CH187 Mass demon casualities.
Despite Alex wanting to go back, it became apparent that having three magical girls and a big ship presented an overwhelming force. They continued even further south deeper along the kingdom of Dover.
Like Cecil predicted, a big force was waiting for them at one of the ports. There were close to 10,000 demons. However, Grace’s ability to subdue large areas with music alone proved to be a great equalizer. Some tier 2 demons had ways to wake themselves up, but none of the demons were cute enough to resist her power. It was quite broken.
“Your puny human rebellion ends here.” A tier 2 fire demon bellowed to the ship in the harbor, floating several hundred feet up in the air. “You are outnumbered by several orders of magnitude doing anything but surrendering would be courting dea….”
Grace appeared from a building, singing her song of sleep that caused the demon and anyone that could hear it to collapse to the ground.
“Little baby go to sleep.” The former Succubus magical girl sang. “Close your eyes and don’t you fret.”
Many demons and people alike fell into instant slumber. The tier 2 demon had some cultivators way to wake back up, but a single demon against the decently leveled force and three magical girls wasn’t enough.
A couple arrows ended the tier 2 demons stay on this plane of existence.
How did Grace get inside the city? There were sympathisers who sent boats out to meet the flying cloud when they were scouting out the city. News that demons were being purged from coastal cities sparked a bit of a resistance. Some fence sitting nobles also saw it as a way to position themselves better. The fact that they had no freedom at best and at worse no agency made people do desperate, traitorous things.
Alex used her dolls to take care of demons at range. One shotting a tier 2 demon with Lily’s arrow felt broken. But it got her the 4 tier 2 demon kills she needed for her next level.
The flamingos made a big point about not leaving anything behind. The combat classers were instructed to account for any arrows or items that they had created themselves. The more meaning it had to them the more important it was not to leave behind. No one wanted to risk dream demons visiting them in their sleep.
Like before, the group farmed whatever progress they could for leveling and before the sun set they had everyone loaded up on the flying cloud and made their exit. Cecil had to meet with some upset nobles that demanded they stay lest more powerful demons come back and enslave them again but he politely refused, and left them fuming at the docks.
When everyone was back on board, Ariel called out to the sailors to get the ship back over the harbor and followed the procedure to land it back into the sea.
“How did your meeting go?” Fufi asked the frazzled guild master when he sat down on the ship.
“Frustrating.” Cecil sighed. “I’m so sick of having to fight social skills. I wish the system didn’t offer them.”
“Thank you for doing it.” Fufi preened. “You are the best.”
Alex checked her phone. The huge amount of mass exterminations of demons disturbed her. However, she had indeed leveled up.
[[Level 9 Progress 800/800 monsters, 4/4 tier 2 monsters, Level up! Level 9 Achieved]
Stat increase: +2 cuteness +1 intelligence
Name: Alex Parker
Class: Magical Girl
Level: 9
Sex: Female
Race: Human
Strength: 11
Constitution: 9
Dexterity: 17
Intelligence: 14
Cuteness: 28
Skills:
Cleaning: 3
Cooking: 2
Dancing: 2
Tailoring: 4
Toymaking: 5
Feats: Empower Doll
Crafting: Force Imbuement
Crafting: Weight manipulation
Possess Doll
Spells: Animate Doll
Magical Girl Transformation
Lesser Grow Plants
Traits: Mental Resistance: 4
[Next level 10: Defeat 1600 monsters, Eight of which needs to be tier 2]
[Level 10 Progress 0/1600 monsters, 0/8 tier 2 monsters]
“Almost to the double digits!” Alex idly commented to herself, still looking at her phone.
The two other flamingos on the deck of the ship gave Fufi a bit of a look, like some unspoken condolence was passed between them.
“Is that not good?” Alex looked around for affirmation.
“Maybe it would be better to not compare yourself to others.” Fufi soothed.
The unspoken words were clear. Alex was the lowest level of the three magical girls present. Grace likely was the highest, despite Ariel being older than her. And Grace being level capped because of that dirty trick to turn her into a succubus.
Cecil shook his head. “You really should keep that information to yourself. Levels are a very private thing. Demons are very sneaky, it wouldn’t surprise me if they are not already scheming to find information on us.”
“I just assumed that there was no one here that didn’t have bad intentions.” Alex sounded a bit surprised by the rebuke.
“You’re not wrong.” Cecil stated. “I assume anyone here joined to get levels. Fighting demons is about the only way for people in the Kingdom of Jass. But the demons tend to come out victors in the end. South of the kingdom of Dover is Orc and other goblinoid lands. The kingdom of Dover wars with them, but never tries to wipe them out because of the contract. They don’t want to take humans with them and have them level up fighting orcs enough to throw off their chains. So the demons only fight a defensive battle, never leaving human lands for more than a few days.”
“Would the orcs kill the demons?” Alex asked.
“Yes, they do, because demons can get them levels the same as humans.” Cecil nodded.
“Then wouldn’t they be allies?” The black-haired magical girl puzzled.
“No.” The guild master shook his head. “The kingdom of Jass and the kingdom of Dover historically were not lands controlled by humanity. They claimed this land by sword and magic before the demon queen came to power. And I’m sure they’d take it back if they got a chance. However, things are complicated. The demons don’t want to compete for the humans on the main continent so they fight off the goblinoids. But if the demons are weakened enough they might make some compromises with humanity to secure their place like saying that humans can fight the orcs and get levels. I doubt they’ll stay true to their word because demons are all deceivers but someone may think that trying to defeat the demon queen is foolish and try to settle for what would be the best offer they can get instead of fighting an impossible battle.”
“People are so disappointing.” Alex was happy about the change of subject, sort of. “This is why I lived in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. You’d think they wouldn’t risk their life if they weren’t committed to the cause. But I suppose Terre is different from Canada.”
Grace sat down next to Alex. “I agree with you. People can be good or bad. It just depends on what they have opportunities to do. We should head back though. The further south we go the closer we’ll get to the more populated areas where the tier 3 demons have their sects.”
Cecil agreed. “We’ve been out at sea for weeks now. I’m wondering how things are going back at the gnome’s island. Hopefully everyone has made enough progress to take some time off to consolidate their gains in level and skills.”
“Do you think there could be some kind of weird demon attacks on the people here?” Alex asked Grace. “I’m not sure being away would make us safe.”
Grace grimaced. “I don’t know about all the cultivator abilities but for a demon to find someone’s dreams they have to have something that would actually be in the dream. So if they find someone’s arrow but that person doesn’t value their arrow enough for it to show up in their dream then the succubus won’t find them. The more important an item is to someone then the more useful it is for that kind of ability. Ideally it would be something that they would be troubled by the fact that it is missing.”
The ship sailed out into the open ocean. Ariel maintained that being miles from the coastline was the safest place to be in case some earth demon sect decided they wanted to monitor for the ship from land and try to set a trap to stop them. They could either go north or south but they didn’t try to make it seem like they were going to go deeper into Dover when they left the harbor of that last city so anyone that was guessing would assume they were going back the way they came.
The first day and night passed with no trouble but with water as far as the eye could see and the boat drifting back and forth in the waves it didn’t feel to Alex like they were making any progress.
“How fast are we going?” Alex asked Ariel when she was at the helm.
The sea elf looked at the water. “A little under twenty knots right now.”
“Not quite as fast as the toy airships.” Alex tapped a foot on the deck.
“Are you working on scaling one of those up like with the flying cloud?” Ariel’s eyes lit up. “I almost wish I could have been a fairy longer to try to pilot one of those things.”
“You sure?” Alex raised an eyebrow. “No winter fairies in the spring. You’d have missed out.”
“Haw.” Ariel smiled cutely. “That’s why I said almost.”
“I got a skill that could help with making an airship.” Alex smiled back. “When we get back I want to try to use it, but I don’t think it’ll work too well until the ship is mostly done because it involves painting.”
The rest of the trip passed with more of the same. There was day then night, a few squalls that people had to hunker down for. But with the clockwork engines worked well. The momentum enchantment kept them going well.