<~> Chapter 239The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of the tunnel and into the market district was the smell of burning wood in the air. Several fires were burning iy and the far-off yelling of fighting could be heard in the distanow that we were out oreet I could see a few dead bodies ying on the ground here and there. I got the sehat these ones had died in the early rioting because none of them looked like the sves we had freed.

  "We have to go that way to get around the outer wall of the southern quarter and market district if we want to leave through the eastern gate," Lorriene said while pointing.

  "It sounds like where the fighting is ing from," Silva pointed out.

  " you tell what enemies we might face?" I asked her.

  Silva paused as her ears twitched and swiveled for a moment. "I don't hear any priests ting so that rules out the Tamin church. I mostly hear guardsmen, soldiers, and rioters, but I 't tell if they're fighting each other hting the demons Quinn saw earlier." There were hushed whispers from the people behind us at the mention of demons but I chose to ighem for the moment.

  "Would leaving from the western gate be better?" I asked.

  Lorrieapped the handle of her dagger with a nail. "Maybe. It would be easier to avoid a fight but it would take a lot loroup with everyo will already take a while to get there if we leave out of the correct gate, walking all the way through the city to the ate and then walking around the outside of the city would add signifit time to the return trip." She turned around and looked over the sves we were guiding. "With roup, I think we could handle most demon threats as long as we're careful, even while proteg the non-batants."

  "You've ried to run from a hell hound," I said with a grimace.

  She shrugged. "Fair enough."

  Silva looked west. "I know it's risky to go east but I think goi might be worse. There are groups of soldiers sweeping through that side of town. If we go that way we'll have to fight them at the risk of being surrounded and trapped he castle. I'd rather deal with unanized demons and rioters."

  "I thought we came this way to avoid the demons," Quinn said with ay in his voice.

  Silva shook her head. "No, we came this way to avoid being surrounded by demons. None of us are afraid of fighting them. We already fought one of them in the cellblocks."

  "We never did find anything out about the cult of Amphores either," Torien added. "I don't think we should go looking for a fight but it would be o see if this was all their doing. I assume they're involved since we've e across demons here."

  Suddenly there was another explosion but from where we were standing we were able to get a better look at it from the outside. A giant fireball spshed against a magic barrier that was surrounding the sver's guild building. That must have been what we were hearing the eime we were down there. While the fireball was still dissipating, the giant barrier cracked and exploded into millions of shards of magic that faded into the air like mist.

  "Uh, guys? I think there might be a problem," Man said with barely restrained panic.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The barrier that just held back that fireball? It was supported by the wards that we just tuhrough. We weakehe barrier by digging through that way and now their barrier just broke. If we stay here, the fireball could topple the building right on top of us," she said talking a mile a minute.

  We could hear a mixture of loud cheering and screams oher side of the building in respoo the shield ing down. Thousands of small spells started to fly at it from the bazaar, the work of individual mages attag the sver's guild. ks of stone and wood began to fly off of the building and fall into the surrounding streets while parts of the structure quickly caught fire.

  "We might not even have that long if they keep doing that!" Man quickly amended as she started to scramble away from where we were standing.

  "Alright, let's go," I ordered. "Keep our new friends between us, don't let them get harmed," I said to Mimi, Bel, and Torien before turning to Silvea and Lorriene. "You two scout ahead for us, we o make sure we're going the right way to avoid trouble." The two of them nodded as we ran from the edge of the colpsing building.

  "I want to fight with you," Kal'daeryn growled out.

  I looked over her nearly naked body and ck of ons. " you fight like that?"

  "I was once a warrior of the Kronil tribe. I am happy to fight with nothing but my cws," she rumbled.

  I nodded. "Fine, just be careful. you give her some magic armor?" I asked Man.

  "Sure, there's leftover terra mana in the air. That should be better for armor than the fire mana." Once we turned a er and put a different buildiween us and the sver's guild, she began to gather the nearby terra mana and form it across Kal'daeryn's body. It looked as if there was shifting sand f around her. She grimaced at first but it seemed that it was fortable enough.

  "You fight with us but I want you to protect them, they're the most vulnerable," I said gesturing toward the other former sves. "Make sure all of them make it through this."

  She nodded with serious determination in his eyes before crag her fingers and fanning her sharp cw-like nails.

  "Ining!" Lorriene shouted.

  A demon simir to the one we saw in the hallway of the sve cellblock had silently leapt through the air at us. Lorriene's sharp eyes had caught it and Silva just as quickly reacted by jumping and defleg it into the ground with her spear. Just like the other ohis demon's flesh was hard aed Silva's pierg on so she had instead used the momentum of her jump to sm it into the ground. My body lit up with [Armor of Light] and I began to glhtly. While slightly annoying, this armor spell owerful defensive magic. With oion I drew my sword and cast [Fme Imbue] on it, the mithril sword taking to the enha magic like a sponge and amplifying its effect.

  The demon ripped its way out from under Silva and uself toward one of the nearby sves but I intercepted it and bashed it with my kite shield, using it for the first time in actual bat. The demon fell over itself before scrambling back to its feet just in time for me to ssh against its chest and leave a burni across the surface of its skin. In the bay mind, I felt the ditions for [Die Nudge] trigger, allowio hit the monster with the additional magic of that spell. The demoed like it was screeg in fusion and pai remained eerily silent.

  Silva followed up after that attad I took a brief moment to pull up the text of [Die Nudge] to refresh myself after it had been so long. I didn't have time to really read it closely, but if it triggered, I wao remember what exactly it was doing.

  [Die Nudge]Any situation where you would fail to hit with an attack, spell, or projectile by a small enough amount, you pay mana to do magic damage equivalent to the hit instead. You will be automatically aware when this spell is castable. Mana cost is reduced by [Magitrol].

  Because I was hitting it but not teically causing it any damage with the physical aspect of the attack, it ted as failing to hit which was enough ter this ability. I dismissed the information from my mind as quickly as I had brought it up and sshed at the back of the monster again after Silva had taken its attention. Like st time, the monster spun around in fusion and wildly filed in my dire. The monster was fast but stupid, it had none of the ing that the previous demons we fought had and solely shed out like a hurt animal. Its cws scraped against my armor of light but it gave me nothing but gng blows that didn't pee my magic armor.

  Seeing that the blood thresher was focused on me again, Silva activated magic of her own. She coated her spear in lightning and thrust it into the back of the monster while it was mindlessly trying to get through my guard. The monster vulsed as the lightning magic coursed through its body and it slumped to the ground slightly smoking from Silva's empowered spear attack.

  [Your party has defeated a blood thresher demon][Your Level has increased from level 50 to level 51][Enha Magic has increased from level 8 to level 9][Learned Enha Magic Spell Hasted Perception]

  The demon pushed me over the threshold for the level I had been at for a while. I loo look at my new spell but from my past experimentation with [Focused Perception], I knew better than practice with any perception abilities in the middle of a bat situation. Too risky. Better to look over the new spell when I was in a safe pce.

  I quickly looked around for anything else nearby but I didn't see any other demons. "Was that it?" I asked.

  Lorrieantly nodded. "I don't see anything else. It seems these demorying to pick people off on their own. Anyone who was in this part of town earlier must have been forced to go somewhere else or they all ged away by one of those demons. More people should be in the market at this time of day, riot or not."

  I decided to leave my spells cast. Maintaining the trickle of mana to keep the enhas active was cheaper thaing them the ime we were in a fight. I hoped that the visible show of strength would be deterrence if we ran into someone else.

  "You're strohan you look," Kal'daeryn ehe pliment to my fighting reciated but I didn't respond.

  "Let's keep moving," I said to the group. The sves that had been worried by the demon showing up looked relieved and I got the sehat they were more fident in my strength now that they had seen Silva and I fight firsthand.

  "I'll go ahead," Lorriene called out before jogging forward a few blocks and peeking around ers.

  "She's a good scout," Silva said to reassure me. "Don't worry about her getting hurt, she's slippery. Trust that she knows what she's doing." I could feel Silva sharing her fiden her with me through the bond, giving additional weight to her words. She believed what she was saying.

  We followed Lorriehrough the town as she scouted ahead of us. After a little while she had stopped by an alley between two buildings and motioned for us to e to her. I motioned for the group to wait and crept up o her with Silva and Torien.

  Slumped against the wall were a dead Tamin padin and two dead Tamin priests. "Sophin's work," Lorriene whispered. "You tell from the lines." As she said, they had been decapitated in a line like they had been sliced apart by wire.

  "Does this mean that Sophin has already started on the priests?" I asked.

  "It probably means he's already finished," Lorriene replied. "Less public than I thought he would be too, if he's leaving their corpses dead in alleyways."

  Silva looked over the corpse and nodded. "This is his work, I'm sure of it. The demons could have ged his strategy. It would be demoralizing for the people left if all the priests who are supposed to be good at killing demons were being openly killed in front of them. It expins why I don't hear any priests ting their magiywhere though."

  The three of us returroup and tinued past the alley. A few of the former sves looked over as we passed but didn't ent on the corpses we ied. After a short walk from there, we were approag the end of the wall that was separating us from the road that would lead us through the rest of town.

  Another explosion could be heard through the town as ane fireball hit the sver's guild building and it began to colpse inward on itself. Every part of the building that was not made of stone had caught fire and the building was crumbling. I was relieved we had taken this job, they would have colpsed the building right on top of the people inside, had we not helped them escape first. Loud cheering could be heard again as the building fell in on itself.

  "I wonder if this means their records are destroyed too," Torien said while looking at the burning building.

  "We hope," Silva said with a smile.

  Saine

  Hello! Making progress! We're finally out of the building but it looks like we're out of the frying pan and into the fire! Thanks for reading!

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