"Miri!" Igladith and Bo'guth exclaimed, rushing over to the black ball that was the Dark Barrier around the demon girl.
They both lunged over it almost at the same time, but Bo'guth was far too large to embrace it like Igladith, so he just stood aside with his hand placed on top of it. I calmly walked in behind them, the sword floating on my back.
Taking care of the ones that were on the lower level was a much simpler task than the couple of knights in this room. Almost everyone back there was nothing more than a grunt with only a little bit of talent to fight, so once I joined with Bo'guth and Igladith, the fight turned into a one-sided battle, where I easily cleared the Holy smoke to allow the couple of demons to neutralize the remaining people.
There were some people killed—by me—but that was just the price of combat. I found it amazing that Igladith and Bo'guth hardly hurt anyone as they focused on simply taking them out of the fight. I couldn't understand why they would do that, since if they were part of the Final War, they should know their enemy would kill them in a moment of hesitation.
Regardless, the ones that weren't killed were either knocked out by Igladith's magic, or surrendered once they realized they had no chance to win. It would've been easy to cut down even the ones that surrendered, since they already tried to kill us, but Bo'guth insisted that they should just be restrained.
It was amazing for me to see that kind of mercy from them, when just earlier this day they were attacked by these people in their home, and even had their daughter kidnapped. That kind of mentality was something that I'd thought only belonged to the Holy Gods, but I'm afraid that they would've killed everyone here—including the kidnapped girl.
"It's okay, dear, you may come out now," Igladith softly spoke to the Dark Barrier, but it refused to come down. "Miri?"
"It seems like she can't hear us…" Bo'guth said with a frown. "At this rate, she'll run out of mana and suffer a magic backlash."
I approached them and looked at the glossy dark ball. "I could try to bring it down."
Bo'guth raised his eyebrows while Igladith glared at me as she embraced the ball even harder. "Don't you think about harming our little girl."
I shook my head. "I have no plans on doing so. I'll just try to manipulate the dark magic and disperse it."
"You can do that?" Bo'guth asked with surprise.
"I could try. Some of the power I have is superior to normal magic, so I should be able to overpower her magic," I said as I took a step closer to the ball. "Would you let me try?"
Igladith warily stared at me for a moment before letting go of the ball. "Okay. But if anything happens to her then—then…"
"I'll stop if I notice that I might hurt her. Don't worry," I said and placed a hand on the glossy Dark Barrier.
"Of course I worry. If it was someone else, I wouldn't worry about it," Igladith said with a bit of hostility. "But… you have done a lot for us tonight… so I'll trust you."
I nodded and focused my power on the Dark Barrier. It was hard, almost as hard as the Dark Barriers that Salrak used, which was quite impressive for such a small being. I tried manipulating my mana to its surface, but the Barrier easily repelled it, leaving not a single trace of the mana on it.
It was then that I reached for the darkness within me. A black fog appeared over my hand and covered the upper part of the ball where I was touching. Igladith jolted slightly and took a step closer, but was stopped by Bo'guth, so I continued what I was doing.
I could try to forcefully destroy the barrier, but that would likely harm the girl, so I focused the dark fog on one point of the barrier, trying to force the dark power to mix with the magic that was forming the Barrier. The barrier proved to be quite formidable, as after a couple of minutes, it still refused to allow my power to break in. But it still wasn't powerful enough to stop me, and after a moment, the dark fog managed to pierce the surface.
Once that was done, it was an easy task to tear the whole thing down, and just like finding a hole in a piece of cloth, I pulled on the dark magic with my darkness power and the barrier easily ripped open.
"Miri!" Igladith shouted and quickly looked into the Barrier.
"Mommy?" the girl replied with uncertainty, after which the Barrier completely fell down by itself, forcing me to withdraw my power.
She had been sitting with her arms over her head, with a trail of bloody tears smearing her face.
Igladith moved almost as fast as the barrier fell, grabbing the little demon child between her arms and lifting her up. "Oh, I was so worried!"
"Daddy!" the girl exclaimed when she noticed Bo'guth standing behind Igladith with tears in his eyes.
Bo'guth wordlessly approached them and hugged both Igladith and Mirlaneth. "I'm so happy that you're okay."
"I was so scared!" the girl shouted and before breaking into loud crying.
"I know, I know, but everything's okay. We'll go home now," Igladith softly spoke as a couple of black tears fell down her cheeks.
"Thank you, Althea," Bo'guth said with a soft smile in my direction.
"Althea!" exclaimed the skeleton that had been quietly watching so far. "You really are the Hero of the Holy Gods!"
I had nearly forgotten about the skeleton as it had remained still since the moment we walked back in, and I had my mind focused on the Barrier. He was still chained to the floor, and still just as damaged as before.
"Hm? I nearly didn't notice you," Bo'guth said and walked over to the skeleton. "Here, let me help you."
With a simple pull, Bo'guth was able to easily break the restraints on the skeleton, who quickly jumped up from the floor, only to stumble and nearly fall down again if it wasn't for Bo'guth who grabbed him.
"Don't you know her?" he asked while pointing a shaky finger my way. "There's no way that warriors like yourselves could've forgotten her face."
"Yes, we're well aware of who that is," Bo'guth replied with a smile, reaching to the Magic Pocket on his side to pull out a blanket and cover the skeleton.
"T-then… aren't you… afraid?" he asked as he looked between Bo'guth and Igladith.
"I would've been terrified out of my horns five years ago if I met her in the battlefields of the Final War, but right now, we're on a different world, and…" Bo'guth paused to look at me for a moment. "She's a different person now."
"Is she though?" the skeleton asked with a soft tone of voice. "How do you know she's not going to end us all the moment we turn around?"
Bo'guth chuckled and shook his head. "If she really wanted to do that, she could've done so even before we came to this place—besides, the only reason we were able to find you was thanks to her."
"So she is involved with these people!" the skeleton shouted and pointed a finger at me again. "You can't trust her! I'm sure she'll send us to heaven if we stay with her!"
Bo'guth loudly laughed, just as he usually did, and for some reason, Mirlaneth joined in on the laugh. "Nothing of the sort. She just felt the dark magic from my daughter and followed the trail."
He decided to leave out the part where I asked someone who was actually involved with these people to tell me about this place, but I wasn't going to interrupt Bo'guth when he was making a case for me.
The skeleton remained quiet as the white glow in his eye sockets remained on me.
"I hardly trust her as well," Igladith interjected, Mirlaneth looking at her with a questioning expression. "But I am willing to give her a chance, at least for now."
Bo'guth smiled. "That is also a part of it. Remember the words of our Dark Lord: 'she's just a well-intentioned holy fool who's being used by higher powers'."
I felt my eyebrows twitch at that description from Salrak, but I decided not to argue about it, since I was well aware of how foolish I was to follow the Holy Gods. The skeleton, on the other hand, lowered his face as he seemingly considered how to react to this situation.
After a moment, he looked up to me again. "If—if you're truly changed… then… I ask you, show it by rescuing the others."
"Others?" Bo'guth asked, looking over at the skeleton.
"I and your daughter weren't the only ones that they captured. They were planning on 'offering' our lives to the Holy Gods as proof of their devotion, and they thought that by doing so with a lot of people at the same time, that the Holy Gods would take notice of their actions," the skeleton answered as he looked down at his broken bones.
"Why did they have you here?" I asked, looking at his broken bones as well. "Was it just to pointlessly torture you?"
"No… they didn't know how to break the Dark Barrier on the Barrier Demon, so they grabbed someone with high magical knowledge to tell them, but I refused to give anything to them, which is why they tried to get me to say it by any means…" he replied, looking at the demon child. "There's no way I'd allow a child to fall prey to them."
Hearing that, Bo'guth lifted the skeleton and gave him a hug. "Thank you, man. You're truly a hellish, good man."
"Ow, ow," the skeleton painfully exclaimed.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot that you're wounded," Bo'guth quickly replied, letting go of the skeleton who faltered in his step. "What's your name, good sir."
"Raki," he replied and accommodated the blanket slightly, but was unable to properly grasp it with his damaged bones.
"I could heal you if you want," I proposed while looking at the broken pieces of the skeleton.
Raki's eyes quickly moved to look at me, and I could tell that he was looking at me with surprise, despite the fact that he had no face. "I'm—"
"Take it. See it a show of goodwill from both you and her," Bo'guth interrupted, knowing as well as I did that Raki was going to deny me.
The skeleton looked at me again, his lower jaw moving up and down for a moment before he nodded. "Okay… I've got little to lose in this situation anyway."
I approached the broken skeleton and he took half a step back. I thought that he was going to break into a sprint, but he remained in place. I didn't take much longer than I should as I looked at every part that needed healing and focused my mana in creating the necessary amount of healing magic.
I didn't need to be as careful as I was with Nicole, since this time, the injuries were so large that I could just let the healing go and the skeleton wouldn't have any adverse effect from the magic.
A green light covered the skeleton. Within a few seconds, the broken bones and damaged bits of his body were slowly being reformed and patched. After a couple of minutes, his bones were back to normal.
"How do you feel?" I asked as I walked around the skeleton to give him a final look.
"I… I feel great…" he replied, looking down at his hands while closing and opening them several times.
Bo'guth chuckled while nodding. "Just what you'd expect from the Holy Hero."
Once I was done with him, I looked up to his white eyes. "So, where are the other people?"
"Ah! Right! Please follow me," he said and hastily made his way out of the door.
* * *
We followed him, walking by the few passed out and restrained people that lay on the lower floor. I wondered what kind of magic Igladith was using to do that, since despite having pure darkness power, I couldn't think of a way to do what she did without killing people.
However, that was something that I should find out later, as right now, we were focused on the place that Raki led us to: a lower level of this base which was by going down a set of stairs that was next to the large ones we used before reaching the large hall, outside final room where we got attacked.
"Here they are," Raki said, gesturing with his hand to a row of closed metal doors.
I couldn't see any cages or jails as this place looked no different than the doors that were by entrance. I walked closer to one and noticed the small closed window at eye level, so I pushed it aside to see inside the room.
Inside, I saw a large being with light gray skin laying on the floor with his back to the door. His arms were the size of tree trunks and his head looked small in comparison to his mountainous torso. After a moment, he noticed me, which is when he half-turned his face to look at me.
His eyes were completely red, save for the dark pupil in the middle of them. He had a tiny nose, and an extremely large mouth with a couple of fangs that protruded from the lower side of his mouth. He was an ogre.
After a moment of looking at me, the ogre turned away to stay in the same position he was when I first looked at him.
I didn't see the need to wait much longer, so with a similar movement to what Igladith did to open the floor gate at the start, I empowered my hand with both Darkness and Hellfire and punched a hole into the door, ripping it away after some effort.
Inside, the ogre stood up and was looking at me with widened eyes. I moved aside and gestured for him to move outside. "You're free now."
The ogre looked at me for a moment, and wordlessly left the small room, crouching slightly as his wide and large body barely made it out of the door.
Similar things were happening with the other doors, where Igladith and Bo'guth were quickly breaking down doors and releasing more beings; all of them warily walking outside like the ogre had done.
Once every door was opened, everyone moved over to the wide hall where Raki was waiting along with the restrained people, and I prepared to think of ways to deal with this situation, since I knew that a lot of them would make a fuss about me as I also made my way up there.