Zoe clapped her hands together. “I have a plan.”

  “Really?” Stella asked. “Because pardon my assumptions, but you don’t really seem the type.”

  “I didn’t say it was a good plan,” Zoe admitted, “and it’s really more of a suggestion.”

  The two demons remained just within the edge of the woods, considering their next steps. Both wanted to go find out what was going on in the cottage, but neither wanted to go sneak up to the windows. They’d also dismissed the idea of going into the mine to investigate. It would be too dangerous, as there was now zero doubt it was part of the cultists’ lair. They’d be better off just kicking down the cottage door and murdering everyone than they would in penetrating the heart of their operation.

  They had two options, now. They could stick around and wait for their big-shot Rank A benefactor to show up come morning, or they could slip away and hope the various problems they’d caused would cancel each other out on their own.

  They both agreed that the first option was better. The main issue then was how they should spend the hours in between. Hunker down somewhere and stay out of sight? Go on the offensive again? Or something else? Zoe had a new scheme brewing, and it fit into the something else category—sort of.

  “So here’s the plan,” Zoe said. “We’re pretty sure there are Inquisitors running around, which is also a whole problem. We talked earlier about getting them and the cultists to go at it with each other.” Zoe pointed a claw at the mine. “So what we do now is bring a bunch of attention over here, give everyone the slip before the real chaos starts, then scoop up my other buddies and wait it out back in town.”

  “Uh-huh.” The shopkeeper followed Zoe’s gaze. Their demonic nature provided superb night vision, so they could see the guildsmaster’s whole estate in perfect detail well after nightfall. “And how do you intend to do that? Start another fire? I believe doing so would bring you up to three.”

  Arson has turned out to be fun—but no. That wasn’t Zoe’s idea. Instead, her mind had wandered back to an early quest reward. An item she’d only played with briefly, but whose unassuming magical properties could now prove most useful. “We’re not setting anything on fire. We’re going to fly a kite.”

  _____

  Lord Darius Loch was in high spirits. For a man with a tendency to grow dreadfully bored, he was having a fantastic time waltzing ever deeper into the great forest blanketing the northeastern edge of the continent. The same couldn’t be said for his—what were they supposed to be again—students?

  “Not once in my entire life have I found myself victimized by a task so dreadful,” the Blodmane heiress complained with a great deal of volume. “Damnation—and to think! That a man of such high station and higher esteem as Lord Darius Loch would subject a young lady to such an indignity, why I—hey!” The dull clang of hollow metal striking bone rang out through the trees.

  “Quiet. I’m thinking.” Ah, so it was little Archie who hit her, Lord Darius thought. That boy had potential. They all did, of course, but the scrawny mage was the one with the largest portion thus far remaining unused.

  “You struck me!” Even though he wasn’t looking and only have listening, Lord Darius could damn-near hear Liliana’s features contort in a delightful visage of aristocratic shock. “Lord Darius! He struck me!”

  “That he did,” the powerful alchemist mused, not turning his eyes from the way ahead. “And I must say, Magus Arthur, that you’ve just won yourself a great deal of my personal approval.”

  Lord Darius tuned out the ensuing bickering. It was entertaining, in some sense, but not interesting. What interested him was leading the trail of youths straight into a pack of monsters, but he wasn’t having any luck.

  It should have been easy. The coastal woodland dominating the area was relatively low danger, but that hardly meant a lack of danger entirely. That was half the reason he’d forced them off the path at the beginning. There were supposed to be a few dens between where he’d started and where he was going, yet the alchemist had yet to detect any. It wasn’t suspicious or even unusual. Those things tended to change, and not least in an area like this. No, it was just annoying.

  “Hurry up,” he called back to the four young adventurers, “we won’t make it by dawn at this rate, and I’ve got a business to check on.” That was a lie. The lack of monster encounters meant they were making more than excellent time—but it was ruining his fun, and that was a problem he could fix by watching them struggle to keep up.

  “I think you mean we have a field exercise to complete,” Andric called back. The other, younger, weaker alchemist said it with such seriousness that, for a moment, Lord Darius almost felt convinced.

  But it was not to be. “No, I believe I meant what I said.” Picking up the pace, he wove between branches, ripped through brambles, and glided up and down the sloping terrain with speed that forced all but the highest ranked among them—Andric—into a sprint.

  For Andric’s Rank C, alchemically modified body, it was more of a steady jog. For Lord Darius himself, it was nothing more than a lively stroll. Though the most powerful alchemist in the kingdom had not built himself for speed, reaching Rank A alone imbued him with enough strength to smash straight through the thickest of trunks and enough grace to avoid needing to.

  The armored Templar, Sean, and the scrawny mage, Arthurt, had the worst of it. The former struggled due to his heavy armor, while the later struggled due to, well, himself. In all fairness, Liliana wasn’t faring much better—not until she cheated by conjuring her sword.

  “Oh, choke on rot, would you? That is so unfair.” Arthur gasped and wheezed as he cursed the young heiress. “Bet you don’t even have the mana to sustain that without burning through a heap of crystals.”

  “Yeah, well, lucky me that I have a heap of crystals to burn,” Lily laughed as she zipped ahead of them above the treetops, riding upon skill that Lord Darius had seen her wield to great effect on many occasions. It took the form of an enormous sword, forged straight out of magic and ice. More than a mere weapon, the conjured blade provided an impressive array of secondary abilities for her rank—one of which allowed her to take to the sky with it beneath her feet.

  While Lily whooped in glee and Arthur kept cursing her, Lord Darius merely scoffed and shook his head. He knew that Arthur was right. There was no way the girl could sustain that kind of flight for any substantial length of time—not on her own mana. But she was born high within a prominent noble house, and that meant she could afford things like stuffing an expensive storage ring with pricey mana crystals to fuel a mana-hungry skill. Using said skill for no reason other than to avoid physical exertion was, well, almost insulting.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Lord Darius just shook his head. He was getting distracted from the real task at hand—field exercises and business were well and good, but there was a better reason to visit Blossomfell than either of them.

  The Rank A alchemist no longer had one, but now two, demons to check on.

  _____

  Standing atop the low hill above the mine entrance, Zoe withdrew her magic kite.

  [MAGIC KITE]

  Rank E, Upgradeable

  It’s a magic kite!

  Despite being a direct quest reward, the system really didn’t tell her anything about it. The kite looked like a kite—as in, Zoe couldn’t imagine how you could make a kite that looked more like a kite than this one did. If there was a kite emoji—Zoe didn’t remember if there was one, and it’s not like she could find out now—well, it would look like this. Or if you imagine what kind of logo a store that sells kites would have… point is, the thing was a cherry-red, squished and stretched diamond shape, complete with a ribbon tail. Zoe loved it.

  “You weren’t joking,” Stella remarked. Standing beside Zoe, the shopkeeper studied the glorious war-trophy. And it was a war trophy. Zoe had won it. In combat. “You really are going to fly a kite.”

  “Yep.”

  Zoe didn’t have much experience using the thing. It was no weapon, and it didn’t have any crazy enchantments or anything. That being said, there was a reason it was a magic kite. Upon first flying it back in the frozen wastes, Zoe had found the thing remarkably easy to direct and control. She hadn’t played around with it much since then, but she had taken it out of her inventory a couple of times. It was in one of those moments that she realized another critical property the item possessed.

  “It’s a magic kite. Which means…” unspooling a bit of line, Zoe activated mana manipulation while also drawing upon her Power attribute. A small gout of fluid hellfire spurted off of her finger, latching onto the line and racing along it before guttering out. “…that it acts as a conduit for mana and spells.”

  A system notification popped up in the middle of her explanation.

  Mana Manipulation has reached level 11!

  Zoe blinked. Huh. I’m not going to say no to another skill level—but that was possibly the least sophisticated way I’ve ever used that skill. No, wait. Realization followed—it wasn’t the skill alone. It was the way she’d asserted influence over the resulting mana type by leveraging the elemental binding on a specific stat. Interesting.

  Leveraging her raw stats wasn’t new to Zoe, but perhaps she’d been underusing the technique. Regardless, now wasn’t the time to get too deep into theorizing. “Since the Inquisitors should be on high alert and tracing things like mana signatures, I figure we can channel a bunch of demonic energy up into this thing. That ought to get their attention, seeing as it’ll be like a giant beacon of evil in the sky above this place.”

  The other demon studied the kite. “Interesting. I’m not opposed to this, as long as you can do it in a way that’s discreet. I mean, discreet in the sense that it won’t be obvious to anyone nearby who isn’t already watching for magic.”

  “Yeah, I can do that.” Zoe already had an idea for which skill to use, and her most recent level in mana manipulation had given her some extra ideas. “I’m realizing there’s a slight problem, though—it’s not exactly windy, is it?”

  The shopkeeper shook her head. “Indeed it is not.”

  “Figures.” Zoe sighed. “Not ideal, but I can still work with that.” Unspooling more of the line, Zoe held out the kite and prepared to set it loose. She was confident that with enough mana and the right intent, the thing would fly in spite of the lack of wind. She’d still give it a little help getting started, though.”

  “Need me to do anything?” Stella asked.

  “Just keep watch, and maybe tell me if it feels like I’m creating a strong demonic presence? Being the one creating the magic seems like it’ll make me overestimate how intense the signature is.”

  Zoe ran backwards, dropped the kite, and unleashed her skills.

  Mana Channeling!

  Manasight!

  Mana Manipulation!

  Mirage!

  The kite lifted with a bit of a shaky start. It came damn close to scraping the ground, and it took a few faltering seconds before Zoe’s magic and intent carried it upwards into the dark sky. The white line darkened and faded, visually blurring until it was impossible to see apart from the line of brilliant mana glowing in Zoe’s skill-augmented vision. It was without doubt the effect of her chosen skill—mirage.

  Higher and higher, the kite itself continued to climb into the sky until Zoe could no longer spot it. That wasn’t due to the darkness—Zoe’s demonic physiology now made it so that incomplete darkness was no different from broad daylight, at least in terms of what details she could see. It was very different in the way it looked, though. She’d thought about the best way to describe it to her human friends, and the best she’d come up was to say that everything still looked close to black. The difference now was that she could see a whole bunch of different colors of black.

  Either way, the kite was just really high up, now. Definitely high enough to serve as a local beacon. Recalling the way she’d filtered her mana to produce only the hellfire-attuned part, Zoe did the same thing—except this time, it was with the infernal component of her spirit.

  Channeling that was a bit harder than channeling an element bound to one of her stats. Zoe had to lean heavily on mana channeling, a skill that was proving effective in conjunction with mana manipulation. Zoe expected it to become irrelevant once she gained the latter, yet her first mana skill remained relevant.

  Mana Channeling has reached level 18!

  Mirage has reached level 7!

  Mirage has reached level 8!

  Bit by bit, she coerced ever greater quantities of raw, unformed Infernal magic up through the line of the kite. Before long, she’d suffused it with a substantial portion of her available mana. Zoe realized the air had grown downright frigid.

  It was approaching the middle of autumn, it was nighttime, and Nordvask was situated fairly far north. Still, this was no natural chill. It was a still, silent cold that burned against the skin and cut deep into flesh. It was the kind of cold of a windless and dry winter morning with no snow. Or it was the discomfort of sitting in a stiff metal chair in short sleeves in a building with the air conditioner cranked too high. Yet it didn’t bother Zoe.

  It was oppressive and stifling, but not towards her. It was also alarmingly similar to the chill suffusing the elder temple during the cult ritual. Zoe could never forget that feeling. It’s the effect of Disdain, she realized. It didn’t bother her in this instance because it was nothing more than the manifestation of her own spiritual presence. Zoe had become a demon of Disdain, after all.

  But I don’t feel disdainful. Not really. Lilith said the emotion that both Disdain and Righteousness actualize is pride. I’m definitely more prideful than disdainful, I think. But either way, is that really my defining emotional state?

  The relationship between her nature as a demon and with the Infernal alignments became suddenly uncomfortable. Zoe resolved to find out more—she could tease a little information out of Stella, and she of course had Lilith. She also had that miniature library of forbidden books, courtesy of Basil.

  But for now—let’s just focus on baiting those Inquisitors.

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