‘Hell na…’ Finn screamed at the back of his mind as he darted about the room in a chaotic frenzy. The tentacles followed the boy without fail, stabbing the ground in a line of promising death that ripped holes into the old building’s foundation.

‘This is not what I signed up for,’ he panted as he continued evading the creature.

[ This is exactly what you signed up for. ] his guardian reminded him.

‘Hey, who’s side are you on?’ he bit back… then cried, ‘Ah, why is this so hard?’

[ Dance of the Serpent]

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Finn bit back whilst emulating the convoluted form of the Dance of the Serpent.

Cracks covered the shaft of his blade, a testament to the durability of this demon’s tentacles despite their malleable nature. A few more hits and he was afraid the demon would destroy his blade. This was why he’d resorted to evading its attacks entirely. That, however, was starting to prove troublesome.

He was growing tired of running. Even for someone along the Glass Temper Rank like him, there was a limit to how long he could keep up such high-speed combat. Demons didn’t tire, which meant he was going to have to think of something fast.

He slipped behind the table the man had been hiding behind, pivoted on his heel and kicked it at the demon. A risky manoeuvre but one that he’d been building up for.

Without wasting any more time, he threw the two chairs that were stationed behind the table. As the table was torn into a million fragments by the demon’s tentacles, the chairs replaced it, soaring at a speed high enough to knock the abomination back.

This time, Finn was right behind the chairs, shooting forward with deadly precision. Words of the Ancient Tongue passed his lips as his sword cut through the demon with lethal accuracy. The blade shone a bright searing orange as it cut through the demon’s body.

Before the creature could register what was happening, Finn delivered another strike, this time cutting through to the solid orb residing at the heart of the beast…

Tentacles wrapped around his legs and torso then squeezed the air out of him. Stars dazed his vision. The world spun.

‘Not yet…’ he gritted his teeth, gripped his sword like a javelin and hurled it forward at the last possible second.

A devilish grin filled the demon’s multi-eyed face as it held up its prize, the elusive gnat only for it to still, then shudder. The skin of the demon began to convulse uncontrollably, its hold on the boy coming undone.

It crawled away from him, spitting black liquid from its maw before collapsing in a heap, unconscious. Finn collapsed on his knees, panting wildly. This was not his second fight since they’d deployed the Elite Guard to this unfortunate town ravaged by a demon attack though he hoped it would be the last.

‘From what I noticed on my way here, the Elite Guard has got this thing covered,’ he thought to himself.

“Hey, rookie! You okay down there? Did you die? I heard noises,” a voice called from upstairs. Finn sighed, then walked up to the demon to retrieve his sword.

“I’m fine,” he replied.

The door opened to reveal a boy shorter than he was with falling black messy hair and blue inquisitive eyes. “Woah, you actually defeated that thing? I thought you were a goner. Took three of us to defeat the one outside.”

“I got lucky,” Finn replied, eyeing the demon suspiciously… ‘My sword.’

“You’re so modest, Finn,” the boy giggled, rushing up to the demon. He retrieved his own sword and began hacking at the body haphazardly, “Lucky, my foot.”

The boy raised his sword and got to severing the grotesque beast’s tentacles. After cutting a tentacle off the demon’s body, he would throw it away from the main body, scattering them all across the basement, before he got to the main body.

At this point, he was panting while Finn watched in silence. Not only was the beast larger than he expected but it also still had a total of thirty tentacles by the time Finn was done fighting it.

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Pausing at the main body, he turned to Finn with a bewildered expression, “Are you going to just stand there or will you help me out?”

“I’m fine right here. I just need my sword,” Finn replied with a nod towards the demon’s body. While subtle, it could be seen that something was keeping the body vaguely unbalanced on the ground, as though something under it was propping it up.

The boy sighed, then silently continued chopping the fiend into pieces. Only when he’d made it to the impure core reeking with a dark miasma did he stop and move aside, “Get your sword. I’ll report the body to the priests.”

“For how much, Gary?” Finn raised a brow at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Seeker. I’ll only ask you one more time. How much are you paying for the demon?” this time, Finn was standing closer to the boy’s face, fury radiating off him.

The Seeker, Gary, took a step back, “Fifty coppers.”

“That’s pocket change,” Finn growled.

“Then what’s your price?”

“Two silvers.”

“That’s too much! Ninety coppers,” Gary argued.

“You pay me well, Seeker and I’ll make sure you claim all my next demons,” Finn said in a low tone.

There was a short moment of tension between the two before the boy swallowed, “One Silver and Fifty coppers. That’s a hundred and fifty coppers and my final offer.”

“Deal. Pay up,” Finn perked up.

“Who carries their wallet to the battlefield? No, I’ll pay you back at the Academy,” Gary shook his head.

Finn ground his teeth in frustration, “I’ve got a few more demons for you if you’re interested. However, if you so much as try to cheat me, those credits will be the least of your worries.”

The boy’s eyes lit up at the sound of more demon cores, “Relax, Finn. We’ve known each other, what… five months? I have no reason to cheat a friend and fellow Seeker.”

“Whatever,” Finn rolled his eyes.

Gary was a fellow Seeker from the Tower of Seekers. However, unlike Finn whose guardian was B-class, Gary had a C-class guardian. B-class guardians were powerful and when compared to C-class, the gap was laughably wide.

For people with C-class guardians, getting into the Elite Guardian Academy was determined by one of two things, combat ability and money. Gary fell into the latter group. As a result of this, he spent more money scavenging for demon cores which would be traded for credits at the Academy.

The boy removed a small pouch from the belt hidden beneath his navy blue cloak and muttered a Word of the Ancient Tongue. Just like that, the core vanished into the pouch.

[ Which Word was that? ]

[ A combination of activation spell and wind magic. Though I reckon he learnt it from the person who gave him the pouch. Knowledge of that calibre doesn’t come cheap ] his guardian responded.

A few moments later, the pair was dashing atop the roofs of the ravaged buildings with Finn leading the boy back to the house where he’d slain the serpent.

The world shook and the wind blew his sandy brown hair as he ran on, leading Gary along. Finn’s heart was beating wildly in his chest, fear merging with exhilaration.

Far to his right, he spotted the calamitous demon. By now, it was the only demon left to hunt, drawing the full attention of the Elite guard squadron that had been deployed in this town.

‘That ugly pile of boulders is still alive?’ he wondered.

[ Perhaps it’s too powerful for a team of B-class slayers ] his guardian responded.

[ B-class slayers are rare. It’s probably a handful of B-class Slayers. Still, there must be a few Stone Temper Ranks in there ] he wondered.

Finn watched as the boulders on the back of the massive demon shot up and exploded into a swarm of buzzing gnats. A few units of slayers detached from the main fighting force and delivered torrents of flame and poisonous smoke to keep these pests from interfering with the battle on the ground.

From Finn’s vantage point, he couldn’t see what was happening on the ground… but something told him it wasn’t good. In any case, he could now see the house where he’d left the serpent.

Just as his mind was about to start thinking of the Silver and Fifty coppers he would be getting for this demon core, a sharp whizzing sound echoed across the battlefield, stopping him in his tracks. He knew that sound.

A moment later, a massive shockwave blew through the whole town, felling buildings that were too brittle to stay standing and raising a mass of dust into the air.

“Haha! We’re saved now that she’s here,” Gary rejoiced at the top of his voice when he stopped by Finn, panting his lungs out.

Yes, they were indeed saved. Finn didn’t need to hear such an obvious declaration of victory. The demon that had taken so many slayers just to keep it at bay was now missing a large chunk of its side, a large swath of its body having been taken out by a single attack.

The silence was followed by a loud guttural shriek from the massive demon, powerful enough to rattle the very bones of the slayers standing at a safe distance around it.

Cutting the creature’s scream short, another arrow, powerful and unyielding, shot through the air, drowning the shriek as though it cut through the very fabric of the space it slithered through.

*BOOM*

Another arrow…

*BOOM*

Three arrows in succession and the massive abomination stopped shrieking and shuddered. The bubbling rocks on its back also stopped before collapsing on the ground. Finn looked up at a wyvern flying high in the sky.

Atop the wyvern, a girl stood with a dark bow embedded in her arm. As she lowered her arm, the bow retracted into her skin and vanished. A cold indifferent expression rested on her delicate beautiful features as she watched the battlefield from above.

“Damn, Lady Darla is so cool and powerful, not to mention extremely beautiful, don’t you think?” Gary swooned.

Finn spared the boy a grimace, “Her guardian is a pixie.”

“I wouldn’t call Sir Apollo a pixie. He is an A-class guardian, after all,” the boy responded.

Finn rolled his eyes and shrugged off the conversation. “Just follow me. Let me show you the kinds of cores low-levels like we will ever see.”

……………………………