They didn't hold still. Without any audible commands, the raiding party fluidly switched as one to using fatal tactics. Fireballs splashed uselessly against my scales, blades shattered and arrows bounced off harmlessly.

The bulkiest of the bandits launched a great overhead swing of a massive two-handed axe. I caught the blade with one hand, running the other through his leather armour and chest, then ripping out his heart.

"Woah. I'm pretty bad-arse!" I exclaimed, surprised I'd actually been able to pull the stunt off, just before the world went yellow.

Holy magic tolerance advanced to level 8

"The heck? You bandits can use holy magic?"

That had actually burnt me. Not badly, but enough that I didn't want to tank that spell repeatedly. I picked out the mage who had cast it and, for a bit of variety, went for an ice breath. I suppose the skill description talked about the perception of the user. From their point of view, I doubt they considered themselves bandits. They were merely perfectly legitimate businessmen, searching for some merchandise to sell.

Yes, this really was like my first encounter with the fox-kin, in the way they saw themselves and me. Would I have got anywhere if I'd tried to explain to them that demons were people too? Unlikely.

I made short work of the rest, leaving one member alive; the one who seemed to be the leader, or at least the one barking out orders. Having watched his party be slaughtered, he'd finally managed to get it through his thick, human skull that he was, perhaps, not quite as high up the food chain as he thought. I stepped towards him, and he fell backwards but still tried to desperately distance himself from me, scraping his hands and feet across the earth to push himself away.

"This perverted boss of yours—would they happen to have a name?" I asked.

"L... Lord Slecher," he stammered, fear of his boss's potential future wrath displaced by the more immediate fear of the monstrous dragon lady in front of him.

I stopped walking in surprise. "Huh. Small world," I muttered. "You mean Craig? Big fella? Holds the world record for most rings worn simultaneously? Some sort of high-ranked noble?"

The bandit-turned-victim nodded desperately. Guess I'd be killing that particular lord for a second time, then.

"So, next question. How many more raiding parties are here, and where are they? And where are your previous kidnap victims?"

"I... I don't know!" squeaked my victim.

"Hmm... Maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't. Let's see if this helps me find out."

The human continued to scoot backward, but he was hardly going to outpace me sat on his bum. I strode up and held my hand to his neck, bringing a slave collar out of my item box. Or dimension home, now. Thankfully, I could still bring items in or out without having to personally enter the place to fetch them, or it would have been a serious downgrade.

I watched the bandit's expression switch from fear to confusion, then back to a different, more considered sort of fear. In this world, it was the humans who used slave collars, not the fox-kin. He knew exactly what it was.

"So, shall we try that again? How many more raiding parties are here, where are they, and where are your previous kidnap victims?"

"There are three more raiding parties. We were supposed to harvest four villages simultaneously. There aren't any previous victims."

I frowned at the word 'harvest', but even more so at his claim of no previous victims. That certainly wasn't true; I already knew where some of them were. No, wait... The way I'd phrased the question was wrong. I was making the same mistakes as So'layn when he tried to question me under the influence of a slave collar.

"Where are the previous victims?" I asked, widening the scope of the question.

"Some serve in our lord's estate. Others were sent to the lord's favoured brothel. The rest were sold, and I don't know who to or where they are now."

Why was I not surprised that Craig had a favoured brothel? And something else I should have noticed sooner; these people were too coordinated. They had matching armour and their weapons looked new. These weren't bandits, but an organised group.

More questioning confirmed that bandits had started the scheme, capturing isolated travellers, but once the nobles had got a taste for their goods, they'd sent their own men in to ransack villages and kidnap entire populations. That was why this person had no prior victims; the entire squad was in demon territory for the first time.

"Thank you for all the useful information," I said, because him being a scummy people-trafficker was no excuse for me to forget basic courtesy. Then I threw him into my dimension home, collar still firmly around his neck, because being people-trafficking scum was more than enough reason for me to not send him merrily on his way. I at least made sure it had sufficient air, and some ground to stand on. Niceties like lighting, he could live without.

I knew when this village had been attacked relative to the others, and while I'd used up a chunk of the time questioning the captain, I still had more than enough to find and eradicate the remaining three groups. I did so, wiping out another three parties, each as large as the first.

Was that it, then? War successfully averted? Was it really that easy?

There were some others I wanted to rescue, and some nobles in need of punishment, but doing that looking like I did may well trigger the war I was trying to prevent. I still had an open skill slot, so I could take formless, and infiltrate as a human. Heck, perhaps I could shapeshift to a rat, or a fly, and do a full stealth run. That would be cool.

I also wanted to go back home and visit myself. Even if my actions here precluded living there, given that my time-travel had created an otherworldly duplicate of myself who was never going to be summoned, I knew from experience that hanging around with myself resulted in good times.

Should I visit the fox-kin town, too, while I was nearby? I could use the statue there to fast travel to the isolated shrine I'd unlocked in the human territory, to avoid having to cross the border. The red dragon was likely to attack me again if I contacted the fox-kin, but I did kinda want to. Screw it; even if he did show up, I could just run away, or respawn.

Wait...

I gave my respawn location options a mental prod, happy to find they were all intact, despite my time travel. It hadn't reset anything. That was a relief, and something I should have checked immediately on travelling.

A few minutes of flight later, and I was once again in front of the town gates. Which were closed and locked, because it was the middle of the night. I hadn't really thought that through. I saw a couple of guards patrolling the wall staring down at me, so flying over the wall would likely get me into trouble. Oops. I should have settled down somewhere for a nap, or skipped time forward till morning.

Hah. That should have been a skill for my original class. Didn't a lot of RPG's with a time system have an option to wait for some number of hours, to save the players twiddling their thumbs while watching a clock progress?

To my surprise, one of the fox-kin jumped down from the wall, approaching me.

"Who are you, approaching the gates at this time of night?" he asked, looking me up and down. "Or perhaps I should ask, what are you?"

The last time I'd been here, they'd assumed some sort of half-dragon, but that was before I'd acquired my awesome fluffy tail. It didn't really mesh well with the rest of my appearance.

"I think, by this point, chimera would be the best description," I answered. "I tend to pick up new bits as I go along. And I..."

I was interrupted by a deep rumble, the ground vibrating beneath my feet. An earthquake? It stopped after a few seconds, and I saw nothing from looking around.

"Is that normal?" I asked.

"No," answered the guard, looking around too, and exchanging some hand signals with the fox-kin on the wall.

Whatever it was, I was quite thankful for the interruption giving me a few more seconds to think. I'd been about to admit the bandit raids and hand over my prisoner, but what if that caused the demon lord to attack? Would it make any difference to him if the attempt succeeded or had been thwarted by outside intervention? Either way, the humans still attempted a mass kidnapping.

"In any case, I'm patrolling the area," I continued, taking a different tack in answering the original question. "Humans have been attacking travellers in the area, and it needs to stop."

"I thought our lord had declared losses were acceptable?"

"Your lord is not my lord," I answered, my hands balling into fists. Acceptable losses? The heck? Did he decide that the small number of pets he was losing weren't worth the effort to protect? Or was he deliberately letting the humans build up confidence until they overreached and drew the ire of the demon lord? Maybe I should have given my theory about the red dragon wanting to start a war more consideration.

"Then I thank you for your service," said the guard, turning around and returning to the wall.

That was the same as the first time I'd visited this place. Weren't they far too trusting? He hadn't asked for any evidence of what I said, despite obviously not recognising my species, and my supposed mission being completely against what he'd heard. Besides, a random earthquake just as I arrived was suspicious as heck.

I was wondering how he was going to get back up, but another couple of guards let down a rope. I left them to it, taking back to the skies, only to be interrupted once more. This time, it was a faint roar, but it was very obvious that the quietness was due to distance and not volume.

Lights turned on in the town. The guard stopped climbing the rope, sliding back down to ground level. From my vantage point in the sky, I watched more guards moving towards the north-west gate. Minutes later, fox-kin started pouring from houses by the hundred; soldiers, mages and even priestesses, all marching silently to the same corner of the town.

I hovered, watching, transfixed. What was happening? There was no talking going on down there. I saw them stumble, the entire town, all at once. I felt nothing in the air. Another earthquake? What was happening? The way they were gathering was like an army. Was the war starting despite my efforts? Why?

But they were the wrong side of the town for the humans. That direction pointed towards...

I looked up towards the lair of the demon lord, and could have sworn I saw a flicker of red light far off in the distance.

I pounded my wings, rocketing towards the distant mountain. This wasn't part of what anyone had told me about the outbreak of the war. There had been an attack on the demon lord? One bad enough that armies of fox-kin were being summoned? That seemed like something someone would have mentioned. The demon lord had explicitly said it was because of the abduction of demons by humans. If humans had attacked first, there's no way he wouldn't have used it as ammunition in our discussions.

It wasn't just fox-kin that had been summoned, either. I was far from the only one heading in this direction, and I spotted an occasional cloud of daemonium volucer, or marching groups of mixed demons down on the ground.

Red light flashed in front of me, and this time, with the decreased distance, it was obvious that I wasn't imagining it. It was followed up by a burst of darkness.

The demon lord was a green dragon. The black dragon was a dungeon special, an echo of the demon lord corrupted by the Void.

A black dragon that was very much looking forward to me killing the green, which I hadn't done. I'd reversed time instead, intending to avoid the war ever breaking out. It was a move that would have destroyed the entire pocket dimension. I remembered the shattering sound when I time travelled, and how familiar it was to when I'd smashed the window between the dungeon and this world. Just as familiar as the roar. I'd assumed he would manage to survive, but I hadn't thought about how, or what he would do next.

The black dragon had Void-sourced powers that the real demon lord did not. Since he had offered to send me between worlds, presumably he could do the same to himself, given appropriate conditions. When I'd reversed time and prevented the events that led to the dungeon's creation, the paradox must have given him those conditions. I'd broken the dungeon and released him from his prison, and he'd followed me.

As I grew closer, I could make out four shapes in the sky. Four dragons. Red, green, white and black. A burst of obsidian flame lanced out from the black dragon, striking the red in a wing and sending him spiralling out of control. I didn't need to be standing on the ground to see it shake as the gigantic monster smashed into it.

Apparently, this dragon didn't get on quite as well with himself as I did with my clones.