Inside May's general store.
Mayleen who was laying around on a chair lazily with a big cushion on her back, suddenly feel a disturbance in the mana flow.
The supposed light and slightly refreshing mana felt heavy somehow.
She stood up and walked outside.
It was still around dinner time at 7:49 p.m. The evening sky was supposed to be painted with a dark blue color and filled with stars. However, it was painted with dark purple color instead.
"This is...?"
Mayleen opened her eyes wide in surprise. She could feel the air was suffocating. Purple mist spreaded all over the place.
She took out her staff and casted "Levitation". It was a magic that let the user to manipulate weight as they please. Bright light was covering her body in an instant.
Her body began to float around. She flew to the sky to get a clearer vision. She looked around and noticed that the entire east district was being covered by a barrier.
"Who on earth did this? And for what reason?"
She fell into doubt.
She flew upwards to see the barrier limit. It streched up to 100 meters in the sky. The highest building in the east district was only around 25 meters in height.
The barrier was quite big considering it enveloped the entire east district, which was around 3-4 kilometers.
She could also cast a barrier at this scale. However, the thickness and how long it would last will depend on her mana capacity.
Mayleen gathered on her right hand and cast a spell.
"Tempest!"
A huge tornado was formed in her hand and she shot it towards the barrier.
BOOM!
Her magic collided with the magic creating an explosion.
Smoke was formed as the outcome. Once the smoke dispersed, she saw the barrier had some cracks. However it soon repaired itself in no time.
"How troublesome"
Mayleen said in a tired voice.
She was using 80% of her power, however she failed to break it forcefully.
Just from the strength of the barrier around, she knew the person who put it was around the same level as her.
"I sense a great trouble coming at me. I ran away from the capital to live a leisure life as a shopkeeper. In the end, trouble still came at me for no particular reason"
She let out a deep sigh with regretful eyes.
Mayleen flew towards the center to see how things going.
When she arrived, she saw people wearing black cloak with an eye symbol on their back were killing people and gouging their heart.
The mercenaries and the adventurers joined hands to resist them.
"What a bunch of lunatic!'
She gritted her teeth and pointed her staff below.
"Disintegration!"
Multiple laser made of light were being fired at the people below. She controlled her aim to only target the people wearing black cloak.
The laser hit them one by one. Everytime the laser with them, their body fell into the ground just like marionettesl whose strings were being cut.
She came down slowly afterwards.
The adventurers and the mercenaries was looking at her with awe. Some people who knows her bowed their head and thanked her.
"Thank you for your help, May-sama"
A man who looked like a mercenary came to her and expressed his gratitude.
"What happened here?"
"We don't know. These people suddenly came out of nowhere and started killing everyone they met. Explosions were also happened everywhere"
The man started explaining.
"Do you know their aim?"
"We still don't know what their aim is. However they were moving to the Silver Wolf building. Also, everytime they gouged someone's heart, they would said something like the lord would be happy with your offer"
He continued.
"I'm guessing they were from somekind of cult"
"I see. Go and help the others to minimize your loss. I'm sure the attacks happens all over the east district. I will find the mastermind who put up the barrier. Get someone to ask for help from the academy once the barrier was broken"
"Understood"
The man saluted and left.
"Silver Wolf building, huh? I hope those kids are alright. If I knew things would turn this way, I won't give the invitation to them"
Mayleen murmured.
She flew towards the Silver Wolf direction after getting some informations.
When she reached there, she saw the building was badly damaged with corpses littered the ground. Some were being cut while some were being burned. Black marks that was left behind by an explotion could be found here and there.
She saw a white-haired man with strange marks all over his body was sitting above the building.
He was looking downward with amusing look on his face. She could feel the sinister aura around him.
"Are you the mastermind?"
Mayleen asked in a cold voice.
The man was looking at her direction after he heard what she said.
"What do you think?"
The man smirked and asked her back instead of answering.
"I will take that answer as a yes. You damn demon worshipper always causing trouble everywhere"
She gritted her teeth and unleashed her spell.
"Wind Blade!"
Countless blades of wind appeared around the man and started moving in circle at a high speed. It was as if he was standing on the center of a tornado.
His body was being ripped by the blades. Instead of dodging or guarding, the man stayed still while looking at Mayleen.
"Guhahaha!"
The man laughed loudly as if he was enjoying the pain. Countless wounds appeared on his body and blood began to ooze out.
Mayleen narrowed her eyes. She kept her distance and raised her guard.
The wounds on his body regenerated slowly.
"That was tingling! Do it one more time"
The man was looking at her with a crazed look.
"What a troublesome opponent. I didn't even get paid to clean all this mess"
Mayleen said with annoyed tone.
∆ ∆ ∆
After looking around for 30 minutes, we finally managed to find the stairs leading to the 1st floor.
As I expected, the 1st floor was more devastated than the other basement floors. The ground was filled with cracks and debris from the collapsing walls with dead bodies littered around.
So far I have seen no less than 200 corpses from both the visitors, mercenaries, guards, and even from the demon worshippers.
Every single one of them had their hearts gouged out.
"Are they trying to summon a high-ranking demon?"
I said quitely.
Rumble.
An impact hit the building from the outside making the ground shaking.
"What the hell is happening outside?"
I could feel somekind of suppresion in the air. To be exact, the mana felt heavier than back when we were in the basement floors.
"We don't know what happened outside, however we better get out of here right away"
Irina suggested.
We agreed with her suggestion. Rosetta was leading the way to the exit. The structure of the first floor wasn't as complicated as the basement floors. While there were some corridors and small passages, one could still find the way out just by following the commotion.
Soon, we saw a group of people were fighting against the demon worshippers.
The thin man who bought the ＜Crimson Dagger＞ and the ＜Ghost Mask＞, Grid, Lily and 2 people wearing silver armor with a wolf symbol on it.
5 people against 50 people.
Grid was leading the vanguard alongside a warrior. He was charging straight ahead with his greatsword. Grid cuts the enemies without any hesitation. Rather, he had a joyful look on his face.
"As expected of the Mad Prince"
I muttered softly.
In War of Generation, Grid was known as the「Mad Prince」because of his crazy nature. Unlike a normal prince who spent their life with pleasantries, politics, women and living a lavish life, Grid was a prince who like to see bloodshed. He especially like fighting against a strong opponent to test his limit.
In public, he was known as a gentle prince. He hides his personality and only people who close to him know his true nature. The war leads the kingdom to almost fell into ruin. After the capital was devastated and the king went into a coma, he began to show his true nature and join the battlefields like a savage beast.
When Grid already killed 4 people, the warrior who was supposed to be supporting his back just finished defeating his enemy.
The other member the Silver Wolf party was supporting them by shooting arrows. Lily was giving buff to Grid while sometimes giving support with water and earth magic.
The thin man was moving separately as he tried assassinating the enemy magicians.
With Lily's buff, Grid was fighting the enemies without care for his body. He didn't even bothered to dodge the enemy attack and met them head on.
Stab and cut wounds doesn't even faze him. He was trading an attack for an attack. He would go for the kill everytime he exchanged blows.
"Should we help them?"
It was unexpected for Irina to said that. I thought she would just stay still since she hates Lily.
Judging from their fight, although it seemed like a hard fight they should be fine with Grid and Lily around. Although it would take sometime for them to finish it and the people other than the two of them were probably going to get killed.
I don't really want to lend a hand to the protagonist party because I'm afraid of the butterfly effect. However, what Irina said made me hesitant whether I should I help or ignore them.
As I was deep in thought, Claudia suddently said.
"You guys stay behind. I will go and help them"
I believed in her strength since I have witnessed it with my own eyes. But, I don't really want her to go.
I took a deep breath and sighed. Leaving her alone would just left a bad taste.
"We will go as well. It will be faster to defeat them that way. Not to mention, the exit was right in front of us. Let's use the same strategy as before"
They nodded their heads and agreed with my plan.
I ordered the two earth golems to charge and disturbed the enemies formation.
At first I thought the golems would disappeared after battle. However, unlike a one time use item in the game, they could still moves around as long as they still have mana.
I don't know how long they could last, but it should be able to last for this battle.
The sudden appearance of the golems made both parties surprised. Irina was shooting ice spears at the enemies. Grid looked back and nodded. it was a sign of his approval to us joining the fight.
The enemies turned their attention to us and send some people to deal with the golems.
I ran forward with a dagger on my right hand. I concentrated my mana and channelled it into the dagger as I ran.
"Whirwind".
Wind started rotating around the edge of the dagger at hyper speed.
Back in the game,"Whirwind"was a level 55 AOE magic that deal a high damage. However, I managed to recreate it in smaller scale and used it to coat my weapon.
After I was able to control wind element more freely, I thought a lot of way how to utilize wind element to my advantage.
Wind element was not as destructive as fire, lightning, earth or dark elements. It also wasn't as vertile as water, ice and light elements in terms of support. However, wind element has one advantage that the other elements didn't have.
It was the most hard element to guard against compared to other elements. At the same level, water would extinguish fire. Ice would freeze water. Fire would melt ice. Lightning could pierce earth, but earth could also redirect it. Light and dark counter each other.
Wind would make fire stronger because it carried oxygent. However, wind could also extinguish fire if it was strong enough to put off the heat. And if the wind speed was fast and strong enough, it could cut everything just like a laser.
A few people were trying to intercept me. I burst my mana on my feet and close my distance.
The impact boosted my speed making them caught off guard. Once there were inside my attack range, I pierced them with my dagger one by one.
The tip of the dagger which was covered with"Whirlwind", drilled through their bodies instead of stabbing them.
Their meats were being shredded into pieces.
"Arghh!"
"Kuh"
They wailed in agony before dying. A hole was left behind on their bodies.
The combination was much more powerful than I thought, however the mana consumption was too big. I could only sustained it for 1 minute before my mana ran out.
I dispersed"Whirlwind"to conserve my mana.
When I looked ahead, Claudia was already went deep into their formation along with Grid. The enemies tried to stop them, however they were being massacred instead. Rosetta went to assasinate the enemy magicians while the thin man was killing their archers.
Lily and Irina casted their spells to the enemies fighting against the golems. Their movements were hindered by Lily and Irina's spell and turned into meat paste soon.
The battle ended far quicker than I expected. Maybe, it was because the enemies doesn't have a leader to command them.
Grid approached us seeming like he wanted to say his gratitude. However, I ignored him and went towards the exit.
Irina followed behind me while Claudia and Rosetta were talking with Grid.
The entrance was broken into pieces. I could bloodstains on the ground and the walls. I narrowed my eyes as I saw the corpses along the way. The gruelsome scene showed me that there was a big battle here not to long ago.
When I finally went outside, I felt a huge amount of mana in the sky.
I looked upwards only to saw two figures were fighting head on with high-level magic.
One of them was Mayleen, and her opponent was a white-haired man with demon marks on his body. There was a pair of black wings on the man's back.
"Ahahaha!"
The moment I saw him, I laughed uncontrollably with tears on the corner of my eyes.