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The 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 in the city and the far-off yelling of fighting could be heard in the distance. Now that we were out on the street I could see a few dead bodies laying on the ground here and there. I got the sense that these ones had died in the early rioting because none of them looked like the slaves 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 coming from," Silva pointed out.

"Can 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 chanting so that rules out the Tamin church. I mostly hear guardsmen, soldiers, and rioters, but I can't tell if they're fighting each other or fighting the demons Quinn saw earlier." There were hushed whispers from the people behind us at the mention of demons but I chose to ignore them for the moment.

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

Lorriene tapped the handle of her dagger with a nail. "Maybe. It would be easier to avoid a fight but it would take a lot longer to regroup with everyone. It 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 other gate and then walking around the outside of the city would add significant time to the return trip." She turned around and looked over the slaves we were guiding. "With our group, I think we could handle most demon threats as long as we're careful, even while protecting the non-combatants."

"You've never tried 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 going west 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 near the castle. I'd rather deal with unorganized demons and rioters."

"I thought we came this way to avoid the demons," Quinn said with anxiety 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 nice to see if this was all their doing. I assume they're involved since we've come 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 splashed against a magic barrier that was surrounding the slaver's guild building. That must have been what we were hearing the entire time 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," Morrigan 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 tunneled through. We weakened the barrier by digging through that way and now their barrier just broke. If we stay here, the next 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 on the other side of the building in response to the shield coming down. Thousands of small spells started to fly at it from the bazaar, the work of individual mages attacking the slaver's guild. Chunks 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!" Morrigan 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, Bella, and Torien before turning to Silvea and Lorriene. "You two scout ahead for us, we need to make sure we're going the right way to avoid trouble." The two of them nodded as we ran from the edge of the collapsing building.

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

I looked over her nearly naked body and lack of weapons. "Can you fight like that?"

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

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

"Sure, there's leftover terra mana in the air. That should be better for armor than the fire mana." Once we turned a corner and put a different building between us and the slaver'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 forming around her. She grimaced at first but it seemed that it was comfortable enough.

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

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

"Incoming!" Lorriene shouted.

A demon similar to the one we saw in the hallway of the slave 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 deflecting it into the ground with her spear. Just like the other one, this demon's flesh was hard and resisted Silva's piercing weapon so she had instead used the momentum of her jump to slam it into the ground. My body lit up with [Armor of Light] and I began to glow brightly. While slightly annoying, this armor spell was powerful defensive magic. With one motion I drew my sword and cast [Flame Imbue] on it, the mithril sword taking to the enhancement magic like a sponge and amplifying its effect.

The demon ripped its way out from under Silva and launched itself toward one of the nearby slaves but I intercepted it and bashed it with my kite shield, using it for the first time in actual combat. The demon fell over itself before scrambling back to its feet just in time for me to slash against its chest and leave a burning welt across the surface of its skin. In the back of my mind, I felt the conditions for [Die Nudge] trigger, allowing me to hit the monster with the additional magic of that spell. The demon reacted like it was screeching in confusion and pain, yet it remained eerily silent.

Silva followed up after that attack and 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 wanted to 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 can 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 [Magic Control].

Because I was hitting it but not technically causing it any damage with the physical aspect of the attack, it counted as failing to hit which was enough to trigger this ability. I dismissed the information from my mind as quickly as I had brought it up and slashed at the back of the monster again after Silva had taken its attention. Like last time, the monster spun around in confusion and wildly flailed in my direction. The monster was fast but stupid, it had none of the cunning that the previous demons we fought had and solely lashed out like a hurt animal. Its claws scraped against my armor of light but it gave me nothing but glancing blows that didn't penetrate 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 convulsed 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]

[Enhancement Magic has increased from level 8 to level 9]

[Learned Enhancement Magic Spell Hasted Perception]

The demon pushed me over the threshold for the next level I had been at for a while. I longed to 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 combat situation. Too risky. Better to look over the new spell when I was in a safe place.

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

Lorriene hesitantly nodded. "I don't see anything else. It seems these demons were trying 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 got dragged 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 enhancements active was cheaper than recasting them the next time we were in a fight. I hoped that the visible show of strength would be deterrence if we ran into someone else.

"You're stronger than you look," Kal'daeryn commented. The compliment to my fighting was appreciated but I didn't respond.

"Let's keep moving," I said to the group. The slaves that had been worried by the demon showing up looked relieved and I got the sense that they were more confident 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 corners.

"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 confidence in her with me through the bond, giving additional weight to her words. She believed what she was saying.

We followed Lorriene through 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 come to her. I motioned for the group to wait and crept up next to her with Silva and Torien.

Slumped against the wall were a dead Tamin paladin and two dead Tamin priests. "Sophin's work," Lorriene whispered. "You can tell from the clean lines." As she said, they had been decapitated in a clean 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 changed 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 explains why I don't hear any priests chanting their magic anywhere though."

The three of us returned to our group and continued past the alley. A few of the former slaves looked over as we passed but didn't comment on the corpses we inspected. After a short walk from there, we were approaching 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 another huge fireball hit the slaver's guild building and it began to collapse 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 collapsed 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 can hope," Silva said with a smile.