They were too close to the city now to bother calling for another batch of Summons to serve as bait. The local farmers and guardsmen would have cleared out anything that had spawned much closer to town than this.
So, the newly expanded group walked toward the outlying farms, greeting the few people that they met. The hunters that they rescued had already passed this way as Cain was interrogating their prisoner, and Cain could hear the Guard getting ready to mobilize in the distance.
Cain only had one person on his friend list who was guaranteed to be in town, so he messaged her before the Guards could be sent out into the woods, wasting their time looking for an enemy that was already dead.
[Prana, it is Cain. We took care of the raiding party. I have one prisoner for you, and he has been pretty much neutralized, the others are not resurrectable.]
[Guild Master? Wow, I didn't expect you to be here. Thank you. What is the special occasion?] The Demonized Dryad asked.
[We are on a quest to find a Librarian with a collection of ancient books, but we ran across a small issue in the meantime that the local leaders should be made aware of. Can you organize them for when we arrive? I've got a small party, plus a group of Merchant Hunters from the Farm and one prisoner with me.]
[No problem. Come to the Tree House and I will have tea on.] Prana answered, making things easy for Cain.
The city looked like it was in better shape than the last time Cain was here. Not only was it not about to be overrun by Mythic Beasts, but they had renovated the walls and some of the buildings that Cain could see. The renewal of trade must have been good for them.
"Guild Master Cain! Welcome. We heard about your heroics in rescuing the merchants with our shipment of Juice and new weapons. Thank you so much, we will be forever grateful." The gate guard welcomed them, waving the group around the lineup of people returning to the city from the nearby farms for the evening.
"What are we, chopped liver? Take note ladies, no matter if you are present or not, somehow he always gets the credit for every success." Kone joked, making the Guards laugh.
"It's the giant demons. They are the part that everyone remembers about the battle. If you can summon something equally impressive to fight, you might be able to steal his thunder." The Guard agreed.
Kone could actually do that, in the form of the Snapping Turtle Kin, but it was obvious that a Guard on the Southern Continent wouldn't know who she was. Luna on the other hand was taking intense mental notes of this new information.
"One question. You can call Thunder? How do you steal Thunder?" The diminutive Lamia asked.
"I can actually make Thunder, but that's not what the expression means. It means that if you do most of the work in the battle, you can get the glory, instead of the demons, which get everyone's attention and make them think of me." Cain explained.
"But you and I both know the same creatures to summon, and you know way more of them than I do. This is a total ripoff. I demand compensation." Luna insisted while Cain stroked her back to calm her down.
"Fine, here is a piece of dried Mythic Peach," Cain told her, handing over the small bit of food.
Luna cheered, then dropped the chunk of fruit the size of her head directly into her mouth, shocking the people who were watching. It was one thing to know that Lamia could swallow large objects, but most of them spent large amounts of time learning to fit in, so actually seeing it in action was a rare thing.
There was one other Lamia in the crowd, who had snuck forward to see the Lamia Progenitor that her senses had detected. She hadn't expected it to be a small child, and the woman was utterly entranced by Luna the moment that she saw her, looped around Cain's neck.
She was so distracted that she didn't even notice the looks that she was getting from the men in the crowd. She was slightly larger than Cyrene, with a humanoid torso larger than the average elven woman, but smaller than most humans, and most of the men seemed to be trying to understand how her physiology worked to allow her to swallow something the size of her head.
Luna noticed her attention and waved happily, then pulled a small piece of fruit out of her own inventory and threw it at the other Lamia, thinking that it was the fruit that the woman had been interested in. She caught it in her mouth, and though the piece was smaller than the end of her finger when the healing factor took effect her eyes opened in shock.
"Thank you, Young Miss. What can we call you?" The Lamia asked Luna.
"I am Luna, Cain's Daughter, but most people just call me Miss Luna. Aren't sour fruits good? They coat them in sugar when they dry them, so they are both sour and sweet at the same time. The Echoes have gotten really good at food." Luna informed her with a smile.
"So I have heard. I am not much of a traveler, so I haven't ever gone to the Farm." The Lamia answered with a smile.
By her brightly colored and low-cut dress, it was clear that she was a local courtesan, but Luna had no idea what that meant, so to her everyone was just another person, and they all got ranked on how interesting they were. To the locals, it was a sign that Cain had been raising her to treat everyone equally, regardless of station, and the young Demon was creating a very good first impression.
Slowly, they made their way to the house built into a tree that Prana had inherited when she moved here, next to the community garden, which was now thriving and well maintained, with a pair of city guards in place to see that nothing happened to it.
"It's good to see you. Everyone important is already here. I take it this news is important for you to request a meeting the moment you arrive?" Prana greeted them.
"You could say that. The nuisance that has been expanding in the center of the Southern Continent has sent groups of scouts out to harass and attack merchants and travelers around the cities in the area. This one here was the Captain of one of their squads, and he has filled us in on the details.
The forces of the Demon Morgeth are attacking a whole group of cities in the area as an extension of their desire to control the entire continent, capturing and enslaving them, using a Spirit Awakened Mind Control ability." Cain explained.
"And he just willingly told you this, despite being mind controlled?" One of the elders asked skeptically. freewebno(v)el
"Oh, not at all. Why don't you tell them what I have done, Captain?" Cain replied, making the Puppet glare at him. But he couldn't resist for long, Cain's will on a Puppet was absolute.
"We lost the battle and this man killed me with a spear through the heart. Then he trapped my body in a Soul Crystal and trapped me in this puppet body. Until he frees me or kills me I am a slave to his will." The Captain snarled.
"As you can see, he's not really housebroken. I will free him in a few minutes, so you can do what you with with the leader of a bandit group that was attacking merchants." Cain assured the elders.
"I am not a bandit, I am a soldier." The Captain countered.
"Has anyone here recognized the nation or rightful rule of the Demon Morgeth?" Cain asked and the assembled locals shook their heads.
"He is an invader, taking cities by force." The Mayor confirmed.
"Therefore, his warriors aren't soldiers but bandits. So, you are a bandit Captain, and the city has a fine legal process about how bandits are dealt with." Cain continued, satisfied that almost everyone agreed with his logic.
Luna and Jin both looked particularly impressed, while Jessica seemed shocked that Cain wasn't going to kill him and was instead turning him over to local authorities for trial and what she could only assume would be imprisonment.
"What is the punishment for being a bandit?" Jessica asked to set her mind at ease.
"Ten lashes daily and ten years of hard labor." The mayor told her with a grim smile. Most bandits didn't survive the punishment, choosing to end their own lives, though the city did feed them and give them a nice dry prison cell to sleep in.
"That's good news then. Transfers live a long time, so ten years should go fairly quickly, and you can be a productive member of society again." The Bunny God High Priestess declared with a smile, deliberately ignoring the man's anguish at the impending punishment.
"You will be happy to know that with my skills we don't even need to use a leather whip for the daily lashes, I can create an all-natural, plant-based version," Prana told the happy Bunny.
That would be the [Crushing Tentacles] Mythic Grade spell, modified by her class to create vines, but it wasn't really a lie, they were plant-based.
"I will let you get the answers out of him on your own. Let me know if you need assistance and I can compel answers from him." Cain declared, then released the Puppet from his control, resetting him to level one.
The Captain looked shocked for a moment, then collapsed with a wail of anguish when he realized what Cain had done.
"Give it back. You have to give it back, it is too cruel to take my levels away. What sort of monstrous ability do you even have? Mercy, I beg you, mercy." The Captain wailed until the Mayor forcefully silenced him with a spell.
"So that's why you weren't worried about him overpowering us. He doesn't even have the mana to use any truly dangerous spells, assuming that he kept them at all, and his physical stats are that of any other level one transfer."
Cain nodded toward the Captain, who was silently sobbing. "He will still have anything he learned from a book, so he will be Mythic Awakened once he can use that ability again, but his class skills will start over at level one and his previous classes are lost. Just like a lucky Transfer who randomly rolled, he will be starting at level one with a Second Advancement class."
Some of the elders actually looked envious at that, but starting over at level one was a high price to pay for the chance to start over with their strongest class.
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