“Illusion,” Zoe shouted, pointing somewhere in front of us.

  A second ter, trees on both sides of the road flickered, and men with covered faces and weapons in hand ran straight at us. Behind them, archers were already drawing their bows.

  A wall of blue ice rose from the ground in front of me.

  “Hide!” Mari screamed, crouching between boxes on the cart.

  Azura and Zoe quickly jumped to my side, hiding behind the wall created by Mari.

  The arrows hit the ice and cttered to the ground, unable to pierce it.

  “Mari,” Tori shouted from behind the cart. “You need to take care of the archers and the mage.”

  “Pass me my spear,” I yelled just after.

  “On it,” Mari replied.

  A moment ter, Mari leaned out from between the boxes and threw the spear and shield to me.

  Zoe was helping me fasten the shield on my forearm as steps were getting closer. Mari stood up, and a storm of small ice shards shot out from her hand. A few screams followed with a thud, like someone fell to the ground.

  “Seven men getting closer,” Mari said. “Two archers and a single mage.”

  Mari rose again, shot two bigger missiles, and crouched. It didn’t sound like she hit anyone, but she managed to hide just in time, when two arrows flew over the cart where she had just been.

  The steps were getting closer, but a tiger jumped from behind the cart, immediately rushing forward.

  Tori, transformed, was just a blur as she shot past me. I peeked out from behind the ice wall just in time to see her sm into one of the bandits. He was sent sprawling to the ground, and she was on top of him in an instant.

  All of the bandits stopped in pce, and even from a distance, I could see fear in their eyes as Tori, with both her front paws, smashed the head of the man beneath her. His skull cracked twice before she looked up and tensed, readying herself to leap at another enemy.

  Arrows flew at her. One of them missed, the other struck her body, but it didn't seem like it pierced deeply. When Tori focused their attention on herself, Mari sent three ice bolts, one after another, at one of the archers. As two of them hit his chest, he fell to the ground, screaming in pain.

  Suddenly, I sensed mana flying toward us, and just a second ter, Mari gasped and fell back as it struck her shoulder.

  “She’s using mana attacks,” Mari shouted over the cart.

  I noticed a woman standing a bit to the side from the archers, partially hiding behind a tree. A big ball of fire appeared in her hand and flew straight at Tori. The tiger jumped back, dodging it, but it gave the bandits time to reorganize.

  “It's an illusion!” Zoe shouted immediately, peeking out on the other side of the ice wall.

  Another fireball flew over the cart, but at the same time, a mana attack struck Tori, pushing her even farther back.

  The attacking men rushed at her, trying to use the moment of distraction.

  “Fireballs are illusions!” Zoe shouted again.

  Mari peeked out her head, looking at us.

  “Zoe has an illusionist css,” I expined quickly. “And she will protect you from mana attacks.”

  Mari nodded before she shifted on the cart so I could not see her again. I turned around to Zoe, who was staring at me. I winked, hoping she would understand. After a slight nod, she focused on the fight in front of us again.

  Without the element of surprise, Tori had a much harder time attacking the bandits, as the men kept her at bay with their weapons. On top of that, she completely ignored the mana striking her body—or maybe she just couldn’t sense it like I could.

  Summoning my mana in front of me, I waited for the next attack coming toward Tori. I pushed my own mana toward it, trying to block it, but I missed, and the mana struck Tori anyway.

  The bandits surrounded Tori, keeping a distance from her, but one of them headed toward the cart.

  Mari leaned out from between the boxes and fired an ice spell, the projectile slightly different from the previous ones. The shard—made of smooth, glowing blue ice—struck the man’s shield. Instead of bouncing off or piercing it, the ice began to spread across the surface, rapidly creeping over the shield and then his arm. The sudden weight—or simply the shock—pulled his hand down, the edge of the shield smming into the ground, leaving him completely exposed. Two ice bolts struck his chest, and his lifeless body colpsed backward.

  But at the same time, the opposing mage sent a mana attack toward Mari. This time, rather than trying to hit it midair, I shifted my mana in front of Mari and formed some sort of shield. The enemy’s mana struck into it, and both mine and hers dispersed.

  An arrow flew at Mari, but she juked down, avoiding it. Immediately, she jumped back to her feet and sent two ice bolts toward the archer. His scream, when the skills pierced his chest, was really short.

  I blocked another mana attack targeted at Mari, as Tori was still fighting the bandits. Two more bodies were lying on the ground around her. Two men were trying to attack her from two sides, but two decided to run at us.

  I stepped back from the ice wall and the cart, drawing them in. If they came for me, Mari would shoot them in the back. If they turned to her, Zoe and I would strike. I was pulling them into a trap—caught between us, they wouldn’t be able to defend from both sides.

  They moved past the ice wall, heading straight for me, but never even got within striking range.

  One of them got pierced by an ice spear, pinning him to the ground.

  On the other one, death fell from the sky.

  Or rather, Zoe—she had climbed onto the ice wall and leapt down on him. She nded on his back, smmed him to the ground, and struck the back of his head with the handle of her dagger. When he tried to lift his head, she hit him again. This time, he stayed down.

  Four fireballs flew—one toward each of us who was exposed. Even knowing it was just an illusion, it was impossible to just stand there and watch as one came straight at you. I dove to the ground behind the ice wall.

  I got up immediately, but the mage wasn’t there anymore. There was only one man left, standing against Tori, but she just ignored him and ran between the trees where the mage had been a moment ago.

  The st standing bandit turned, looking toward Tori, and he must have realized that it was a big mistake when an ice bolt pierced through his back and came out of his chest.

  “Is everyone okay?” I asked, looking at Zoe and Azura. Both of them nodded.

  “I’m good,” Mari gasped, but then fell loudly on the cart.

  I rushed to her, worried that she was wounded.

  “I’m just tired,” she gasped when our eyes met.

  “Thanks for the ice wall,” I said.

  “I’m not ending up in the sve market without an owner again,” Mari said, grimacing.

  I nodded as Mark walked out from behind the cart.

  “Do you have a rope?” I asked him.

  He rushed to one of the boxes and pulled one out, passing it to me.

  “Let’s tie them up, and we need to follow after Tori to help her,” I ordered, passing the rope to Zoe.

  We bound those bandits that were still alive quickly.

  “Stay here, and watch over them,” I ordered Mari.

  “Azura, Zoe, follow Tori!” I added.

  Both of them headed in the direction that Tori had run. We sprinted between trees for a moment before I sensed mana in front of us. A moment ter, I noticed Tori and the mage, who was wounded, her arm bleeding, but she was constantly sending mana attacks toward Tori, who clearly couldn't sense them. It looked like she was trying to avoid them blindly, some of them hitting her, holding her at a distance.

  I stepped closer to Zoe and summoned my mana in front of her. If the mage could sense it, she would assume it was Zoe. After conjuring as much as I could control at once, I squeezed it into a ball slightly bigger than a football and pushed it at the mage.

  She turned toward us, even managed to summon mana and send it at my missile to block it. But my mana ball just flew through her mana and struck her body, sending her flying into the air a few feet until she fell to the ground.

  Tori immediately jumped at her, pinning her with her paws, but the mage wasn’t moving at all.

  “Just in case, you did that,” I whispered to Zoe as we approached the tiger.

  Tori was massive. I don’t know how big tigers are naturally—I’d never stood close to one back in my old world—but she was huge. Not especially tall, standing slightly over a meter at the shoulder, but easily longer than I was tall—and that’s not even counting her tail, which added another full meter on its own.

  When I showed her the rope, she stepped back. I rolled the unconscious mage and tied her hands behind her back. Tori growled, stomping her paw on the ground.

  “I don't know what you mean,” I replied, shifting to tie the mage’s legs, not really sure if that was what Tori wanted me to do.

  Tori growled once more, and then her body began to change—shrinking, fur fading away, bones shifting beneath her skin, just like her eyes moved on her face as her mouth shrank.

  “We need to cover her eyes,” she said after shifting. “We’ve got no way to block her magic, so we can't let her see us.”

  “Zoe, run to the cart for some rag,” I ordered, checking if the woman on the ground was still unconscious.

  “And my clothes, please,” Tori added.

  I looked at Tori’s naked body, covered in dirt, but still amazing as she stood in full glory in front of me.

  “Don't stare,” she said.

  “I had already seen everything. And will see it again at night,” I replied.

  “Don’t be so sure of yourself,” Tori answered, smiling softly.

  I got up from the ground and stepped toward her. “You got hit with arrows,” I said, scanning her for any wounds.

  Tori turned around to show me her back. She had three wounds, but they were all shallow—more like scratches than real injuries.

  “In my tiger form, the fur protects me, and my skin is really thick. At least on my back,” Tori expined.

  I gently brushed the skin around her wounds, checking to make sure they were all as shallow as they looked. She seemed fine—especially since they weren’t even bleeding much. Then, I couldn’t help but steal a gnce at her firm ass before she turned back around. Which, in turn, gave me a perfect view of her pussy.

  “Men,” Tori sighed, still smiling. She walked over to the unconscious woman and began checking her pockets.

  “How often do attacks like that happen? You said that we would be safe, and it's the second time someone has tried to rob us. In two trips.”

  “We’re unlucky. Well, we were protecting the cargo, so we were at higher risk,” Tori expined, before she turned toward me, still crouching over the woman. “Or you attract trouble,” she added.

  I didn't have time to answer, as Zoe ran out from between the trees holding a bundle of clothes. She passed a rag to me, and the rest of them to Tori. I tied it over the mage’s eyes while Tori was dressing.

  “What are we doing with her?” I asked.

  “We will take her to the city. Perhaps there is a reward. Can you carry her?” Tori asked.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “M-Master,” Zoe whispered.

  “What?”

  “M-Mari…”

  “Something happened to her?” I asked, standing up and gncing in the direction where we had left the cart.

  “No! I mean, everything’s okay with her, but… bandits.”

  “What about—” I wanted to ask, but then stopped when I realized that leaving them with Mari, whose whole life was destroyed by people like them, wasn't actually the safest for them.

  “All of them?” I asked.

  Zoe nodded.

  I sighed, then picked up the mage woman from the ground as we walked back to the cart.

  All of the bandits y just as we had left them—but now with several new holes in their bodies. Their heads, chests, and stomachs had been... massacred. Mari clearly hadn’t stopped at a single stab. Their bodies were torn open, with blood everywhere.

  Mark, white like a ghost, matching the skin tone with Zoe, stood next to his horse, looking all over that.

  I sighed, dropped the mage next to the cart, and walked to the back to check on Mari. She was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at one point without any movement.

  “Mari, are you okay?” I asked quietly.

  “I don't regret it!” she screamed, not even looking at me.

  “Are you wounded?” I asked calmly.

  Mari shook her head, still staring with an absent gaze at the crates.

  I sighed and walked away, looking at Azura and Zoe, who stood to the side and clearly avoided looking at the corpses.

  Tori, on the other hand, didn't seem at all bothered by all of that. Especially when she was cutting the ropes that we had tied those bandits with.

  I realized that it would be hard to expin this as self-defense if they were bound. However, with the wounds that they had, I doubted that anyone would believe that anyway.

  After Tori quickly took care of getting rid of the rope, she walked back to us. “Shall we get going?” she asked.

  “Just like that? What about them?” I asked.

  “What about them?” Tori repeated my question.

  “I don't know. Shouldn't we do something with their bodies?”

  “We don't have room on the cart, and I'm not going to drag them. We'll tell the guards in the city that they attacked us, died during the fight, and we left the bodies here. They'll send someone to take care of it. No one’s going to cry over them—or look into it more than necessary.”

  “Are you sure we won’t get in trouble for that?” I asked.

  “Not really. Those guys were scum, and the city guards will be gd we got rid of them. One way or another,” Tori replied.

  “Okay,” I said, and moments ter we got back on the road.

  I didn’t know this world well enough to be sure whether things like that were punished or not. But they had attacked us. A few of them died in the fight, and honestly, I wasn’t even sure if they would’ve survived the trip to the city without medical help.

  Besides, it was Mari who killed them. If anyone should feel guilty about it, it was her. But Andrew—the sve owner who sold her to me—told me she was my responsibility, and I’d be held accountable for her. Still, it was self-defense. Excessive, maybe, but the only person who could possibly report us was Mark.

  I matched his pace. “I want to talk about what happened—back when I chased the mage and you stayed behind with Mari.”

  “Bandits attacked, you did your job, and that’s all there is to it,” Mark replied without hesitation. “They died in self-defense.”

  I nodded slowly, wondering if he was scared because he had seen what Mari was capable of, or if he didn’t feel sorry for those bandits.

  “It’s even better that they can't attack merchants anymore,” Mark continued, when I didn't speak. “Because of people like them, I can't travel safely and expand my business so freely. All of them should end up in prison or… like that.”

  I watched him for a moment longer, then nodded and slowed down until I was next to Zoe again. It seemed like he didn't regret that those people were dead.

  “Hey, Zoe,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Do you want to talk? About what happened.”

  Zoe looked at me and smiled softly. “It was… gruesome, but I didn’t do it. I understand why she did that, and perhaps they even deserved it, even if I would not do it myself. Who knows how many people they had killed before.”

  I nodded slowly, gncing at Azura, who walked by our side in her wolf form. We were behind the cart, and Mark with Tori was at the front, not really seeing us.

  “Azura, can you shift for a moment?” I asked, wanting to check up on her too.

  We stopped as she shifted into her woman form and then caught up to the cart as she walked naked next to us.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

  “They attacked us, and they were weaker.”

  It felt like she was viewing the situation from a more animalistic perspective—like predators who cross paths, fight, and kill. Maybe something simir had happened in her previous pack, over food or territory.

  “Can I shift back?” Azura asked after a moment of silence.

  After I nodded, she transformed back quickly into her wolf form.

  It seemed that no one really was bothered by what had happened. No one except Mari, but I doubted she would want to talk with me about it.

  The rest of the way we walked in silence, or I chatted with Zoe about casual things.

  The mage, who was on the cart, had woken up after some time, and she even tried to summon mana blindly, but I immediately attacked it with my own, not really letting her do anything. After a few attempts, she gave up and just y on the cart until we reached our destination around evening.

  The city, Lunvar, wasn’t as big as Ortas, but it was clearly bigger than Caldwin, the first one that I had stopped in, where I had met Samara.

  At the city’s gate, we approached guards. “We were attacked on the road,” Tori said. “And we caught the mage that was part of the group.”

  “Go for the captain,” one of the guards said, and the other one immediately ran into the building behind them.

  “Is she secured?” another guard asked, approaching the cart with two other men.

  “She’s bound, but we didn't have anything to block her magic,” Tori replied, pointing to where the woman was lying.

  “What spells was she using? Was she alone? Which road was it?” asked a tall, athletic, middle-aged woman as she stepped out of the guardhouse. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and a sword hung at her hip. Three other guards followed closely behind her.

  “She plus nine men. We were traveling from Ortas. Illusions and mana attacks,” Tori replied.

  The woman—the captain—shared a quick gnce with one of the guards as two others hauled the mage off the cart. The third stepped in, snapped a bck colr around her neck, and shoved her to her knees before the woman who’d been asking the questions.

  “What happened to the men?” the woman asked.

  “All died during the fight, or bled out while we were chasing her—after she abandoned them and tried to run,” Tori expined.

  The captain looked at Tori carefully, then over our whole group. “Why were you traveling?” she asked.

  “Cargo transport,” Tori replied, waving at the cart. “He hired us to protect it,” she added, pointing at Mark.

  When the captain looked at him, he just nodded. Then her gaze focused on Zoe and Mari for a moment before she turned toward the kneeling mage woman. She pulled the rag from her eyes, and the woman's eyes darted around quickly before she lowered her head.

  “Well, that’s Mirage. We’ve been getting reports about her attacks for months now. Good work,” the captain said at st. She waved her hand, and the guards lifted the woman by her arms and dragged her toward the city gates.

  “You left bodies on the road?” the captain asked.

  “Yes,” Tori replied immediately.

  “One of you must go with me. Transcribe the statement, and collect the reward.”

  “Take money from Mark,” Tori said to me. “I will pick up the reward and let’s meet on the other side of the gate in a moment.”

  “How long do you stay?” the captain asked.

  “One night, and we head back to Ortas,” Tori replied.

  “Let them in for free,” she ordered before she walked with Tori back to the city’s gate.

  I walked to Mark, who immediately pulled out a pouch and passed it to me.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You saved my life.”

  I nodded, spilling coins in my hand, counting them quickly. Then I put them all back into the pouch and passed it to Zoe. I squeezed Mark’s hand. “Be careful in future travels,” I said.

  As he led his cart to the city’s gate, I walked over to the guards that were supposed to let us in. One of them held a simir tool like the guard in Ortas, which he pressed against my forearm and left a red shining image of a dog. Or a wolf. It was too small to recognize.

  Then he walked over to Mari and reached his hand toward her, but she hissed and stepped back.

  “Mari,” I said calmly.

  She scoffed, looking from the guard to me, and took another step back.

  I sighed. “Sorry for her, she’s still stressed after the whole attack. Can I?” I asked, pointing at the device in his hand.

  The guard looked at me for a moment, and then just passed it to me. It was a bck stone, or rather a few of them connected together. I looked around discreetly, and when I only saw male guards, confirming that no one should realize that I had used my skill, I inspected it.

  [Gate Sigil Imprinter][Item Type: Device][Function: Applies temporary magical entry sigil]

  This was a bit different from the items I had inspected before—probably because it was made from several components combined into a single device.

  “How does it work?” I asked, walking over to Mari. I held out my hand to her. For a moment, she just stared at me—but then, slowly, she slid her wrist into my palm.

  “Put it against the skin and press the top,” the guard expined.

  I pced the device against Mari’s hand and pressed. There was a small gap between the stones, and when I pushed them together, the bottom one lit up, leaving a mark on her skin.

  Mari quickly pulled her hand back and stepped away from me.

  “I want to,” Zoe said, immediately jumping in front of me and shoving her hand into mine where I had just held Mari’s.

  I smiled and marked her hand as well. After her, Azura walked up silently and extended her arm. I pced the mark on her forearm too, then handed the device back to the guard.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He just shrugged. “No problem.”

  We entered the city and stopped on the other side, waiting a few minutes for Tori. I considered trying to talk to Mari, but she'd avoided conversation earlier, and after what had just happened, I doubted it would go any better now. And she was standing to the side, staring at the ground. Just a look at her was enough to realize that she didn't want to talk.

  When Tori finally emerged from the gate, she walked over to us.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Tori replied. “And my instincts are never wrong,” she added, tossing the pouch in her hand. The coins inside jingled.