Chương 21: He’s a Liar, But He’s Helpful

Yara's shield already felt too light in her hand. The Iron Chain General was supposed to be two nights away. Instead, the Void Ship had reached the port just when the Order was threatening the slavers. Everything went to hell after that. They hadn't come prepared to clash with one of the Generals. Those people weren't just strong. Each one had a powerful God standing behind them, and none of those Gods belonged anywhere near the good side. The General's sword had weight that went past steel.

Every time she met it, the impact rang all the way down to her toes. Her arm throbbed under the bracer where a cut had gotten through earlier and Marcus had slapped a patch of light over it. He stepped in again. She didn't wait. She lunged first, blade flaring with Aurora‑light as she aimed at the joint under his shoulder plate. He twisted, took it on the flat of his own sword, and let her force carry her past him. She barely got the shield up before his follow‑through clipped it. The hit drove her sideways.

Dirt sprayed as her boots slid. Gareth appeared at her flank like a habit.

"Right side!" he shouted. She shifted because she trusted his eyes before she understood the threat. A chain of hardened mana cracked the ground where she'd stood, links snapping up like a trap's jaws. The General watched them both with a bored calm that made her want to spit.

"Is this the best the Order could find?" he asked. He sounded genuinely curious.

"Budget's tight this year," she said between breaths.

"You get us instead of the good ones." His lip curled. Behind her, Elizabeth's voice rose in a sharp, clipped pattern. Air bent on the left. Three slavers who had been trying to flank teleported five paces to the right and crashed into each other. One went down under his friend's weight with a yelp, falling right into a sword and dying right there. Yara bit back a grin. Of course Beth would waste fine spatial magic on slapstick.

She had met Elizabeth as a scrawny kid in a too‑big robe who'd introduced herself as "Eliza, but you can call me Beth or I won't answer." The City Lord of Citadel had smiled that thin smile of his and told Yara, "Watch her for me. She's talented and has no sense of self‑preservation." He hadn't been wrong. The Aurora had taken notice when Beth was thirteen and ripped open a fold in space to shove villagers through while Yara and the other paladins held off a demon horde.

The goddess had laid a Major Blessing on Yara' shoulders that day. Yara still suspected the real reason she'd looked down was because Beth had been there breaking rules. Now that same reckless prodigy was standing behind Yara with a world‑class mana pool and a toolkit of spells that barely scratched the man in front of them.

"Captain!" Marcus called.

"His armor's barely taking scuffs. I can't keep the barrier up much longer."

"Noted," she said. The General moved. One moment he was three paces away. The next, he was almost on top of her. Not because he'd used teleportation – Beth would have felt that – but because he'd stepped with a burst of physical Skill that chewed distance and left a crack in the dirt behind him. She blocked high. The blow still rang her skull. Stars swam at the edge of her vision. Gareth darted in on the other side, sword glowing with [Judgment].

His arc kissed the General's ribs and left a gouge in the black plate. The man grunted and kicked Gareth in the chest so hard the paladin flew back and smashed into a splintered gatepost. He slid down it and groaned.

"Yara!" Elizabeth yelled.

"Down!" Yara dropped without arguing. A hair‑thin plane of slashing force cut through the air where her neck had been. It took a slaver's head off the wall instead. The body pitched off the parapet and landed in the yard with a thud.

"Stop almost killing my captain," Marcus yelled without looking up from Hanno's chest.

"Tell her to stop standing in my way," Elizabeth snapped. Yara tuned them out. She had no breath to waste on scolding. This was bad. She'd fought named monsters before. She knew how a D‑Rank felt. Yara and Gareth were both in that bracket, above Level 100 and all, but they had their Blessings and polished Skills too. This man still made them feel like trial knights. She heard something in the air change then. A sound not made by steel or spell. A wet, heavy roar rolled over the yard from behind the fort.

It wasn't the sea… No, that was an odd sound. She risked half a glance back. The rear section of the compound sagged as if the ground had melted. A dark shape rose up over the palisade there, glistening and wrong.

"What now?" Yara muttered.

Leo had just shoved the last clutch of slaves into the trees when the ground at the back of the yard decided it was tired of staying put. He spun in time to see the Trash‑eater Slime haul itself up over the lip of the trench. The thing he'd watched sleep in its pit for days in his earlier scouting trips was no longer a quiet, domed lump. It was taller than a house now, a mound of black and purple ooze threaded with half‑dissolved bones and twisted bits of armor.

The iron collar around it sparked as mana raced wildly along its lines.

"Shit," Leo said aloud.

"That's not supposed to happen." A foreman near the converter post slapped his palm on the main rune plate.

"Down!" he screamed.

"Heel!" The collar glyphs flared once, jagged and bright. The Slime shuddered. For a moment Leo thought it might actually droop. Then one of the control lines snapped like a rotten rope. The glow fractured, ran in new directions across the metal. Someone swore and jammed more mana into the post. A feedback bolt jumped from the plate into his arm. He seized up, smoke leaking from his nose, and collapsed. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Well," Leo muttered.

"That answers the 'did Ivan touch it' question." The Slime boiled forward. The first slaver it reached vanished to the waist in a blink. He had a second to claw at the edge of the ooze. Then his arms went soft and slid under. Armor hissed. Bone showed white and then gray and then nothing.

"Back! Get back!" someone screamed. Chains of hardened mana lashed at the Slime from the General's direction. One loop managed to hook into the side of the beast and yank a chunk away. But the separated globule flopped to the ground, quivered, and then rolled off on its own.

"Wonderful," Leo said.

"It splits." He saw Rys and Ren still by the pens and swore under his breath.

"Rys! Ren! Move!" he shouted. Thankfully, they heard him. Rys grabbed Ren's collar and half‑dragged him away from the pens. Freed slaves clustered along the sheds, frozen between bolting and watching. A few had collapsed to their knees, sobbing.

"Into the trees!" Leo roared.

"Unless you want to find out how long it takes to melt!" He shoved the deer woman who seemed to have taken some lead with the earlier group.

"You know the path?" he asked. She bobbed a quick nod, wide‑eyed.

"Then run," he said.

"Take them. Don't stop." She started moving, tugging others with her. Good enough. He turned toward the drainage trench. At the front of the yard, Yara and Gareth had already started giving ground. The Slime rolled closer with every swing the General took, and even paladins knew when to stop arguing with a hungry blob. They fell back in steps, using broken carts and fallen beams to keep something solid between them and the ooze while they edged toward the side of the fort. They were trying to retreat.

Rys was already headed that way. She didn't slow when he caught up.

"Ivan?" Leo asked.

"Making this worse," she said tightly.

"Come on." They found Ivan near the lip of the trench, one knee in the muck. His left hand was pressed flat to the stone, fingers splayed. His right hand held what remained of a chalk stub. Sweat ran down his face with mud streaks. His breathing sounded off, too quick and too shallow. The collar array around the Slime glowed in ways Leo had never seen. Lines had been cut and re‑stitched. Loops that normally pointed to a single handler node now spat their output into a mesh. Leo didn't know the theory.

He knew a hack job when he saw one.

"You're insane," he said with a laugh. Ivan didn't look up.

"You're welcome," he said between breaths. The Slime roared again, answering a command that no longer existed. It surged straight toward the biggest knot of aura in the yard. The General, Yara, Gareth, and Elizabeth. Rys dropped beside Ivan.

"How bad?" she asked.

"Not too bad," he said.

"Just out of Mana." They were looking at him like he'd sacrificed something. He hadn't. [Principle Interference] had only let him mess with the existing runes in the Slime's binding. Only was a stupid word for something that had nearly killed him. He let go of the stone and slumped back on his heels. His hand shook so hard he nearly dropped the chalk. He opened his Inventory and withdrew Marcus' potion vial. The wax had a bite mark from earlier where he'd torn it off with his teeth.

"About time you drank that," Leo said. Ivan didn't waste breath. He downed the potion in two long swallows. Warmth spread under his skin. The worst of the tremor eased, but the hollow, scraped feeling in his core stayed.

"You could have told me you were going to wake up their pet," Rys said.

"Hmm? I thought you understood the hint. Damn, here I thought you and I were close enough to communicate like a married couple," Ivan joked to calm his nerves. Leo snorted while Rys scowled. Heavy footsteps crunched on broken boards. Yara stepped into the cramped space by the trench, shield still up, chest heaving. Marcus came behind her, Hanno's blood on his hands and his jaw set. Elizabeth trotted in their shadow, staff in hand, eyes too bright. Gareth limped, face tight. All of them spared one look at the Slime.

"Great," Gareth said.

"Now we have two disasters."

"What did you do?" Yara snapped, looking at Ivan.

"Do you understand what you woke up?"

"Bought us time," Ivan said.

"You got clear, didn't you? I turned their trash can into a very angry distraction. Seemed fair." Yara looked like she wanted to shout at him and hug him for that in equal measure. She did neither.

"We need to go," she said.

"Now. The Slime doesn't care who it eats, and he's still on his feet." She jerked her chin toward the front where the General's armor still moved inside the chaos. Elizabeth had been staring at the Slime's collar. Now her gaze snapped to Ivan's ink‑stained hands.

"You rewrote that binding?" she asked.

"You? A Scribe?"

"Why's that so surprising? Oh brother, mages and their superiority complex," he said weakly.

"But yes. I nudged it." Elizabeth stepped closer.

"You… this doesn't make any sense, though. Beast collars like that take teams of enchanters and mages with actual Classes hours to create. Unless you own an ocean of Mana, it's not possible to just override them. Scribes copy what we give them. They don't edit."

"Maybe you should pay your scribes more," Ivan said.

"They might surprise you." Gareth made a disgusted sound.

"He's Level fifteen. No one at fifteen does that. This stinks of a trap."

"Relax, Gareth," Elizabeth cut in.

"He saved our lives. And the timing was right. If the Slime came a little earlier or later, we don't get out." Her eyes stayed on Ivan.

"You saw his tricks. Do you still think that number means what you want it to?" Gareth shut his mouth, scowling. Ivan shifted his weight and forced himself back to his feet. The potion had stopped him from falling over. He'd taken one of his own Mana Potions too, but his reserves were small enough that the refill barely counted as impressive.

"If I had more to burn," he said, "I could have done worse to that collar. Maybe even brought the beast under my command. But that's hypothetical, and life isn't that easy. If I had enough Mana, I could have made a difference against the General too." He nodded toward the General.

"As it is, I just broke the leash and pointed at the dog." Elizabeth's eyes narrowed.

"You could do more?"

"With enough fuel," he said.

"Yes." Maybe he was talking too much, but this was a serious situation. The Slime wasn't going to hold the General for long, and Ivan wasn't convinced they could run anywhere meaningful in the meantime. So he didn't bother pretending modesty. He was too tired, and false humility wouldn't save anyone. A single, huge arc of force cut through the air then. The General's latest swing carved a gouge into the far yard and sheared off part of a watchtower that had somehow still been standing.

The top crashed down, barely missing the Slime. The ooze rolled around it and kept hunting. Yara flinched. She didn't show it in her face, but her grip on the shield strap tightened.

"We can't stay," she said.

"We killed a lot of them, we freed who we could. That has to be enough. If we stay, we die here."

"And if we leave," Elizabeth said, her voice low, "he just chases after us. Where do you want to run away to? And best case scenario, if some of us do manage to stay alive, that bastard just walks away from this with a fun story, not a scar." Yara rounded on her.

"And what are you suggesting? None of your spells are scratching him," she said.

"You've hit him with everything you have, he barely felt it. What else do you want to do?" That was about as close as Yara ever got to saying "I don't want to watch you die." Elizabeth lifted her chin.

"I've been throwing my mana at his armor because I don't have any meaningful spells that can hurt him," she said.

"My Space Affinity is the problem since most of my kit is movement and shields, dammit... He's built to shrug that off. I'm a scalpel and he's a siege tower." She jabbed her staff at Ivan.

"He, on the other hand, is different. I don't know what his true Class is, but he isn't any Scribe. He's a liar but he can be helpful." Even Rys scowled at that. Ivan blinked.

"Thank you? I don't have Mana though as I said." Elizabeth went on.

"Mana isn't the issue, just let me finish. I do have plenty of Mana, I just can't use it all in ways that get through that plate fast enough. [Linking] my Mana with Yara or Gareth doesn't help much; they swing blades." She took a breath.

"I can open a Zone," she said, looking at Yara.

"Pull more mana in, then push it into him. Let the scribe do the casting while I handle the flow and our footing. That, maybe, tips the scales." Marcus swore under his breath.

"Beth that's a bad idea." Yara shook her head hard.

"We agreed you wouldn't use the Zone in hostile territory unless we had a fallback. It'll attract monsters, and I am not going back to the Citadel to explain to the Lord why his little sister burned herself out in a slaver yard!" Ivan blinked at that. Little sister of the Citadel's City Lord…? That man was another Primordial Blessed. That explained the way everyone kept half-watching her even while the world burned. She was awfully important.

"We don't have a fallback," Elizabeth said.

"That's the point." She pointed with her staff, in the vague direction of the freed slaves in the trees.

"And forget us, those poor people are still close enough for him to hunt on foot when he's done here." Ivan watched Yara's face. The muscle in her cheek jumped.

"You know what that [Skill] cost you last time you pushed," Yara said.

"You burn too hot again, the Aurora herself has to catch you, and none of us know what happens if you slip her hand. This isn't just your skin, Beth. It's your soul."