Chương 20: Dangerous Fight

For a moment, nobody inside moved. A dozen faces stared back at them. Fox ears and wolf muzzles but all with human eyes. All were hollow and all ringed at the throat with dull iron.

"You want to live?" Rys said. Her voice was low, steady.

"Then stand up." They watched her. They didn't believe her yet.

"When this door opens," she went on, "you run for the trees behind us. You do not stop. You grab the smallest one next to you and drag them if they fall. If you sit there, you die here. I am not coming back for you a second time." One boy, maybe Ren's age, pushed himself up with shaking arms. A woman with a torn ear followed. Once one person moved, the others found their legs. Still, there was hesitation. They were being far too slow. Ren stepped up where they could see him.

"We really did get out," he said. He hooked a finger under the collar scar on his own neck and tugged it down so they saw the healed skin.

"It hurts, but you get to live. So run." That landed better than any speech. They spilled out in a clump, half‑stumbling with their eyes darting. Rys pointed them toward the gap between two sheds.

"Go," Leo called quietly from that way, bow ready.

"I'll get you to the trees and come back." The second pen went faster. No seal on that lock, only a stiff bolt. Ivan put a thin wedge of force through it with a small [Minor Force] burst, just enough to knock the mechanism aside. The gate jumped in its frame. Rys had to give the short version again, but they moved quicker now. Someone had already started praying in an old tongue as they ran. By the third pen, shouts from the front wall were bleeding into real combat noise.

Metal on metal and the crack of a spell hitting stone. Ivan's nerves wanted to go look. He kept his eyes on the lock instead. This one had a seal stronger than the first, layered with a tag that would scream back to some hub if it was broken. He saw the trip‑line and shook his head.

"Skip this," he said.

"Too much glyphwork. We don't have time to find out what it reports to." Rys' ears flattened.

"There are children in there."

"And there will be corpses in there if I guess wrong," he said.

"We get the easy ones first. We come back if we somehow live through this." It was a lie. They both knew it. The odds of "coming back later" in the kind of situation where a General had walked into were slim. She held his gaze for a heartbeat, then looked away, jaw clenched so hard he saw the muscle jump.

"Fine," she said.

"Next." They moved. By the time the third gate swung open, Leo had taken the first group to the treeline and was jogging back, breath misting in the cooling air. Ren kept moving with him, opening latches Ivan had already cleared, repeating Rys' lines in a thinner, higher voice.

"You run, and never stop. Don't look ba–" A sound rolled across the yard from the front. Less like a shout, more like a crack in the world. Elizabeth's magic hitting something solid.

"That's… a bit louder than the plan," Ivan said. He scrambled up the side of the nearest shed, boots finding holds out of habit more than thought. The roof boards creaked under his weight. Rys followed, more sure‑footed. Ren climbed halfway and clung there, face tense. From the roof, they saw the whole mess. At the front, Yara and Gareth stood in a ragged hole where the gate used to be. Now splintered timber lay all around, jutting from the ground like broken ribs.

A fan of blackened earth spread out beyond them, smoking slightly. Hanno lay against a shattered crate to one side, slumped. Marcus crouched over him, hands pressed to his chest, golden light seeping between his fingers. Elizabeth was behind them, staff planted in the dirt, white‑gold power spinning around the ring at the top. Three slaver mages on the wall tried to answer her, their own spells slamming into a translucent screen between Dawn and the yard. Marcus' work again. Then Ivan saw what had made the crack.

The General walked through the wrecked gate, and Ivan made a small, unhappy sound. He wasn't huge. That would have been easy to process. He looked like a well‑built man in his thirties, dark hair tied back, beard trimmed, armor neat. The plates over his coat were etched with chain motifs, links running like veins toward the long sword resting on his shoulder. His presence sat on Ivan's senses like a mountain he only noticed once it moved. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on the original website. Beyond him, past the broken gate and the slope of the ridge, the sea glimmered faintly under the dying light. Far out, close to where the water darkened into depth, a massive black‑hulled ship waited without lights. Its silhouette was wrong for a merchant vessel. It was too tall and heavy, with sails that furled like folded wings. Mana clung to it in dense layers, so much so that it repelled the hungry Sea Kings in the Abyssal Sea. It was a Void Ship.

So that's how he got here. The scout's report was wrong. The Void Ship was much closer to the camp than Ivan's group had expected. Shit, this isn't good. [Instinct of the Prey] screamed in the back of his skull, pointing at that one figure like a knife.

"That's him," Ivan said. Rys nodded once.

"General." The slavers nearest the gate straightened. Ivan could almost see their spines regrow. A few laughed, high and brittle. The General didn't shout. He took in the situation at a slow sweep, sword still resting on his shoulder.

"Hah. Heroes of the New World. A pathetic bunch," he said. The General lifted the sword off his shoulder and swung it once. The blade cut air. The air didn't like it. A wave of pressure tore away from the arc of the swing, pale and almost invisible until it hit the palisade. Wood exploded. A section of wall and gate simply stopped being vertical and turned into jagged debris raining down. Yara had her shield up. Gareth braced with her. The impact still shoved them back a full step, boots digging furrows.

Hanno slid off the crate and didn't move again. Dammit! Slavers cheered.

"That's…" Ren's voice shook.

"That's not fair."

"That's what a hundred‑plus looks like. A D-Rank," Ivan said. His mouth was dry.

"Town‑breaker." Ivan didn't risk [Inspect] here. He didn't need the exact number to know the man was above Level 100. Yara and Gareth were D-Rank too, but that did not make this even. Then Yara charged, as if she had taken that personally. Her sword flared with a hard, clean light, different from Elizabeth's. She met the General at the gap, steel on steel. The clash cracked the air again. His next swing had less range than the last but more weight; she blocked, but it drove her back.

Gareth darted in from the side, his own blade lit with a [Judgment Strike] that bit into the General's armor. It left a shallow gash. The General glanced at him, eyes flat, then stamped his foot. Chains burst out of the dirt around him. They weren't normal metal, but mana shaped into links and cuffs, but they hit like the real thing. One loop snared Gareth's ankle and yanked. He hit the ground, cut the thing away before it could drag him closer, and came up limping.

Elizabeth hurled a bolt of searing light at the General's back. It hit something he wore like a cloak of force and fanned out instead, catching two slavers on his flank and setting them screaming. He didn't flinch. The freed slaves who hadn't yet reached the trees had gone still below the shed. They clung to the back of another fence, eyes fixed on the fight. A deer woman with grey fur at her temples started to whisper in Old Vas.

"Another one," she said.

"There is always another one. W-we can't leave…!" Her voice broke. Rys' hands had found the edge of the roof. Her claws bit into the wood.

"They're going to die," Ren said.

"Aren't they?"

"If we do nothing?" Ivan asked.

"Maybe." His heart hammered so hard it hurt. [Lattice Guard] tingled along his bones, no comfort at all at these power levels. One mistake here erased Ivan, armor and all. We can run, a small, cowardly part of him said. That's the smart thing to do. We can take who we have, dive into the woods, pretend we never saw this… He pushed that thought down. He had talked Yara into being the distraction. He had told her he'd handle the back.

If the Order of Dawn died here while he snuck away, the gods wouldn't have to punish him. He'd do it himself. He forced his gaze off the General and back toward the rear of the fort. Past the sheds and past the palisade. Down to the carved trench where waste ran, and the gully below where a glistening mass of half‑tamed Slime waited in its collared misery. A trash monster, hungry and bound by a control array that looked like a drunk had carved it. Ivan reached out with [Architecture of Mana], mapping the array.

It wasn't too complex; he should be able to interfere with it using [Principle Interference].

"I have an idea," he said. His voice didn't sound confident. It didn't need to be. Rys tore her eyes from the fight to look at him.

"I hate your ideas."

"Good," he said.

"Hate this one from the trees." He climbed down from the shed, boots scraping wood. His hands weren't steady, but they moved. Ren slid after him, landing in a crouch.

"What do we do?" the boy asked. Ivan looked at him, at Rys, at the line of people they'd already shoved toward the back gap. More were gathered now, huddled in the shadow of the sheds, torn between sprinting and watching.

"You and your aunt," he said to Ren, "go where Leo is. Warn him about the General, although I think he's already noticed. Keep opening anything I've already touched. Get them into the forest. Don't wait for anyone who doesn't move."

"And you?" Ren pressed.

"I have to try something very stupid," Ivan said.

"If it goes wrong, you'll know because the screaming will get worse." That did not help the boy's expression, but he nodded anyway. Rys stepped in close, grabbing Ivan's sleeve.

"You come with us," she said.

"Or I stay."

"Nah. You go with them. You know how to remove the slave collars, and they'll need you. I'll join you soon," Ivan said. She scowled but knew he was right.

"All right, then just come back when you're done," she said.

"If you die down there, I will drag your soul out of Yueko's halls and slap you."

"Get in line," he muttered, but the corner of his mouth twitched. She held his gaze a heartbeat longer, then shoved Ren toward the back.

"Leo!" she called.

"Move them now!" The ranger, already gathering the first group, jerked his chin in acknowledgment.

"On it," Leo said.

"Whatever you're planning, good luck, Ivan." Ivan snorted and turned toward the drainage trench, then toward the cages he hadn't opened earlier. The General's sword came down again behind him. The ground shook. He didn't look back. First, the sealed cages. Things were already messy enough. Then he'd find the slime. Down in the gully, the trash-eater slime pulsed wetly against its collar. Ivan flexed his ink-stained fingers. Right. The slime had a collar too.