Without any more thought toward bluffing or any kind of diplomacy, Kepa Ying throws herself at the biggest man blocking her way out of the alley. Better to go for a single person than to have to contend with a two or three on one fight, she reasons. Her punch goes straight into the giant man’s gut, where it has no effect whatsoever, other than making her hand hurt.

“Not even through body refining,” he grumbles, gently pushing her arm away.

Undeterred, Kepa Ying uses her other, solidly defended arm to punch while she’s in the process of being spun around. With the momentum imparted by the bigger man, she slams the chunk of metal into his side with a spinning backhand. This time, it’s her who experiences no effect on her body. He bends over, gasping for breath, and Kepa Ying makes a break for it.

One moment she’s running, the next her vision goes dark. Belatedly, she realized that she had been pushed less gently into the wall of the alley, and now her head was stuck inside the wall.

“Pretty good armor there. Try not to break it when you take it off.”

Kepa Ying feels a pressure on her shoulder, and decides she’s not going to take that. Having a general idea of where the person had to be to touch her, she lashes out blindly at the potentially non-empty space. Unfortunately, it was to no avail. Her strikes went through where she hoped to meet resistance, and when she attempted to retrieve her arm found that it was restrained.

“It doesn’t matter how powerful your demonic armaments are when you’re not even strong enough to use it properly,” someone behind her says, as they pull the armor off her now-extended arm. “What a waste, giving this kind of artifact to a weakling like this.”

“Probably the young master of some noble demonic house or something. How much do you think it’ll sell for, boss?” the third person asks the larger man.

“Not as much as both it and the helmet,” he grunts, pulling Kepa Ying bodily out of the wall sans armor.

Now that she could see again, Kepa Ying could tell that the big man was nowhere near small enough to fit into the arm piece he had just stolen from her. He looks at her as his mouth splits into a cruel grin, ordering “Before we leave, teach her a lesson.”

What he didn’t notice immediately, but Kepa Ying did, was that a purple haze spread out from the helmet as soon as her head popped out of it. From behind various bits of trash littering the alley, small monsters were spawning, fully armed and ready to murder.

Their first indication that something was happening was a rat the size of a child biting the left thug in the calf, at which point he screams and starts jumping around on one leg, trying to shake the monster off. The boss’ grin disappears immediately, and with a casual wave of his hand summons an orb of purple slime before tossing it at the biting menace. While the one monster begins to dissolve under the acidic sludge, four more rodents of unusual size clamber up into menacing positions.

“Change of plans, the noble was unfortunately savaged to death by a freak monster spawn, by complete coincidence. Grab the loot, we’re leaving,” states the giant, spitting disdainfully to the side. The unharmed minion is quick to follow orders, pulling the armored orb out of the stone wall and pulling his companions along with him.

That left Kepa Ying robbed in an alley, beset by monsters. She couldn’t help it, and started to cry in rage.