I woke up more refreshed than I had been since first visiting this world. Victoria had taken last watch so I didn't get to wake up next to her but we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves the night before. Once shortly after retiring for the night and a second time while Merri and a drunken Farrah were on watch together. Both of these wonderful times Victoria showed off that bubble of silence spell she had access to. Truth be told I wasn't sure if I was impressed by her ability to maintain concentration on the spell or insecure about my own inability to break it. Judging from the happy smile I was greeted with when I joined her at the campfire this morning I had nothing to worry about though.

Luna's smile was a little tighter and she kept opening her mouth to say something and then seeming to think better of it.

Merri and Farrah had no such reservations. "Impressive spell that one" "You might want to invest in a bigger tent though, the smaller one seems to flap around a bit with the two of you rolling around in it."

Victoria and I blushed terribly while Luna went to fetch some more firewood.

Merrilax grinned at me. "Starting to feel like a real harem you've got going on here Jack, I'm impressed."

Victoria put a hand on my waist possessively as her sister returned, clearly still within earshot, it was adorable and very sweet of Victoria, It made me hope for some peace, some more time to ourselves. Luna's reaction was a direct contrast however. "You're including me and my sister in that fantasy of yours are you demon? I recommend you don't do that if you want to keep those tits of yours." I sputtered in shock but Merri just giggled. "I forgot that's a whole thing you mortal's get upset about. For us demon's we don't really have to worry about it, demonic energy is just demonic energy, there's no inbreeding to worry about."

The rest of the ride to Croftop was equally as bumpy as the day before but nowhere near as brutal, all of us were healed up almost to full capacity due to the wondrous properties of a full night's rest and the poison's effects had faded away beneath an application of my own magic and that glorious nights sleep.

When we reached Croftop I went for my workshop, Victoria headed to the library and Luna took care of the guy we'd rescued before going to inform her mother of the incoming Derro incursion. Merri apparently knew a few people from her prior infiltrations and Farrah went straight to the Hophouse.

Reagents, I had access to plenty of force multiplying reagents but the metals here were limited, I'd already been to the blacksmith and found myself out of luck. Herbal reagents were a similar story, the town had medicine but it was fairly basic stuff and none of the herbs had made for useable spell candles on first testing. This time I had access to second level spells though.

Immediately I found some success, some new combinations. Of course I could upgrade spells I already knew to second level, boosting their power in one way or another, for instance a second level cleansing spell allowed me to clear poison and other debilitations 50 percent faster while a second level Desiccating Darkness lasted 50 percent longer.

The real eureka moment came with using my new supply of demon blood though, basic defensive reagents and Merri's untainted blood produced something useful even if it wasn't what I'd wanted. "Demonic Recovery, this spell-candle creates fumes that draw on the demonic energies of the hells in order to regenerate lost hit points."

A good nights sleep could heal an adventurer from most ills, this spell wouldn't be much use during combat as the fumes would affect the enemies as well but in a town without any readily available magical healing this could be a game changer for the common man who, as far as I understood didn't get the benefit of simply sleeping it off after a fight.

I reloaded my bandoliers with new spell-candles, spending as much mana as I could without passing out in the few hours I had available to me, then it was time to go again. Merri had taken flight half an hour ago and returned with news of a new and imminent breach from the east. I guessed the shock trooper would have been excellent at rooting out enemy sappers with her ability to detect caves and tunnels even from the air and was thankful for her presence.

Once more into the saddle, once more into the breach.

"Damn, how long till my ass just becomes one giant callus and that stops hurting so much." Victoria looked at me in mock horror and made little grabby motions with her hands, I laughed in spite of myself as I swung awkwardly out of the saddle, boots thumping into the earth as I looked around. We had reached the outskirts of the site well before nightfall and were planning on waiting it out, the moment those twisted cultists came burrowing through we would rip into them and charge through the tunnels until we reached the gondola system.

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And that's basically what happened, or how it started anyway.

The tunnel breach happened and Victoria and I were there to open fire directly into the crowd of raiders with a combination of the scouring flames of Dragonwick and the eye-popping heatwave of her microwave spell. Derro died enmasse in those first seconds, scouts and warriors losing their lives in the inferno, experience points rolling in until the juggernauts came in to fill the gap. It was dogshit military doctrine, the armoured units with the claws should have been up first to form the defensive lattice but clearly there was some sort of class structure at play that cared not for efficiency. Anyway, once the juggernauts were absorbing our spells it quickly became apparent that we would run out of mana before the shields ran out and we ceased our onslaught, retreating from the tunnel's edge so that the enemy could exit. The first few died quickly, a rain of arcane missiles, arrows, thrown axes and lightning overwhelming the enemy's defences but we couldn't just draw the horde attackers out and I couldn't use area denial to keep them in their hole.

"Go, Go, Go" Farrah, Luna and Merri leapt into the hole, Farrah entering a battle rage, Luna dodging and striking and Merri just tearing through the weaker Derro with her vicious claws while ignoring poison darts and polearms that pierced her ineffectually. I activated one of my newly discovered spells, buffing Farrah with a defensive spell that seemed to be called Shell-Plate. I wondered how that worked, probably the first person to discover the magical combination of reagents had named the spell and it had been permanently stored within the Akashic Record for all time. If I had discovered a spell I would have reflexively called it something just as stupid as Dragonwick or Shell-Plate so I could certainly sympathise.

Anyway, Farrah was a berserker, one who had already been subdued once by these foes and she needed a little extra help to face these particular enemies with the heedless fury she normally showed in combat. The spell covered her body in multiple plates of armour that looked like turtle shell while remaining ethereally light and preventing the poison from finding its way into her veins. The plates were only good for a few hits though and some damage still got through even if the poison couldn't. It was all the edge the catgirl needed though, I watched her block with one axe and drive the second into her opponent's skull, using the embedded handle as leverage she whirled into the Derro warrior's ranks and traded blow after blow, forcing them to choose between turning to face her or facing the vision of clawing death that was Merrilax. I just kept replenishing the plate armour until my mana ran out while Victoria picked higher priority targets and laid them low with volleys of arcane light. The whole time the Derro were chanting about the Worm and the depths, about slaves and blood.

But that changed pretty quickly, soon they were calling for their priest to retreat and for the tunnel to be abandoned. I took grim satisfaction in that, knowing that we could keep playing whack a mole with these little bastards if we had to, whittling them down with little cost to ourselves if they didn't update their strike forces to hit a little harder.

Instead of whack a mole we went spelunking, melee attackers dropping down into the hive followed by Victoria and myself. Then it was a penetrating charge downwards into the earth, hordes of Derro came at us, too many to defeat, attacking without even a semblance of fear now that we were in their territory and clearly gunning for more than a simple raid. Victoria covered our rear with microwave blasts while I unleashed gouts of flame and at one point blocked a much wider tunnel with my desiccating darkness. If we slowed down then the Derro would surround us, if our melee specialists couldn't cut down the Derro in front of us quickly enough then the Derro would surround us and if Victoria and I failed to cover our rear with as much area denial as possible then of course, the Derro would surround us. Already Farrah was slowing, a war-pick having pierced through her armour, torn through the lithe muscle of her bicep and injected her with a massive dose of ichorous toxin while Luna had experienced several very close shaves. That was problem number one, the second was the increasing number of warriors in the enemy ranks, those took a little longer to kill and if they could mass up enough of them we'd likely be hacked to pieces. Of course the biggest concern was the juggernauts, if we had to face 4 or more of them at one time we'd be bogged down and overrun.

The Derro followed us deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast, we passed pictograms and stockpiles of that porous wood as the Derro came after us in a maddened shrieking pursuit that ended at a chasm crossed by the same ski-lift style gondolas. I placed a black-burning candle charged with as much mana as I could manage and the sand-filled darkness engulfed the tunnel full of bloodthirsty Derro. Screams of pain replaced the fury in their raspy voices and they began shouting orders to go around. There was only one other way into this chamber that I could see but I didn't think it would take them long to navigate their way over to it.

Unlike the last tunnel complex we had assaulted this one hadn't had more than a few turns or side chambers full of horror, it seemed the Derro only added those after successfully completing a raid or two. That way if an attack on the surface failed then no resources or labour would be wasted on a forwards operating base and the survivors could flee back to their hive city after collapsing the tunnels.

"Jack's right, here it is" Luna had found the fuse I'd seen in the last one of these gondola-chambers. The Derro Shazbla had told me this was how they would bury the Gondola access point behind massive piles of rubble. I lit the fuses with the same spell I used for wicks and ran for the Gondola as my friends familiarised themselves with the controls.

It seemed the Gondola was operated from within by a series of ropes and as I leapt inside the others began operating them without hesitation, lowering ourselves into the chasm below as explosions sounded from behind and Derro died by the dozen. The experience points flowed home to me and I noted the death of several priest class enemies amongst them. Experience to level 7: 45/89