Chapter 51

From the edge of the treeline, Zeth pointed out Garon’s house. “See that one?”

The demon next to him nodded.

“Right. That’s our target. Just follow me, and I’ll give you instructions as events occur.”

“You do not have any standing orders for me?”

“Well, I already gave you most of them. Don’t kill anyone, don’t draw attention to yourself, if it looks like anyone’s going to hurt me, stop them from doing that. If my life is at stake, you’re allowed to kill them to do so.” He looked at her. “But keep in mind, if I ever get even the slightest feeling that you’re trying to exploit my orders to take advantage of me, I will not hesitate to unsummon you.”

Her face paled. “...Please, if I am doing anything wrong, inform me before doing something drastic. I assure you, I will not intentionally disobey you, but I am ignorant of your world.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’m just letting you know, in case you’re planning on pulling any tricks.”

“My life is on the line, sir. You have my word that I will not do so.”

“Good. Just keep that in mind, then. Because we’re going in hot.”

With that, Zeth breathed in and out, trying his best to clear his head, and began walking toward the house. His full identity-concealing suit had already been donned, so if anyone saw him, he had no doubt they’d assume he was up to no good—not to mention, of course, he had a demon marching right behind him. But then, if there was trouble, he had a demon marching right behind him. So he wasn’t too worried about some random guards.

Speaking of, as they approached the house, the group of guards surrounding Garon’s house noticed them, shouting out to stop where they were. In the dark night, it didn’t seem like they recognized who they were speaking to just yet.

“I said, stop!” one of them yelled. “Identify yourselves, or we will not hesitate to draw our…”

The man faltered as his eyes landed on the face of the person walking behind Zeth. Just as Astrys became visible to him, his eyes widened and his voice was reduced to a whimper. Zeth recognized the man’s full-body shivers as a clear sign that the demon’s fear aura had completely overpowered his mind.

Zeth remembered last night, when they hadn’t even bothered to stop the singular Rosalie from breaking in. No way they’d do anything against a demon.

“Step aside,” he said, “and run.”

The guard did just that. And as Astrys continued to draw closer, subsuming the rest of the guards fully within her aura of terror, their confidence, too, was sucked from their minds. Within seconds, the sounds of boots thudding against stone echoed through the otherwise silent town as the guards ran for their lives. There was a good chance they’d go get help, but more guards wouldn’t be an issue. If Rosalie and the others caught wind of this, they certainly would be one, but Zeth hoped to be in and out by the time they made it out here.

“Open the door,” Zeth said to Astrys. “Feel free to break it. Just get me inside.”

She walked up and tried the handle, finding it locked, so she just…pushed her hand forward. And, as if the door offered no resistance at all, her arm simply passed through the planks, snapping them in half as she moved, the doorknob and lock shattering before her might as well. With that, the door slowly creaked open on its own.

He nodded. “Okay, let’s head in.”

Astrys led the way, slowly creeping through the house as she looked back and forth, checking the corners of each room before she fully passed into each one. They walked through the entryway, the living room, and the kitchen—no signs of life. From there, he had her open up the door to the bedroom—nothing, and the bathroom—empty.

They checked and double-checked every room, not finding Garon or anyone else anywhere inside.

Zeth had expected that, though; it was exactly what Rosalie had found last night. Still, there was no way Garon had genuinely ordered so many guards to stand uselessly around an empty building, right? There had to be in here. Besides, they themselves had admitted the man had gone in at evening and hadn’t come out. Even if he wasn’t still in here, he had to have gotten out through some sort of secret exit. If they didn’t find him, they’d simply have to find that, instead.

So, Zeth tried something. He closed his eyes, standing in the middle of the empty bedroom, and focused into himself, looking at the room a second time through a second method of perception. This was the way he looked at mana fields to repair him, so if there was something magical in the room, maybe looking in the same way would allow him to see it, too.

But no luck. Nothing stood out to him in the empty room.

Only…He frowned. Maybe something did. Not visually, but calling out to him in some sort of way. If his mana perception was his sixth sense, this was like a seventh. The barest, faintest little pull. Not leading him in any sort of direction—it wasn’t strong enough for him to tell that—but simply informing him that was around. It existed.

The feeling was familiar. It was almost the exact same thing he’d felt back when he was wandering through the Otis and Roul’s offices and he’d gotten a feeling calling him to search through a specific storage closet. And when he’d followed that feeling, minutes later, it had been revealed that the exact closet he searched happened to house a massive ritual circle being hidden away by some Skill. If he was feeling it again here, in Garon’s house…

Zeth turned to Astrys. “Do you think you could rip the floor off of the ground?”

She frowned. “I believe so—this ‘normal tree’ substance doesn’t seem to be particularly strong. However, this is meant to be a stealth mission, yes? I don’t believe I could while keeping quiet.”

Zeth shrugged. “The guards’ll probably talk anyway; our cover’s already as good as blown. Besides, if all goes well, we’ll be getting in and out pretty quickly after this.”

“Okay. But please, do not hold it against me if this goes poorly.”

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With one last glance at him, she nodded, kneeling on the ground and lifting her hand up.

And then, in a single motion, she swiped it out in a downward motion, demolishing a half dozen entire planks of wood in a split second. Splintering cracks rang throughout the entire house, echoing across town. Breaking the door probably alerted the house’s next-door neighbors; this woke up the entire neighborhood.

Below the planks was nothing but plain earth. After revealing it, Astrys looked back up at Zeth.

“Keep going,” he said. “I don’t care if you reduce this entire building to rubble—there’s something hidden here. Find it.”

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“Okay,” she said. “You should probably leave the building, in that case.”

It took around fifteen seconds after Zeth stepped out the door for the walls to collapse. He couldn’t see Astrys while she was in the darkened house, but after a few extraordinarily loud smashing sounds and some quakes in the earth that shook his feet, the building seemed to no longer be able to take it, and fell in on itself.

After the dust settled, Zeth watched as a piece of roof tipped over to reveal Astrys, standing completely unbothered in the middle of the building’s rubble.

“I found something,” she said.

Zeth’s heart erupted. “Show me.”

She cleared away some of the rubble that had fallen where the living room had been. “When I attempted to break this section of floor, it resisted. It is clearly stronger than any of the other wood this house was built with.

Sure enough, in the place she gestured at, where the rest of the floor had been clawed apart, a perfect square of planks sat undisturbed, as though they’d been made indestructible. The foundation below the planks, too, looked untouched, while the rest of the house was cut open with slash marks all across. It looked like a little box of planks protruding up from the ground, the top of the box looking the exact same as the rest of the floor was supposed to.

Clearly, this was something special. Some sort of reinforced hiding place, maybe? It was around the width of a person on either end—Garon could’ve been just inside, balled up in the fetal position. Just the thought of having his prey so close practically left Zeth salivating.

“What shall I do?” Astrys asked, breaking Zeth out of his thoughts.

“Oh, uh…Try breaking it again. I want to watch.”

She took a battle stance once again, holding her claws back, then in a lightning-fast motion swung them with incredible force at the wooden box. They impacted the planks so hard, the force of the strike practically knocked Zeth off his feet. Wind blew into his face, pushing his hair back from the single swing.

But her claws bounced right off the simple wooden planks.

Zeth frowned, staring at the strange object. He reached out and rubbed his hand along the wood—it certainly felt like this was a perfectly normal set of planks. What was making it so strong?

He walked in a circle around the structure, examining it from all angles, not finding any ritual circles present on them. That tug on his subconscious, he found, been leading him here—but what was actually doing this? And how was he meant to break in? Surely there wasn’t some sort of Skill that could genuinely make an object —he would’ve certainly heard of it by now. But if a demon as powerful as Astrys couldn’t do it, what could?

Zeth looked at her, then back at the structure. “You can dig, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Start digging around the box. See if those planks continue downward.

Astrys got to her knees and began doing just that, pushing her fingers into the dirt and quickly scooping gigantic swaths of dirt from the ground, tossing them behind her. After a few seconds, having dug out about a couple feet of dirt that was next to it, she’d revealed that the planks did, indeed, continue underground.

“Great,” he said. “Keep digging and keep testing their strength. If there’s something that can make a surface indestructible like that, no way it’s cheap. There’s got to be a point in this little tunnel of theirs where it stops being protected.”

***

It was after the second crash that echoed across town that Rosalie finished donning her combat gear and left her room, finding herself alone in the empty nighttime streets. It’d come from the direction of that detestable new mayor’s house, right? She had never gotten answers from him; but perhaps this was the night she’d get them.

She began hurrying in the direction of the sounds. They’d ended by now, but that didn’t mean whatever was happening had stopped. She had a sneaking suspicion that the man was the Blood Mage she was looking for—it only made sense that a corrupt man from a corrupt guild taking control of a corrupt town would wield a corrupt Class.

But if it was him…If it was truly him, tonight would be bad. She’d seen the Blood Mage fight. She knew what they were capable of. If that person brought their detestable powers into town, it could mean disaster for everyone. But then, that fight…Why had they fought the mannitor to begin with? There was no reason to kill the monster as it ravaged the town, unless they were trying to help people. But it wouldn’t make sense for a man like that mayor to be helping people of his own free will.

Something was up. She knew it.

She cursed herself for even allowing the thought to cross her mind, but Rosalie almost found herself hoping this was just another monster attack. At least then, she’d be capable of facing the foe. If those mysterious crashes were actually the Blood Mage’s doing, then the fear currently gripping her heart would be the least of her worries.

As she sprinted in the direction of the sound, Rosalie spotted a group of guards running in the opposite direction. She wanted to shout at them, away But she held her tongue. Perhaps they were running to inform the precinct of what was going on.

She stopped in front of them. “What’s going on? Where are you coming from?”

“Th-there’s someone breaking into the new mayor’s house!” one of the guards said. “They…”

Another spoke up. “They had a demon with them.”

Rosalie’s face drained. “Demon?”

The guards nodded. The first sighed. “We…We ran for our lives. Just looking at it was enough for us to tell we had no hope against it.”

“Have you evacuated the townsfolk?”

They looked between each other.

She wanted to smash their heads together. Had they received no training whatsoever?! But once again, she perished the thought from her mind, trying her best to practice empathy. It wasn’t their fault—of course an underfunded guard precinct wouldn’t train its guards properly. She, herself, had abused this fact the mere night before to get into that same house.

“Come with me,” she said, taking charge of the situation. “You will escort everyone in the area to safety.”

“But ma’am, the—”

“Don’t worry about the Blood Mage. Or the demon.” She took a breath, trying to steady her pounding heart. “Those will be my job.”

***

Zeth stared down the hole Astrys had been digging. The wooden box had continued straight down for about ten feet, but as he watched the demon toss one more handful of dirt out of the hole, he saw the planks turn at a right angle, going from heading straight down to heading sideways.

“Okay,” he called down to her. “Now, try to break that.”

After a moment, she reared back, lifting up her clawed hand, and struck downward with all her might. And finally, after so many failed attempts to break the planks, the ones below her shattered.

Astrys was forced to take a step back to avoid falling through the hole in the planks, which had opened up to reveal a tunnel—it was too dark to see inside.

Zeth’s eyes grew wide. A smile spread across his face. This had been going perfectly. He approached the edge of the sloped dirt hole and slid down, stumbling to a stop next to his demon ally.

“Alright,” he said. “Jump on down.”

“It may be trapped.”

“If there’s anyone who can handle a trap or two, it’s a demon,” Zeth said. “Now go. Get in there and see if it’s safe.”

With a deep breath and a look of fear creeping across her face, Astrys sat down on the edge of the planks, dangling her feet in the hole. Zeth felt a twinge of regret for making her do this upon seeing her obvious anxiety, but he pushed it from his mind. This was a he was dealing with. If he were in danger and she actually had a choice in the matter, she’d let him die in a second. Hell, if she had a choice in the matter, she’d be the one to kill him. It was no use feeling sorry for demons. The fear aura constantly mucking up his mind ensured he realized that.

After the moment’s hesitation, Astrys scooted off the edge and fell in.

Zeth watched as she landed on the floor, glancing around for a moment before looking back up at him with a look of relief on her face. “It seems to be safe. There is nobody here.”

“Alright. I’m coming in,” he said, and jumped in, himself.

He found himself standing in the middle of a wooden tunnel, looking at the plain floor, ceiling, and walls. Behind him was the section that went upward, into what once was Garon’s house. And in the other direction…

He stared down a long hallway, sloped ever-so-slightly downward, whose features faded into darkness as the light of the moon, shining in from the hole in the ceiling they’d made, failed to reach further in.

That seemed to be Zeth’s destination.

This was it. This was the Blood Mage’s lair. This was where he’d find Garon, and this was where he’d kill him.