The next thing I knew, the magical pink light of the fox spirit’s spell traveled to the three pairs of eyes in front of us, and the two armored men in the back leapt forward.

“Yes, I’d love to!” one cheered.

“I’ll have what she’s having!” the other shouted.

Elron wavered for a moment before catching himself, shaking his head. “Those cheap tricks won’t work on me,” he spat as the ethereal glow vanished from his eyes.

He clapped a hand on the backs of both of his enforcers and they instantly returned to their senses, the Charm broken.

Shit.

“That is a highly illegal spell,” the archprick went on, grimacing at Viela. “For a rogue demon such as you, the sentence is permanent banishment. And if you resist: death.”

Of course the Church was ‘evil’ in this world. I didn’t know why I wanted to blame him right now but God damn it, John!

“Hold on!” I said. “Just slow down a minute, man! This is crazy!”

Elron turned to me, arrogantly tapping his staff on the floor. “You would oppose me even after that display? I could let you off with a stern warning—if you don’t interfere.”

The approach of a familiar seductive figure spared me from having to come up with a response. A tall succubus with ruby hair and a long, whiplike tail sauntered toward us, her skimpy outfit barely containing her massive breasts. Her heels clacked louder with every the step until Minerva came to a stop behind Viela and me. A cold sweat covered my body as I stared up at the Demon King’s succubus queen narrowing her red eyes at the robed man across the table, her previous charming allure from the first night I met her now replaced by cold indignation.

“Archpriest, these ladies are both esteemed guests in this establishment,” Minerva began calmly. “If you aren’t here to drink, I’m afraid I’ll have to…” She cast a spell, a thorny whip instantly materializing in her hand. “Ask you to leave.”

Elron grimaced even harder at the new arrival. “You have no say in the matter, demon. Not even if your master was here.”

Minerva curled her lips into a frown. “So that’s what this is really about. Back to ‘politics’ again?”

Four other succubus barmaids quickly joined her, glaring daggers and brandishing their own leathery whips as they stood at either side of their leader. The two enforcers standing behind Elron retreated even further, rushing to cast a series of defensive spells on themselves before holding up their shields and drawing the maces at their sides.

The tension in the room had grown so thick, I could have cut it with my dagger. And we were practically caught in between that lethal two-sided staredown. The other drinking taverngoers in the room shouted around us, begging for a fight or cheering on the succubi for some ‘action.’

Part of me desperately wanted to watch this go down, but we really needed to get the hell out of here before this escalated out of control and we got caught in the crossfire!

On second thought, I didn’t have to wait for shit to hit the fan; I only needed a second to cast Recall and disappear with Viela!

Again, I reached one hand to grab hers and prepared my other hand to begin casting. I could even do the spell casting under the table so the glowing light wouldn’t catch Elron’s attention. But when I turned to look at my foxy companion, my blood nearly froze on the spot. For a horrifying moment, I watched as she slowly retrieved another magical spell card from her cleavage with a drunken, impish grin plastered across her face.

“Don’t do it!”

Everything happened at once. Viela snapped her fingers, and a thick cloud of smoke exploded from her hand to fill the room. She pulled me under the table with her other hand as shouting erupted everywhere above and around us. The sounds of whips cracking against metal, wood smashing to pieces, the crackle of lightning and too many other spells to process all rang together in my ears as if the whole goddamn apocalypse was upon us.

“Oh Beryl, isn’t this so exciting~?” Viela said as she trembled in my arms.

“No, bad foxy!” I whispered as loudly as I could. “This is all your fault! Now we’re… ah forget it, just hold on. I’ll get us out of here.”

Thanks to all the smoke that found its way under the table with us, I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I was pretty sure I had a good grip on… whatever soft, bulging part of Viela I was holding onto. I quickly brought the image of that mansion in the Upper District to mind as I cast Recall with my free hand.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, thinking it was a fluke. And again. Each time, the spell fizzled out like it never had before, and I knew I was tracing the right symbol.

“Beryl, I know how easy it is to get lost in the moment,” Viela said with an unfamiliar tone, “but could you be a little gentler if you’re going to grab me… there?”

“What? Oh, damn it! I’ll explain later. For now, it looks like we’ll have to escape the old-fashioned way.”

I didn’t want to admit it to the fox, but in hindsight, her smoke bomb was actually a good idea—at least now that we had go with ‘plan B.’ I directed her to crawl under the table with me away from our original seats as I tried to make our way toward the door.

We didn’t make it far until there was no longer anything to crawl under. I felt a sudden wave of force brush over me as it launched the entire table in the direction our succubus ‘allies’ had been standing moments earlier. The spell cleared much of the smoke in the process before the table came crashing back down in a horrible groan of splintering wood. Looking up revealed the succubi more or less unscathed as they were now… flying above us in the air. They lashed down with their whips and hurled shadowy projectiles at the enforcers, the latter’s armor not quite as pristine as it was before. On closer look, their batlike wings weren’t flapping or hardly moving at all, so it was almost more like the succubi were… defying gravity?

No, now wasn’t the time to spectate or speculate!

With Elron out of sight and his enforcers sufficiently distracted in combat, I grabbed Viela’s hand, got up, and bolted for the door. The din of surrounding shouts had reached a fever pitch, one look around revealing that the fighting had spread throughout the entire ground floor. Half of the rowdy taverngoers were hollering cheers at the fighting succubi or trying to dogpile the enforcers with little success. The other half appeared to be brawling among themselves just for the hell of it.

The front door was still open and resting where it had collided with the wall on Elron’s entry, but I froze when I reached the threshold. A shimmering, translucent wall of shifting colors stood in the doorway—a barrier that definitely wasn’t there until recently. I kicked at it with a boot, confirming that it felt like a solid, impenetrable wall of glass that barely reacted to the impact.

“That’s not good,” I sighed. “Viela, apparently you know some good spells. Can you do something about this?”

For what felt like the first time tonight, the fox spirit looked uneasy. “A ‘demon hunter barrier,’” she frowned with chilling sobriety. “I’d only ever heard about these. They’re even supposed to have built-in protections against dispelling. Gotta hand it to him; that one knows his stuff setting this all up ahead of time.”

She pointed beyond the barrier to what looked like a thick metal plate on the ground that glowed with an intricate array of symbols.

“That’s what’s powering it?” I asked. “And that must be why teleporting didn’t work, either. Are you really out of ideas?”

Viela shrugged. “I could try, but it will get messy. It would be easier to keep a low profile and wait this out or blow a hole in the back wall where it’ll be weaker.”

“No, I think you’ve already caused enough trouble tonight,” I groaned.

I couldn’t help checking behind us to examine the back wall anyway. The chaotic fighting had resulted in dozens of incapacitated men on the ground, magically or otherwise. One of the enforcers was lying bloodied on the ground with his mace cast aside like he was surrendering. Even a few of the succubi had tapped out of combat and were focused on healing each other, but several others had joined the fray against their remaining armored opponent.

The rest of the smoke had mostly cleared out by then, revealing Elron and Minerva dueling at the end of the tavern. Oh, God—somehow Minerva’s top had torn off in the fight, exposing her giant bust with nipples to match. Then again, considering what I knew about her, it might have been intentional…

Elron’s staff crackled with electricity as he summoned arrows of lightning at the towering succubus. She deftly flew out of the way of most of them and blocked many others with a shield of solid shadow, wincing as an arrow changed course midair to find its target anyway before she began her counterattack. Minerva dove at him, snapping her whip right where his head was. Or would have been—in a flash of light, he vanished and reappeared behind her, preparing another volley. As if anticipating that exact move, Minerva lashed out with her whiplike tail, its sharp tip scoring another cut on Elron’s freshly tattered robe. He launched another barrage of electric arrows, and the cycle of their ‘duet’ repeated.

I couldn’t help noticing that Minerva’s anti-gravity magic even extended to her chest, which didn’t bounce around at all despite her aerial acrobatics. And against all odds, neither of them looked like they were bleeding. Both were insanely skilled with magic in their own right of course, but I got the impression that the fight would have ended long ago if either of them were seriously trying to go for the kill.

That meant Viela and I would be stuck here until they somehow finished their overpowered duel? If Minerva lost somehow, that also meant we would be pretty screwed. Or at least Viela would be, but I wasn’t about to let that archprick have his way, not even if he was a ‘high-level’ boss who managed to trap us with that magical barrier in the doorway!

Wait, this wasn’t a game. If John wasn’t bullshitting me about my Gift earlier and I could inherently deflect magic, there had to be some way I could counter this thing!

“Stand back,” I told Viela. “I’m going to try something.”

I cast a Mana Bolt at the shimmering barrier, and it wavered and cracked where the projectile exploded before sealing itself back up a moment later. I cast a few more of the same and got the same result, although it almost seemed like the barrier was slower to repair itself after each attack. Then maybe…

I walked up to the barrier and placed my hands on it, channeling mana into it at full force. The translucent wall began breaking apart, first with small cracks spreading out from my palms until they grew into larger and larger fissures. A moment of panic made me waver as I felt my mana running low, almost as if I was underwater and running out of breath. The barrier struggled under my relentless assault to mend itself, but it struggled in vain. With a shattering crack like breaking glass, the barrier fractured apart, leaving a gaping hole where my hands had been. The shimmering wall instantly began trying to fill the hole like a viscous liquid filling empty space in a container, but I had a better idea to finish it off.

I reached a hand through the opening and cast one last Mana Bolt at the metal spell plate on the ground. The ball of energy exploded on the plate, the glowing symbols sputtering and flickering away to darkness. A moment later, the barrier shimmered its last, finally winking out of existence for good.

A well-earned sigh of relief escaped me, yet my victory celebration would have to wait.

“I don’t know how you did that,” Viela said with a tug at my wrist, “but we’ve got a little problem.”

Another moment of panic struck me after I turned around to see Elron staring directly at us. Did the sound of the shattering barrier really reach him over the din…?

“Nevermind, just run!” I shouted as I grabbed her hand and took off.

We didn’t make it more than a few steps outside. In a flash of light, Elron appeared in front of us, more pissed than ever.

“Let go of her and you may yet walk away from this!” he growled toward me.

I glanced at Viela who appeared to have sobered up in one terrifying moment, staring him down like she was ready to go all out on his ass. Damn it, this was a hell of a way to hit a dead end for plan B. And we were so close, almost free and clear to make our getaway!

Wait, he teleported out here? Of course…!

“Fine, you win,” I grumbled. “But can you just give me a second?”

“What?”

Fortunately, one second was all I needed. Elron reacted as soon as he saw my finger turn into a glowing blur, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop plan A.

He didn’t waste any time yelling out. I gripped Viela’s hand a little tighter as his staff lit up and a wave of force slammed into us. The last thing I felt was the sensation of my feet leaving the ground as we flew backward, even before I finally finished casting the spell.

***

I opened my eyes to a night sky lit up by a bright moon and innumerable stars with the feeling of countless bricks pressed against my back. My relief at successfully arriving at my intended destination vanished almost as soon as it came, since I felt a crushing déjà vu overcome me all at once. I tried to sit upright, but a crippling weight pressed down on me.

“Ahh…”

I looked down to see a barely coherent fox spirit sprawled over me, her head resting dangerously close to my chest. Hold up, this was just like that time before!

Actually, this time it didn’t seem like I fully ran out of mana and drained my body of everything. And beside that, I felt Viela’s chest hugging my abdomen and something irresistibly fluffy brushing against my bare legs. After enduring all that insanity in the tavern, maybe I could just lie back, relax and enjoy this for a moment…

Viela stirred atop me, her shifting tail tickling my legs as she slowly sat upright and rubbed her eyes.

“Oh, my,” she said while taking a look around. “Did we get away?”

The moment was nice while it lasted… “Yeah, we should be safe,” I sighed. “Now, um, would you mind getting off?”

Viela glanced down at me, a devilish grin spreading across her face at some silent epiphany. I yelped as she suddenly wrapped her arms around me and buried her head in my breast.

“Oh Beryl, you really are something else~!”

No, bad foxy!