‘Oh fuck.’

Elania had no time to move as the mercenary busting down the door didn’t pause, the door slamming into the wall with a crash. “What’s---”

His words clipped off the second he saw Elania; he pulled a knife off his arm and flung it straight for her. Her dodge reaction was just as fluid as the attack, except only as she was about to push off, she realized that would leave the knife going straight into Yolani.

Checking her movement cost precious time, but Elania was able to grab the other girl and pull her away into a fall. The knife thudded into wood, and Yolani let out a scream as she slammed into the stone floor, causing Elania to wince. Elania hadn’t intended to hurt the other girl, but she hadn’t had time to be gentle either.

The mercenary cursed, whether at almost having hit Yolani or that he missed, Elania didn’t know. She wasn’t going to wait to find out, either, leaping back onto her feet and between two of the shelves before darting toward the front door.

The man must have been tracking her movement, as wood splintered then exploded just in front of Elania’s face as his sword punched through the shelf. She had intended to get around him and lead him away then escape outside, but the sudden attack had her reply in kind.

She didn’t have a sword to punch through back at the man, so she braced herself and then shoved the heavy shelf with all her might. It had no choice but to obey her sudden force, planks cracking as it crashed sideways and smashed into the mercenary. A pained grunt signaled to Elania that her attack had found its mark, but she froze, unsure of what to do next.

“Jonas!” A second mercenary arrived shouting at his crushed comrade before drawing his sword and leveling it at Elania. Instead of charging her, though, he turned his head toward the entrance and screamed as loud as she had ever heard anyone try.

“DEMON! HERE!”

“It’s not what it looks like, he---”

That’s when the new mercenary decided to charge, shouting something at her she figured was a war cry. He was fast, much faster than his friend and Elania found herself backing up a step before realizing she needed a weapon. There were plenty of metal bits on the remaining shelf to her right, and she grabbed one of the longer ones just in time to use it to intercept the man’s sword swing.

The metal clanged together with a thud, but he was already pulling back for another swing while her arm was still ringing from the impact. She wasn’t going to beat him in a sword-fight, so she didn’t even try. In a move the man had not been expecting, she darted forward, under the heavy swing he had been preparing to smash away her improvised pipe.

As it was, it was a hazardous move because the mercenary almost backpedaled enough to make enough space for his slash. Still, Elania managed the lunge required and slammed into his middle, catapulting the both of them back into parts of the broken shelf and the scattered debris.

She landed on top and immediately slammed a fist into his side without considering his armor, but the blow elicited a pained grunt anyway. A flurry of blows followed unblocked, but then he managed to grab her arm on one of the wild swings and throw her off and into some of the broken wood with a crash.

As Elania hurled herself back onto her feet, she saw she’d done more damage than she’d expected, as he remained in a heap on the ground, unable to prop himself back up. That was good because she needed to catch her breath, too.

[Power: 249 / 277]

That wasn’t too bad, Elania thought. She’d managed to conserve Power while dealing with them. It was quickly followed up by the realization of just how fucked things had become so quickly. A layer of dust filled the room from the shattered shelves, and a thick layer of miscellaneous

Artificer bits were scattered everywhere.

She could hear shouts coming from outside; there wasn’t going to be an escape that way.

Escape.

That was what she needed to do, there wasn’t going to be any reasoning or talking this out. The mercenaries had seemed friendly enough to her, but the second they’d seen her with red eyes, the first one’s response had been instant.

She wasn’t willing to put her hands up and surrender either, not with how she knew demons were treated in this city.

Elania turned and started to walk toward Yolani, who was beginning to get up. “Hey! Is there another way out?”

The other girl was still fuzzy and out of it and didn’t respond. Elania was halfway across the shop to her when a crossbow bolt crashed through the single small window by the entrance and cut through the air in front of her face.

‘Why do things keep trying to impale my head?’

Elania threw herself down just in time for a volley of three more bolts to smash into the wall behind where she had just been, before a chorus of shouts heralded four mercenaries charging into the room.

It had been hard enough fighting them one at a time, so Elania felt completely justified when she responded by jumping back onto her feet, grabbing the last remaining shelf, and hurling it at the entrance. The frame ripped apart as she did so, so only the top half of it flew at them, but it smashed into three of the mercenaries, downing them temporarily. It was enough to buy her more time to continue her retreat toward Yolani and the back door she hadn’t seen behind yet.

Elania didn’t make it the rest of the way to the back, though, as something solid and hard clipped into the back of her head with a thud, sending her reeling onto the ground. As she rolled over, she saw what it was, the last mercenary had thrown his shield at her like a frisbee, and the edge had struck her.

He cursed as she got up, and Elania found herself agreeing with him. She had a hard head now. Didn’t she have a dagger somewhere? Where was her pack? The entire workshop was destroyed, with only the back counter remaining. She knelt and picked up the shield, but everything felt a bit muddled. Maybe the blow to the head had done more damage than she thought, but her status hadn’t started screaming about [Regeneration] to her, so she wasn’t sure.

“Stop!”

The shout coming from behind froze Elania. It didn’t work quite as well on the mercenary who had his short sword drawn and leveled at Elania in a slow approach, but the flash of light and sudden crack that threatened to blow out Elania’s eardrums did.

‘I was so right, it was a gun.’

Elania turned slowly, and Yolani had the tool pointed at the mercenary who was still standing.

“I said fucking stop, you bastards!”

‘Oh, it’s a wand. A gun wand?’

Elania was suddenly very glad Yolani was ignoring her and that the dangerous little length of shard encrusted metal wasn’t pointed at her.

Yolani started shouting at the mercenaries, who had thankfully stopped their approach. Instead they began to collect their downed comrades. Two new mercenaries entered to replace the ones that dragged the wounded out. Elania had no idea what to do now, and she was pretty sure that whatever back way out was probably being watched now, too. Yolani continued yelling, but the men didn’t budge or make to leave. The standoff lasted a few minutes longer, before Harlock entered with a grim expression on his face, followed by Artificer Ranolf.

“What are you doing girl? Stand aside and allow them to arrest the demon at once! Can’t you see she’s destroyed your shop?”

“Like hell! Your men did this to my shop, Ranolf! And attacked my customer!”

The man scowled, and Elania decided to try and explain.

“This has all been a giant mis---”

Elania hadn’t noticed that he had one of the ‘gunwands’ in his hand already, and he leveled it on her without warning, and suddenly a giant invisible fist slammed into her. The only thing that prevented her from slamming into the wall was that she smashed into the back counter first, the impact shattering the backboard and causing Elania to double over, blood exploding out of her mouth from the eye-popping blow.

[Your physical Status is degrading quickly.]

[Due to your high Power, Regeneration is enhanced!]

‘Oh, does it say that without my power being over 100% now…?’

[Power: 211/277]

Everything was pain, and when vertebrae in her neck slipped back into place, she tried to scream, except broken ribs had punctured and deflated both her lungs, so nothing came out.

Her hearing wasn’t working anyway; all she could hear was a painful torrent of tinnitus. Her eyes still worked, however, and Yolani was still clearly arguing with them all.

Elania blinked away her tears as the pain reached a climax, then thankfully started to taper off, [Regeneration] had saved her once again at the expense of a rapidly draining power bar, but she was losing hope of finding a way out.

Apparently, the other side had run out of patience as one of the mercenaries with a shield started forward. Elania wasn’t sure just how she and

Yolani had become a ‘side,’ but there was no denying the other woman was protecting her when she leveled her wand and blasted the man away.

The victory was short-lived as Ranolf responded in kind, the invisible fist of air becoming a visible red cloud as the crystal on Yolani’s wand suddenly surged in brightness. A dusty blue cloud in the shape of a shield suddenly appeared in front of the red cloud. The particles mixed in a torrent of exploding lights as red and blue particles collided with each other in tiny, soundless explosions.

The exploding clouds quickly tightened up into narrower and narrower streams until they were focused into two beams as thick as an arm colliding and annihilating each other as they met in the center.

‘Artificer fights are pretty to watch.’

The idle thought made Elania realize just how woozy and fucked up she was still. That Yolani was fighting off Ranolf, whom Elania had thought was pretty much the boss of the whole Artificer thing, was impressive.

Then the crystal in Yolani’s wand began to flicker and die. The clash didn’t end, though, as Yolani pulled out a second wand, discarding the first one when the crystal shattered into dust.

That’s when Elania realized that fights between Artificers weren’t duels of skill. They were wars of attrition. The Artificer whose mana shards ran out of Power first would lose. Her eyes drifted back to Ranolf, and she realized that he had a dozen of the wands on his belt.

Yolani’s second wand began to flicker. Ranolf’s wands all had larger, stronger shards than Yolani’s. Did she even have a third one? The answer was yes, but the grim look on her face told Elania that there wasn’t a fourth.

‘I need to help somehow.’

Elania propped herself up with an arm; she’d regenerated enough that she could move. Standing up was still impossible, though. Crawling was too slow. So she gritted her teeth and hurled herself forward, landing just behind Yolani’s feet.

That was good enough for her idea, a hand coming up and closing around the other girl’s ankle. Elania felt the Yolani tense up as soon as she touched her but quickly relax and go back to focusing on the clash of magic. It was enough for Elania to be in contact with Yolani, to feel the energy in the wand’s mana shard.

It was already almost dead.

‘What happens if you drop a nuke in a war of attrition?’

But, Elania hesitated; how could she calculate how much Power to use? Enough to win the duel, but leave enough for [Regeneration] and then to survive long enough afterward to get more energy?

The answer was: she couldn’t.

‘Fuck it.’

Ranolf, the mercenaries, and the storefront disappeared in a giant nova of yellow light.

Thump-Thump.

“Hey, wake up, The Guard is here.”

“Seriously! Wake up!”

“What did you do!”

Thump-Thump.

“Elania! Wake up!”

Everything was so terribly hazy. It didn’t feel like she was in her own body, but the pounding thump-thump of her heart in her ears was relentless as it was rapid.

“I don’t… feel very good.”

Thump-Thump.

“Elania!”

“Hey… let’s make a contract.”

It was hard to think, but it was simple enough to bring up the screen.

Thump-Thump.

“I don’t understand. How is this a contract?”

Thump-Thump.

“Elania! Hey, Elania!”

Something was shaking, maybe it was her. What was going on? What was wrong?

[Power: 1/277]

Thump-Thump.

Oh. Yeah. That.

She felt too tired to worry about it now.

Thump-