Secret Agent Chapter 086 - First Contact (Patreon)

Rosimund was the first to react.

“Demons!” he bellowed, and a sharp tug on the reins brought the horses and the carriage to a halt.

Bradley heard a thump on the roof of the carriage as—he guessed—Liz leapt up there to get a wider vantage. It was dangerous: that would expose her to ranged attacks.

“Defense!” Bradley shouted just a moment after Rosimund. His own helmet was already on, and the order echoed metallically. “Anny, recon.”

Without any response, Anastasia kicked the door open and vanished. A small corner of Bradley’s mind wanted to geek out over how cool that was, but he held himself in check.

They were under attack, right outside the starter city.

It was possible their information had leaked.

It was possible they simply had bad luck.

But…

Nothing happened.

The forest was eerily quiet. There was only the rustling of the grass and leaves in the wind.

Belatedly, Bradley, Maria, and Su exited the carriage…

And Bradley clenched his jaw in regret.

They should have practiced this before. They were all way too slow getting out of the carriage in a combat situation.

Ruby held back in the carriage behind them, because…

“Barrier.”

A nearly invisible barrier of mana surrounded them, made of eight segments. This would allow Ruby to drop her barrier in one part or another to let the party enter and exit the barrier as needed.

Once the barrier was up, Maria carried out her part as planned. Her prayer was exceedingly quick, given her deep relationship with Goddess Arianna.

“O Goddess, Sanctuary!”

It was rapidly deployed, and rapidly faded, only covering the area inside Ruby’s barrier.

No demons inside. Beyond that, the plan called for Maria to save her mana for healing, if necessary.

“I still can’t see them!” Liz called from the roof of the carriage.

Rosimund hopped down from the driver’s seat with an earth-shaking thump.

Bradley reviewed his options.

Attack, Magic, Item, Flee.

The problem was they couldn’t see the demons. If it wasn’t for the talismans, they wouldn’t even know they were there.

It was eerie, the lack of any attack.

Tink.

There was a faint, high pitched sound, and looking back, Bradley saw Anny on the other side of the barrier. She made the hand-sign to indicate they should keep the barrier up, and another hand-sign that they were being observed.

“There is only one demon within two hundred yards,” she said softly. “Fifty yards dead ahead, in the form of a housefly.”

Rosimund raised the visor on his helmet and grimaced.

“How annoying,” he groaned through gritted teeth. “One of the [Demon King’s] spies. It won’t be easy to kill.” He looked at Bradley almost apologetically. “Housefly demons are fast, highly evasive, and very stealthy. Hitting it with [Holy Strike] will be nearly…”

Bradley raised a hand, cutting him off. He looked back and forth between the [Guide] and the [Saintess], the two members of the party with the most knowledge of the [Demons].

“Can it hear us, now?”

Anny nodded.

“Okay. Defenses up, AOE, Anny go long, regroup.”

This would put the most strain on Ruby, but when Bradley checked her expression, all he found was a soft smile and bright eyes. Next he checked Anny. Outside the barrier, she was about to have a rough time, but her face was as expressionless as ever. She made the hand-sign not to worry and disappeared from view.

Su had a grim expression on her face, but with nothing to do, she simply stood ready, taking a position between Bradley and the forest.

Liz hopped down from the carriage and took up position next to Su after handing him what he needed. He hoped it wouldn’t come down to that, because being protected by two girls while he was in the back row felt wrong, but that was what the strategy called for. Thankfully, Rosimund took up position in front of them with a new greatshield.

Ruby stood aside, and her fire spirit fully manifested before them.

It was a salamander, a fire lizard of some kind, made entirely of flames. But rather than the smooth flame of a lighter, it was more like the snapping and crackling of a campfire. Flames surged and popped all along its body, though Ruby’s control kept any of them from feeling the heat at all.

“Lammy,” she said, and then she paused. The spirit was, for once, not looking at her, begging for mana. It was snarling in the direction up the road, where the yet-to-be-seen demon was.

“Oh, you already have the target, excellent.” And without further ado, she cast her spell.

“Explosion.”

At the same time, the barriers turned opaque and blocked sound. Ruby invested four-ninths of her mana pool into the explosion spell, and the remaining five-ninths into her barriers protecting them all. A moment later her mana had fully recovered thanks to [Supreme Mana Regeneration], and she strengthened her barriers further as the pressure wave of the explosion reached them and the earth shook beneath their feet.

Bradley’s face grew pale though he kept his expression stiff.

Anny was out there.

But he could only trust her.

He had finished what he needed to do, and although it had been a few seconds…

Their talismans continued to shine with a red light.

The demon was still out there.

Ruby clicked her tongue, and Lammy snarled and hissed.

“Shall I try again, Bradley?” Ruby asked.

Bradley shook his head.

“Stick to the play.”

“As you wish.”

Su, unflappable as ever, simply remained on guard. Liz looked uncomfortable, cut off from the outside world as they were. Maria bit her lip and Rosimund’s expression remained grim.

Several seconds after the explosion, Ruby shifted the barriers back to translucent, and then opened up them up to sound as well.

It looked like hell had come to earth.

It was worse than any wildfire Bradley had ever seen on the news. There was a massive crater in the earth half a football field away, and trees had been torn from the ground and flung into the air, and were still falling. Farther away the trees had merely been blown over, like matchsticks in a radial pattern pointing away from the center of the blast, and there was fire. Even the earth burned, the flames sticky like sap or napalm, and thick black smoke billowed into the air.

And still their talismans glowed, indicating the demon was alive.

“I see it!” Liz pointed, and Bradley squinted through the visor of his helmet, but there was no way he could see a housefly from fifty yards away, through all that smoke.

“Ruby.” That was all the warning he gave before he hauled back and threw the knife Liz had passed him earlier. She flickered the barrier for just a second as it flew towards the housefly…

It tumbled through the air, flashing in the sunlight.

The momentary gap in the barrier had let in a wave of heat and smoke, but with a wave of her hand Ruby’s wind spirit cleared that up.

They watched as the knife flew…

“Miss,” Liz declared with a tone of bitter regret.

***

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies and one of the [Demon King’s] Lieutenants, watched through the eyes of his spy as the [Hero] re-emerged from the Sanctuary of Forti.

It had been only by chance that one of his spies had seen the [Hero] a week earlier, roaming around the forest outside the Sanctuary.

He had had to scramble after that. There hadn’t been any [Hero] summoned in so long, he had let his guard down. But the [Hero] and his [Party] were clearly still low level, and inexperienced. It had been trivial to lure a Lynxen cub into the [Party’s] path and force a confrontation.

Surprisingly, the [Hero] survived the initial strike, and his [Party] managed to drive off the Lynxen.

Unfortunate, but from across the continent, what else could be done?

The [Party] retreated into the Sanctuary.

But Beelzebub wasn’t done yet.

He could recover this.

With the foul Church distracted with the [Hero’s] condition, it was a perfect opportunity attack the Sanctuary directly.

First, he devoted a large portion of his mana to encouraging the monsters with which he shared an affinity to breed: the disease-carrying thurgenrats.

Then, he directed them to attack the city just so, in the weakest points of the wall and the Sanctuary’s boundary. First one point, then another, and finally there was a cascading failure.

Forti’s Sanctuary was breached for the first time in a century.

It was only thurgenrats, unfortunately. The other monsters of the forest had mostly been culled prior to this, but no matter.

Once the disease took hold and spread…

This could be the chance to wipe out the Church once and for all. Curing the disease would deplete the Church’s resources, the [Priests] would be unable to reestablish the Sanctuary, and the [Demon King’s] Army could dispatch forces at its leisure.

It would be a fait accompli.

But…

Somehow, only hours into the invasion of the city, a strange Sanctuary was reestablished. Not over the entire city, but just along the wall.

Beelzebub lost several hours analyzing the unprecedented use of the Goddess’ miracle.

Infuriating.

It only enshrined the area around the wall itself, and freshly cast as it was, it had no weaknesses Beelzebub could exploit immediately.

He would have to undermine it the hard way.

Thurgenrats threw themselves at it, gnawing with teeth and scratching with claw, but it was futile.

Well, it was a setback, but there were still hundreds, thousands of thurgenrats within the city already. The thurgenrats scurried into the rotten parts of the city, the most vulnerable parts, where the most vulnerable people were.

Once those people were infected, bloodrot would spread.

As bloodrot spread, the [Priests] would be overwhelmed.

This could still work.

But…

Throughout the night, thurgenrats were slaughtered. Those infected were taken for immediate treatment.

Beelzebub sighed wetly, a burbling sound, and spat acid onto his forelegs and washed his face with it.

This wasn’t going to work.

Even when the sun rose and the thurgenrats shifted to hiding and creating burrows for themselves, hunters tracked them and killed them.

And before the sun even set, the [Priests] of the Church managed to reform the Sanctuary, wiping out all of Beelzebub’s spies and monster pawns.

Beelzebub shivered with suppressed rage, his chitin plates rubbing against each other with an ear-splitting buzz.

For a day he sat, considering the situation.

And in the end, he decided that this was fine.

It had been an attack of opportunity anyway.

In the end, he had lost nothing but a few pawns, and he now had information of the [Hero’s] location. Still, he would keep this information to himself until the [Hero] reemerged to begin his [Journey].

And now that day had come.

Beelzebub’s spy was nothing more than a drone, birthed in a batch of tens of thousands by Lilith, in the form of a simple housefly. It relayed what it sensed via mana-transmission back directly to Beelzebub, and Beelzebub could fortify any of his drones with a thought.

It was concerning that they had detected his drone so quickly, though.

Beelzebub analyzed, and determined that the red glowing talismans must be the cause.

They were a new factor, not seen on any [Hero] summoned prior.

Beelzebub added this conclusion to his records, along with his observations of the [Hero’s Party].

And then…

There was fire.

But, no matter.

The fires raged fruitlessly against Beelzebub’s defenses.

Housefly drones, being so small, were easy to protect. Less surface area. A highly efficient design. A simple bubble of [Fire Nullification] was all it took to weather the storm.

The fires died down and the smoke started to dissipate, just in time for Beelzebub to see the [Hero] throw a knife.

Instantly he analyzed it. Conclusion: no threat. The trajectory would take the knife several yards above the housefly drone.

There wasn’t even any need for evasion.

Instead, Beelzebub turned his attention to the aftermath of the explosion. It must have been a spell, and the crater was—

The feed cut out.

The drone was dead.

Beelzebub shivered.

There had been no warning. No indication of any attack. The [Hero’s] entire [Party] had still been cowering behind their magical barriers, not that Beelzebub couldn’t overcome simple mana barriers.

He analyzed for some time…

[Telekinesis]? Some kind of trick throw with the knife, violating simple ballistics? A different kind of spell?

Beelzebub failed to reach any conclusion.

He noted this in his records.

Still, he had other drones. The would have to observe from a distance. His analysis of the talismans had determined a detection range of approximately fifty-two yards for the housefly drone, so a standoff distance of sixty-six point six yards seemed appropriate for a margin of error.

Beelzebub shifted his bulk and rose on deceptively thin legs. Fetid ooze flowed over his chitinous exoskeleton and he made his way to the [Demon King’s Throne].

And there sat Lucifer, the [Demon King]. He currently wore the form of a young man with a deep tan and black hair, and on his face there was a cocky, self-assured grin.

“Beelzebub,” he said with a deep voice. “What news have you for us?”

“My Lord,” Beelzebub burbled through his proboscis as he folded his wings back in supplication. “A new [Hero] has been summoned, once again in Forti. He has just begun his [Journey], this very day.”

“Ah, excellent! This will relieve our boredom. Asmodeus, we leave you in charge!”

There was a pulse of mana in acknowledgment, and the throne cracked as Lucifer took off, dashing away on foot.

He ran faster than the wind, through the [Lair], past all the manufactories, out into the bleak, tortured landscape, and towards the Wall.

Lucifer ran, and cleared the Wall in a single bounding leap.

Of course, the assembled forces took their shots.

He batted them away with casual ease.

Arrows, stones, ballista bolts, and all manner of missiles were deflected and Lucifer landed in the assembled armies’ midst.

But he had no business with them.

He simply ran straight through, smashing through tents and buildings and ballistas and man and beast and elf and dwarf and golem and anything else in his way as he ran in a straight line towards Forti.

The [Demon King] approached.