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At least something like a leaf didn’t look too out of place in his hand, unlike a big wooden board with a ritual painted on it, or something. If someone saw him, they’d hopefully think nothing of it. Though, standing next to a demon out in the forest surrounding town certainly made it unlikely that anyone who saw him would interpret the situation positively.

It was with those thoughts running through his anxious mess of a head that Zeth tried his best to think of a solid plan. Busting into the building and trying to find their way to the basement while running from the guards sounded insanely risky, and sneaking through those tight hallways felt borderline impossible, too.

They’d been forced to take the long way to this side of town, circling all the way through the forest until the building was in sight, so quite a bit of time had passed already, bringing the moon high in the sky. That meant at least the streets were deserted, but that certainly didn’t mean the guard station was empty of defenders.

“I do not understand what is so hard about this,” the demon spat. “Simply say the words, ‘you are free to act as you see fit in order to bring the previously mentioned prisoners to me,’ and it will be done. Unless the guard station is fuller now than you saw before, or the military force of this measly settlement is more powerful than I imagine, I would be capable of simply walking through the front door and killing anyone who stands in my way.”

“I already said that isn’t an option,” Zeth whispered back. “Not only are there decent people in there who don’t deserve to die, but it would also draw needless attention to me. Ideally, they just think the thralls broke themselves out, or something. Or they had help from more of their own. They certainly do not need to know it was a demon.”

It groaned. “Your insistence on stealth and the sparing of your foes’ lives is endlessly vexing.”

“Well, unless you help me come up with an actual plan, you’re going to continue to be vexed. C’mon, you know your abilities. Are you really so incompetent that you have no way of getting in and out undetected?”

“Do not call me incompetent, you ignorant slug. Of course I can do something as simple as that.”

“So then? Let’s hear it.”

It sighed. “You have said the prisoners are being kept underground?”

“Yeah.”

“And you know their approximate location relative to the surface?”

“Uh…yeah, probably.”

“Then I could dig.”

“Dig?”

"I will dig underground from here, and create a tunnel underneath the town that leads to the basement they are being kept in. Once I find it, I will break through the wall and take them out into the forest through the same tunnel.”

“Uh, how long is that gonna take? I don’t have weeks, you know.”

“Are you so ignorant as to believe I would suggest a method that would leave me in this accursed realm for even an hour longer than necessary? Your spell will automatically force my departure twenty-four hours after it summoned me, regardless, so that would be impossible anyway. It will take me no longer than an hour. Perhaps two, if there are issues with the basements of other structures getting in the way.”

“What? That’s, like, a hundred and fifty feet of tunnel you’ll be digging. You’re gonna do it in an hour? How?”

“We demons are more than adept at digging underground structures. Our claws are made for it. And in dirt as soft and malleable as the kind that appears in your realm, it will be trivial to dig a simple tunnel.”

“Why are demons so good at it?”

It looked at Zeth with a bewildered expression. “What?”

“I’m curious. Why are you so good at it? Do demons dig underground a lot?”

It stared at him. “Why are you asking me that?”

“I already told you. I’m just curious. I don’t have any reason, you just said something interesting about yourself and I’d like to know more. Do you not know what that means, or something?”

“I am capable of understanding your words, slug. I was simply caught off-guard at your benign question.”

“Why would a question catch you off-guard?”

“Humans do not normally act like that. Asking questions with no purpose. You are strange.”

“…I don’t think it’s all that weird. People ask questions for no reason all the time.”

“Then they do not do so around demons.” It shook its head. “The reason we are adept at digging is because we live in underground structures. The surface of the Thirteenth Realm is deadly to exist on for extended periods—we only go up for short durations before we must return underground.”

“Why’s it so deadly?”

It stared at him strangely. “The sky in our realm is not like the sky in yours. We have an everlasting sun—nighttime such as this does not exist. And our sun is much more powerful than the coddling thing that exists in your realm. If you were to take a steel bar and leave it in direct light, it would be a matter of minutes before the steel melted into a puddle. As such, we must take frequent breaks to cool down underneath the surface, and if such a need occurs when there is no underground structure around, a demon must dig one of their own. Of course, a slug like you would burn to dust before you could even take a second step in our realm. It is not for the likes of humans.

“Wow,” Zeth muttered. “Sounds like it’d be tough to survive in a place like that.”

“Not many can. Many of our own die before maturation.”

Silence permeated the treeline for a moment.

“I will begin digging with your permission,” the demon eventually said.

“Oh, right. Uh, dig a tunnel from here to the guard precinct. Ensure you are not detected by any humans and do so as quickly as is reasonable.”

It nodded and bent over, sinking its razor-sharp claws into the dirt as though it were water. With a simple motion, it flung a massive amount out of the hole and scattered it across the forest floor behind it. It sank its other hand in and did the same thing, removing more dirt than Zeth could even carry with each scoop. Within only a few seconds, it’d already removed several cubic feet of soil. It would’ve likely taken Zeth an entire hour just to do that much.

It glanced over at him. “You may return to the clearing if you wish. Simply order me to take the prisoners to that place and I will return with them when I am able to reach them. Your presence here will only get in the way.”

“I want to stay,” Zeth said. “Just in case you get spotted or something goes wrong.”

With a sigh, it returned to digging. “It seems you are determined to exert your will whenever possible.”

As the demon had said, it didn’t take long for the entire tunnel to be constructed. It dug it to be short and thin so a collapse would be less likely, and frequently sent Zeth back to the surface to look around and ensure it was going in the right direction. They needed to make a couple detours to go around peoples’ basements, but overall, it was a smooth trip.

One thing Zeth had been worried about was the demon’s fear aura. Even if it was below the surface, it’d still be close enough to some people as they walked along the road or it passed them in their houses that they’d be affected. But when he raised his concerns to the demon, it explained.

The fear effect would enhance a person’s fear, no more. It was up to their mind to decide what they were afraid of at that moment. In Zeth’s case, because he was around the demon and knew how powerful it was, he was obviously most afraid of it. But if a person couldn’t see the demon, they’d just become afraid of whatever else was going on. If they were walking down the street, they’d become afraid they may be robbed. If they were eating, they’d suddenly be afraid they might choke.

Of course, there was the issue of anyone who fell victim to this fear aura getting a System notification telling them about the Influence check that it performed to see if it would affect them, but even that didn’t necessarily tell them there was a demon about—only that they caught some stray spell that made them afraid for a little while. And for most people, the fear was so intense that they often wouldn’t even notice they’d received a System notification until after the demon was gone and the aura disappeared. So while some general panic may have been caused, it wasn’t likely that people would go searching for this tunnel.

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Eventually, though, they got to a barrier of stone bricks that Zeth recognized to be the outer wall of the basement the prisoners were being held in. Zeth breathed, trying to push back his anxiety. It was likely just because he was spending so much time around the demon that he was so afraid, but that didn’t make it any less bearable.

“Okay,” Zeth said. “You ready to break through?”

The demon nodded.

Zeth took off his tunic and wrapped it around his head, leaving only his undershirt to cover his body, so that it covered the bottom and top of his face while still leaving his eyes exposed to see. Then, he nodded as well. “Do it, then.”

It reared back, preparing to strike the wall with its fist. “You would do best to stand back.”

Zeth took a couple steps backward, putting some space between himself and the wall.

And then the wall was destroyed.

Zeth didn’t even see it happen. The demon had swung its fist with a single, swift motion, too fast for his eyes to catch. It was simply standing in one position one moment, and in another the next. A gash was carved into the wall, sized exactly like the demon’s fist, that followed the line of its swing.

For a second, all was silent, the only sound coming from pebbles hitting the ground and the only light peeking through the cut in the dungeon wall. And then, with a crash, the entire rest of the wall collapsed in on itself.

Gasps and shouts of alarm broke out from among the prisoners—especially the ones in the cell that the demon had just broken into. These were not Zeth’s targets—just people from the cell they’d happened to enter. The four people gasped in horror, falling to the ground and kicking away as they stared at the demon’s face with broken expressions. Had that really been how Zeth had looked when he’d first laid eyes on the thing?

Among the screams from everyone in the dungeon—as well as shouted questions about what was going on from people in cells that didn’t have a view of Zeth and the demon—Zeth could pick out one voice in particular.

Far down the hall, a solitary guard drew his spear and pointed at the darkened cell. “What’s going on back there?! Show yourself!”

The demon casually stepped out into the prison cell, glancing around at its surroundings, and Zeth followed it, trying to keep to the darker corners. He may have had his face covered by his shirt, but he still wanted to avoid anyone getting a good look at him.

The guard cautiously strode closer, spear still held out, pointed in their direction. “What made that noise?! Who’s there?!”

“Knock him out,” Zeth muttered to the demon. “Don’t kill him.”

Instantly, the demon reached over to the wall, sinking its claws into the stone bricks and snapping off a chunk of rock. It held its arm back, then flung it forward, sending the stone hurtling toward the guard. With a painful thunk, the rock collided with his head and sent him stumbling back, where he fell to the ground, unmoving.

“Now get us out of this cell,” Zeth said.

The demon obliged, walking up to the iron bars and examining the door for a moment. Then it grabbed the hinges on the top and bottom and squeezed tight. With a squeal and a crunch, the hinges snapped immediately under the intense pressure, and the door slowly tilted forward, falling straight to the ground. The loud clatter of steel on stone echoed across the hallway.

Zeth glanced at the staircase on the end of the hall—the only entrance to this lower level from the main building. “That noise probably got some people’s attention. Uh…Can you wedge that iron door between the walls of the staircase, so nobody can get through?

“Easily.”

The demon picked up what was likely hundreds of pounds of metal with a single hand, casually carrying it over to the staircase, where it slammed one end of the door into the stone wall on one side of the stairs, sticking it deep inside and sending shards of rock flying, then pushed on the other end until it, too, was stuck into the wall on the other side. Nobody would be getting through that without either an incredible amount of physical Stats or a lot of time.

A muffled shout came from upstairs once the demon was done. “Hey, what was that noise? Thom, what was that? …Thom? You down there?”

The guard in the hallway—apparently his name was Thom—began to rouse from his slumber on the floor.

“Lock him in a cell so he doesn’t cause us trouble,” Zeth said. Then he looked around at the prisoners in the cell they’d broken into. He didn’t know what they’d done, but it probably wouldn’t be good to let them escape through the tunnel they’d made. He was only here to break one group of people out. “Actually, get these people too. Just throw them all in a cell and lock them in somehow. Then we can work on getting the thralls out.”

The demon sighed, muttering about how things would’ve been so much easier if he just let it kill them, but it obeyed, picking Thom up and holding him around the waist like a sack of dirt as it carried him over to another cell’s door and used its claw to slice the lock in half. It opened the door and threw the guard in—more roughly than Zeth would’ve liked, but the man was still certainly alive—and then walked over and did the same with each of the four still-whimpering people in the cell where Zeth stood.

Once they were all in, it snapped a bar off of the cell they’d broken into, then walked over and twisted it around the bars of the other cell and its door, keeping it shut. The guards could figure out how to open it again when Zeth was gone.

As shouts echoed from the top of the stairwell—as well as the sound of metal against metal from people beating their weapons against the iron door wedged between the walls—the demon walked over and started breaking the cell doors down of each of the Wicked thralls. They were all still chained up and restrained through countless different means, so Zeth was in no way afraid of them running off during the escape. He just stuck to the shadows, watching the operation.

“Sir!” A voice echoed down from the stairwell. “We believe there’s a prison break going on down there, but we can’t get in. We’ve sounded the alarm, but there isn’t much else we can do until someone can break through.”

“Get some of the demolition specialists,” a deep voice responded.

Seemed like there wouldn’t be much more time. Zeth turned to the demon. “Are you almost done?”

Another snap of breaking metal sounded out from the end of the hallway. “That’s all of them.”

“Great. Get them all and come out with me.”

“There are eleven of these slugs. It doesn’t matter how light they are, they won’t fit in my arms for one trip.”

A loud clang echoed from the top of the staircase. Far louder than any of the others. Sounded like those demolition specialists were here.

Zeth groaned, dashing out of the jail cell he’d been hiding in and running over to where the demon stood, holding two of the thralls with one in either arm, looking at the cells of the other nine. It turned to him. “I could get maybe one more without crushing or killing them.”

“That\'s four trips,” Zeth said. Another clang echoed through the hall. It sounded like snapping metal. “Not an option.”

“Then let me kill them, and I can take their squashed corpses with me in—“

“Also not an option.” Zeth looked at the remaining thralls in their cells. They were bound in leather jackets that pinned their arms to their sides, with chains around them that attached to the walls, and gags in their mouths. “Break the chains off the walls and pull them along by the ends. You can get them all and just drag them across the ground that way, right?”

It chuckled, moving to do so. “I like the way you think, human. Pull them through the dirt like the slugs they are.”

As it snapped the chains off the walls and began collecting the ends in its hands so it could pull them all behind it at once, Zeth heard the loudest clang yet from the top of the stairs, followed by the sound of metal tumbling down the stone stairs. A large section of the iron door clattered from the top of the staircase into view, landing on the floor at the bottom.

Zeth looked at the demon. “We need to leave.”

It collected the last chain, then nodded, following Zeth back over to the tunnel. Eleven people wrapped in leather restraining jackets tumbled behind it, the metal attached to them clattering together with every movement as their muffled shouts mixed together with the noise to fill Zeth’s ears.

He rushed through the broken wall of the cell they’d entered through and into the tunnel, beckoning the demon to move faster with its precious cargo. “C’mon!”

As he ran through the dirt hall, occasionally checking back to ensure the demon was close behind him, he heard the clattering metal of soldiers rushing into the basement and looking around for him. On the other side, he climbed to the surface, where he could hear alarm bells ringing out from the precinct.

“Collapse it behind you!” he shouted to the demon as it squeezed all the people it was dragging through the tight passageway.

It yanked on the chains, bringing the people closer to it, then dragged its claws along the walls and ceiling of the passage as it exited, creating deep gashes in its structure. Once outside, it slammed its fist against the dirt, and the earth began to fall. Zeth caught a narrow glimpse of a face peeking through the tunnel before the entire ceiling collapsed, closing it off to anyone else who wished to pass.

As Zeth threw his head around, trying to catch his bearings, he saw the doors of the precinct slam open and dozens of guards pour out, quickly spreading throughout the town.

“Run,” Zeth said to the demon. “Just get deeper into the forest.”

He took off with it behind him, dragging all those people alongside itself. And it seemed eleven bodies being hauled across the forest floor made more than enough noise for some people to catch on, as Zeth quickly heard footsteps drawing closer behind him. When he glanced back, he saw the sheen of metal armor through the trees, right behind them.

He bit back a curse. We can’t just keep running. No way we can throw them off our trail while dragging these people behind us, and even if we could temporarily get rid of them, going back to the clearing will just lead them straight to me.

It wasn’t a desirable situation, but he knew he had one last resort. They’d have to fight.

Or, rather, the demon would.

“Stop,” he said. The demon instantly halted in its tracks, looking at him with a curious expression, and he slowed down as well, watching it from a dozen feet back. He called out to it, “fight against the guards that are coming after us, but do not kill them. They’ve done nothing to deserve it. Injure them, knock them out, scare them off, whatever to get them away from us. You just can’t kill them, and can’t do anything severe or permanent to their bodies.”

Its constant frown morphed into the slightest grin. “I would rather I be able to kill them…But still, I prefer this to running. You will finally be witness to my true skill set.”

“I sure hope it’s good enough,” Zeth said.

It chuckled. “Believe me. By the end of this, those puny slugs will be wishing you would let me kill them.”

Zeth frowned. “No overt torture, either.”

The bushes rustled, and a group of six armored guards dashed through, taking stances in a semicircle around them with weapons at the ready.

“Stop, in the name of the law!” one shouted, and Zeth recognized his face. It was Kirik, from the front desk earlier. Didn’t look like he recognized Zeth, at least, as he continued speaking. “Release those escaped prisoners back to us at once, and we may just reduce your sentence.”

Zeth took a breath from behind the tree. “Alright, demon, impress me. Go.”