The next day after enslaving the three demons, I've gathered my party to discuss the invasion of the demon race.

"Here is the map of the demons' settlements. There are three major towns, one fort, and some hamlets and villages. Their forward camp is here, there are about one hundred and fifty demons in the camp." The camp is about two hours away from here by foot.

Marcy measures the map. "They are so close to us. This is impressive! If they march for five days they would be upon Barnsley."

Zahariel that was with me when I interrogated my new thralls completes, "And there are more troops coming to assault us again, right?"

"Right. Two hundred or more soldiers. And this time they are shock troops. They wanted to take us out with skirmishers but called in the cavalry after the failed assault. This time they are going to barge straight through the front door. And we are not going to like it if we let them reach home base."

"We are going to eliminate the forward camp tomorrow." Helen voices our consensual opinion. "How are we doing it?"

"The best way is to bombard them from above. Zahariel can dump his comet, I have the lava bomb, and I think I can bring a third projectile to the table."

Helen points out a flaw of our plan, "The timing needs to be perfect or their magicians will raise a barrier. All projectiles must hit at once."

"Yeah. you are right. In the afternoon we are going into the mountains to test it. Then we are going to drop our spells and see their timing."

"And assuming these tests work, how are we conducting this attack?"

"After we do the tests, here is our plan. Helen and Marcy will be positioned at their back. After the spells hit, they are going to be in disarray and at a disadvantage for being attacked during the day. I am going to sneak past their camp and set an anchor. Then we teleport there and Zahariel and I will fly above the camp invisible to bombard them. The survivors will either flee back to their territory or scatter in the forest. I am going to set a detection perimeter with sentry wards beforehand. After the bombs are away, I will teleport with Zahariel back to the anchor location, and we will wipe out the survivors either way they flee. After the camp is wiped out, I am going to scout ahead for the marching troops. They should be one or two days away from the forward camp. If I find them I set an anchor and bring you to attack them too."

Helen is cautious, "But they are regular army troops. I doubt they will be easy."

"Then we will just bombard them once from outside arrow range and run. If they keep marching forward, they will fall into guerrilla warfare. Regular armies will be weak without support. Though two hundred is just division. Unless they are all veterans they are underestimating us."

"Or they have some card up their sleeve."

"I don't think so if they had the thralls would have said so. But they should be in a rush to get us. From what I got there is an ancient soul magic rite the humans use that sacrifice a life to enchant the land with the properties of that person. Like what that sniper guild master tried to do with Helen."

Zahariel asks, "The guy that wanted to kill Helen to spread the blessings of her 'harvest princess' title around Mirfield during the equinox?"

Everyone had the same epiphany, "The Equinox! Of course. We are almost entering Spring. I bet that ritual can only be used on special dates. Or he would have no need to hold Helen in jail."

Helen shudders and I pull her in with a warm hug. "We are here now. They won't touch you again."

We teleport to the anchor where the rocs were killed. The place is still dark red from the blood. I doubt these stains will vanish before the rainy season. At least the sun has bleached out the smell. Helen didn't come. She wants to work on the beehive and we only need one extra person to measure.

First order of the training, finding a big enough boulder. Second, determining altitude. We go up but it is hard to measure how high. But I think it is fine. We will drop the comet, the lava bomb and the boulder from the item box and Marcy will measure the timings. The results were, the lava bomb is the fastest, probably because it accelerates away from the caster. The comet lost to the boulder. Not only it appears overhead but its size causes a lot of drag.

The timing was decided. First, the comet, then the boulder after the comet was past us and after that the lava bomb.

"I'll have to do the 21 seconds chant of the lava bomb after dropping the boulder. But at least I can aim at the presences of the survivors below. There won't be any visual because of the dust cloud."

Zahariel notices some oddity in my statement, "Don't you have the wizard job?"

"Yes. What is the matter?"

"Have you checked the skills from the job?"

"Now that you mentioned, no. I haven't. I switched in the middle of the raid, I really didn't pay attention to the messages. All I know is that it grants no new schools of magic."

"Not even 'Fast Casting'?"

"Wait for a second..." I hurriedly check the wizard skills.

Wizard [Tier: 4] - Magician 20, knowledge of 10 spell schools levels 5 or more. Spell Research (D), Fast Casting (D), Spell Duration Increase [C], Spell Power [C], Spell Improvisation (D), Signature Spell (D), Melee Resistance [c] 15% P - 12% A - 73% M Fast Casting: Reduces casting time of spells (not rituals) by x 7.5% Spell Duration Increase: Increase duration and upkeep tick timer of spells and magical effects by x 20% Spell Power: Increase damage of attack spells and magical effects by 20% per level. (619% at level 10) Spell Research: Gains a new random Intermediate or advanced spell from any school that the user has enough levels on each level. Allows spell R&D. Spell Improvisation: Grants a greater understanding of improvised magical effects. Allows one to improvise faster and better effects. Signature Spell: Declare a spell as the signature spell. That spell receives a x 5% bonus to all parameters. It takes 3 days to change the set spell. Melee Resistance: Reduces melee damage taken by 20% per level when not wearing armor.

I'm an idiot.

The first three are straight modifiers. I have earned over 200 SP these days and I doubt they level on their own or they would have risen from level 1 already. I should get all of them except Research. So it is 54 SP for each one of the six and I'll bump them to level 10. My signature spell is set to lava bomb. The lava bomb now takes a little over 5 seconds to cast. And deals nine times the previous damage. Spell research is, at first sight, a spell gacha using SP. You might get a spell you didn't get from a previous level of a school skill. The R&D part takes a lot of time and money. I'll skip this one now. Improvisation is those minor effects we do like using fire magic to light a campfire or using wind magic to ventilate a prison cell. But now it can be assembled faster and with better effects.

"Heh, thanks. I totally skipped on those."

Zahariel taps my shoulder and smiles, "No problem. Let's purify some demons." I think that is an angel euphemism for slaughter.

"I need to prepare my boulder first. Hold a second." Using earth magic I make a teardrop-shaped boulder. I keep putting it in and out of the item box and adding more stone to it until it becomes the maximum limit. Now I have a sixty thousand pounds projectile to drop on them.

"Hold on, we are teleporting back!"

I am experiencing some compulsive behavior after the surprise raid. Every time I teleport back to the Hill I have to check every ward and focus for a few minutes. The worry about having demon assassins sneaking into my home and killing my comrades is stressing me out. I am sure the party noticed, but they haven't mentioned it yet. I think it will improve after the goblins finish evolving and I train them. Or after I eradicate all the demons.

Marcy grabs my arm and proposes, "What if we bring Cloude here to help defend while we are out?"

"Would he come?"

She gives an evil stepmother laugh, "If you ask, he would go murder Hrothgar."

"I don't want that much. If he stays out of my way and helps a little, it is fine by my book."

"Then go and fetch him." What did she do to the boy?

It took me half an hour to go to Mirfield and return with Cloude. People insisted on giving me reports I don't care about what is going on with the town.

I'll also convert my thralls to their original jobs. Ranna as a Sniper, Rez'mazod an Assassin, and the third one, Bek'rennas, an Assassin too. They have orders to obey all orders from Shraaizar, Cloude or Kochurearc.

I also need to give Cloude a hint, "The girl is a succubus. You can order her to do anything, but she drains life force and kills if you do lewd acts with her."

He didn't react well to my tease, "As if. Stop pushing these weird monster girls on me. I only like human girls."

"Not even some hot elves? I can respect that. Especially the plural you put there." I give him a thumbs up.

We went to sleep but the threat of a demon attack made everyone sleep lightly.

Dawn of the assault day. I spend a few minutes making my daily ritual of checking the wards. From what the thralls told me, these two were the best infiltrators they had. But not the only ones. This time I won't renew all the wards. I'll just put four of them inside the perimeter in a diamond pattern.

Next, I am supposed to set an anchor and a trap using wards on the rear of the demon camp. I'll fly there invisible. My shadow stealth is downgraded to ordinary stealth because there are no shadows in the day sky for me to hide. I hope its enough. There are a lot of demons down there. Somehow the shadows of the trees are fuller, a dead giveaway somebody manipulated it to make that grove more to their liking. I got past their camp and reached a good spot. Anchor set! Now to go around and place the sentry wards. Six of them forming a hexagon. I also set overlapping areas. Teleporting back, I feel so excited I suppress the compulsion to check the wards.

"Is everyone ready to go?" They confirm and we join hands to teleport to the ambush site.

I had set the anchor a little away from a trail that was probably formed when the scout troop of the demons came from the east. And they will probably flee this way. They walked in rows of three and covered their footprints, maybe with earth magic. But the grass won't grow back so my nature sense can follow the trail of recently killed grass to get where they went through.

"We go separate ways now. Before that, tie a rope between you two so you don't get lost before leading Helen away to recon the area. I'll do the same with Zahariel. Remember to stay within Exp sharing range. The ropes can be seen after they get a little away from the spell's effect, but it is a minimal liability. Getting lost from your partner because the invisibility is worse. Exp sharing range is around a thousand feet in distance. It depends on the scale of the combat, so less than that should be safe."

"We will look for a good sniping point near here. You two go up and begin the fireworks," said Marcy.

"Wait, I'll cast invisibility on you. And remember to set the barriers before the bombardment." Invisibility will last for more than an hour or until they attack. I use the spell four times.

They move away and soon we also take off to the skies. Going around once, we familiarize ourselves with the area. Their camp is using a grove around 150 feet across with some darkness spell to increase the shadows beneath those trees. Probably to make it comfortable for themselves.

Zahariel tugs on the tether and asks, "Should I begin?"

"Yeah. When the comet is past us I'll drop the boulder and then chant the lava bomb." Even then, the rock will have dropped over 400 feet when I finish the casting of the lava bomb. But I will aim at the biggest presence reactions. I also check the mini-map. They are outside the spell's area but close by. If the barrier is active, they won't be harmed even if they were closer.

I think the height we are now is comparable to when I visited New York and went to the top of the Empire State...

"Comet Fall!" The seraph finishes his spell while I am absorbed in my painful musings.

The huge flaming rock begins to crash down. The name is bad, real comets are made of ice. And this is more like a mini dinosaur-killing meteor. There is a shadow, but it is being projected far to the west. It is early morning. There's noise, but now it is too late for them to react.

Should I use gravity magic to increase the weight of the boulder? Probably not. It would mess up with the timing and I am sure the boulder won't be in range.

I open the largest item box portal ever and the bomb-shaped boulder goes away. I immediately begin to scan for presences down below and cast the lava bomb spell. The chant finishes before they hit, but I hold the spell charge. I messed up the timing. The boulder hit a few seconds before the comet. I threw the lava bomb, but the shock wave from the blast below broke it mid-air. And then the shock wave hit us, idly flying over it. Both Zahariel and I were able to recover before we plummet down to the ground, but the tether broke. It doesn't matter because we are no longer invisible. And I lost two sentry wards. They were either broken or torn from the ground.

From where the girls were supposed to be light rays flash in the dust cloud and some bright red spot rise and dive down with a sharp whistle resembling a raptor's cry. The point of origin for these effects move in a circular path around the crash site and the lights repeat themselves several times.

I check with minimap and confirm. Helen and Marcy are wiping out the survivors.

I missed on some kills because I went to replace the two wards that were knocked.

Helen (4-Wizard) +7 levels (49 > 56) Marcy (5-Guild Master) +7 levels (45 > 52) Zahariel (4-Wizard) +3 / +5 levels (racial: 62 > 65 / job: 59 > 64) Beowulf (4-Wizard) +8 / +8 levels (racial: 43 > 51 / job: 43 > 51) +140 SP

Survivors: zero. Chance the marching column knows the forward camp is no more: a hundred percent. The mushroom dust cloud is still high up in the air.