The more eager of the defenders needed some healing and buffing after Orrin had to drop them. He didn’t hurt anyone but having their feet stop working because their strength dropped to one made a few heads bounce off stone.

  He wasted no time telling Daniel everything that happened. Brandt listened in but stayed quiet. Orrin did notice the knight made hand signals at two other guards who ran off at a sprint but kept talking.

  “Hold on, O,” Daniel said, stopping Orrin’s multitude of theories about level caps. “That’s a lot of information that you threw at me in one long sentence. You didn’t find the Demon Lord but demons are all over level one hundred?”

  “Not all of the demons, I think,” Orrin answered. He pulled a bottle of water out of his [Dimension Hole] and poured it over his hair. It still stunk of tomato sauce. “It’s weird, right?”

  Daniel said nothing as he gazed into the distance. Brandt shrugged when Orrin raised an eyebrow.

  “Has he been brooding a lot?”

  Brandt held back a laugh but his eyes shone with merriment. “Isn’t that what a [Hero] does best?”

  “If we can’t find the Demon Lord, we might be able to sow a little discord between the demons,” Daniel said, ignoring them. “Brandt, our scouts can’t approach the camp like Orrin. Why?”

  The knight scratched his cheek. “I have no idea. Nobody does.”

  “Do you think our scouts could find one of these demon cities? If we can cause some chaos at one nearby, the Dark Horde might break up a bit. Nothing huge, just some quick destruction and then running back here.”

  Orrin looked at his friend. “You want us to attack their settlements? Did you not hear the part of my story where I said they didn’t know the Outer Wall was built and think we’re invading them?”

  “They are here now,” Daniel said, his voice unwavering. “I don’t care about anything but defeating them.”

  Orrin couldn’t think of a polite way to tell his friend he was being a dick but was saved when Madi arrived.

  “Why didn’t you meet back at the rendezvous point?” she asked Orrin, punching him in the shoulder. “Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? You were gone for way longer than we planned and there was no sign of a struggle in the camp. We thought you’d been caught.”

  Daniel told her what Orrin had seen and heard, leaving out a lot of key information.

  “He didn’t tell you that the demons think people from Dey are invading their lands,” Orrin added when Daniel stopped talking. “Have you heard of demon cities before?”

  Madi shook her head. “The little information we get back from adventurers who go into the Pass is usually about the Pass itself. I don’t think anyone has come back from out there in a few hundred years as far as I know.”

  Silas rolled up and Orrin tuned out as Daniel began telling the same stilted information again.

  Is he being weird because he wants to attack the demons? Orrin watched Daniel’s body language but didn’t see the same slightly shifty behaviors he’d shown before he ran away from Dey to fight the demons in the Pass all that time ago. He might be better at hiding his desire to fight demons now.

  “I’ll get this information to the others,” Silas spoke slowly. “However, nobody should mention anything about demons with a higher-than-cap level until we’ve confirmed it. We don’t want to cause a panic.”

  “I confirmed it,” Orrin spoke up. “Don’t you think lying to pe—”

  “Orrin, I’m not saying you are wrong. It goes against everything I know about magic but I believe you when you say you saw what you saw,” Silas held up his hand to forestall Orrin’s raised voice. “There are multiple possibilities that we need to eliminate before we go to the worst possible option… that the demons have the ability to exceed the maximum level.”

  “What kind of possibilities?” Daniel demanded. “Because to me, it does sound like you are calling Orrin a liar again.”

  The man rested his hands on the wheels of his chair and rolled himself back and forth a few inches. Nervous pacing. “What if the camp perimeter, which has worked as a powerful deterrent for everyone we’ve sent through so far, creates a field that gives false information within? What if demons have an ability to skew [Identify] results? What if Orrin was hit with a spell that made him hallucinate the entire ordeal? While I, as someone who knows Orrin well and trusts him, believe him, I am still in charge of thousands of lives in Dey. I have to verify and exclude every conceivable variable. Until I can confirm that the worst-case scenario is true, giving that information to the people defending their homes would be foolhardy. I mean no offense by it.”

  Orrin put his hand on Daniel’s arm. “D, he has a point. I didn’t even think about half those things.” He turned to Silas. “Sorry for raising my voice. I did check a few people out and everyone was an abnormally high level. I can leave a list of what I remember.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “That will be appreciated,” Silas gave a small nod to Orrin.

  “Now tell me what you know about demon cities.”

  Orrin saw Madi roll her eyes.

  “What?” Orrin challenged. “He has a history of secrets.”

  Silas let a smirk through his normally passive face. “We all have secrets, Orrin. To answer your question, I do know that demon cities exist, though only my reputation. In the past, expeditions were sent to destroy any deemed too close to our territory. I’ve never sent anyone to antagonize the demons though, nor do I know of any sent in the last thirty years. Sometimes groups of adventurers go out for a clear-the-Pass quest from the Guild and don’t come back. They’re marked as killed in action but we know that some simply left the Pass in search of their fortunes in the demon lands. None return.”

  Orrin was stunned. A straight answer from Silas was rare.

  “I wish someone had told me about this,” Madi said, crossing her arms. “If we didn’t attack them but they think we’re a threat, maybe a truce could be on the table?”

  Silas and Daniel shook their heads at the same time but Silas spoke first. “There’s no way they’d back down. We built these new walls to protect against their attack but from their perspective, we now have a forward operating base to strike from. I fear that the time for negotiations has passed.”

  A guard was speaking into Brandt’s ear when he turned and nearly shouted, “When did this happen?”

  The young man holding a pike stepped back and paled a bit as he stammered, “A-about ten minutes, sir. We just got the report from the—”

  “Sir, we have a problem,” Brandt knelt and spoke quickly but quietly to Silas. Orrin caught a few words but not enough to know what was going on.

  “Send in reinforcements, immediately,” Silas ordered in a calm voice but Orrin heard the despair underneath. “Will they make it in time?”

  “We’ve already sent a runner for a [Locationist], sir,” the young guard stepped up to answer. “ETA is three minutes.”

  “What’s going on?” Daniel asked. “Are the demons attacking?”

  Brandt glanced at Silas for permission but started speaking before the man nodded.

  Small victories. Orrin pondered. He’s more willing to bend the rules for us.

  “When we started building the walls in the Pass, we called on the Guild to supply extermination quests. The more people we can send into the Pass, the more monsters we can clear to keep it safe for the builders and such,” Brandt explained. “We have scouts checking every nook and cranny for monsters and we send out teams specially picked for each type and level. We have [Locationists] ready for emergency jumps to bring in reinforcements or help with escapes.”

  “What happened, Brandt?” Madi prompted.

  “A team that was sent in to clear some two-star Denclovers sent out a distress call. A [Locationist] went in with another five members. We got another distress call a few minutes later. The problem is nobody else was close enough to that area to get there quickly. It’s been ten minutes since the second call. It’s no longer a rescue mission but a recovery.”

  Everybody was quiet but Orrin. “Where is the call from?”

  “Orrin, no.” Daniel stepped in front of him. “We need to focus on the demons.”

  “I need to do something useful after that failed mission,” Orrin said, turning back to Brandt. “Where?”

  Brandt did wait for Silas to nod this time. Orrin noted the location. “I know the area. I’ll be right—”

  “I’ll come as well,” Madi stepped up and nudged Orrin. “You’ll need someone to watch your back. Brandt, keep a close eye on Daniel. He’s getting antsy for a fight and we are not going to be the ones to throw the first punch. I’m not giving up on talking with the Demon Lord.”

  Orrin reacted before Silas could object and waved to the others. “Be right back.”

  He cast [Teleport] and brought Madi along with him.

  They landed near one of the walls built already, near the middle of the Pass. It didn’t run the length of the Pass, from sheer cliff to sheer cliff, but broke into several smaller section walls with odd gaps between that anyone could run through.

  Except every third opening was trapped with hundreds of spells that would go off from proximity. Every defender was trained to watch for the markers that listed which were the safe passages. Luckily, Orrin landed on the correct side of the wall and they wouldn’t need to pass through a potentially deadly section.

  “You jumped quickly,” Madi said, shaking her head. “I wasn’t prepared for that. I thought you’d argue with me.”

  “I was worried your dad was going to say no.”

  Madi gazed down at Orrin with one of her piercing looks. “Do you think that would have stopped me?”

  “Nope, but I didn’t want to give him another reason to hate me,” Orrin answered with a smile. “Brandt’s map said they should be a minute or two this way. Are you still buffed?”

  Orrin made sure to keep his friends buffed to their maximum sustainable capacity each morning using [Utility Ward].

  “I’m good. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Orrin pulled up [Map] and ran, wondering at the vast difference in red dots from his foray into the Pass to save Daniel. When he was searching for his friend then, the walls were awash with hiding monsters but now, the few he saw moved away fast. They knew a predator was on the hunt.

  He found the first body outside a cave. Orrin paused to check the wounds only for some hint at what he might be facing, as the woman was dead. The crushed arms would have slowed down most people but the several close stab wounds to the chest would have been enough to kill even a higher-level adventurer.

  “Denclovers don’t attack like that,” Madi huffed as she arrived a few seconds later, her dexterity not as high as Orrin’s. “They cast small poison clouds that you can step over. Is anyone alive?”

  Orrin nodded. “I count about eight gray dots inside but there are twice as many red. I can’t [Teleport] that many out in one go, so I’ll debuff the monsters first.”

  Madi gave a thumbs up and they entered the cave.

  They found fifteen monsters swinging their club-like arms at a wall of earth that chipped more with every strike. The hunched over horrors weren’t scary from the back but when one caught their scent and turned to scream, Orrin’s hackles went up.

  The things had no head and where their chest should be was an open orifice of teeth. To make matters worse, a dark red prehensile tongue tipped with dozens of sharp quills swayed in front of the body waiting to stab its victims.

  Orrin made short work of the monsters. Definitely not Denclovers. He dropped them all with some debuffs and stabbed each one before letting Madi finish them off.

  “You could make so much money bringing people out to farm experience,” Madi complained. “This doesn’t feel fair.”

  Orrin knocked on the stone wall. “It’s all clear out here. Come on out.”

  Muffled words drifted back.

  Orrin turned to Madi. “Did you understand that?”

  “I think they said we’re stuck.”

  Link

  Link

  Link

  Patreon - You can join as a free member for random updates/thoughts/silliness. There are a few tiers that get you anywhere from 20+ to 30+ chapters from what's on Royalroad.

  Discord - (New Forever Link) Come say Hi. First news goes here. Or my random thoughts.

  Facebook