Heist
A/N: Some of you more watchful readers happened upon a 'spoiler' last chapter. Freya is former Demon Lord Frey after she was renamed by Rimuru. You'll understand more in the next chapter.
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It was sunset when the first explosion went off.
The western residential district in Altair, near the lake and surrounded by parks was under assault by a group of Humans, Elves, and a Dwarf. They ran through the street attacking civilians and destroying property.
Erya Uzruth had stabbed an elven mother in her leg, crippling her before slicing the belly open of her husband in front of her. He then proceeded to tie up the startled mother and her infant daughter, all the while, his elven 'companions' watched on with tears in their eyes and horror on their faces.
The Dwarf began bashing down carts and windows with his heavy Axe and cutting down any monster or Demihuman who was brave enough to try to stop him or just got too close. His team's magic caster cast several fire spells, causing large fires to erupt around the area and begin to spread while the thief of the party raided the small corner stores of the district, ignoring all the wailing and fleeing from the civilians. He even gutted a Goblin shopkeeper and his wife to steal the pearl necklace around her neck.
Of course, this was all in their heads. In reality, Da Vinci was floating above the group of men and women with a look of contempt on her face. She had evacuated the few blocks closest to the western parks because she knew they were coming. She then created several magic dolls to act as civilians and cast illusion magic of the 8th Tier using her Ultimate Skill [Hecate: King of Magic] to fool the workers.
Her deception didn't end there though, she made sure to bring with her a communications crystal to record the senseless slaughter and she made it very clear that these workers were deliberately attacking civilians of the Demon Lord and looting his city for their own gain. Finally, after a few minutes, she panned the recording over to the Guards that had arrived to quell the chaos.
The Workers were surprised to see a group of Kijin and another race they didn't recognize (Lords) led by Benimaru quickly approaching and they turned tail to run. Their job of distracting was over and they didn't want to fight that beast. They had made it to the park and were nearly into the forest when a wall of ice several stories high blocked their path.
Cocytus walked out from behind a tree and stood in front of the wall, adding another obstacle to their path. He was armed with both a long ornate katana and halberd in his arms. Despite the fact he didn't have a human face, it was clear he was angry. The normal steam he expelled from his breath was now tinged red rather than it's normally icy-blue.
"HOW. DARE. THESE. PATHETIC. BEINGS. ATTACK. LORD. RIMURU'S. TERRITORY! COME. NOW. COWARDS! FACE. YOUR. DEATH!" He yelled.
"Tch! Erya! Have your elves cast fire magic on the wall to melt us a way out! Our team will deal with The ones behind us, you just have to stop that monster!" Gringham yelled as he turned, only to jump out of the way of a katana swing aiming for his neck.
"I would call you a bug, but I respect Kajin too much, and calling a dwarf a bug would be insulting to him, so I shall refer to you as a fool," Banimaru said as he returned his weapon to its sheath. He opened his palm and a flicker of black flame appeared in his hand. He then flicked his wrist towards the group. "Goodbye fools. {Hell Flare}"
*BOOOOOOMMMMM!*
A huge dome of black flame engulfed the party and reduced them to ashes, though, somehow, to his eternal curiosity, Gringham was only severely burned rather than killed. He rolled on the floor in agony for a few moments before being restrained by [Sticky-Steel Thread] and forced into unconsciousness using magic by Sakura.
"Thanks, mother. I'm sorry you had to come with us for this." Benimaru said as he turned to the mature Lord woman with pink hair and eyes. She looked like a MILF Shuna, being about 20cm taller and with a much more... developed body.
"It is no issue sweety. I've been wanting to repay Rimuru-sama for a while now and doing the interrogations for him and Da Vinci-sama is the only thing I could think of." She said with a gentle smile on her face, though the dark aura she was giving off made everyone around her realize she was an S and also did it for her own enjoyment.
(An "S" means Sadist or Sadistic)
Back with Erya, he has currently being bullied by Cocytus. He was partially frozen, cut up, beaten, and the insectoid even punched him into the ground before swinging his icy, spiked tail around in front of him and crushing his family jewels.
The human was foaming at the mouth and had nearly passed out before turning to look towards his slave elves and begging them to heal him. To his horror, they did nothing but smile evilly and walk up to him and begin to kick him in his broken family treasures again and again. The other monsters watched in amusement as he screamed into the night.
This worker, unfortunately, wouldn't be given the mercy of death any time soon. Demon Lord Rimuru had never outlawed the use of torture in prisons and had a rigorous program being set up to ensure no one wanted to spend so much as a day in prison, let alone a lifetime. While this was made to intimidate criminals, it also would serve as a fitting punishment for someone like Erya Uzruth.
...
Elsewhere in Altair; Foresight and Dragon Hunt were currently sneaking through a large 'field' towards an airship. Although this airship looked like it was ripped straight out of a sci-fi fantasy realm, having both a small blimp and sails, these were purely aesthetic as the mechanisms to run the airship were Wind Magic and Anti-Gravity Runes. The real airships were in an underground hanger and the use of especially powerful illusion magic was used to show the hanger as a large grass field for the workers.
The two worker teams jumped behind large boxes and crates at the center of the open field. There were hundreds of boxes all around and it was easy to find cover. They then knelt down and waited for the signal to begin the operation. The other team would cause a loud explosion to let them know when to begin the hijacking. The Workers didn't have to wait long, since only a few moments later, the echo of a "BOOM" came from the distance. They could see just over the treeline of the park separating the airship dock and the city, a large pillar of smoke rising from the other side of the city.
They waited as the guards ran off towards the city to help and report, leaving only two men to guard the platform the ship was docked to. This should have alerted them, since abandoning your post in an emergency didn't make much sense, but the Workers weren't going to question it. From their perspective, there was no way the monsters would know of their plan since they had made it so close to the airship in the first place without being detected.
"Alright, I'll put the guards to sleep, Dragon Hunt, you guys search the boxes for anything valuable. Arche will get this thing up and running in only a moment but we should loot everything we can. Imina will be our eyes and ears as our ranger, alerting us to any unknown situations." Hekkaran whispered to the group.
"You've got experience with heists don't you boy? Well, your plan is fine by me." The old man Parpatra said as the two teams split up.
Hekkaran ran up to the two unsuspecting Brown Oarks and threw a bag at them. When one of the Oarks swung his ax at the bag, intending to bat it away but it exploded into a cloud of dust that knocked out the two guards after a moment of delirium.
In the boxes, the two worker teams came across large quantities of valuable ores unique to Tempest, such as Ebony and Luxite, though they mistook the Luxite for gold ore. They also made sure to collect the magic weapons the guards had. It shocked them slightly that all the guards seemed to have magic weapons of at least the Legacy rank, making them only slightly less powerful than national treasures or the weapons of Adamantite Class Adventurers.
After ten minutes of gathering supplies and loading them onto the ship, a loud howling was heard, followed by several other loud howls. "We've got company! Very very BIG company!" Imina yelled.
A gigantic white wolf, the size of a small house appeared in the tree line followed by a pack of similar wolves, all of which were slightly smaller than the leader. On the back of this wolf was a beautiful icy-blue-haired woman wearing a general's uniform.
Dragon Hunt rushed towards the airship as it began to take off, abandoning a box of treasures they were carrying onto the ship. They were greedy, not stupid. They'd have to make do with the fortune they'd loaded aboard previously. Now they could only buy one castle each rather than two.
Arche had finally 'deciphered' the complex magical control mechanism and immediately put it into overdrive, accelerating high into the sky at a very fast rate, just barely missing the jaws of the behemoth wolf. After everyone was able to catch their bearings and stand up from being violently thrown to the floor in the escape, they began to cheer. It seemed like they had escaped in just the nick of time when...
"Damn! What was that!?!" Hakkuren yelled as he looked over the edge. Just then, a spike of ice came soaring towards him. He barely had time to pull his head back and void being impaled through his head, though his left eye and nose weren't so lucky.
"Aaaagggghhhh!!!" He screamed as he collapsed backward, bleeding heavity.
"Hakkuren!" The half-elf yelled as she ran towards him and pulled him closer towards the ship's center. "Roberdyck! We need healing! Hakkuren's face!" She said with tears in her eyes.
"On it!" The Cleric said in a rushed voice as he healed his leader's disfigurement.
"You idiot! I thought you died there for a second!" Imina said as she held Hakkuren tight as the airship ascended away from the city.
"Heh. Don't worry babe. I won't leave you alone that easily." He said with a slight amount of snark. His face was still numb and red from being healed.
"I hate to be the one to break up your moment, young'ns, but were not out of the woods yet," Parpatra said as he pointed his spear towards the oncoming four Dragonnewts.
"Hahahaha! Foolish humans! You think you can escape to the air while we are here?" Gabiru yelled as he twirled his spear a bit before diving towards the airship and the old man. "
"
"That's Gabiru for you!" One of the dragonewts said before spewing fire from its mouth towards the other members of Dragon Hunt, killing their Cleric by burning him to death.
"Indeed," Another one who had a shinobi motif said while catching the Warrior's Axe in his hands. He quickly put a kunai through the warrior's through before looking towards Foresight.
Gabiru stood in the center of the airship and looked at the old man. "My name is Gabiru! You there, Old man. I recognize you! You are the one who killed my grandfather, the only Dragonewt born naturally into my tribe before Rimuru-sama's rule. I shall enjoy exacting my revenge!"
"My! It seems the feat that named this party has become its curse..." Parpatra said as he readied his stance.
"
Under normal circumstances, Gabiru would be able to defeat this man and all the workers by himself, but he made a deal with Rimuru. He could have this worker team, but he would have to let the others go. In order to do so, he would need to defeat this man without destroying the airship, which was easier said than done. Gabiru's new form allowed him a lot more physical power, and being that he was focused on training ariel combat now and never really needed to worry about controlling his strength, this fight started off at his disadvantage.
*Clang!*
*Slash!*
*Stab!*
*Clang!*
Gabiru was being slightly pressured more than he'd like because of his limited moveset and his inability to destroy the airship but eventually, he found his rhythm and was able to disarm the old man by twirling his trident and stabbing straight through his opponent's incoming spear which was of much lower quality, pinning his arm down to the ground.
Just as he was about to deliver the finishing blow, a large Morningstar smashed into Gabiru's side, not penetrating his sales, but shoving him just enough to have his Trident ripped from the deck and allowing Parpatra to escape by rolling away.
Gabiru growled a serpentine growl for a moment before turning towards the group, now consisting of Roberdyck, Hakkuren, Imina, and Parpatra. The rest of Dragon Hunt had been killed by his men and Arche was too busy piloting to be able to assist.
"You interrupted my duel," Gabiru said with slight irritation.
"I won't let you kill that man, monster!" Roberdyck replied.
"If you stand in my way then you shall perish as well!" Gabiru said while releasing his aura. He didn't notice when it happened, but he gained the Extra Skill [Menace] just then and a wave of fear struck all the workers. They all flinched and Roberdyck, who was the direct target of the intimidation, even took a step backward subconsciously.
"Alright then..." The old man said with a sad tone. He looked over the corpses of his dead friends and then back to Foresight before pulling out a small dagger and pointing it towards Gabiru.
"Fight me, Dragonewt in a duel. If you win, then you can leave with my head, but if I win, then your men shall leave this place and you shall surrender to me that weapon." He said.
Gabiru nodded and the other dragonewts threw the old man a new spear. The fight was on, but unlike their last clash, Gabiru had gotten used to his more limited move set, and he was able to disarm and stab Parpatra in the gut in only three exchanges.
The old man coughed blood before falling to his knees. "That young lizardman whose father I killed once said that someone from his line would end me. At the time I thought it the ramblings of a child who just watched his father die in front of him... looks like... he was... ri-"
The old man fell onto the floor and died. A second later, Gabiru sharpened his claws with magic and swiped off the old man's head. He tucked it into a small leather sack before turning towards the remaining horrified workers.
"Tsk. Damn, the old man got me good! Let's go" Gabiru said to his followers, much to their shock along with the rest of Foresight.
"Gabiru-sama? Are we not going to apprehend them and get the airship back?" The green Dragonewt asked. The remaining workers waited with bated breath.
"Unfortunately we have to leave. That old man's words were that we would leave after taking his head, not that we could kill these people. I shall not have this moment of our tribe's revenge be tainted by treachery." Gabiru said before looking at the workers. They didn't need to know that this was also a convenient way to let them escape without drawing suspicion.
"Know this. While I may be merciful this time, my master will not give up his pursuit. Others will come so I suggest you flee. Don't worry about your comrades, they've already been killed. Fly along little birds, for if we meet again I shall show no more mercy!"
Gabiru jumped off the railing of the now damaged but still operational airship and flew back towards Altair. His group of friends looked at the workers for a few moments before jumping off and flying after him.
Every member of Foresight exhaled at the same time. They looked at each other and all chuckled slightly at their luck before it was decided they should make haste and abandon the other workers. Even if the monster was lying, which they don't do very often, they couldn't afford to go back for them when they would have to fight against that dragonewt and his friends again.
Roberdyck purified the bodies and gave them as 'proper' a funeral as possible on a damaged airship while Imina and Hakkuren wrapped the bodies in cloth from a spare sail dipped in alcohol and some tar they found below deck. Foresight was forced to through their bodies overboard, as stopping to properly burn them would only give the other monsters in the forest time to catch up.
Imina fired flaming arrows at them as they fell so that their remains would be burned and not left to be eaten by wild animals or monsters. Arche simply cried silently to herself while navigating the airship. Their team had never been so close to being totally wiped out like they just were. She thought about what would happen to her sisters if she were to die in a place like this. The others all had similar thoughts and now they decided it was time for them to disband. They had thought about it a lot before this mission, but now it was obvious.
No one said a word as they all silently shared their decision with each other using nothing more than their eyes. Like this, the last remaining worker team sent on this mission made their way back to the Empire.
Little did they know, a recently evolved former demon lord was following them from the sky high above the airship and team foresight was non-the-wiser. The white-haired beauty smiled as she looked down upon them. She wondered what kind of face they would make when they get back to the Empire only for them to realize they had flown out of the frying pan and into the Demon Lord's fire.