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Slayers - Volume 10 - Chapter 3




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3: Battle Breaks Over Solaria at Night

“Who’s there? Don’t move!” Luke drew his sword and dashed straight at us.

Whaaa?! Gourry and I reflexively ran in the opposite direction!

“Don’t try to get away, you bastards!” he shouted as he gave chase.

A pretty absurd request, if you ask me. When a guy charges you with a sword, you get the hell outta there! Granted, I’ll admit that we looked pretty darn suspicious under the circumstances. Faces covered, dressed all in black... and while we weren’t armored, we were armed. All that, plus two guards collapsed by the door? It was no wonder Luke was after us.

The question now was how to handle the situation. Should Gourry and I peace out, or reveal our identities and explain ourselves? The answer came to me easily enough—Let’s book it!

With Luke’s shouting and carrying on, there were bound to be other guards on the way. And amidst all the coming kerfuffle, we’d never get a chance to tell our side of the story. We were just gonna have to make tracks for now and get back in touch tomorrow to lay out the sitch. Now, as for how best to make our getaway...

I chanted a spell under my breath. “Dam Blas!” Then I whipped around and unleashed it!

Crash! Just as I’d planned, the blast broke through the ceiling between us and Luke, raining debris down to block their way.

“What?!” Luke backed off to avoid the shower.

Meanwhile, I chanted another spell, took Gourry’s hand, and... “Lei Wing!”

I used that to take us out the hole in the ceiling and land up on the roof. I theoretically could have just kept going, but Lei Wing’s speed, altitude, and carrying capacity all varied greatly based on the magical power at the caster’s disposal. With Gourry in tow, it took all my concentration just to get us this far. My Demon Blood talismans would let me tote him with ease, but I hadn’t had time to cast the amplification chant with Luke on our heels.

So I waited to cast it until now, as we reached the edge of the roof.

Hail, Lords of the four worlds’ darkness

I beseech your bond and beg you this boon

By your powers combined, entwined,

Bless me with magic mightier than mine

And with that one little recitation, the Demon Blood talismans on my neck, both wrists, and belt buckle began to shine. I could feel their power filling my body. I then started chanting a new Lei Wing. When I did...

“Get back here!”

Luke and Mileena appeared on the roof too, probably courtesy of a Levitation spell.

Man, talk about persistent!

Luke darted toward us, but just before he could close the distance, I finished my chant!

“Lei Wing!” With far greater speed than the last time, Gourry and I took flight and fled into the night sky. Now, once we shook these guys off—

“Lina! They’re after us!” Gourry shouted.

“Whaaaaaaaat?!” I couldn’t help screaming. “You gotta be kiddin’ me! First those men in black, now Luke and Mileena?!”

“Guess your spell isn’t all that fast...”

“Yeah, right! There ain’t a sorcerer around with a spell that can keep up with this baby!”

“Except them, I guess. Oh, I know!”

“You know what?!”

“Last night, your spell didn’t work on the man in black either. Must be that time of the month!”

“It is not!” I barked.

Gourry was right that I’d failed to defeat opponents I should’ve trounced and outrun opponents I should’ve left in the dust... But my magic wasn’t compromised in any way. The speed of my Lei Wing just now and the force of the Dam Blas I’d used on the ceiling earlier were up to snuff. That meant we had a different problem on our hands—our opponents were more powerful than usual.

A normal Lei Wing could never keep up with my amplified one. But one with an artfully altered chant? An enhancement like that might get the job done. It seemed Luke and Mileena had quite a few tricks up their sleeves... I’d have to ask ’em about it later. For now, however, our top priority was getting them up to speed.

I flew out to one of the city’s meandering walls some distance from the castle, touched down in an unpopulated area, and dismissed my flight spell. Not long after, Luke and Mileena followed suit. It looked like Luke had been pulling Mileena by the hand through the air, but I suspected both could use Lei Wing. If you combined two spells just right, maybe you could boost their effectiveness. But all that aside...

Hang on, you two! I wanted to cry, but before I could... a ball of magic appeared in Luke’s outstretched hand! Oh, for the love of...!

“Prepare for pain, assholes!” Luke shouted and released the orb. It broke up in midair, sending countless small glowing bullets showering down on me and Gourry.

“Gwaaaah!”

Pow! Powpapow! Gourry and I split as they rained down around our feet. They didn’t seem particularly powerful on their own, but I wasn’t anxious to taste one.

“You ain’t gettin’ away from us!”

“Hold your freakin’ horses, darn it!” I shouted, turning back toward Luke as I pulled the cloth off of my face. “It’s me! It’s us!”

“What the...?!” Luke stopped, understandably surprised, while Mileena observed us as stoically as ever. Had she already figured us out, perhaps?

“It was you guys?!” Meanwhile, Luke seemed absolutely flabbergasted, suggesting he definitely hadn’t. “Finally turned to dirty dealings, did ya?!”

“Why would you assume that?!”

“Shut up and eat this!” Luke extended his hand, another ball of light forming in it...

“I’d advise you to hear them out!” a familiar voice boomed out, interrupting him.

“What?!” Luke called off his attack, looked around, and froze when he saw something.

I followed his gaze and spotted a silhouette standing on a roof near the wall. It was the masked man again!

“You there, raven-hair. Are you doing this with full knowledge of Lavas’s plot?” the masked man boomed again.

“What?!” Luke stammered, looking shaken by the accusation. “Lavas’s plot? What’re you talkin’ about?!”

“Lavas is leading the men in black we fought in Bezeld!” I threw in this time.

“For real?!”

“We’re not sure yet! That’s why we snuck into the castle!”

“For your information, Lavas’s plot does not stop with merely amassing forces...” The masked man glanced around him. “But it seems I’ve no time to explain.”

I heard a rustling on the wind and suddenly felt presences appear all around us.

Of course... Luke and Mileena weren’t the only ones who’d followed us. The figures that came into view, rising up out of nowhere like moonlight taken form, were the all-too-familiar men in black. More than ten of them, at that.

“Beware,” said the masked man, his eyes cautiously scanning their ranks. “Several of these men are fused with demons.”

What?! I looked back at Mr. Mask in shock. And I wasn’t the only one taken aback.

“You... Who are you?! How much do you know?” one of the men in black demanded anxiously, lending credence to the man’s declaration.

But it made perfect sense! That explained how Zain had gotten so much stronger than before, and how his buddies had kept up with my amplified Lei Wing. They had demonic power now!

Still, if that was the case, it was hardly good news. What I’d witnessed so far (these guys quick-casting spells and blocking them barehanded) didn’t mean they’d been sneaking chants past me somehow; it meant most magic didn’t work on them at all.

“Take the masked man alive. Kill the others.”

On the lead man’s order, the other black cloaks sprang into action. One of them jumped up on top of the wall, produced a spear of light in his hand, and let it fly. His target? The masked man on the roof!

But the masked man just calmly and quietly brought his right hand forward. “Vas Gluud.” As if he’d expected the black cloak’s play, he created a magic barrier the size of a small shield. Plink! It dispersed the spear of light effortlessly.

“What?!” The man in black froze for a second, shaken.

Ah, never let your guard down, as they say! I’d already finished chanting my spell. “Blast Ash!”

Vwsh! Before he could even scream, the man in black on the wall turned to dust.

“Don’t underestimate them!” spat one of the men in black. It sounded like Zain! “I’ll start with you, Lina Inverse!”

With that, Mr. Probably Zain came straight for me! Still, he had a lot of ground to cover, and I could chant pretty darn fast! I completed my next spell before I was even in his sword range.

“Blast Ash!” I aimed it right where I expected him to run. About the only spells in my repertoire with a fairly wide area of effect that would also work against targets with beefy magic resistance were this and Dragon Slave—and I couldn’t go chucking Dragon Slaves in the middle of a city.

My Blast Ash caused a black something-or-other to wreath any swath of air I targeted. The dark field would expand and then disappear, reducing any opponent caught within it to ash. I watched as it encircled Zain, and when it disappeared, I saw... nothing.

“Lina!”

The second Gourry cried out, I felt a chill run up my spine and immediately leaped forward.

Whoosh! Something brushed by my back. I quickly took my distance, turned around, and saw a man in black standing there, sword in hand. There was no way it was reinforcements. The men in black already had us surrounded. Which meant... this could only be...

“He... He just came out of nowhere!” Luke shouted, confirming my theory.

“Is that your power, Zain?!” I demanded.

“It is,” he responded quietly.

Just as I thought. In the moment I’d cast my spell, Zain had warped behind me in an attempt to sneak in a backstab. The ability to blink through space... That explained his impossible moves in our battle last night as well. It was something I’d seen powerful pure demons do from time to time. But to see a human do it, even if he was fused with a demon... That’d only be possible by combining the magic power he’d acquired through the fusion with a certain degree of innate magic skill as a human. That added up to a tricky opponent.

I’d so narrowly dodged his blow that it had caught the edge of my clothing, but I might not be so lucky the next time. If the masked man was to be believed, Zain wasn’t the only one with a deadly trick up his sleeve either. And that was all without acknowledging that these guys had us outnumbered two to one, which wasn’t the best of odds even if they’d been normal humans. Yeah, this was gonna be a tough fight.

While we were panicking over the reveal of what Zain could do, the other men in black began to close in. If the five of us could work together, then maybe...

But just as I was thinking that—Tnk!—the masked man suddenly leaped from his roof to the top of the wall. With another jump, he then vanished into the adjacent block.

That little sucker ran off on us! I wasn’t the only one distraught over his actions. Zain also let out a cry of surprise, briefly stopping in place.

“Raza Clover!” In that instant, Mileena unleashed a spell.

Zain leaped up and dodged it with ease. “You four, after him! The rest of you, finish them off here!” At his behest, several of the men in black disappeared over the wall in pursuit of the masked man.

Aha... The black cloaks’ priority was pinning down the masked man and what he knew. Him fleeing the scene had taken some of the heat off of us. But even so, we were still outnumbered. We’d have to approach this carefully.

Zain, who’d remained on our side of the wall, dashed straight at me again!

Clink! Two flashes of silver clashed, a metallic ring resounding through the air. Gourry had dived in to parry Zain’s blow before it could reach me. Then, as if intent to finish their business from the night before, they launched into a fierce back-and-forth.

Too bad I didn’t have time to stand around and watch it. The remaining men in black set upon us immediately. I drew my sword, on my guard for the first one charging at me. Needless to say, I was also chanting a spell!

Shing! I blocked the incoming strike just as I finished my spell. “Freeze Arrow!”

Fwsh! Responding to my words of power, a few dozen bolts of ice manifested in front of me. A normal casting of this spell would summon about a dozen, but this puppy was amplified!

“Wha?!” Clearly terrified by this, the man in black leaped back.

“Go!” I fired my spell into the densest part of the black cloaks’ ranks.

Fshhfshhfshh! Countless streaks of light audibly tore through the air. It was such an overwhelming ice storm that there was no way to dodge it all, even if you were fast.

“What?!”

“Gwah!”

Were those screams of shock, or pain? Either way, I heard quite a few and saw two men collapse. Ice magic probably wouldn’t work on the demon-fused guys, but quite a few of the black cloaks seemed to be plain ol’ humans, and my goal was to sift out a few of their number. Fortunately, my plan had worked perfectly. I started my next spell...

Clank! Clang! I could hear the ringing of metal on metal directly behind me. At some point, Mileena had moved to stand back-to-back with me, her sword drawn. Beyond her, some distance away, two men in black had thrown something at me—maybe knives—which she’d knocked out of the air. The men’s hands were raised like they were about to throw something again...

“Fight like men already!” Luke shouted as he swung his sword. Whoosh! A burst of wind from his magical blade sent the men in black flying.

And as if she’d been waiting for just that... “Fell Zaleyd!” Mileena incanted, unleashing a swirling bolt of white light that mowed one of them down!

Their teamwork was seriously amazing. Apparently intimidated by how quickly we’d dispatched so many of their buddies, some of the men in black looked hesitant... but others yet were still raring to go. Were they just that cocky, or was this the confidence their demonic powers afforded them? It was safe to assume that, despite thinning their numbers, we still had quite a few formidable enemies left to face.

So... what if I do this?! I released the spell I had at the ready.

“Fireball!” Normally, this baby exploded on contact, but I’d tweaked the chant a little bit.

“Break!” I snapped my fingers, and then... Fwooobababoom! High above my head, the Fireball burst, creating crimson flowers in the night sky.

Two days ago, the masked man had forced the black cloaks to retreat just by hinting at the commotion their battle might cause. So what if I intentionally made a scene here and now? I was betting it’d chase them off again.

“Damn it! This ain’t no time for playin’ around!” Luke yelled at me, none the wiser to my plan. It certainly gave the black cloaks pause, however...

All but one of them.

“Graaah!” The man who refused to be cowed charged at Mileena with a bestial howl. With the force of a berserker, he piled on attack after attack.

“Tch...!” Barely managing to deflect the strikes, Mileena was slowly being forced back.

“Hey! Lay off my Mileena!” Luke bellowed, moving in to support her (and sneaking in some shameless self-promotion in the process).

“I’m not yours,” Mileena objected, as cool as could be despite the danger she was in.

I was chanting a spell in the meantime, natch. I would’ve liked to offer Gourry or Mileena a little magical backup, but I couldn’t really do much while they were locked in melee combat. Too great a chance that I might hit one of them.

Should I work on picking off the rest of the black cloaks, then? I went to release my spell and... that was when I heard an unexpected shout.

“What?!” cried an old man on the side of the road—probably a local attracted by all the ruckus.

“Tch...” Zain looked rather disturbed and leaped back from his clash with Gourry.

Yes! Success! If we could draw a big crowd, the men in black would be forced to retreat!

Or so I thought, except the man in black attacking Mileena didn’t react the same way. He did break away from their skirmish, but...

“You’re in my way,” he said casually. His left hand flashed.

“Geh!” The onlooker let out one final shout as he hit the ground with a thud.

What the...?!

“What are you doing, Zord?!” Zain reproached him.

“Getting rid of a witness!” the man called Zord responded with unsettling glee. “Anyone who interrupts our battle must die!”

“Are you insane?! You just made things worse! He won’t be the only one who comes!”

“Then I’ll kill all of them!” Zord said, his left hand now flashing... in my direction!

Sensing a danger that I couldn’t put into words, I jumped to the side. An unseen blade severed a lock of my hair.

My beautiful tresses! How dare you?!

But this was no time to be petty. This was probably the same move he used to kill that innocent old man. I’d thought it was a throwing knife at first, but I hadn’t seen anything moving through the air. My hair was there one minute and simply gone the next.

An invisible shockwave, then... Zord must have produced one the size of a knife when he flicked his hand.

This is so not cool! I decided. Watching Zord’s movements and dodging when he seemed about to attack was going to be the only way to deal with it. But with other enemies around, I couldn’t afford to focus solely on him. In other words, we were gonna have to finish him off first!

I released my next spell, another Blast Ash, even knowing how easily these guys could dodge it! Don’t get caught up in this, Mileena!

“Blast Ash!” I aimed straight at Zord’s back.

He must have realized it was coming—either that or he had good instincts—because he ran forward to avoid it. When he did, though, Luke leaped in! Vwoosh! With a magnificently timed sweep, he cut deep into Zord’s side.

Yes! Now we just— But my celebration was premature. Zord immediately swung his own sword right back at Luke, with a speed that suggested he was totally unfazed by his gaping wound.

“Huh?!” Luke managed to block the strike despite his surprise. “How in the hell...?!”

“Wahaha! You’ll need more than that to kill me!”

H-Hang on a minute now! This guy’s tough as freakin’ nails! If we don’t beat him fast, we’re in trouble! Yet before I could make my next move...

“Withdraw!” thundered Zain.

The other men in black immediately pulled back. Everyone except for Zord.

“Zord!” Zain scolded.

“Go on if you want to! I’m not done here!” he replied in a crazed tone.

Word to the wise: Don’t give crazy dudes superpowers. Or... was his madness a byproduct of the demon fusion?!

“What will he think of your insubordination?!” Zain shouted.

Twitch! That threat seemed to register with Zord. He quickly jumped back, got some distance from the group, and hurriedly said, “F-Fine! I’m sorry!”

Huh? He seemed completely docile now.


“Let’s go.”

With Zain’s second order, the men in black at last all disappeared into the darkness. Zain withdrew with them, leaving the four of us to a growing crowd of rubberneckers.

“Anyway... we’d better get going too,” I said.

“Indeed.” Mileena nodded in response. “We should head somewhere we can have a quiet talk.”

“Aha... so that’s the deal,” Luke whispered grumpily, sipping his cup of wine as I finished my story.

After the men in black had retreated, Gourry and I slipped back to our lodgings, picked up our luggage, and got some distance from the walled-off central block of the city. We’d then made our way to this inn-slash-tavern (which seemed weirdly rundown despite not actually being that old) in a burgeoning outer district. The houses here looked like they’d been built willy-nilly with no actual attempt at city planning, giving the place a real “wrong side of the tracks” vibe. The joint was packed with seedy and suspicious characters too—the perfect hiding spot, if you ask me.

“So can we say for sure that the regent’s in league with the guys in black?” Luke now asked.

“Seems like it to me, yeah,” I replied as I took a bite out of the salmon sandwich I’d ordered off the late-night menu.

“Tch. He really pulled the wool over our eyes, huh?” he said in frustration.

Mileena interjected calmly, “Not ours. Just yours.”

“Huh?” Luke looked stunned at this. “W-Wait a minute... I thought you trusted the regent, Mileena.”

“Why would I? I’ve never liked redheads.”

“W-Well... that’s kinda prejudiced, if you ask me...”

“Weren’t you the one who took the bodyguard job?” I had to ask. I was pretty sure that’s what Luke had told me.

“I was. But I had my reasons.” The silver-haired sorceress then began to explain in her ever-calm voice...

Many nights ago in a city not too far from here, Mileena—fed up with Luke’s incorrigible lovey-dovey overtures (her words)—decided to leave their inn and take a stroll. While she was out, she encountered a man who claimed to be a servant to Lord Langmeier of Solaria. He said the lord had been usurped, and that his entire family might be killed if nothing was done. He was allegedly on the way to report the situation to the king himself, and he was looking for protection for the journey.

Mileena had turned him down. Not because she hated mundane errands (unlike our whiny buddy Luke), but because she doubted the man’s story. This was entirely understandable, of course. Who comes crying to a random merc on the side of the road—that they haven’t even hired yet, no less—about how their lord has been usurped? Mileena figured it must have been some kind of scam.

But the next day, when she found that same man dead on the street, she had to wonder... Could he have been telling the truth? Had he unloaded on her out of desperation, knowing his pursuers would catch up to him soon? Was it a last-ditch effort to ensure that the knowledge didn’t die with him? Mileena had come to Solaria to find out for herself.

“But if the regent’s got the men in black, why hire you guys?” Gourry asked skeptically as Mileena wrapped up her tale.

“He’s probably the opportunistic type,” she replied, taking a sip of brandy-infused tea. “I wanted to stay at the castle a bit longer to investigate, but of course, things have since changed.”

“Ah, so you were investigating too when you stumbled across us, huh?” I mused when it dawned on me.

Mileena nodded silently.

“There was a man laid up in that room we broke into,” I shared. “He’d been drugged.”

Twitch. Mileena’s eyebrow arched slightly.

“I’m assuming... that he was Lord Langmeier.”

“So he really did get usurped,” Gourry remarked with a frown. “Wait, then who’s this Lavas guy really?”

“Our enemy—I can tell ya that much,” Luke said as simply as ever. “But the one I’m wonderin’ about now is that masked guy. Just who is he?”

“Well... probably not our enemy, at least,” I offered.

“You sure about that? What if he’s an agent of the king, who’s just usin’ us to keep Lavas busy? Or what if the lord’s other son, Veisam, got out alive and this dude’s workin’ for him, huh? That’d explain how he knows so much. If that’s his angle, he might play nice as long as we’re handy... and then throw us to the wolves once Lavas is gone.”

“Fair enough. We won’t slot him in the ally column just yet, then.”

“The smartest thing to do, if you ask me,” Luke said, with a glance at Mileena, as he scratched his head, “is to say bye-bye to Solaria, give the king a heads-up about what’s goin’ on here, and leave the rest to him.”

“You can do that if you like. But I won’t be going with you,” Mileena said harshly.

“Mileenaaa...” Luke whined, turning teary-eyed.

“Can I ask a question? What should we do next?” Gourry asked, wincing in anticipation of my expected reply.

Far be it for me to disappoint him, I delivered with a bright smile. “The same thing we do to anyone who picks a fight with us, be it cat or bird or regent lord!”

“Then it’s decided,” Mileena said, expression unchanged.

Luke smiled through a grimace. “So we wait for things to quiet down and strike back?”

“Oh, don’t be such a wimp,” I said, rising to my feet after polishing off the last of my sandwich. “We strike right now—while the iron is hot!”

Solaria that night was as busy as I’d ever seen a city. That was to be expected, given that there’d been trouble two evenings running. The site of our last battle was packed with onlookers, as well as guards marching this way and that to investigate the scene and keep traffic moving.

We gazed down at it all as we flew overhead through the darkened sky. We were backtracking to the temple-like building that Gourry and I had infiltrated on our first little mission, but there were a few key differences now. For starters, we had a bigger party... And more importantly, this was no stealth operation. We were going to pick a fight this time.

I figured there had to be a pretty important facility under there, see... Possibly a facility creating demonoid humans like Zain and Zord. We needed to find it and crush it.

Of course, the quickest way to wrap this whole business up would actually be to head to the castle, tie Lavas up, and beat a confession out of him. In fact, that was my original plan, but Mileena had poo-pooed it. It was clear that Lavas was our prime suspect, but we still didn’t have solid proof against him yet. She was concerned that if we came for Lavas and it turned out he wasn’t the mastermind after all, we’d be up a certain creek without a paddle.

(My thinking was that a little “Teehee, whoopsies! Wrong guy!” would be enough to cover our asses in just such a situation, but Mileena had poo-pooed that too.)

Hence we’d shifted our sights to the facilities in the heart of the city. Whether or not Lavas was behind them personally, it was clear that they were important to the men in black. Striking one might enable us to put a dent in their forces, and if things went really well, we might even be able to identify their ringleader and bag some evidence of the rising insurrection.

It was also possible that Zain and his goons were busy reporting to their boss right now, so they might not even be around. It was highly unlikely that they were expecting a reprisal from us so soon, which meant security on the facility should be fairly light. Talk about a golden opportunity!

“There it is!” I whispered quietly—“it” being the temple-esque building with the domed roof.

I shepherded our group closer. Because of the darkness of night and the distortion of our wind barrier, it was hard to be certain, but it sure seemed like there were fewer guards than last time. The four of us touched down on the roof.

“Mileena, put up a wind barrier,” I said.

“Why?”

“Sound dampening.” She caught on quickly, chanted the spell, and conjured a wind barrier surrounding us. As for me... “Dam Blas!”

Crash!

The attack I unleashed broke through the floor at our feet with a big boom, but Mileena’s wind barrier muted most of it. We then levitated down into the building through the hole I’d made. It was as dark inside as it had been on our last visit, but this time, we didn’t have to keep quiet. Just as I was about to chant a light spell...

Wham!

“What is it?!”

“Who are you people?! Hold it right there!”

The outside door flew open and security forces poured in, rabbling at us.

“No fair!” I cried. “We muffled the sound!”

“They could still hear the rubble falling, dumbass,” Luke whispered in response.

Ah... fair point. Our wind barrier prevented sound from leaking out roofside, but it didn’t do much about the debris hitting the ground below. That had, um... probably made quite a lot of noise, in fact...

Welp, whatever! No use crying over spilled milk, right?

I quickly chanted a spell, got around behind the pews, and turned toward the approaching soldiers. “Sleeping!”

The crowd collapsed with a frankly comical thumpa-thumpa-thud. The fact that they’d all gone off to dreamland so easily suggested that there weren’t any demonoids like Zain and Zord among them.

More soldiers kept coming, but Mileena and I put most of ’em to sleep with more magic. Any that managed to get through were quickly knocked unconscious by Gourry and Luke. Soon enough, we had a cathedral packed with snoozing soldiers, and no more reinforcements to go.

There had been two men in black present here last time, but maybe they’d been sent out to find us and weren’t back yet. Maybe they were lying low for some other reason. Or maybe they were hiding in the main facility underground, just waiting for us...

At any rate, I cast another spell. “Lighting!”

Pop! The light I threw up toward the ceiling hung in the air overhead and illuminated the room around us. Lines of pews, a central walkway... and at the head of everything, a rather grand altar with a divine statue behind it. The building could certainly be used as a real place of worship. If not for all the security, I would never have pegged it for a front.

There was probably a hidden door somewhere around, but we didn’t have time to search it out the old-fashioned way. I began chanting under my breath... “Dam Blas!”

Crash! My amplified blast tore through the floor below! And beneath it was... dirt.

“Tch. Not here, huh?” I was hoping to hit the jackpot on the first blast. I began chanting again.

“Hey... you’re not gonna keep blasting the floor until you find a way down, are you?” Gourry asked in disbelief.

But of course I wasn’t. I placed a hand on the exposed earth... “Bepheth Bring!”

This was a burrowing spell I used to create a long, narrow tunnel through the ground. My thought was that if I cast enough of these in various directions, we’d eventually connect to the underground facility. But I didn’t even have to run a second chant. There was already light at the end of my tunnel.

“Found it.” The facility seemed to be hidden pretty far below. I cast another spell to widen the hole, and then... “Actually, scratch that.” I’d been thinking about using Levitation to take us down, but I changed my mind and switched to a different incantation. Right down the tunnel, I sent a... “Fireball!”

Fwoosh! Once the flames in the depths died back, Luke and Mileena levitated down through the tunnel. Gourry and I followed suit a second later.

We found ourselves in a straight, empty corridor with white walls, partly charred black by my Fireball. I’d shot the blast in the event that there was an ambush waiting for us inside, but there were no enemies in sight. The sound would probably bring them running soon, though, and knife-throwing enemies in a narrow place like this would probably make short work of us. In other words, we needed to get a move on!

I chanted another spell, and... “Dam Blas!” I fired at one of the walls based on nothing but a gut feeling.

Crash! And... pay dirt! I’d opened a huge hole that revealed a vast room on the other side. I darted in without looking and...

“Wh-What?!” There were a total of five sorcerers inside. They cast flustered, fearful gazes my way.

Now, I pegged them for sorcerers, but based on their appearance and bearing, these guys looked the research kind rather than the casting kind. And they weren’t the only people around.

Well... “people” might be putting it loosely. There were several dozen chimera-growing crystal tubes in the room. And suspended in the so-called water of life within... were probably the fruits of their human-demon fusion experiments. Men who seemed half human, half lesser demon. Women with twisted bodies below the neck. And... children, equally deformed.

It was clear that none of these once-human creatures had volunteered to be part of this.

“You sons of...!” Luke raged, grabbing the collar of the nearest sorcerer.

“Ah! Ahh!” One of the sorcerers on the other side of the room reached for the knob of a door when...

Thump! Luke’s sword was suddenly sticking out of his back. The sorcerer fell limp and slumped to the floor.

“I kill the next guy who moves,” Luke said in a low voice, making it clear how serious he was. The sorcerers all froze in place. He turned his eyes back to the guy whose collar he was holding and said, “Tell me everything or I start breaking fingers. You still don’t talk, I kill you and move on to the next guy.”

His eyes were dead serious. He seemed like he’d really do it if we let him... And after seeing what was inside those tubes, none of us were inclined to stop him.

“F-Fine! I’ll talk!” Realizing that silence wouldn’t save him (or perhaps just because he was a coward), the sorcerer readily capitulated. “They’re... They’re making us run experiments here! Experiments forcing humans into becoming hosts for demons summoned from the astral plane!”

Hmm? The sorcerer’s words tickled something in the back of my mind.

“We study what happens if you use humans who haven’t yet developed a strong sense of self—children—as hosts, their differences in stamina, compatibility... external appearance when using men versus women, adults versus children...”

“I don’t give one damn what you’re studyin’,” Luke hissed, interrupting the man’s terrified ramblings. “Who put you up to all this?”

The sorcerer hesitated for a moment, then said, “L-Lord Lavas.”

Aha!

“Got it. So it’s the regent who’s orderin’ you to do these disgusting experiments on folks.”

“I... I was just following orders! I-It wasn’t my fault!” shouted the sorcerer, refusing all personal responsibility.

“Oh?” A dangerous expression flashed across Luke’s features. “I’m bettin’ the women an’ kids in there didn’t ask for any of this. You’re sayin’ you bear no part of that ’cause it was an order? So it’s okay if I kill you on someone else’s orders, huh? It wouldn’t be my fault, right?”

“Wha—”

A shudder ran through the sorcerer’s body. Gourry and I gasped. I didn’t know where he’d been hiding it, but Luke had produced a dagger in his free hand and plunged it into the man’s chest.

Whud... His neck released from Luke’s hold, the sorcerer collapsed to the floor.

“That’s too far, Luke,” Mileena said calmly.

“Don’t you see what they’re doin’ here, Mileena?!” he responded angrily, uncowed for once. “He said he was ‘just following orders’! These assholes don’t even think what they’re doin’ is wrong!”

“We have more pressing concerns at this particular moment.”

Luke gritted his teeth at Mileena’s words. “Seeing this crap... It’s enough to make a guy hate the whole of humanity...”

“I’m human. As are you.”

Her words seemed to release some of the tension in Luke’s shoulders. “Yeah... I guess. So what do we do with the rest of ’em?” He glanced at the remaining sorcerers, who suddenly huddled together in fear. And then...

“Sleeping!” The spell I incanted sent them all into slumber. “Why don’t we just leave them here for now?”

“Fine,” Luke said bitterly. He still seemed infuriated, but he was above killing men in their sleep.

“Quit worrying about these maggots. Now that we know Lavas is calling the shots here, it’s time to go beat his ass! We can see that these guys get their just deserts later.”

“But... I don’t think we’ll be able to leave just yet,” Gourry said, peering through the hole in the wall that led back out into the corridor.

“Enemies?!”

“Yeah. Incoming.” He drew his sword while keeping his eyes on the corridor. “I can’t see them yet and they’re masking their presences, but... I think they’re surrounding us.”

“You can tell all that?” Luke looked at Gourry skeptically.

The rest of us couldn’t sense squat, but Gourry had a kind of bestial instinct that, as far as I knew, had never been wrong. Now, if the enemy had us encircled, what was the best way to respond?

I know! I quickly began chanting a spell under my breath.

“Okay, let’s do this! I was lookin’ for someone to vent on!” Luke, taking the news of an ambush extremely well, marched toward the door and yanked his sword out of the dead sorcerer. Just then...

Crash! The door came flying off its hinges—probably the work of a Dam Blas from the outside. Gourry had been right!

In that same instant, I erected a wind barrier on the knocked-in door with the spell I’d been chanting. Whoosh! It wavered and swelled, streaked with the colors of fire. Someone outside had chucked a Fireball at us!

In other words, the enemy’s plan had been to blow in the door and follow up with a Fireball to finish us all off—including their own sorcerers who were trapped in the room with us. They’d probably also set this up so that if we’d jumped through the hole in the wall opposite to escape fiery death, we’d get pincushioned by throwing knives from men lining both sides of the hallway. The reason for their delayed attack was to give them time to close the snare. Too bad for them that Gourry’s instincts were so sharp!

The second the fire died down and I released my wind barrier, I turned and saw Gourry leaping out the door. Luke and Mileena looked at each other, nodded, and followed after him. I was about to do the same... but a flash of inspiration hit me. I chanted a spell to set up a little trap before leaving.

When I caught up with the others, I found them in an even larger room than the one we’d come out of. It had to be a laboratory, lined as it was with strange devices I didn’t recognize and more crystal tubes. And as expected, there were about ten men in black inside. Maybe they’d let their guard down, assuming they’d finished us, or maybe they were just kinda crummy in a fight, because by the time I made it through the door, two of them were already on the ground.

Intimidated by Gourry’s skillful swordplay, one of the men in black drew back, and...

Swish! Suddenly, another man—leaping out from behind an empty crystal tube—flew at Gourry from the side, his sword swinging! He’d have to do better than that, though!

Gourry took a half-step back, putting a small bit of space between him and the closer man, then pivoted on his left foot. He channeled his momentum into a slash at the man’s stomach, and when he slumped forward, Gourry kicked him into the incoming ambusher!

The ambusher reflexively caught his comrade’s body, and when he did... Gourry took the opportunity to cut them both down together.

While all that was unfolding, Luke and Mileena worked together to take down another black cloak, and I finished my spell... Kra-kash!

“Wah?!” came a cry of distress behind us with a crash.

Ha! Got ’em!

“Fireball!” Whipping around, I fired the spell I’d chanted at the men caught in my pit trap!

Fwoosh! Needless to say, they had no way to dodge it. They took the explosion head-on and were fried head to toe.

This had all worked out thanks to the little trick I’d taken the time to set up earlier. Assuming that the guys in the corridor would come swarming in, I’d used a Bepheth Bring on the ground in front of the hole in the wall in the previous room to dig myself a pit. I’d then left some flooring on top of it—just enough to crumple immediately if someone stepped on it. The men in black in the hallway, realizing that the earlier Fireball hadn’t done the trick and sensing fighting deeper within, must have charged in in a panic.

Unfortunately, I’d probably only taken out a fraction of their number this way. More would likely be coming from that same direction soon. That meant I should leave the lab fight to my friends while I picked off the enemies pouring in from the rear! Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any of the fused demons in the group so far, but they could still show up at any time. I had to thin the crowd while I had the chance!

“Blast Ash!”

Vwmm! The spell I unleashed cleared out the next couple of black cloaks appearing from the hallway. Of course, if I limited myself to this pattern, the next one would probably just toss a Fireball or some other projectile into the room. Which meant...

I chanted another spell. Then, almost as if he’d waited for me to finish, another man in black appeared beyond the broken wall. An orange ball of light was already in his hand.

I knew it! Since I’d seen this coming...

“Fireball!” he shouted.

“Diem Wind!” I incanted in the same breath.

Our spells activated simultaneously. A normal Fireball, with no extra bells and whistles, was an orb of light that exploded on contact with a blast of flame. The orb in flight, however, wasn’t powerful enough to push through my Diem Wind.

The man in black flinched. He probably hadn’t been expecting his Fireball to come sailing back at him. Even if he processed what was happening and tried to flee, he wouldn’t get far amidst the gust my spell produced. As a result...

Ba-bwoom! The Fireball fried its own caster.

Okay! That should keep the guys in the hallway at bay!

But as I was chanting my next spell, I felt a wave of hostility rising up nearby. And then, suddenly... a dark figure appeared in the corner of the room.

The ability to blink through space...

“Zain?!”

“Sorry I’m late.”

The figure in question, possessing the power of both human and demon, zeroed his attention on me.



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