"A mage..."

A figure standing in a dark alley muttered under it's breath. And in seconds, it disappeared into the darkness.

Thea and the others arrived before a house. It was separated from the other houses nearby. And there were barely any people around. Except there was a mob of people gathered at the front of the house.

"Get him out here!"

"Kill him!"

"Hand it over!"

There were various people shouting.

"What are they doing?"

Leaf asked.

"It's some kind of protest I think?"

Janna answered, but she wasn't sure herself.

"They're demanding the handing over of someone. And since it's the house we were told about, they must be after the child."

Thea made a guess. The location was the same as the house Silas told her about.

"Let's head in from the back. There's too many people here."

Walking to the back of the house, there was a door. It wasn't locked, so Janna went in first.

"Nothing's wrong, come on in."

After finding no traps or anything, they headed inside.

"Who are you?!"

Suddenly, someone came out from a room with a knife in their hand. It was a women in her thirties. Wearing an apron on top of a grey colored dress. It was more like a robe than a dress. And she had grey hair all over her head.

There were also wrinkles on her face.

"We're not here to harm you! Please calm down."

Janna quickly said as she raised her arms up. She was facing a civilian, so she couldn't show hostility. Instead, she showed that she was surrendering to gain the other person's trust.

"W-why did you come in?"

The women, now having calmed down a bit, asked a bit nervously.

"We're looking for-"

Janna was about to say something, but her mouth was covered by Thea.

"Let me handle this."

Thea whispered to Janna.

"Hello, ma'am. We just arrived in this city yesterday and couldn't help but notice the strange things happening."

"The strange things?"

The women seemed to know something about the magic spell cast on this city.

"Do you know anything about it?"

"I-I-I don't."

The women denied knowing anything about it.

"Please. If you know anything, please tell us. We can offer help."

"Offer help? How could you offer help?"

The women seemed to have heard something funny and laughed.

"There's no helping this city."

"What do you mean?"

"They deserve the curse cast on them."

The women suddenly shouted. She was visibly angry.

"All these years! They never offered us help! Always looking down on us! Always saying hateful things about us! Showing us those faces full of hate!"

The women had been treated harshly throughout the years by the people of this city.

"Ma'am. We're not from this city. We can help you."

Thea held the women's hand.

"...you can't help...no one can..."

The women showed a face that wanted help at first because of Thea's words but then she showed a face that was void of any hope.

"Where is your child?"

Thea suddenly asked.

"H-how do you know?!"

The women was startled. She thought that they didn't know since they were from outside the city.

"That's not important. We came here to help you and the child."

"How can I...trust you?"

"Unnie can really help you!"

It was Leaf that responded to the question.

"She'll do everything to help you."

"I see...follow me."

Perhaps because it was a child that said it, but the woman put her trust in them. The woman stood up and guided them to a spot. She lifted up the rag on the floor and revealed a secret room. A basement room.

It was barely three meters on each sides. It appeared to have been dug by hand.

"There's not much space, so only you come with me."

The woman pointed at Thea. They headed down to see something on the floor. It was a person laying on the floor. The room was dark but the person was visible because there was a red glow on the person.

"What happened to him?"

The child appeared to be thirteen years old or so. But his hair was white in color. It was very unnatural.

"It's been happening for months now."

The woman was holding back tears.

"At first, it was just headaches. But now he isn't even responding anymore. I can't even hold him in my arms."

The woman started crying. As a mother, not being able to hold your own child that you spent years raising in your arms is one of the most hurtful things to the soul.

"Is it because of the red glow?"

"...yes. If I approach it, it makes my hands hurt."

"I see..."

Thea could see the glow. It was actually the same as mana. But it was different somehow. Mana of nature is blue or white in color. Of course, there are exceptions. The golden mana of the worshipers of the god of the sun is one such mana.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Thea has never heard of a red colored mana. But through the clues, it is not hard to understand it.

'It must be the mana of demons. True demons.'

Demons were a class of monsters as stated in the adventurers' guild's guidebook. And most of them were disgusting meat blobs that went around by sliding on the floor. They had the mana of monsters, a gray colored mana.

But what if it were demons of four stars? Would their mana be the same? The mana of liches changes to a purple color when they reach five stars. There are many other monsters whose mana changes color as they evolve. There is no reason for demons to not also change.

But there has never been a record of demons evolving to four stars or above. All four star and above demons always seem to appear from thin air. It was quite rare to see demons actually. Janna had seen one from afar during her time as a knight. The other senior knights handled it while she was at the back protecting citizens.

Thea put her hands on the child on the floor.

"Wait stop!"

The woman tried to stop Thea because she knew that it would hurt her. But Thea didn't stop. She covered her body with her mana.

"H-how?"

The woman saw as Thea was able to touch the boy.

"I'll check on him first."

Thea opened the boy's shirt to reveal a black mark on his chest. It was a circular shape with a symbol in the middle and lines of unknown language on the outside.

"Do you know anything about this?"

"No, that wasn't there before."

"I need you to do something for me."

"Yes? What is it? I'll do anything."

"Can you go up and explain to the black haired girl about this? I need something from her that will help me."

"Yes, of course. I'll be right back."

The woman left the secret basement and came up to the surface when the base was covered in a barrier.

"What?! Wait!"

The woman banged on the barrier but nothing happened.

"Let me back in!"

She demanded but nothing happened.

"What happened?"

Janna who was standing around asked.

"You! Tell her to let me back in!"

Since she couldn't ask Thea to let her in, her desperation naturally turned to the people that came with Thea.

"Please explain what happened first. Why did you come outside?"

The woman explained everything that happened.

"So she didn't want you there."

That was the conclusion that Janna came to.

"Didn't want me there?"

"Thea is not the type of person to not think things through. If she didn't want you there, then there must be a reason."

"What could be the reason? Why can't I be there?"

The woman was desperately asking. She, as a mother, wanted to be close to her child who was in a state where life and death was uncertain.

"I don't know. But please trust Thea. She won't bring any harm to your child."

The woman was crying. She felt useless and powerless as a mother.

Inside the basement, after Thea had sent the mother away, Thea was beginning to examine the boy.

"You must be scared."

She talked to the boy. The boy's eyes looked at Thea. His red irises were full of pain. A deep suffering behind them was apparent. The boy was actually not unconscious. He faked it so that his mother wouldn't see him suffer. And perhaps he didn't want to see his mother suffer.

Thea could feel the pain of the child.

"You've been brave, kid. I'll do everything I can to save you. But I need you to be strong for a little bit more. Just this one time and you won't suffer anymore."

The boy nodded his head slightly. He didn't have much hope. Why would someone help him now when his family had been suffering for years because of his birth?

But he wanted a chance to live with his mother for longer.

"I'll begin now...sorry, this will hurt."

Thea poured her mana into the boy's body. She had noticed one detail earlier when she arrived and held the boy. When the red mana clashed with her mana, they annihilated each other.

So if she could use her mana to annihilate all the red mana, it would be fine. The strange unknown magic circle would lose it's power source and cease to function. But the problem was that most of the red mana was inside of the boy's body.

Only Janna could handle Thea's vast amount of mana unharmed. It was because of the special connection they had. If her mana went into the body of someone else, it would leave severe and even permanent damage.

She would have done some research on the magic circle on the boy's chest to think of another way to save him. But there was no time for it. Whatever the circle was meant to do, it was almost the time for it to do it.

As Thea poured in her mana into the boy, there were screams for a while. But they then disappeared as the boy fainted.

Underneath the skin, where the unknown language was written, it was like the roots of a tree.

Thea took great care to eliminate most of the red mana in the boy's body. She also tried her best to bring as little harm as she could. But it was not possible for her to eliminate all of the traces.

First, she couldn't go too deep under the skin. She could only eliminate the top layer of the red mana. If she went too deep, the damage would be too much and irreversible. The middle of the body still had a lot of the red mana left that didn't come up to the surface.

And more importantly, the real source of the red mana still remained. And it's location was a big problem. It was near the heart, or maybe even inside the heart. Thea couldn't be sure because she can't sense it without causing irreparable damage.

What Thea was doing right now was basically a band-aid solution that didn't fix the root problem. But it was good enough for now.

The unknow strange characters disappeared and the red mana was subsided.

Thea made the barrier go away and brought the kid up to the surface.

"Son!"

Thea handed the child to his mother, who was finally able to hold her child.

"Thank you..."

The mother thanked Thea.

"I just did what anyone should."

While treating the boy just now, she noticed that by removing the circle, a signal of it's destruction was sent out to somewhere. Probably the person who made it.

Thea turned towards Janna.

"We need t..."

"Open the door!"

As Thea was speaking, there was a shout from the door. Followed by loud banging on the door.

"Why are the people at your door?"

Thea asked the mother.

"They think we had something to do with the sickness going around for the past month."

"A sickness?"

"I don't know if it was caused by my son...but he's been sick for much longer."

"Don't worry, he's not the cause of it. Please wait for a bit."

Thea cast a sound blocking spell around the room. The shouts and banging on the door were immediately cut. She then pulled Janna aside to talk.

"I'm thinking a demon is behind the sickness."

Thea told Janna.

"And it's controlling them through that?"

"Yeah, it must be some form of magic that's causing the disease. That's why you could smell a demon's scent on them."

"So we just have to destroy the magic, right? Can't you find the core?"

"It's not that easy. We have already found the core of the spell."

"You don't mean?!"

The boy was being used as the core of the magic.

"Isn't there another way?"

"We have to kill the demon who put the magic circle on him. If the intent of the circle is gone, then the circle should disappear too."

"Can you find the demon?"

"I don't think we need to. Since I broke the magic circle, it should be coming to find us. Like, right now as we speak!"

"So we're fighting here? But the people?!"

Janna suddenly realized.

"I'll take the demon on by myself while you get the people away from the fight."

Thea was going to hold the attention of the demon by herself while Janna evacuated the civilians.

"Can you do it alone?"

"Of course. I can at least hold on until you come back."

While Thea had insane amounts of mana in her body, she was only a three star mage, a high mage. The ability of a mage depended on many factors, including how they can use their magic. For Thea, she always relied on power. She would put a huge amount of mana into a spell and overwhelm her opponents.

But there were a lot of problems with this method of hers. First, she can't control the power of the spell. Like only the ashes of bone hound gang leader remaining after being hit with a flame tornado from Thea. Thea has to be careful to concentrate the power in one place so that others don't get harmed. Or to not destroy the city in the process.

Secondly, it's not hard to dodge an attack from Thea if you're just a bit fast. And most people would be able to dodge her attack.

Third, the demon was at least a four star. It would be a hard fight for Thea alone.

"Are you sure?"

"It's fine. I can hold on until you come."

After the plan was made, they walked through the front door. They told the people to leave but the people weren't listening to them. They demanded that the child be handed over. That was until two figures showed up on the roof of a nearby building.

"What's that?"

"Hey, maybe we should listen to them?"

The people finally started to pay attention to the two of them. They started to run away.

But the demons saw that happen and jumped down the building.

"Hey, triangle face and flabby whacker."

But they were met with Thea. Her insults were accurate to their description.

They were both red colored and had weird slouched bodies. And both of them had bat like wings in the back. But their faces were different from one another.

One had a triangle-ish face, and seemed more feminine. And the other had a big round face, with several big warts all over the face. Almost like a whack a mole game table. Except for the fact they had a head, two arms and two legs, they were nothing like humans. They were truly demons.

"What did you just say, human?"

The triangle faced demon spoke up to Thea. Her face was facing towards Thea but her eyes were moving around.

"I said, come fight me triangle bitch."

"You'll regret saying that!"

The demon got angry at Thea's insult. It was exactly as Thea wanted. To hold the demon's attention until Janna got everyone away. But she hadn't expected there to be two demons.

"Karvaan, attack her."

The demon order Karvaan, the round faced demon to attack. Karvaan started to grow big in size, almost doubling his height. And his muscles also grew.

It was a weird technique. Maybe it was magic, or maybe it was a trait of demons. But Thea didn't have time to think about it as Karvaan struck down at Thea.

Thea was able to dodge because it was a very slow attack.

'Where did the other one go?'

But in that moment, the triangle faced demon disappeared from Thea's sight.

"Looking for me?"

There was a whisper from behind Thea.

Not giving any thought, Thea threw a burst of fire towards her back immediately. A wave of fire flew towards her back. But there was no one there.

"Where are you looking?"

Karvaan attacked again. Thea was able to dodge, but the attack seemed a bit closer than before.

'I need to take care of the triangle face first.'

The big guy's punches were not difficult to dodge. The real trouble was the other demon, she seemed to be a speed type demon. Just now, if she had attacked, Thea wouldn't have been able to block. Of course, her basic mana shield would have blocked the attack.

"Hehehe, we're just getting started."

The demon laughed. A fog started to form around Thea. The surroundings became shrouded and the sky darkened. It became hard to see much. Even the big figure of Karvaan started to be blocked.

'Shit. This just became so much harder.'