Caspian left early the next morning without much notice, Alexander watched the carriage with the man within it ride off in the early morning.

He still expected Caspian to turn around and change his mind or to send one of those robed monsters back to kill him where he stood after having lulled him into a false sense of security.

But no matter how much he stared at the carriage now disappearing in the thickness of the forest there was nothing, no one left the carriage and it didn’t turn around either. As soon as he could no longer see the carriage, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Had he had known what Caspian was planning however, he would have been far less relaxed…

…

“Is the time set correctly?” Caspian asked, ‘Maybe I should stay to see how they do…’ He thought to himself but shook his head quickly after, he had already wasted enough of his time in a single city and was no closer to achieving his goals.

[Ten Low-Tier Demons will be summoned at 21:00 tonight just outside of Novatus City]

Caspian nodded as he heard this, “Force them to go easy on the humans for now, shallow wounds – nothing dangerous yet. Can you monitor their actions from this far away?”

[Yes. Distance is irrelevant]

“Good, monitor them, make sure no humans die for now we’re just testing how Alexander reacts for now.” He muttered as he relaxed in the back of the carriage. He had already sent four High-Tier Demons out to scout the surroundings and kill anything hostile that tried to get close, the final of the fifth had been rudimentarily trained by one of Alexanders coach-drivers in controlling a carriage at Caspians request.

He had to admit that despite only a couple days training the Demon was better than he expected, or maybe it was the fine craftmanship of the carriage itself that made the journey relatively smooth, allowing him to lay back and relax without a care in the world.

The same couldn’t be said for Novatus City however.

…

Later that night, just outside of the City Gates a short distance away in the surrounding forest, a portal opened and ten small, dwarfish, human-shaped monsters crawled their way through the hole made on all fours.

They sniffed and licked the ground like animals before becoming excited, the smell of humans and beasts excited them as they rushed towards the City Walls without a care.

It only took them a few short minutes to reach the walls and begin to scale them, their sharp-clawed hands dug into the stone as easily as a knife did to flesh which they used as handholds to pull themselves up as they climbed.

They seemed to be extremely familiar with this method of climbing as it only took them a short few second to reach the top of the walls and alert the guard patrolling the top.

“Halt! Who goes there?” One of them shouted as he pulled his blade from his scabbard and waved it in the direction of the small figures he could see congregating on the walls, as soon as he spoke he could see their shadows all turn to him and as they all began to pant.

Before he could react they all began to swarm him, he tried to slash one with his sword only to discover it was like he had tried to slice stone – his sword made a thin dent in the creatures red skin before it healed almost immediately.

“What are you?!” He screamed, “Rooooaaaaaaaghhh!” They all screeched simultaneously in response as they began to bite into his skin but before they could do any major damage that they were clearly capable of doing they stopped suddenly.

The guard couldn’t understand it but all of the Low-Tier Demons had heard a voice in their minds at the same time forcing them to stop their slaughter.

[Stop]

It was simple, a cold emotionless voice that quietly spoke to them, yet its orders were absolute. They, reluctantly, released their teeth from the soldier. One of them kicked him to the side with a look of disgust on its face, the soldier could only stare at it indignantly while he held his wounds.

The guard’s screams had naturally alerted the others patrolling the walls and they had rung the alarm, the Demons suddenly found themselves surrounded by a few tens of guards who were staring at them warily.

They outnumbered the creatures, but these newbies were naturally scared of the unknown, there were a few veterans who stepped forward and kept them at a distance, but their grotesque appearances made them unwilling to get any closer.

The Demons didn’t hold back when they saw this, they rushed into the soldiers as they dodged blades only occasionally taking a blade only for the wounds to heal almost immediately.

The Demons seemed to have discovered that it was impossible for the blades of their prey to truly hurt them, so they became wilder and wilder as they attacked.

Strangely however, not one guard that was attacked was killed – some did have chunks of flesh ripped out of them that was quickly devoured by the Demon who attacked them but for some strange reason they always spared the lives of those they attacked, every wound they left would be dangerous but not life-threatening as long as they were treated soon enough.

The Demons were growing bolder as they no longer even attempted to avoid the feeble attacks instead choosing to take them head on and simply brush them off with a gruesome grin, they became excited when they saw the look of horror in their preys eyes before they took a chunk from their body.

“Griiii!!” Suddenly an inhumane scream rang out across the battlefield causing the Demons to stop and look in its direction. On the ground was the severed arm of one of their pack members as a human loomed over it with a satisfied grin, he didn’t wait for them to respond before slashing his sword once more – this time cleanly decapitating the monster.

“Hahaha! They can still be killed: Captain, Johnson, Clark get over here! You need to at least be a Knight Apprentice to damage these things.” The man who had killed the Demon shouted, the men he was shouting for were all veterans who had held back to gauge the strength of their opponents after seeing that they weren’t trying to kill the guards they attacked.

“You’re always so impatient Lewis, these little things are good training for the newbies.” The Captain shouted back; the man was massive with bulging muscles, his head was bold, but his red eyes seemed to pierce whatever they stared at, including Lewis.

Lewis sheepishly looked down as he mumbled, “Sorry Captain.”

Trent, the Captain of their unit, shook his head as he pulled out his sword and stepped forward. “They’ll be good practice; I’ve not exercised my body in a while.” He said casually, an intimidating aura surging from his body that somewhat supressed the Low-Tier Demons.

“Roooooooag!!” The Demons screeched before rushing at them, they ignored the ignored the guards that were little more than paper sheets to them and charged at the veterans who were now drawing their swords alongside Trent.

The aura of Knight Apprentices radiated from all of them as all four of them confidently stepped into the battlefield. “These things are thinking we’re easy targets just because we let the little one’s train for a bit, what the fuck are they anyway?” Clark said bluntly as he swung his sword towards one that was charging for his leg.

It tried to dodge but only managed to just move out of the way as the blade cut off one of its forearms. His blade was coated in a thin layer of Mana that originated from his body; the Mana naturally reinforced the blade allowing it to slice right through the tough skin of the Demon.

“No clue, just clean them up fast.” Johnson spoke calmly, there were already three corpses at his feet and his blade was still moving towards a fourth.  

“Less talk.” Trent ordered as he stabbed towards the head of one of the Demons trying to attack him, the strike was simple, yet his intimidating aura seemed to lock the Demon down from moving as he was overshadowed.

A second later he was removing the blade from the creatures’ head and attacking his second.

They didn’t take long to clean up the rest and before long there were ten small mutilated corpses at their feet, various limbs and heads were scattered on the stone floor as blood began to make small pools on the ground.

“What’s going on here?!”

“I guess we finished up too fast… or the Lord was too slow.” Clark grumbled beneath his breath, “Ugh…” His words earnt him a quick punch to the stomach from Trent who quickly bowed to greet Alexander.

“An enemy attack Lord Orville.” He said with a bow, his bow however wasn’t for Alexander and himself but towards the name ‘Orville’ he had an immense respect for the family yet he found it a shame that the only surviving member was so weak in comparison to his ancestors.

“Enemy-“He stopped himself as he saw the corpses on the ground, they all noticed as his face paled slightly and his body shook but they didn’t question it. “Gather these things immediately and bring them to my home.” He said without a pause, he quickly turned and left on his horse without a second word to the troop.

“That fucking br-“

“Stop,” Trent said forcefully cutting him off from speaking any further, “just do as he says. Lewis, you help Clark and Johnson you go get help for the wounded, are we clear?”

“Yes Sir!” The three men quickly branched off to do their tasks not daring to question his orders, Trent turned to the guards that were still standing from the battle, “You lot, help those with wounds – no one is dying on this floor today!”

The guards half-heartedly mumbled their agreement before doing what he had told them to do, Trent could tell their morale was horrible but there was nothing he could do – these guards weren’t under him, if it wasn’t for the fact they had been punished with wall patrol tonight it was likely that there would be many more injured, although there should have been anyway had Lewis not interrupted.

He didn’t know why the things didn’t try and kill the guards and instead only injured them but as soon as he saw this he thought it was the perfect opportunity; had people begun to die then he would have stepped in immediately but… He was truly disappointed in the state of the Cities military.

…

[Ten Low-Tier Demons have been killed]

The System informed him; Caspian was somewhat surprised as he knew how strong the demons he had summoned were. It had only been slightly over ten minutes and they’d already been dealt with, “I guess they’ve already given Alexander quite the fright.” Caspian said with a grin as he imagined the face he made when he saw what the creatures were.

“I wonder who was the one to take them down… I guess I’ll just have to send twenty tomorrow and see how long it takes them then…”

TheWorldTree

Hope you enjoyed :) Cya tomorrow!