Lily looked like she wanted to run away, but the closest other building was the one Zoe was on—and she couldn’t head back down to the ground, for obvious reasons. Zoe frowned. Am I really that scary?
Lilith hummed in response. “Yeah, probably.”
Well that was just fantastic. Deciding that getting on the good side of a powerful noble was likely a good thing, Zoe made the decision to try helping the other girl. Also, doing so would increase the likelihood that Lily would actually survive. That sounded like something that was the right thing to do.
It also helped that Zoe’s building was just slightly lower than Lily’s. There was also a thick railing around both—but said railings were crumbling in places. If Lily could get a good running start, leap off an intact section of her wall, and aim for a gap in Zoe’s—she could probably make it, potentially.
Zoe then had the bright idea to voice the idea.
“Hey! Lily person! You could try running up and leaping off the railing. There’s a section that way where there’s a gap on this one.” Zoe paused to take a breath. She wasn’t used to raising her voice much. “Oh also I have a skill that might have a possibility of being able to catch you if you miss.”
Laughter bubbled up through her bond with Lilith. “You’re using a whole lot of hedge words there…”
That may have been true, but Zoe would rather hedge than make promises she couldn’t keep. Although, it wouldn’t really matter if she broke the promise if Lily died—would it? Actually—this was the specific sort of circumstance where she should make the other person feel confident. That would improve the chances of Lily following through and the plan actually working.
And if she dies, at least I tried. That was supposed to count for something, right?
The other girl wasn’t looking too sure about it, though. She hadn’t said anything back either, which made Zoe feel a bit awkward—socially speaking.
“I think she’s less worried about making the jump and more worried about dealing with the Demon on the other side.”
Oh, right. Lilith brought up a good point there. Dismissing any ideas about pretending to not be a Demon, Zoe committed to embracing it. Being honest was good for building trust, right?
“Yeah, and it’s already pretty obvious—to someone like her, at least.” Zoe wasn’t entirely sure what Lilith meant by that, but she could ask later. “Just be sure we don’t reveal anything about being connected to the gods or being an outsider.”
Sure, Zoe could manage that. She’d be asking about that later as well. Zoe inhaled deeply before shouting again. “Okay yeah, so I’m actually a Demon apparently, but don’t worry because I’m pretty sure saving some kind of noble is useful for later. So I won’t be killing you because I kind of want you to live.”
A moment of silence—then the other girl stepped backwards, braced herself, and took off straight towards the railing. Wait, that worked? Zoe didn’t expect convincing her to go so smoothly.
“I… didn’t think so either. There’s a difference between being honest and doing whatever that was.”
“Yeah but it worked, so…” Zoe trailed off as the ice mage reached the edge, pushed off, and careened into the open air on a trajectory that was definitely going to miss. “Well we can’t be having that happen,” Zoe muttered to herself. While the elemental summoner would probably cover most of the distance—yeah, she’s definitely going to fall short.
Luckily, Zoe had a skill for that. Technically, she had a skill that had a non-zero chance of being useful for that.
Blood Whip!
There were two main things Zoe needed to accomplish here. The first was to actually snag the girl as she fell. The second was to make sure the whip itself didn’t kill her. She would be pretty pissed if she managed to grab the ice mage, only for her own skill to kill Lily anyway.
It took less than a second after activation for a writhing tendril of coiling blood to leap from Zoe’s forearm off into the night. Unfortunately, she missed—but it was close enough that Lily was able to grab it—which the girl thankfully had the good sense to do.
Half a second later, and Zoe had her prize firmly secured. Not willing to trust Lily to hold onto it for an extended period of time by herself, Zoe lengthened the whip further and looped around and around to form a crude harness. All that remained was to haul said prize back up to the roof.
“Your prize?” Lilith chuckled. “I wonder how she’d react if you called her that to her face.”
Bah. Zoe didn’t intend to do that, so it didn’t really matter. What did matter was that she didn’t actually want to haul over a hundred pounds of woman like twenty feet straight up with her own strength. Having 110 in her power stat didn’t change her aversion to weightlifting.
So instead of using her muscles, Zoe used her brain and started lowering Lily back down to the ground.
_____
Lily—did not know what to think of the recent developments. The strength of the Rank F undead caught her terribly off guard once they’d reached sufficient numbers, so she hadn’t prepared for such a hasty retreat. The alleged healer they’d picked up revealing herself to be a blighted Demon was—pretty surprising, even with the benefit of hindsight. Now, said Demon was lowering her back to temporary safety after saving her from a pretty nasty fall.
With all of this happening on top of the weirdness of the town square being unequipped and someone stealing a manaship battery from Lord Darius—Lily wasn’t certain what to think of things anymore. Honestly?
The only thing I’m certain of is that Andric is totally going to kill me.
It didn’t help that between the two, Lily would rather deal with this frighteningly stealthy Demon than with her guardian when he was angry.
The ground startled her when it finally touched her feet. Lily regained her focus quickly, however, and she slipped away the moment the Demon’s bloody vine released its grip on her.
But what now? The ghouls weren’t going to stop chasing her—not for another hour at least. The mark she’d placed on herself wasn’t going to just go away. She’d already tried. She also had a higher Demon to contend with—a higher Demon that could easily hide itself from both her and Andric’s infernal skills and Sean’s hallowed ones. And that’s not to mention the shapeshifting and fully faked identify. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Whatever this thing was—it had to be fairly powerful. But while that was bad, it was also kind of good too. It meant that the Demon truly had no intention of harming them—not yet. Either way, Lily hoped that Andric would be able to handle it—yet a cold feeling filled her after that thought. Where is he?
Lily had already been wondering what was taking her glorified watchdog so long to hunt her down. His absence alone was a bit concerning—but with this Demon? Lily didn’t doubt that the creature was Rank C at least.
_____
Zoe grumbled to herself as she chased after the runaway ice mage. She hadn’t expected the woman to make a break for it the very moment she released her blood whip—but it made sense in retrospect. She just hoped she could keep up. Not fucking fair! How am I supposed to keep pace with a full Rank D when I’m only Rank F myself?!
The answer to that was quite simple—at least according to Lilith. “Just run faster.” Zoe didn’t think that advice was at all helpful—but she followed it anyway. What else was she supposed to do?
“Yeah, exactly, which means it’s good advice.”
Zoe actually snorted. No, it’s still terrible advice. Being true doesn’t make it useful. Either way, she was definitely not moving fast enough. Her perception was high enough that she could see the distance between them widening—but her power and acuity weren’t high enough to change that. The other girl was probably going to get away.
“Is that such a bad thing?”
Zoe frowned. Yes? She didn’t understand the question. No, she understood it, but she thought it was stupid. She was literally chasing Lily. Zoe was confident that someone getting away when you wanted to catch up to them was bad by definition. Like, that’s literally the concept of chasing something.
Lilith went silent for a moment. “Okay, but do we actually need to catch her? We’d just be returning to the camp anyway. Although—that might be a bad idea now, since she knows what we are.”
Skidding around a corner—and nearly slipping on a thin patch of ice—Zoe couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Yes, which is why I want to catch up to her. If I can just talk to her alone first, there’s a chance I can do something better than just show up in front of everyone or run away.
Lilith didn’t say anything in response, which Zoe took as a sign that she made a convincing point. The best option was definitely to talk things out first, given what she already knew about Lily—and what it implied. There was a big problem with that plan though. She needed to catch up to her first.
_____
Andric was not having a good time.
Granted, the Rank C alchemist rarely had what most would consider to be ‘a good time.’ That being said, on most days he found himself bored, frustrated, or perhaps marginally entertained. The rest of the time he was too focused to experience any of the other three.
However, most days did not lead to him locked in a life-or-death battle with a Rank C Demon while his most important charge had run off to do something undoubtedly idiotic. How a Rank C Demon had found its way so close to the edge of the frozen wastes, he hadn’t the faintest idea. The only reasonable assumption was that it had something to do with the newly-discovered infernal cult activity in the area.
Landing in a crouch a dozen or so paces away from the Demon, Andric took a few moments to study the creature. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever heard or read of—let alone seen. It looked as if someone had taken a monkey, turned it inside out, and then juiced it up with so many elixirs that it should have dissolved into a puddle of sizzling red goop.
Granted, it was bleeding noxious, fuming blood from nearly every part of its body. That didn’t have much to do with Andric, actually. It was already doing that when it first attacked him.
Also, the horrid thing was clearly tainted with a pretty nasty strain of corruption. Every second, tumorous pores continued to cough up more foul, oily black sludge to mix with the rest of the—fluids.
Which is just lovely. Even ignoring how downright disgusting the Demon was, the sight of the corruption more than convinced Andric that he did not want to touch it.
The moment was broken when the abomination released a gurgling screech, before leaping across the rubble straight towards him. Andric was fast enough to avoid it with relative ease—while the creature was quite fast on its own, its attacks largely amounted to charging straight at him and swinging its appendages wildly.
This should have made things very easy for the alchemist—but instead, he found himself grinding his teeth together as he continued to run circles around the rampaging fiend. While it was a fair bit slower than him, it was still fast enough that it could follow him if he just ran. That would just end with him leading the Demon straight towards Liliana.
And while Andric was fast enough to dance circles around the monster, his ward most definitely wasn’t. Talented as she may be, the heiress had not built herself for speed. Andric was not keen to see what would happen should one of the Demon’s wild strikes land on her.
Gritting his teeth even harder, the alchemist rolled backwards down a slab of fallen brickwork while releasing a stream of condensed Frostfire point-blank into what used to be the Demon’s face.
The monster didn’t scream, but the sounds of gurgling flesh and fracturing ice said plenty. Finally, something might actually work. As a battle-focused alchemist, Andric was best suited to close combat. Immense speed, strength, and resilience usually helped with that—but they were less useful when he was avoiding any chance of touching the opponent.
It didn’t take the Demon long to recover. If it even needed to recover at all—it probably continued charging straight through the attack.
Resigned to his fate, Andric drew deeply from the well of latent Frostburn suffusing his flesh like blood. While the alchemically-distilled substance was an integral part of his magic, he tried his best to avoid throwing large amounts of it around. Doing so was essentially wasting power. Most of his magic consumed some, sure, but that was in small amounts that quickly regenerated. Taking it outside his body was a bit risky, so he usually restricted that for forming small blades or some of the more costly spellforms.
Neither of those was going to work here. There shouldn’t be anything nearly as strong as this Rank C Demon anywhere nearby—and his ward was in danger. After another hop back to avoid the abomination’s flailing arms, Andric pulled his Frostburn tight—and released it straight towards the crazed Demon.
There was no need to activate a skill—it was an extension of his own body. The downside there was that the alchemist staggered beneath the weight of an immense wave of pain.
The Demon fared a bit worse, though. A jagged spike of glittering Frostfire erupted from Andric’s body, skewering the corrupted horror straight through the chest and shattering its core.
The spike of magic was close to fully crystallizing by the time its glistening tip came to a stop a full two meters out the Demon’s backside. Granted, the creature was dead long before that. Its corrupted, blood-soaked flesh wasn’t, though—so Andric patiently waited to make sure the corpse fully froze over.
He only allowed himself to sink to one knee when he got the system notification.
You have leveled up! You are now level 73.
+1 Power, +1 Durability, +1 Vitality.
+5 stat points.
Andric decided to save all five of his free points for now. It was always a good idea to have a small amount of buffer as needed, especially once you started reaching higher levels. Also, he had a tingling feeling that things were not going to proceed as expected.
After allowing himself another few seconds to regain his energy, the alchemist stood, stretched, and darted off in Liliana’s direction. Using up so much of his internal Frostburn took a lot out of him—after all, it was now an integral part of his physical body just as much as his magic. He’d just have to hope there wouldn’t be any more corrupted, Rank C Demons roaming around.
Don’t count on it, though. When one strange and highly inconvenient thing happened, others usually followed. And to make matters worse, that fiend was clearly artificial. Identify had listed it as a ‘Corrupted Blood-Crafted Simian of Wrath.’ Andric had seen quite a few Demons in his time—more than most warriors his age, and that even included the Templars. Thus, he felt confident in his assessment that the Rank C simian was decidedly not a naturally-occurring creature.
And with suspected infernal cultists now operating in the area? That removed any doubt that might have been left over. No one within the Blodmane estate had warned him of this either—and they would have, had they known. They probably wouldn’t have allowed Liliana to come.
This was, needless to say, bad.
But as Andric’s mind turned away from the broader implications, he found himself only growing more worried. It would be pretty bad if he allowed Liliana to die. The fact that she ran away by herself didn’t make it better. It only increased the temptation for him to kill her himself.