Dolan ran, jumping between balconies and roofs of buildings, with Sebastian on his back.

  “Sorry I was late,” Dolan said. “I was keeping watch

  right up until the fight. I was gonna jump in, but I detected a squad of

  city guards coming toward the warehouse. Figured you could hold your

  own in a fight from your spars with Silas, and I had to see if things

  were about to take an even bigger turn than expected. Which they did.”

  Sebastian winced at every sharp turn and landing, his

  fractured arm struggling with the movements. “Well, I won that fight, so

  I guess you were right about that. The boss was a bit much though.”

  “Yeah, Boss Raph is pretty well known for his strength.

  I’m impressed you survived if I’m being honest. You took that hit like a

  champ.”

  “Thanks… You were saying about the guards?”

  “Right, yeah. There’s basically an army coming, and it

  looks like they’re coming for you, and by extension the rest of us as

  well. I couldn’t get a full picture of what exactly is going on, but it

  seems like some big-shot came over from the capital, chasing after you.

  You did say that you were in some kind of trouble, but I gotta say, this

  is a bit more than we bargained for.”

  Sebastian winced again, this time more so from guilt than

  pain. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t think that— No, I hoped that they

  wouldn’t follow me here. I didn’t mean to drag you guys into this. I—“

  Dolan waved his hand to interrupt Sebastian’s apology as

  they flew across a wide city street, lit only by street lamps at regular

  intervals. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. In case you didn’t know,

  smuggling people across the border, especially with the war going on, is

  technically treason. We all knew this day would come. All of us have

  our own circumstances.” He paused for moment, as if reliving some of

  those circumstances. “Take Rafi, for example. He is what people around

  here like to call a ‘half-demon’ because his father was born in the so

  called ‘demonic lands’ of the East. He’s been treated like less than

  human for most of his life. He feels very little love for this place,

  its people, and its laws. Myself, I had a sister. She worked for the

  military. Followed orders her entire career until one day those orders

  led to her being told some secret the high-ups didn’t want anyone to

  find out about. They had her killed.”

  “Dolan, I—“

  “Don’t. I’m not telling you this for sympathy or anything

  like that. I’m saying, you might have started out as just some client,

  but we’re not gonna abandon you. We got your back.”

  A wave of warmth overwhelmed the pain, which had been

  steadily growing as his body was healing due to his essence continuously

  circulating through his meridian system. “Thanks…” Sebastian muttered

  sincerely.

  So Rafi is a “half-demon”, huh? He

  doesn’t look demonic, whatsoever. They way the people of this place

  talks about demons, you’d think he’d have horns and wings.

  Why am I not surprised that they

  lied about this too. Demons. What a joke. They’re just people, people

  who Lumeria happen to be at war with. Bastards…

  They rushed back toward the church to tell the others.

  Along the way they had to evade and avoid several guard checkpoints and

  patrols that had sprung up throughout the city in the night. It seemed

  like most of the city guards had been brought in for this.

  It took some effort to remain undetected as they

  traversed the city but with Dolan’s level 49 Stealth, Detection, and

  Movement Skills they reached the church without much trouble.

  POV Kevin Vane

  Kevin and Interim Commander Wadley of the Luxendorf City

  Guards arrived at the warehouse not long after Sebastian and Dolan fled.

  They were accompanied by a small army of guards who surrounded the

  area.

  Boss Raph sat on a barrel outside the warehouse, calm and collected as always, utterly unfazed by the army of guards.

  “Mr. Bronte! You were supposed to bring him here at

  midnight. Why in the hell did you meet with him ahead of schedule?!” the

  commander scolded the crime boss, but he suddenly stilled when Boss

  Raph looked him in the eye. The commander had a dawning realization

  about who he was chiding and averted his eyes before continuing. He

  cleared his throat and explained the situation to the crime boss. “This

  is Sir Kevin, from the capital. The crown has ordered the apprehension

  of the target with the highest priority. We weren't yet fully ready to mobilize

  when the reports came in of his early departure. At this point we can

  only hope that our checkpoints and patrols catch wind of him. By not

  adhering to our agreement, you have caused the crown a great deal of

  trouble.”

  Boss Raph shrugged. “He decided to show up early, through no fault of my own, interim

  commander. In fact, he killed my friend before running off, so I do not

  appreciate the implication of responsibility on my part.”

  Kevin looked at the Commander and noticed how unwilling

  he was to antagonize the crime boss, shook his head and jumped in the

  conversation himself. “And how exactly did he manage that? You’re what,

  level 54, from what I’m told? Sebastian shouldn’t be much more than

  level 30, and yet you’re claiming that he sneaked up on you and your

  ‘friend’, killed him in front of you, and got away? How does that make

  sense?”

  “He had help. I don’t know his name, but I recognized him. He’s a hunter, a ranger. High level too.”

  They realized that there was nothing more to gain from

  talking to Boss Raph, he clearly had little intention of helping more

  than what little he had already provided. Kevin and the commander walked

  away to talk more in private.

  “Sir Candidate, while it is unfortunate that our efforts

  to capture him were unsuccessful, our suspicions have been confirmed.

  The target has clearly marked the four we apprehended as subjects for

  his rituals. This hunting party he’s joined up with must be a sleeper

  cell of demonic associates. Either Mr. Bronte arranged to meet with him

  early—in an attempt to seek out information and/or profit—or the target

  and his demonic associates saw through our plan and arrived early to

  disrupt us. Regardless, we need to make haste to their base of

  operations. The time for subtlety is over.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Kevin balled up his fists as he resolved himself for

  what came next. He agreed with the commander, the time for subtlety was

  over. It was time for action.

  The commander ordered the city guard to raid the church

  where the hunters were known to reside, and the two hurried over there

  themselves as well.

  “What will happen with the marked citizens, Commander? We

  stopped Sebastian from reaching them. He can’t go after them now, can

  he? They’ll be released?”

  Wadley raised an eyebrow. “No Sir, they will receive the mercy of a swift execution before first light.”

  Kevin’s bravado cracked, and a sense of horror seeped into him. “What? You’re gonna kill them?! Why?!”

  “Sir, demonic marks are permanent. Even if they’re safe

  from this particular demon, there will be others. To keep them alive

  would not only benefit the demons but would be an insult to these poor

  souls as loyal citizens. The moment they were marked they became little

  more than demons themselves, they would not want us to allow them such a

  fate.”

  Kevin reigned in the horrified look on his face. “Even the boy?”

  “I suppose… We might be able to spare the boy, since Sir

  Candidate clearly has a kind heart. He’s young, after all. With a little

  luck, we might be able to suppress the mark, if it hasn’t set in too

  deeply. We’ll have to keep an eye on him, though. He’ll be sent to a

  facility to train, perhaps he can repay our kindness at the front lines

  in a few years, battling the very demons responsible for his suffering.”

  The hero nodded, and he steeled himself to the reality of

  this new world. He knew in his heart that the commander was right.

  Demons were evil, and they needed to be destroyed. It was quite

  literally his purpose in this world.

  There was no room for the soft values of his past here.

  POV Sebastian

  Sebastian and Dolan had reached the church in no time.

  With the speed and mobility of a level 49 ranger,

  traversing the city in was a fairly simple matter. Although avoiding the

  patrols had complicated things. As soon as they arrived, Dolan called

  out, “We’ve been burned! Get your go-bags, we need to leave, now!”

  The rest of the hunters were ready to go in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

  They left through a back door leading to a maintenance

  tunnel in the sewers, an exit prepared for just such an eventuality.

  None of them said a word. They followed their agreed upon protocols

  without complaint.

  Although it was a maintenance tunnel and not the actual

  sewers, Sebastian felt his eyes sting from the smell. They had ensured

  that the tunnel had some basic lights, but even then it would have been

  difficult to navigate without someone to guide the way. The sewers ran

  throughout the entire city and these maintenance tunnels ran alongside

  them like a maze.

  Rafi was in front the group, guiding them along, like he

  knew the tunnels by heart, which he probably did. Sebastian chose not to

  think about why after he heard of Rafi’s past. The tunnels weren’t

  wide, there was only enough room for two people to walk side by side if

  they squeezed together, so the group walked silently in a long line. The

  odd rat-like creatures who called the tunnels their home mostly left

  them alone. They scurried along the other side of the tunnels, as if

  they maintained two lanes. One for fleeing humans and one general

  purpose lane for rats.

  They walked around the maze of tunnels for almost an hour

  before they finally reached a seemingly inconspicuous wall. Rafi placed

  his hand against it and closed his eyes. Moments later the wall folded

  in on itself and faded away, revealing a path to a ladder. Rafi stayed

  behind to close the hidden wall as the others climbed up. He followed

  behind them once the tunnel was hidden once again.

  They all remained quiet, but their faces made it very

  clear that they were quite happy about finally leaving the tunnels. The

  smells and the filth wasn’t something any of them wanted to stay exposed

  to for longer than necessary.

  The ladder led to the basement of a building, a storage

  room of some sort. It was an ordinary basement, filled with nothing but

  old dusty furniture and broken down pieces of equipment. It looked

  abandoned, as if nobody had been here for decades, which was maybe the

  point.

  “Alright, we should be good, for a short while at least,” said Rafi after he and Dolan did a quick check of the house.

  Now that they were safe, or at least as safe as they

  could be for the moment, Bishop took charge again. “Let’s head up and

  assess the situation.”

  Once they left the basement it was made

  clear that they were in a residential house. It was a rather small

  house, just the one floor and a basement.

  Bishop noticed Sebastian carefully look out the window to try and figure out where they were.

  “Don’t worry, we’re safe here for now. We set this safe

  house up a long time ago. Rafi has been coming here every now and then

  over the years to improve the enchants and add new ones. For example,

  all the windows are enchanted so that anyone looking in will see just an

  empty room. And, no trackers can find us here. Come, let’s talk.”

  Everybody sat down around the living room table.

  Sebastian, Dolan, and Silas sat on the couch, Bishop took the armchair

  while Rafi and Carvell settled for some chairs brought over from the

  dining room. Rafi had lit a glowing rock installed in the fireplace to

  emulate the light of an open flame without producing any smoke.

  “So… It was a trap, I take it?” Bishop asked.

  “Yes,” Sebastian answered sullenly. “Boss Raph had been

  ordered by the city guards to lure me in, but he got greedy, or maybe

  just curious. He wanted to know why they went to such length to lure me

  out, and who I was. So he arranged for me to show up earlier than they

  planned. If Dolan hadn’t spotted the guards and gotten me out of there I

  would be dead, or worse.”

  “The why is simple enough,” Bishop said. “They knew you

  were with us, and they didn’t want to risk a big fight. What I’m a

  little curious about is who. I know you said that you had some trouble

  and reasons for not wanting your name registered, and I didn’t want to

  pry. Honestly, I didn’t care too much, we all got our pasts. But this

  feels a little bigger than most.”

  Sebastian looked around and decided that they deserved

  the truth after everything they had done to help him. He took a deep

  breath to calm down and explained. “You know the hero candidates?”

  Silas answered for the group, “Yeah, a couple of months

  ago, the capital announced four new hero candidates with limits upward of

  a hundred.”

  Sebastian paused for a moment. He balled up a fist to

  steel his resolve, and he squeezed it with his other hand, almost

  breaking the skin with his nails. “Technically, I’m one of them.”

  The hunters gasped, and they shared a round of confused

  looks. They all looked like they were about to pelter Sebastian with

  about a thousand questions, but Bishop held up his hand to stop them. He

  looked directly at Sebastian. “What do you mean, ‘technically’?”

  Sebastian sighed. “From what I understand, there are a

  lot of different theories and ideas about who the hero candidates are

  and where they come from. The truth is, the mages at the castle in the

  capital used a spell or ritual to summon myself and the other four here.

  We come from another world, one without the [System]. It’s what gives

  us such high limits among other advantages, well… usually at least.”

  Dolan jumped in, “Wait, hold up…. You’re from another world?!”

  “Yeah.” Sebastian briefly debated internally on what to

  reveal and what to keep close to his chest. He still didn’t want to

  reveal the secrets of his cultivation, that was his secret. He had no

  problems spilling the secrets of Lyra and the kingdom, but his own

  secrets would remain hidden. “I had something of a falling out with the

  woman in charge. She decided that I was a problem. That I would be a

  distraction for the others, so she decided to have me killed. Guards

  woke me up in the middle of the night, and they dragged me out of the

  castle. They took me to a cliff and threw me off, expecting me to die. I

  had hoped that they wouldn’t discover that I survived but it’s clear

  now that they did, and they’re hunting me down because of it.”

  Dolan looked at Sebastian with sympathy in his eyes.

  “That sounds about right. They do that. If your usefulness to them fails

  to exceed your potential threat level, then you’re a danger and need to

  be killed. Different circumstances, but I know the story well, it’s

  what they did to my sister after all.”

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