Elania was starting to rethink her plan to look for the Mercenary District’s Artificer Row as she walked down the side street. She had asked directions from the waitress again, just to confirm the ones from Henri and Elburn had given her. That, and that she hadn’t misremembered or scrambled them in her head, which was probably more likely, she admitted to herself. Luckily, what the waitress said matched what Elania remembered, so after her fourth Frujuice and way too much people watching, she had set out to look for her goal.

She hadn’t needed to go far on the main row, as the side street she needed to turn off on wasn’t that much further into the district. She’d barely hesitated at the slightly dimmer lighting. Elania hadn’t appreciated just how much light the extra fixtures on the buildings had provided the main street, and the further she delved into the district, the fewer and fewer of those were in appearance until they were only present on the block corners. The alleys didn’t have any at all and were darkened enough that her eyes would adjust into a near monochrome if she looked down them.

The fact she had a sort of night vision made them a lot less scary. However, they looked quite full of trash and debris and definitely not the type of place to spend any time in. She had spotted a few shadowy figures sleeping or moving about in a few of them as she went. That was enough to prod her to walk closer to the center of the street. The feeling of being watched started to prickle at her back, but the few times she peeked back the way she had come, there was no one there.

‘Maybe if I learned Demon-Jujutsu or whatever, I’d stop feeling so nervous.’

Or really, any real fighting ability would do. So far, she had flailed her way through everything, relying on her superior racial strength to survive. She had turned her [Mana Manipulation] into a weapon, but that was risky at best and limited in range unless she wanted to burn copious amounts of her reserves.

She had no idea where to even start with ‘Magic,’ so the idea of using some sort of ranged weapon...a bow or crossbow maybe, appealed to her. The memory of Marcus preparing to shoot at her was still fresh and outlined just how vulnerable she’d be to someone with a projectile weapon where she couldn’t get into ‘Power Punch’ distance.

The thought of having to learn to use a bow from someone like Marcus made her feel uncomfortable, though. Maybe if she met Tessa again, she could learn to use a sword and shield with a few lessons instead. With a class like ‘Knight,’ the other demon should know all about swords, Elania told herself. Although it was probably wishful thinking that she’d be free to teach anything.

Elania frowned and came to a stop at a large T-intersection. The path going straight ahead shrunk and became almost as dim as the alleys she had seen, while the turn continued to be about the same. Her first instinct was to follow the better lit main path, but... the directions she had been given didn’t include any turns or junctions like this.

She was supposed to follow the street she was on until it ended in a square with multiple branches... that was definitely not where she was at now as directions and reality didn’t match up once again. Was everyone so bad at fucking directions? Elania bit her lip and looked down both paths again.

‘What I need is a map.’

Suddenly, she recalled a brief tidbit from Marcus of all people from one of their early conversations.

“Fun idea, but no. It’s an artifice that provides certain functions to those who reside in the area. Clock, maps, the ability to call the guards, among other things.”

Elania repeated the keyword in her head.

'Maps.'

Henri had shown her the stone, and it had been as simple as putting her hand on it and getting a simple status box to show it to her. Neither he, Elburn, or even Tessa had mentioned Maps. They had all given her directions when a map would have been much more straightforward, especially if it worked somehow like her [Status] or other screens.

Why had they not even mentioned it?

[User Binding: Neftasu]

[Clock: 5:18]

[Emergency]

[Locked]

[Other]

Yeah, that looked like it had earlier when Henri had shown her the Binding Stone. It had been easy for her to transfer the [Clock] function over to her custom [Hud] window, so she’d not used this screen more than once. Was the locked function the map? A quick glance around showed no one nearby, so she decided to test [Other] before going on.

[Unbind]

[Locked]

[Locked]

[Activate Management Interface]

Well, she didn’t want to ‘Unbind’ that would take away her Clock she guessed, and everything else seemed locked except the last option, which she wasn’t sure about. It was the only choice if she wanted to continue investigating, though, so she activated it and received a deluge of messages she wasn’t prepared for.

[Attempting to Grant Management Access]

[New Management Permissions Restricted]

[Management Authority Exceeds Current Management Authority]

[Overriding Management Permission Restrictions]

[Management Access Granted: City-State Neftasu, Elania Reyes, Full Access]

[Stripping Previous Management Requires Core Access]

[Resetting User Confidentiality Settings to Management Default]

[Management Interface Activated]

What the hell had she just done? Elania bit her lip, the messages stopped, and nothing else seemed to happen, so she activated the [Bind] screen again.

[Manager Binding: Neftasu]

[Clock: 5:19]

[Emergency]

[Map]

[Other]

There it was. For such a verbose response, just the first part of the screen had changed from ‘User Binding’ to ‘Manager Binding’, and the [Locked] function now revealed was a map. Rather than spend time panicking over the log messages, Elania quickly activated the [Map] function.

She was rewarded with a huge screen popping into place in front of her, the slightly transparent image expanding to several feet wide and tall. It was much too close and almost made her go cross-eyed. Elania took an instinctive step backward, but the screen followed her movement perfectly, which was even more disorienting.

‘Fuck, whoever designed this was near-sighted or something.’

Thankfully, she knew what to do to actually manipulate the screen and push it a bit further away, just like she had managed to customize her [HUD] screen.

The map was not what she expected. Google Maps might have spoiled her. The dark blue background has several weird areas where beige bled through in irregular patterns. Over that, a grid of darker black lines arranged all over it in what she assumed were buildings as she looked closer. There were absolutely zero labels of any sort, and she was barely able to get an understanding of the city’s layout. If the map was even the entire city. She’d been told the magic barrier she’d passed through was a sphere, and the map was shaped in a circle, which suggested what she was looking at was probably a top-down view.

Of course, there was no legend anywhere to be seen, but there was an odd-looking rectangle box in one corner. Elania was about to try to figure that box out when she realized that the blue and beige colors were shifting. She focused on one of the beige splotches that stood out, and sure enough, around the edges of it, the blue was shifting.

Zoom-In? Just her thought of looking for that function rewarded her with the map slowly responding, and she realized that the solid blue color was anything but solid. It was thousands of small blue dots. Most of them were stationary, but many were moving. It took a moment, but then she had a theory on what they were.

‘People. The dots are people, this isn’t a map of where to go, it’s a map of the population of the entire city.’

Suddenly, the blank rectangle in the corner made more sense to her.

‘Henri.’

The sea of blue dots disappeared, leaving just a neat beige with black lines all over it. That prompted her to Zoom-out and there it was. A single green dot sitting somewhere near the center-right of the center of the city.

‘Tessa.’

The Henri-dot disappeared, to be replaced by another green dot, this one near the eastern, or what she assumed was the eastern side of the city due to her association with east being to the right.

‘This is why no one mentioned the map, and that function was locked, giving everyone a map that locates everyone in the city would be… dangerous.’

It didn’t explain why she suddenly was able to have this ‘Management’ ability, though, or why she’d be permitted to access it.

‘Elania Reyes’

[Confidentiality settings prevent this user from being displayed. Change status to visible? Y/N]

‘Oh, definitely not.’

Elania was quite happy that no one would be using this [Map] to track her. The question of just why she’d have more authority than the current management was a bit nagging though. She’d need to be careful and keep her access to the [Map] hidden, since she figured that someone would be rather miffed if they found out some random ‘Demon’ could locate just about anyone she wanted.

There was only one problem.

She didn’t know the name of any Artificer, and there were no street names or building labels at all, just a mess of black lines that indicated buildings, and only on a single level, at that.

Try as she might, whatever commands she tried failed to change that. The map was, in the end, a big people tracker, not a roadmap to the Artificer district.

Elania sighed and glanced down the two streets. She’d spent a good five or ten minutes just standing there, lost and looking at the map.

“Found another one, Mac.”

Elania’s heart leapt instantly at the voice cutting through the silence much too close behind her. Before she could turn around, an arm wrapped around her left side to grab her breast.

The sudden unwanted touch almost paralyzed her in fear; it would have done so before.

Elania's reaction after the brief hesitation was vicious as she reached up with her free hand to grab her assailant's hand and crush down on it with all her strength. Despite it being larger than hers, she felt the resistance he offered falter instantly as bone and sinew shifted under her fingers. The weakness allowed her to twist around in his grip to face him. The man had obviously not been expecting much resistance, if any, and while he was still reacting to the pain in his hand, she shoved him as hard as she could.

He didn’t quite go flying through the air. Her leverage had not been good enough for that, and the tight confines meant she hadn’t been able to produce enough momentum. He still staggered backward and tumbled onto his backside.

“Fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!”

Elania’s heart fell as she took in the scene; her assailant wasn’t alone. There were two others, standing just behind where her attacker had fallen. One was another man, and the other was a young girl that looked like she was maybe ten or eleven and had her head down looking at the ground.

[Bruiser – Human – Lvl 58]

[Rogue – Human – Lvl 78]

[Classless – Human – Level 15]

The one who had grabbed her was a Bruiser, while the one holding the girl was a Rogue. Both seemed relatively low level compared to everyone Elania had met so far.

As the man got off the ground and back onto his feet, his earlier words clarified their purpose as Elania phrased them in her head.

‘They’re grabbing girls off the street. Human-fucking-traffickers.’

A knife suddenly appeared but failed to produce any instinctive fear in her. She’d fought a Razorclaw with teeth bigger than the short length of metal, and she felt herself settling and preparing to counter whatever rush came at her.

The Rogue had apparently been doing his own examination because his hand settled on his partner’s shoulder and stopped him.

“Wait, Ned, she’s not a girl, that’s a Demon.”

Elania could feel the men’s attitude and posture change immediately from eager attackers to wanting to escape. Suddenly, she wanted to pounce on them, and teach them a lesson for attacking her. A system prompt suddenly appeared.

[Darkwalker Transformation, Y/N?]

‘At least if fucking asked this time.’

Turning into an oversized black panther monster seemed like it was a terrible idea in the middle of the city, though. It was good to know it was there if she needed it, but the last time, she’d had trouble turning back, and plus, she would end up naked and unable to carry her stuff.

“Don’t you two have identify?” Somehow Elania managed to bite back an expletive, but the tone in her voice seemed to convey enough sentiment to whip the Rogue at least.

“We’re sorry, didn’t mean to grab you.”

“Wait, she’s lower level than us, we could—”

“Don’t be a fucking bigger moron.”

Ned turned toward her and held up a hand toward her. “We don’t want any trouble, just a misunderstanding. Mac, let’s go.”

The bigger Bruiser, despite his bravado, seemed content to retreat with his friend, but Elania’s eyes settled on the young girl. The Rogue’s hand had never left the girl’s shoulder, and as the two men turned away the girl was pulled with them.

The memory of Marcus urging her to ignore others who were in trouble when they first arrived in the city came to Elania suddenly, a frown taking shape on her lips as she made a decision.

“Wait.”

The two men flinched in response to her command, halting midway in their turn. Elania let the time stretch for a second as they stared at her blankly.

“Leave the girl.”