The Main Battlefield

Rory swears to herself as she continues slaughtering the masses of enemy soldiers, wondering why the hell these idiots won’t just give up. Since they’ve already lost over eighty percent of their forces by now.

She’s tempted to just turn around and leave, but she’s not even sure if she’ll manage to do that.

At this point, she’s used up a large majority of her mana. Even after drinking a single mana potion. A precious item that – unless someone wants mana poisoning – can only be drunk once a day.

But there’s still almost four thousand soldiers remaining. Poisoned and sluggish soldiers, but soldiers nonetheless.

Rory quickly backs away as the attacks of several of the soldiers land right in front of her. Each one using either an ability or a stronger weapon that would harm her. Despite her significant level advantage over each of them.

And it’s only now, after her centuries of life, that she finally truly understands what her father is always trying to drill into her.

That a high level person’s greatest threat isn’t another high level person.

It’s the numbers game.

Every last bullet by the time she’s largely running low on mana is a threat to her life now that she can’t defend herself well. Every grenade. Every wave of flame from the flamethrowers.

And if she hadn’t focused on taking out the artillery right away, then those would be an even bigger issue. But she took care of them, so they’re not a problem anymore.

Rory pants in exhaustion while trying to look for a way out, having already sent a request for reinforcement. Only to block another round of fire with a solidified wall of poison before spotting one of those strange creatures Aria summons waving at her from beyond the enemies. And not long after that she spots a request for aid from her sent to the Clan Leader.

Guess she’s not having a good time either.

Her thoughts grind to a halt when she spots a wave of shadows suddenly appearing out of the corner of her eye. And she almost gets hit due to the distraction, only barely managing to avoid another wave of rockets fired off by a rocket launcher.

But she doesn’t take her attention away from the direction of the shadows that are currently manifesting into a person nearly a kilometer away from the battlefield.

A person she recognizes as the second Class S of the Sullivan Clan.

The man can be seen wearing a full black outfit seemingly made out of leather. An outfit similar to clothing she’s seen on some people in the Rex Dynasty, clearly marking out the man’s origins before he was expelled from the Dynasty and hired by the Sullivan Clan all those centuries ago. With the leather being a sleek black, a little tight fitting, and with a jacket on over a black shirt and black pants. One with a hood.

Arlan Annul raises a single eyebrow at Rory as he stands with his hands in his jacket pockets and a laid back posture without seemingly preparing to move. But despite that, he vanishes from place as the shadows beneath him swallow him up before he reappears several meters in front of Rory, making all of the soldiers quickly back away.

Almost as if his very presence made them feel relaxed and no longer worried about her.

Most of the soldiers even move far enough away that they begin to relax a little while taking care of their wounded. Which number most of them.

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Rory quickly uses her communication ring to warn the Clan Leader about this development.

Because if he’s here, then Aisling isn’t. Meaning she’s most likely planning on attacking one of the fortresses.

“Hah, little Lady Violet, I really was not expecting to find you here,” Arlan says while tilting his head a little, not even taking his hands out of his pockets. “What’re you doing here? You know the Empire’s lookin for you everywhere, right?”

Rory grits her teeth at the man’s clear knowledge of her background. But she can’t return home. Not just yet.

After seeing that she isn’t responding, Arlan lets out a sigh and lowers his head to his shoulder before he mutters into a microphone that Rory hadn’t noticed before pinned to his collar, “Go ahead and activate it.”

Rory grows tense at that, only to find her body suddenly growing hot starting from her chest. Then the heat grows into a burning sensation that’s so powerful it forces her to her knees.

“We won’t kill you,” he says while taking slow and lethargic steps towards her. “We don’t want another war after all. But we will be taking you in and giving you back to the Empire.” He stops walking a few feet in front of her. “Can’t let you interfere with the war after all.”

Shit…

Rory slowly feels the edges of her vision going dark, but then, out of nowhere, a warm sensation flows through her body, wiping out the flames and all of her pain. And the sudden shift is so bizarre that she stumbles before frowning and looking backwards to find someone wearing a red cloak standing with their hand on her back. But then the figure – whose face is covered by a black mask so that she can’t see anything about them – stands up straight and vanishes in a purple flash of light.

She turns to look, only to find them standing in front of Arlan, startling the man.

Then a staring contest ensues between the two for several seconds, both of them obviously having a telepathic conversation judging by Arlan’s shifting facial expressions.

And after a few minutes pass in silence, Arlan lets out a sigh and mutters, “Fine.”

Without saying a word to Rory, he turns around and vanishes in shadows again. Following which the red figure turns around, finally giving Rory a clear sight of the cloak they’re wearing.

A cloak she very clearly recognizes as one belonging to the Crimson Empire.

The cloak covers their entire form and obscures their figure with magic, making it impossible to even tell if they’re male or female.

“Who are you?” Rory asks with a frown. “Why did you help me?”

My family doesn’t have any ties to the Crimson Empire… so why would they help?

Her thoughts come to a halt when the Crimson Empire denizen simply raises an arm and points in the direction of the basecamp that Aria is attacking. Then words written out of crimson lightning appear in the air right in front of the Crimson Empire denizen.

Save Death and we’re even. Don’t say a word about our intervention.

Rory blinks at that.

Our?

Then she finally notices that the entire remaining forces of the army around them have all just dropped dead, with each one occasionally twitching with red electricity running through their body.

Rory stares in silence before suddenly snapping out of it and nodding her head at the Crimson Empire denizen. And without any further hesitation, she rushes straight towards the base camp to go save Aria.

But when she arrives, she finds a sight that makes her feel rather conflicted.

Part of her wants to laugh at the sight of the officers struggling rather hard to figure out how to contain Aria, who according to them keeps breaking out of any sort of containment they try. Whether it’s through burning through whatever constraints with fire, blowing up containment areas after biting off her own tongue over and over again to build up that energy of hers, or blowing up entire vehicles when they try to separate her body into dozens of segments.

And another part of Rory feels instant rage at the sight of the girl she’s come to view of like a younger sister despite their limited interactions being treated like this.

So she quickly spreads her poisonous mist around, surprisingly finding that her mana was restored by the Crimson Empire denizen, and kills off the surviving soldiers while intoxicating the officers. Since their mission requires them to capture some of the officers leading the forces.

Of course, she accidentally kills half of them. Particularly the ones she saw cutting Aria apart.

But what hurts her almost as much as the sight of what they were doing to her is how Aria looks at her afterwards.

As if nothing had happened.

Like she was completely used to all of that.

Rory grits her teeth while freeing Aria from the last of the constraints she was previously trying to break out of.

Then Rory moves in to hug the much younger girl, startling her in the process.

I know I shouldn’t think of her like this, but she… really does remind me of little Aurora…

The Class S Ability Holder feels some tears leaking out of her eyes at the thought of her sister.

All while Aria looks around with more than a little bewilderment on her face, clearly not understanding what’s happening.