Faye had been prepared to leave every militia member behind in the Guard’s barracks, but she was secretly glad that they had decided to come with her. Though these people were not trained in combat, having allies made the walk through the streets of Lóthaven slightly less nerve-wracking.

The gate was only a fifteen-minute walk away, if they were able to walk a straight path. However, the Primalists had been slowly and steadily building up layers of thorns and brambles that were growing as high as the houses and buildings around them.

The militia had all grown quiet, the closer to the gate they managed to go. Faye had the benefit of her [Mana Sense] to ensure that she was always moving them toward her goal. The barracks were a bright enough mana impression in her sight that she could use it to navigate, despite needing to travel back and forth across streets multiple times to find the way forward.

“Gods,” one of the men muttered. “They’re herding us where they want us to go.”

“What are they even doing here?” one of the women asked.

Faye felt their eyes on her back. She shrugged. “I’ll be damned if I know,” she said. “All I know is that we want them out of here before they get to do whatever it is they want.”

A quiet chorus of assent came from the group.

“But,” Faye added, “they’re not forcing us to go anywhere. Right now, I’m following the open path because it keeps us low profile. I can burn us a path through the bramble if we need to go through.”

“It’s just… creepy,” came the man’s response.

The briar walls were getting tall and getting closer to them it was easy to smell the mouldy and rotten core that for some reason was part of the Primalist’s signature scent. The walls of thorns exuded the rotten stench and the virulent green of one half of the Primalist’s magic.

The militia all stayed quiet as they carried on through the winding streets. But it was clear after half an hour more that the Primalists had been thorough in their barricades.

Faye turned to the group.

“Looks like we will need to burn our way through. The problem is that I can’t imagine they won’t notice. So, be prepared. We haven’t seen any of their monsters on this side of the walls, which means they’re keeping them on the other side.”

“Why would they be keeping their monsters on that side?” one militiaman asked.

“Haven’t a clue.”

The militia did not like it when Faye admitted she did not know something, she could see it in their faces and postures.

They’d like it less if I lied and turned out to be wrong.

“But it doesn’t matter. What I’m going to do is get us close enough to the gate that we can burn through as few of the barriers as we can to get there.”

“Would it not be better to try and sneak in, or use the wall?”

Faye shook her head. “We thought it might be, but that was before we saw the state of the streets here. The Primalists have made this their stronghold. To get from the barracks to the wall would have required burning through bramble, and I can almost guarantee it’ll tip them off. No, getting in as fast as we can is the play here.”

“Just remember that you’re the only adventurer here, all right?” one of the women said, she had been a solid, but quiet, member of the team since Faye had picked them up. “We know our duty, but I have a family that want to see me again.”

Faye flinched. In no way did she think of these people as expendable.

“That wasn’t what I meant…”

“No, I know,” the woman replied, and she gave Faye a meaningful look. “But I remember what it was like when I was younger, levelling and finding boosts to my strength, power… it’s intoxicating. Remember that we all chose different paths than you.”

Faye looked at each of the militia group in turn. Each one was determined. They were defending their homes, so Faye expected nothing less, but she also saw the strain. Tension in their shoulders. Some of them might not be making it home. That fear was invasive, and Faye was a fool for forgetting that at the end of the day, these were real people, with families, regular professions, and real fears of not making it back to their ordinary lives.

“You’re right. I am on a different path. That might have changed the way I look at things like this. Okay. Let’s take the longer path.”

The group let out their collective breaths at Faye’s proclamation. She felt a worm of frustration, but savagely smothered it. They were right. If it had been Arran and the others, then the straightforward approach would have been viable. With a bunch of amateurs, it was less optimal.

“Okay, we know what it’s like north of here. The bramble is thick and basically impenetrable. Let’s head to the south, see if we can’t skirt the worst parts of their defence. They had to concentrate somewhere, and next to the barracks seems like the most logical choice. Let’s hope their effort was reduced further away.”

Faye had not expected for the Primalists to have really expended so much effort defending the approaches to the eastern gate stronghold just to leave gaps in their southern flank.

Which meant that she was not disappointed when, an hour later, the group had stumbled into a Primalist redoubt planted on the main road.

Their group had approached the Primalists from the north, almost directly, and this group of Primalists were watching for people approaching from the south.

In the small gap between stumbling across the Primalists and them being noticed, Faye pointed her militia to the left and right, then drew her sword.

Despite never using a jian before, Faye found that the handle slipped into her palms with what felt like long practice. The few times she had used this blade since the Quartermaster had given it to her had been enough for the length, balance, and other unique properties of the sword to enmesh themselves in her memory.

It was the first time that Faye had felt such a conscious change from the system in terms of her swordfighting ability. She liked it.

Sliding forward on quick feet, Faye enveloped the steel of the blade in mana and waited until the last possible moment to ignite it.

The moment she did, the two Primalists that were manning the post spun in surprise. One drew what looked to be a twisted branch of a tree out of a loop on their belt, but before he could do anything but raise it, Faye swung the jian around in two sweeping curves.

[Blades of Flame].

The flames along the length of the blade condensed with the casting of the spell, then arced away in short curves, converging on the same point on the Primalist’s body. Each impact blasted away bones and dangling talismans or whatever else he was wearing, accompanied by a pitiful scream of pain.

The second Primalist took the opportunity to get closer to Faye.

This one held a savage looking spear, with tusks and spikes adorning the head of the shaft, creating a vicious cross bar behind the shard of metal used for the head of the spear.

His first thrust came in from outside of her reach, violent and sudden. It breached her defence immediately, but at the last moment, Faye spun so that it only scraped along her ribs rather than impaled her chest. She hissed at the pain.

Using the strong of her blade, near the hilt, she pushed the spear away and then brought it down in a quick cut, activating the spell again.

Another arc of flames burst forward, but the Primalist had expected it.

Congratulations! Your group have defeated a level 13 [Primalist Caller].

Experience awarded.

The notification pinged in her mind and the words wormed into her consciousness, despite her attempts to ignore it. She flicked a glance at the other Primalist, whose body had just been pierced by one of the militiaman’s spears.

Her opponent took advantage of her distraction, jumping forward for another thrust. But prepared for the speed of his thrust, Faye was able to deflect the spear away from herself. She stepped forward into the space that had opened from the parry, but the spear slashed down, and she was forced to block it directly.

The blow forced her down to her knees.

She grimaced.

No blocking attacks. You’re not built for it anymore.

The Primalist was using the length of their weapon to its best effect. Pulling the spear back and thrusting it out in quick repetitious jabs meant that Faye had to quickly retreat.

The second spear user of the militia group appeared in the Primalist’s blind spot and thrust out. It was a basic, but solid, thrust. Faye grimaced as the Primalist easily spotting it coming and swung his own spear around to knock the militiaman’s attack off its line.

Instead of approaching, Faye used the momentary distraction to throw a [Fire Dart] or two at him. They impacted with blasts of energy that pushed the Primalist a step.

Faye had not expected the darts to do anything on their own and she was close behind. In that moment of imbalance, as the blasts of energy forced the Primalist’s foot off the ground, Faye darted forward and got inside the range of the spear.

She jabbed forward with the tip of the jian, but the Primalist recovered and tried to retreat. Cursing the competent opponent, Faye matched him step for step. He had transferred his grip from the end of the spear to the midpoint, giving him a much easier weapon to use in close combat, but he was no longer able to thrust out the spear’s full length — exactly what Faye had needed.

The spear’s extra spikes meant that the Primalist was able to savagely swipe the spear side to side as if it were a mace, and Faye had to ensure that she either made him abort the attack with a quick thrust to an unguarded portion of his body, or she had to block the swing in a way that avoided the spikes, some of them about three or four inches of thick bone.

The militiaman continued harrying the Primalist from behind, jabbing out with every opportunity. The Primalist had practised fighting multiple opponents at once, however, because with his mid-shaft grip, the lower end of the spear was free to disrupt the weaker militiaman’s attacks.

All this Faye took in as she darted forward and back in the deadly dance of combat. It was second nature to her, and part of her recognised that the system had made her more capable. But that also meant that opponents like this one were also getting near superhuman boosts to their prowess.

That prowess revealed itself fully when the militiaman got too eager on a thrust, leaving himself stretched too far. The Primalist spun inside the man’s range, slipped the head of the spear under his guard and thrust up into the soft flesh under the jaw.

It was over in a moment.

Faye flashed forward and savagely cut down, the speed of the strike making the flames that coated the sword violently rip through the air.

The Primalist had barrelled into the militiaman, even as his lifeblood poured from the fatal blow under his jaw. They both went down. Faye’s strike missed, but she controlled the blade beautifully, slashing again in the opposite direction.

[Blades of Flame].

One, two, three, four blades emerged in a quick pattern. By the fourth one, Faye felt her mana straining to continue. She might have been able to do more in quick succession, but she did not want to push too much in the middle of combat like this.

The first two struck, but even under her onslaught the Primalist was able to spin and roll out of the way of the additional blades. They flashed across the ground, leaving blackened scorch marks behind.

The fuel of mana she contained in her core was under half, now. She could not carry on throwing out spells this way. She pursued the man as he rolled to his feet. He presented his spear and thrust forward into her movement, causing her to split off to the left.

She spat out a curse.

But as she changed her position, she suddenly saw that three of the militia were approaching at once, their shields interlocked. Faye tried to keep the Primalist’s attention by edging forward and making some feints, but the truth was that this spear user was too competent for her to reach in a frontal assault.

He spun as the militia arrived, sweeping out with the spear to make them hesitate in their charge.

Faye stepped forward, but the spear came around again in another whirl.

But just as she was about to retreat and try attacking with magic again, the militiamen stepped forward, into the swing of the spear, which slammed with a heavy cracking sound, eliciting a gasp of pain from the wielder of the shield.

But then a spear thrust forward, jabbing into the Primalist’s shoulder.

The middle member of the militia group opened the miniature shield wall, emerging with sword bared. She jumped forward into a thrust that the Primalist dodged by falling back.

Straight into Faye.

The cut went from his lower left to upper right, entering his side where his kidney was, splitting the flesh there with painful ease. Faye felt the blade cut into the man’s spine.

Congratulations! —

Faye pushed the notification aside as she pulled back savagely with the blade, feeling it scrape against the bone as it came free.

The man’s body dropped to the ground.

Looking around the Primalist’s camp, Faye realised that the fight was already over. She looked at the militia, each one panting heavily as they came down from the adrenaline.

Fights always felt like they lasted longer than they really had. Though it had felt like minutes, Faye knew that that had been only a couple of minutes at most. A couple of minutes to take two lives and lose one of the militiamen.

“Shit,” one of the others was saying. “Shit. Just… gone, like that.”

The flames on her sword extinguished when she retrieved the minor amount of mana she used for the imbuement. She slid it home in its scabbard.

The group were gathered around the fallen man’s body.

“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly.

“Wasn’t you,” one of them said, he looked up at her with a dark expression. “It was them.”

“Aye,” Faye said. “It was. I still wish it hadn’t happened.”

With a grimace, she stepped closer still.

“And,” she said, “I’m afraid we can’t stop here. Let’s move him inside one of the houses here. It’ll be better than out in the middle of the road.”

They carried the man inside the closest unlocked home. They pushed the half-eaten food still on the table off, laid him out on it, and covered him with a sheet.

“Shit. Whose house is this? They’re gonna come back to find him here.”

“They’ll understand,” one of the women said, quietly. “They’ll definitely understand.”

Faye felt the group’s morale dropping like a stone. She coughed.

“May God rest his soul,” she said. The others looked up at her with strange expressions. She smiled, sadly. “It’s something from back home.”

They nodded. Sombre. But they each filed out, one by one. There were no tears. No anger, just… bleak acceptance. Faye felt a cold horror in her stomach.

Just how many more are going to end up like him?