After fiddling with his magic for a bit longer his round ended and it was time to wake one of the girls, naturally, he woke Selena up as she was a better guard than the other two.
As soon as her senses started to return, her body sprung into action. “Something is here-gaw!” she growled, throwing distressed looks everywhere. She has caught Spindle’s smell and already perceived him as a threat.
“Calm down, what you’re smelling isn’t a foe, it’s just a familiar that I summoned. I bet he could help us!” Cain said as he patted Selena on the head trying to calm her down, after feeling his touch, her expression softened and she started purring.
“Spindle, come here for a second.” As Cain said that, his shadow flickered like a candle in a storm and the Imp crawled out. Selena didn’t seem surprised seeing him, her instinct told her he was weaker and could be taken easily. She was right as Spindle is arguably the weakest of them now, he doesn’t stand a chance against either of them.
“Master’s wife…Spindle greet her!” Spindle was still learning how to speak properly, his lines were a bit rough around the edges.
“He seems weak, what is he anyway-nya? a cooked goblin-nya?” Selena poked Spindle’s face trying to inspect what the thing was. She had no previous knowledge about devils and imps.
“Spindle isn’t weak… Spindle is growing!” Spindle replied, he didn’t seem to take nicely to Selena’s statement.
“Selena, treat spindle nicely. He will be an important asset from hear on.” Cain said, crawling into her place to sleep. Selena’s spot was warm and comfy giving him a fuzzy feeling.
“Understood-nya, nice to work with you Spindle weed-nya!” Selena has concluded the weed part on her own, rubbing even more salt on Spindle who already hated his name.
“Spindle is out to work, nice sleep master!” Spindle stormed out, he already started to get irritated by Selena. She didn’t seem to mean it so Cain just brushed it off and got to sleep.
For some time he wasn’t able to sleep as he was still thinking about his magic and how he should use it. He needs to use [Enchanting] on soul soon as well. to fight thoughts, Cain slithered between Alice and Sofia, enjoying the soft feeling of them sandwiching him. With that, he quickly fell asleep.
“Master, Master! Spindle saw humans fighting!” Spindle woke Cain from his sleep with a whisper from his shadow. Hearing that, half-awake Cain hardly opened his eyes. Selena was sitting by his side.
“Which direction? Fighting what?” Cain asked yawning, he didn’t show that much care to other humans being in danger which pleased Spindle’s, little black heart.
“A fair distance to in that direction-nya. I can hear loud metal noises-nya!” Selena was the one to reply first, pointing to the left.
“Big bug, Spindle don’t know what it is. big claws and thick bone hide.” There was a single creature that lives underground and the guild mentioned and meets those descriptions. An umber hulk.
An umber hulk looks like a hybrid between a bulky ape and a beetle, standing fully at 8 feet tall and being over 5 feet wide. Their enormous muscles are clearly visible even from far, making them weigh between 800 to 1700 pounds. Their mandibles are typically ivory in color and can bite through any hide or bone but their most dangerous asset is their iron-like claws.
The claws of the umber hulk are strong and sharp enough to completely rip through armor but most importantly, they allow the monster to break the ground and allow it to borrow.
The strong hide of the umber hulk takes the shape of many plates that cover the chitinous body of the creature, these plates are as hard as steel and provide the creature with protection from cave-ins and strong impacts.
‘What should I do? I really want to test my magic and the umber hulk is a good practice target.’
After a short moment, Cain decided to at least fight the umber hulk. It was a good test for his magic and a nice chunk of Exp.
“Selena. let’s go we have work to do.” Cain made his decision and stood up.
Before they head out Cain used [Earth wall] to divide the room into two sections, one where Sofia and Alice are sleeping and one where the rescued adventurer are going to take shelter. This was a necessary measure as they must not see Alice’s devil form.
“Let’s hurry!” Cain rushed out followed by Selena. Spindle leads them to the fight.
…
Up in the distance, Cain spotted the fight, two umber hulks were fighting a party of four adventures. The party consisted of a shield and a sword brawny man, a dual dagger rouge woman, a cleric woman who was fighting with mace, and lastly a young-looking mage with a tense look on his face.
They were quite a distance away, at this rate Cain would arrive late as one of the umber hulks was dangerously close to the mage.
Let’s test it out. Cain drew his sword [Thunder Step] Chzz, Crackle! CLAP! In the blink of an eye, Cain flashed like a lightning bolt, zapping directly to umber hulk with a loud BOOM! Shaking the whole cave.
In the blink of an eye, before Selena could even react, Cain was already standing face to face with the Umber Hulk. The mage couldn’t even recognize Cain as nothing more than a flash of light.
[Haste], [Slow] casting haste on himself and slow on the umber hulk, Cain quickly unleashed a [Lightning strike] to the monster’s abdomen, forcing it to stumble backward.
Noticing that they were badly injured and in no state to fight such a monster, Cain shouted at them with a strong voice.
“Run to the back and you will find a room you can rest in! Just sit there until I return and never touch the wall, you will die!” Cain directed them to where they were staying. “Selena lead them and return to help me!” Cain stayed fighting the umber hulks, testing how well his body did with the new magic.
“This is the place-nya, rest and heal your wounds until we return-nya!” Selena said before quickly rushing to help Cain.
“What was that? I have never seen a mage fight like that!” the brawny fighter gasped for air, he found it hard to breathe as his wounds were throbbing.
“He burned bits of my robe, those lights were actually lightning, I bet he could kill someone by just touching!” The mage noticed that Cain’s [Thunder step] did damage to those Cain passed by, he was just like a charged lightning bolt.
“Sit tightly, I will do what I can!” The woman wearing cleric clothe approached the fighter to heal him.
“That cat-girl as well, her movement were something else. She must be quite strong!” The rouge said, downing a potion he had hidden in her pouch.
“An A-rank party perhaps? We were lucky I guess to have them close by.” The warrior said in relief.
After they settled for a moment, they felt something strange coming from behind the wall. The cleric’s face paled as she recognized the dread full feeling.
“Curse magic? something bad is behind that wall!” she pointed out, bearing her mace high up.
The fighter stood up and approached the wall, taking the front line as he did in all their fights.
“Stop, he warned up about the wall. We shouldn’t touch it!” The mage tried to stop them, he had felt Cain’s power firsthand and knew better.
The rough snorted at him, pointing with her dagger at the wall “It’s quite weak and mixed with traces of holy magic, I say it’s a cursed beast that he was fighting.”
After a short argument, they decided to check what was behind the wall, ignoring Cain’s warning under the reasoning ‘We are strong enough to face whatever beast lay behind the wall.” They were right as Alice couldn’t stand a chance against them right now, but that wasn’t the problem.
As the fighter started to dig the wall with his sword, Spindle who was watching from the shadows sent a warning to Cain.
Before long, they managed to dig a big enough hole for them to have a clear look inside.
As they opened the walls and saw Alice, the cleric gasped, “It’s a devil, oh god! We need to purge it quickly before she wakes up!” Her initial thought was what any sane cleric would say, a devil, kill on sight.
Hearing her words the entire party prepared to Kill Alice and the girl lying beside her cause it was suspicious. The fighter dug quicker and the rogue coated her daggers with poison, the mage also prepared his spells.
As they took formation, the cleric backed down to support them with healing magic. It was them when she felt a cold hand tightly gripping the back of her neck.