his blade free. “Die already!”
I released the blade and kicked him away.
From behind him, the dark elf grumbled, “Stop yelling. Just kill her.”
Though there were few prying eyes here, making noise would nevertheless attract attention. If they didn’t want any, they were here with a purpose. Maybe the hooded man was one of the missing dark elves. Maybe he was involved with demons.
Before I could make sense of it, the remaining four Krus people attacked.
“Yaaah!” one man shouted as he thrust out a flexible thin spear. Like the others’ weapons, this was most effective against ordinary people, not monsters or armored soldiers.
I spread my cloak wide to puff it up with air, and the spear pierced through the empty space underneath the fabric. As I stepped forward, a sharp hidden weapon stabbed out of the shadow in my palm and through the spearman’s throat, piercing his medulla.
Against multiple opponents, tactics focused on maiming and disabling were superior—any combatant who couldn’t fight was a burden. But against so few people, killing was more efficient.
Assuming the Krus man who had first confronted me was Rank 3, the others had to be around the upper end of Rank 2, maybe with 200 power or so. Small fry were of no concern to me; they’d drawn their weapons and I had no reason to show mercy. I didn’t need to keep them all alive for interrogation—the two stronger ones would be plenty.
The spearman collapsed with a thud, and my weighted pendulum launched upward from his shadow. I swung it down, crushing the skull of a nearby man holding a cutlass.
“Y-You little...! How dare—”
Watching his friends fall one after the other, the first man, who was on his bum after I’d kicked him down, was turning even darker with anger as he readied his own cutlass.
“Wait! That girl is not normal!” the dark elf warned.
“Shut up, pointy-ears! I don’t take orders from you!” the man bellowed, then attacked again.
They were allies but not comrades, it seemed.
I glared at the other two Krus people to intimidate them into not interfering, then decided to question the angry one. Sliding in, I deflected his blade with my black knife, then elbowed him in the face.
“Ngah!” Blood sprayed from the man’s nose as he staggered back several meters. He fell to his knees. “Y-You brat!”
He was a hardy man, but still, that would keep him immobile for a while.
Just as I moved to finish off the other two, I saw the bloodied man grinning in my peripheral vision. From where the dark elf sat, I heard rhythmic, rhyming chanting.
“Heh!” the bloodied Krus man scoffed. “You’re gonna die.”
Behind him, fire-aspected mana surged.
“Fire Arrow!”
The dark elf shot four Fire Arrows, and I leaped sideways to dodge. Casting multiple simultaneous instances of the same spell like that was an advanced technique—but only one of them was aimed at me.
The other three arrows struck the three surviving men in the backs while they were focused on me.
“Gaaah!”
Even a Level 1 Fire Arrow could be lethal if it struck vital spots from behind. The man who had only just gloated about my imminent death was hit in the back of the skull, his face exploding into a ball of fire as he stared at me incredulously before collapsing.
The dark elf clicked his tongue and turned his back on the Krus allies he’d just killed. “Tsk.”
He must’ve realized the Krus had little chance of victory and changed tactics to silence witnesses instead. I spun my skirt and threw a knife but was a moment too late. The dark elf leaped into an alley, and the knife deflected off a nearby building.
I immediately gave chase, but upon entering the alley, I found no one at all. I tried to locate him with Detection and glimpsed the hem of a cloak disappearing over the rooftop of a two-story building. My sickle pendulum shot up and hooked onto the roof’s edge, and I ran up the wall in one go. As soon as I reached the rooftop, another Fire Arrow came flying—but I’d used this exact tactic to escape before, so I was prepared.
“Shield!” I chanted, and the spell quickly deflected the arrow.
“What?!”
The shocked dark elf hurriedly tried to leap to another building, but by then, I had finished casting my next spell.
“Pain.”
“Aaargh!” the dark elf shouted, tripping from the intense pain.
He fell from the rooftop. I jumped off after him.
“How...do you know that spell?” the dark elf asked. His leg appeared broken, and his hood had come off. He was glaring at me, still under the effect of Pain. “Only our kind knows how to cast Shield...”
“So you are a demon, then,” I said.
My mistress, Cere’zhula, formerly the Fiend of the demonic army, had taught me this spell. She’d learned it from her own mentor—and only demons from her homeland would know it.
“Tch...”
Having accidentally revealed too much, the dark elf fell silent. This only confirmed my suspicions. Though using my mistress’s spell risked revealing her survival to the demons, my tactics and martial arts were entirely based on the demonic versions either way, so it was a moot point. If Cere’zhula would be in danger because this man had learned of my techniques, I would simply eliminate him.
But first, I needed to know what he was plotting. I took out my sickle pendulum, and before I could do anything, the man—who had been glaring at me and sweating—suddenly looked serene. He bit down on the pendant hanging from his chest.
“Ngh...”
Blood gushed from his mouth, and he collapsed face-down.
He’d committed suicide, poisoning himself before I could get any information out of him. The pendant must’ve been fitted with a poison crystal or a small resin container filled with toxins. But what could have possibly been that important to hide? If he’d committed suicide that quickly, without even trying to fight back, whatever the demons were plotting had to be extremely significant.
I went back out onto the street and focused on the nearby presences. Several groups like this one—Krus people and dark elves—were scattered all across town. I couldn’t handle all of them, and trying to extract information was pointless if they had suicide as a backup plan. I couldn’t tell Jaysha about this either, since she’d already departed to deal with the stampede.
A massive monster outbreak. An earth dragon stirring. And now the conspiracy between the Reezan mafia and demons. There was no time to investigate all of this, and it was probably too late to stop whatever plot was already in motion.
“I don’t have enough information,” I muttered to myself.
This was concerning, but my priorities were elsewhere. For now, determined to fulfill my role, I started running again toward the watchtower, where Elena was.