Chapter 69

Lyra watched in dismay as Rain stumbled into the mansion, his paw pressed up against his side in clear and obvious pain.

They had found him near delirious in a side street, a small lake of blood around him. He had come down amongst the warehouses away from any house and out of sight so by some fluke had avoided attention. It had taken a long time to get him standing, luckily having eaten such an absurd amount his healing was already starting to slowly push and pull his bones and flesh back into place. Still, it had been a gruelling trip back through Lynthia with Rain limping from corner to corner, one where Lyra had fainted twice from holding her invisibility up. Then there had been the struggle of climbing the wall. Rain had needed to push his shoulder up against the stone until his dislocated arm popped back into its socket, then once again for the other side. He had nearly passed out from the pain more than once.

It had taken half a dozen attempts but eventually he had crawled over the wall and then together they had slowly trekked back through the forest as the sun peeked over the horizon.

Rain stumbled into the Ranker’s bedroom and collapsed without preamble onto the bed. Opal hopped up on top with him leaving Lyra standing awkwardly beside them.

He turned his head and eyed Lyra out of the corner of one eye.

“ ... What happened to the two prisoners we let free?”

Lyra bit her lip. “Uhm. W-well, after you disappeared with the S-Succubus the Satyr snapped a Goblin slave collar around the Elf’s neck. I tried to stop her from leaving with him, I really did! But the Satyr was too strong, I’m not a combat Class ... I- I couldn’t do anything.”

Rain closed his eyes.

“You think she will say something to the town?” said Rain, his voice was quickly fading as exhaustion crept up.

She hesitated. “I ... don’t think so, she’s an escaped prisoner, she won’t want to be caught again, but more importantly, well, that was a Succubus, a Succubus! She’s likely already as far away from Lynthia as she can possibly get! ... It’s a Succubus! You don’t seem to get it!”

“A demon or something, demons are bad, I know that...” murmured Rain sleepily.

Lyra ran her fingers through her fluff in frustration, as much as Rain used to be a leveler and had more of an understanding of levelers than any other monster he was still quite unknowing. That was just the nature of having been trapped in a small town and forced to remain at the absolute bottom of society, more concerned with day to day survival than vanishingly rare existential threats.

Lyra knew. She had grown up with endless stories of the dangers of the world from people who had experienced them first hand, from the darkest monster to the grimmest demon, she knew all too well that this was something special. A Succubus meant something to levelers in a way that monsters or other demons did not. It was simple really, a Succubus could Take Your Levels. The very thought of such a concept made Lyra’s skin crawl and an involuntary shiver ran up her spine. She hunched over subconsciously as though to somehow protect her own levels from some unseen threat.

She needed to do something. As much as she couldn’t let Rain in a mindless state of hunger be loosed on the town she could not let the town go completely unwarned about a Succubus, she just couldn’t. Just as she had been taught to put aside differences when it came to greater monster threats she had been taught the same when it came to succubi.

“Rain?”

Rain didn’t answer, he was already asleep.

Opal was lying spread eagled atop him and cracked an eye.

“Stop fussing sheepy.”

“I- I’m going back to Lynthia...”

“Why?”

“W-well, shouldn’t we know if we managed to get away with it?”

“Get away with what?”

“Got away with eating all the livestock and horses in the entire town! Rain’s not going to be moving again anytime soon, it might be important!”

“Oh. Right.”

“Well?”

Opal waved her hand noncommittally and yawned.

“I’m not going to stop you, do as you like sheepy. If some levelers want to come bother us then Rain can eat them. Simple.”

Lyra curled her hands into fists and fumed at the Goblin girl. She was just so, so, well, she had different priorities, clearly mostly consisting of finding ways to make Rain larger. She really needed to sit down with the Goblin girl and try to change her entrenched views someday, just as she had inadvertently done to her.

As Opal got comfortable and closed her eyes Lyra gathered her things and prepared to return to Lynthia. That mainly consisted of washing blood from her wool and securing her bribery bag, er, Dimensional Bag with Rain’s hoard in it. She had collected the gold from the floor of the cultist’s building after the Satyr had fled not knowing what else to do. Putting a stop to Red’s very loud and very indignant complaining about using gold incorrectly had been a bonus.

By the time she got back to town it was midday and the sun was high in the sky. She approached carefully, and having somewhat rested was able to use her invisibility to hide herself as she peeked from the forest edge. The town seemed ... fine? No, wait, where was the guard? The front gate was wide open and completely unguarded!

She waited ten minutes wondering if someone would turn up to replace the missing guard but no such thing happened and hesitantly she stepped from the treeline. When nothing continued to happen she relaxed slightly and headed toward the gate, then tensed up as she entered below the portcullis, just waiting for the penny to drop.

Again, nothing happened, and she was free to enter the town completely unimpeded.

As she went deeper into town the reason why there was no guard soon became clear, the entire population of Lynthia had descended on the market and were throwing a full pitched many sided screaming match. Several dozen fights had broken out, magic and Skills being thrown freely and the already undermanned guard were on the verge of being overwhelmed by the furious levelers, none more furious than the merchants who looked ready to physically explode they were so red in the face with anger.

Lyra kept back and kept invisible and watched and listened carefully. There were a lot of accusations going around, a lot of incoherent confusion too as the logic of such a vast quantity of livestock and horses vanishing into thin air while leaving blood violently and liberally painted across their pens didn’t quite square with any one idea that was being suggested. There was talk of some kind of monsters getting in, but the sheer numbers needed to eat so many in one night defied belief. There was talk of thieves too, but the violence with which the animals had died didn’t fit, and why kill the horses when they were so much more valuable alive?