In a smoke-filled, windowless room sat a man, thick and burly with exaggerated muscle and armour as ornate as royal robes. He was hunched over a fine, oak desk with intricate, golden filigree; a gift from a friendly noble.

Before him were piles of papers–notes, reports, accounts, all about one thing.

Riza.

He leaned backwards in the plush, red chair, taking it all in at once. The dates on some of these dated back months, ever since her first sighting. The Head Steward in Kratten was the first one to send word, but even her report suggested a farmer of the village was the first to encounter the mysterious and dangerous woman.

She got lost sometime in the Moya quarry, on the intersection with Droya and Toila. No doubt, she had found the expansive demon nest there for the next time she was seen, in Litchendorf, she was much, much stronger than previously noted.

Ostensibly, that was the start of constant monitoring of the woman. That was when this man, with a bushy, grey beard and balding head, had received a note of his station; to keep an eye on her and anything that might be related to her.

From there, her exploits kept getting bigger and bigger, the pressure on above increasing on him to make sure she never disappeared from the Empire’s sight.

And then she did. Somewhere outside of Trotton, in a forest that was inhabited by some Tarnys, right after her encounter with an Enforcer.

Normally, surviving an Enforcer was an emergency situation; she had gotten too strong to deal with and drastic measures needed to be taken.

But Death didn’t think so. He relayed back her method of creating a stalemate–something that could easily be prevented through a certain magical item that could easily be obtained.

The man believed him. He gave Death the order to proceed as he wished, trusting that the reliable Enforcer knew what he was talking about.

How wrong they were. The man blamed himself, spending many sleepless nights afterwards wondering what went wrong. There was one, simple truth to it; no necromancer had managed to rise to Riza’s power before, and certainly not in such a fortuitous location of the furthest most point of the Empire.

It was his fault; he dropped the ball.

And then it escalated from there as Riza had adopted a strategy they couldn’t work around; the underground. It was the domain of the demons and she had hidden herself there as well until the next time she reappeared.

Rensenfeld, a whole month later.

Drastic measures had been taken. A plan was put into place, with contingency on top of contingency on top of the plan as well.

A woman was sat in the room with him, a white, stone tablet in her hand, etched with a height map of the auspicious province, with notable locations listed as well.

“Just outside Edderdorf?” She asked, her voice melodic and soft. “That’s where the worm appeared?”

“Yes,” The man answered, stroking his beard as he looked over the accounts of all the soldiers they had managed to mobilise to the border. Among them, three Enforcers and four Guardians were there.

Not enough, he thought.

“That damnable Lord,” The woman said under her breath.

“They don’t listen to us, is the problem. She never will have gotten this strong if they just stuck with the plan.”

“The Dreaven. When is he expected to arrive?”

“Three days with the rest of his entourage. It’s one day if he just leaves them behind and travels on foot.”

“We don’t have the time. We have to strike now. A change of plans is necessitated.” The woman put down the tablet and stared hard at the man. Her message was clear.

“We can’t. Rensenfeld-”

“We have no other option.”

Fire. Her eyes were not deceiving her; flicks of flames drifted from the thatch roofs of the village in the distance, and they were growing by the second.

Fuck. Of course this happens as soon as the rainstorm stops.

With a quick message to Daven to stay there, she began to run.

Her legs exploded with power, pushing off the sodden ground as she bounded through the air. Metres were travelled with a single stride as she ran faster and faster.

She arrived at the village a moment later, skidding to a stop before it.

Fires had engulfed what looked to be most of the houses. Panicking villages were rushing about, buckets in hand, flinging water on the raging infernos to little effect.

And then, Riza’s stomach sank as she saw it.

People, lying on the ground, motionless. A few were right outside the buildings, covered in terrible burns that scarred their hands, legs, arms, and faces.

She rushed to the first one she could see; a young man. His entire right side of his face was disfigured, the flesh melted and burned. She placed her hand on his torso and used [Heal]. Nothing.

Shit.

Scrambling back to her feet, she leaned into [Meditate] to focus her emotions.

Many people are probably dead. They’re gone. The fire is an issue now.

Before her, she saw a woman dash into a flaming house, shouting something Riza couldn’t recognise.

Lefie’s too far away. I need to do something.

Immediately, Riza’s mind went to the fire, to what they needed to survive.

Fuel, heat, oxygen, and a chemical chain reaction. I can deal with one of those.

Rushing over to the burning building Riza had just seen the woman run into it, she focused on [Intrinsic Tank].

[Intrinsic Tank] (10/10)+ -Learned

Store and release air inside of you

Cost: 5250 es

Targeted gas: OXYGEN

Proportion of gas: 100%

Final capacity: 24,114.52 m3

Final radius: 17.92 m

In an instant, all the oxygen within eighteen metres vanished. The fire flickered and burned for a second longer before dying out.

Riza shunted the oxygen back out into the air and, thankfully, the fire didn’t restart.

The same woman came stumbling out from the house seconds later, clutching a young child who was badly burnt in her hands. She looked upon Riza with a mixture of confusion, fear, and awe.

“Let me help,” Riza said, walking over and placing a hand on the child’s head gently when she saw the woman did not refuse.

A brief, green glow emanates from her fingertips, the child’s skin tightening up and wounding back to the healthy shade and shape it should be, all traces of burn fading away.

“Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you-” The woman began to mumble, tears dripping down her face as she held her child closer to her chest, becoming incoherent.

Riza repeated that with each and every house, causing the flames to die down and healing whoever she could until, eventually, everyone was either fully healed or dead.

A small crowd had begun to form around her, watching her every move as building after building was extinguished and burn after burn reversed.

They asked who she was, and she merely responded with ‘Riza’, a meaningless name to them all. She asked what happened, and her heart sunk even further than she thought possible.

Once every building was extinguished, every life she could save, saved, they led her to the corpses.

Corpses that did not die by fires.

Riza fell to her knees at the first one, examining the body. Simple clothes, dirty attire. He was a simple, unimportant man. Quite ordinary as well, except for a large, diagonal slash across his torso, bloodying the body.

The gash was deep, the wound almost certainly fatal.

“Who did this?” Riza asked, her voice betraying no emotions as she leaned into the cold, hard calculatedness of [Meditate].

“The Lord’s men,” A woman spoke up from the crowd. She said the words with disdain. “They torched out buildings and murdered those who stood up to them just hours ago.”

Riza’s stomached dropped further than was imaginable.

The Lord’s men? But that’s not possible. I had nothing to do with this.

“What did they look like? What were they wearing?” She asked, needing more information.

“Just like us. They were hiding in plain sight,” A man said. “The man you’re kneeling before, Condur; he was stabbed by his own brother. I heard his scream and saw the bastard run out right as I was passing by.

“I managed to drag his body out right before the house went up in flames,” He said sombrely.

Just like them…

“Riza. I need you at Rensenfeld. Things have gotten bad.”

The message was like a stab through the heart. This wasn’t an isolated incident. Andreya sounded worried.

Riza leaned forward and gently placed her hand on Condur’s head and one on his torso, lightly touching his fatal wound.

“Rest in peace, you unfortunate soul,” She muttered quietly under her breath, traces of sadness breaking through the stoic barrier of [Meditate].

And, with that, she stood up. It was time to return to Rensenfeld.

Smoke wafted from behind the tall walls of Rensenfeld. The black stone tower stood tall, watching over the city. Flicks of flames could faintly be seen from within.

She had arrived. With her stats and endless stamina thanks to [Heal+], Riza had ran the entire way over here in record time; not even a day had passed, although the sky was getting darker by the second. Within the hour, it would be night.

During the journey, she had a bit of time to think, to ponder who might have been responsible for this. She had passed numerous other villages, all burning as well, and she had not taken the time to put them out.

This was a province-wide problem, with each village reporting the cause was a group of people proclaiming themselves the ‘Lord’s Men’.

There was only one answer that made sense to Riza; the Empire. It fit with everything else they had done to sow discord in her province but to go as far as using their own people to cut down and murder innocent civillians? It was barbaric.

And illegal. It broke the treaty they had agreed to. It was war.

The word weighed heavy on her heart. They had agreed to no Empire presence in Toila but yet, here was proof of the opposite.

Riza sighed heavily. It was naive of her to trust that the Empire would keep their word? Outside of Death, most of her interactions with them were relatively… normal. They acted just like anyone else and treated her with respect and dignity.

If they had broken this term, just what else had they broken?

The observation part, no doubt. Forren really wanted that included but Riza was having none of it. No state-sanctioned spying on her and her people.

The Empire was spying on her anyway. It had to have been the case; the rain and the fires lined up so well with her raising the worm demon. The Empire had to be aware of increased level caps and an elder greater demon was now on her side, and so they pressed the button to burn every bridge imaginable.

Which meant they were scared. This was an extreme measure.

Riza passed through the empty gates of Rensenfeld without a soul in sight.

The entire city was on fire. Many of the buildings were burning, although the wooden roofs were fairing a little bit better than thatched ones.

She looked at the bodies that littered the streets. There were so many. She swallowed her emotions as she observed them.

Men. Women. Children.

She couldn’t handle it. A tear broke past her stone-cold facade and that unleashed the floodgates.

She fell to her knees before a pile of bodies, haphazardly thrown in an alleyway. The stench was horrific; rotting and burnt flesh permeated through the air, making her want to gag.

How are they capable of such brutality?

Riza’s eyes darted between each and every body there, looking them in their lifeless eyes, remembering their faces, imagining the last thing they saw before death.

And, with some, they didn’t even have recognisable eyes.

She sat there, motionless and in silence, stewing in the situation, her mind blank of all thoughts.

A sound broke her out of her contemplative reverie; the breaking of what sounded like a door, and various screams.

With sluggish enthusiasm, Riza rose to her feet and lazily walked over towards where the sound had come from.

A group of three men had cornered a bloodied and beaten man on the ground. The building they were immediately in front of was not burning, but its door was broken in and Riza could see movement from the inside.

The gang were holding clubs and swords and wearing ill-fitting piecemeal armour, no doubt stolen from somewhere.

“Eh, wait a minute. Who’s this lass?” She could hear a tall, bald, and baby-faced man speak to the other two by his side.

“Don’t know but she’s dressed nicely, ain’t she. And look at her hair,” A short, thin man pointed. “Blonde. She’s a noble.”

At this point, the two individuals from the inside ran out, clearing having finished ransacking the place. They were holding bags bulging with various valuables, no doubt.

“She looks familiar…” The third man said quietly to himself.

Even the downtrodden man on the ground, who seemed to live in the house, was looking at her with pleading eyes.

“Are you the Lord’s Men?” Riza shouted at them, voice cold and emotionless.

The two men from the inside looked confused, but baby face chose to respond.

“We ain’t no one’s men, lass. We’re merely taking advantage of an opportunity,” He said.

Looters.

The man walked towards her. With a longsword in hand, he seemed like the leader of the group. The mail clung tightly to his torso, the sleeves too short to protect her hands and wrists. Two sabatons protected his feet.

“Where did you get the weapons and armour from?” Riza asked.

“If you want the answer to that, you’re going to have to pay,” The man said, a mere few feet away from her now. He was tall, towering over her, with muscles that suggested a physically demanding job.

I don’t have time for games.

She took a deep breath.

[Intrinsic Tank] (10/10)+ -Learned

Store and release air inside of you

Cost: 100 es

Targeted gas: OXYGEN

Proportion of gas: 100%

Final capacity: 480.23 m3

Final radius: 4.86 m

The man began choking near-instantly. The sword dropped from his grasp as both hands reached for his throat, trying to wrench free the ghostly hands that weren’t there.

The man gurgled and gasped and fell to his knees, hand flailing about for whatever was causing this to him.

Riza walked over and kicked him onto his back. Even with minimal power, she could hear his ribs crack from the impact.

He’s had enough.

Oxygen flooded her surroundings, and the man gasped like fish, sucking in as much oxygen as he could.

“You-you bitch!” He groaned in between breaths. “What-” He didn’t get to finish the sentence as Riza stamped on his foot, crushing all the bones within, and forcing a scream out of the man.

She wasn’t going to leave him like that, crouching down and placing a hand on him as she cast [Heal].

“Wh-I don-I don’t know anything!” The man suddenly sputtered, his previous brash confidence replaced with evident fear on his face and in his tone.

“Where did you get the weapons and armour from?” Riza repeated with the same icy tone as before.

“We stole them! From the Chosen place, near the tower. They were just lying there! No one was guarding them.”

He could be lying to me but I don’t think so. Probably is just a looter taking advantage of the situation.

She has wasted enough time as it was.

With surprising ease, Riza grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him back to his feet. Unfortunately, she was too short to lift him into the air, but at least he wasn't standing comfortably.

“You and your gang will put everything you have stolen, including the armour and weapons, into that man’s house,” She pointed. “And will stop your looting. If I see any of you again, I will kill you,” She said, punctuating her point by throwing the man towards his compatriots, knocking two of them down like a game of bowling.

They all scrambled to their feet, sufficiently intimidated by Riza as running into the house as she approached the injured man on the ground.

“Thank you, thank you,” He sputtered, wincing from pain. “But… who are you?”

Riza said nothing as she used [Heal] on him, restoring him back to full health. She watched the confusion and then amazement cross his face as he felt the energy infusing him.

He was fine with not having his question answered, running away as soon as he was able.

Riza continued to explore the city in a listless state. There were numerous gangs of people, looters, doing who knew what. Corpses dotted every street, with conspicuous piles disturbingly frequent.

Every street, every intersection, every building, it was all the same. The city had fallen into chaos.

There was no saving this.

So many dead…

Some time ago, Riza had stopped looking at the bodies, stopped observing those who had died. There were just far too many.

This is because of me. Because I’m here. Because I killed the demon. It was an unavoidable truth, one she had been told by Death months ago.

The quarry, the forest, Litchendorf, and Hotton. My presence brings death and destruction.

As she was walking, she stopped. Her ear twitched, a sudden, faint sensation burning in her head, pointing her towards the black tower.

She closed her eyes and focused on the feeling, reaching out and probing it to gather its strength, shape, location.

It was far away, but getting closer by the second. The faint, vague feeling grew stronger and stronger until it became a searing pain behind her eyeballs, directing her towards it.

Riza broke out into a run. This was… feeling was stronger than a humanoid demon. Stronger than even the worm demon.

“Andreya. You need to evacuate the city right now. An elder greater demon is about to appear within it!” Riza used [Inform].

She turned a corner and froze.

There it was. Unmistakable.

It was humanoid, but only just. Its legs were curved like a kangaroo’s, its arms sinewy and long, splitting in two at the elbow joints for a total of four hands. Its head was completely smooth, with the only imperfection a deformed, crooked mouth that reached across from one side to the other.

And it was tall. Comparing it to the buildings on the street, at least two and a half metres tall, maybe three.

Shit.

The city was burning. People rushed down the streets, running towards the rich district. Many bumped into Sanders, oblivious to him as he moved against the current.

He walked and walked in silent contemplation, listening to the voices around him. They said things, spoke of things they could not have known.

He stopped at each body he saw, the frequency increasing the further into the city he got. At the corpse piles, he just stood there for minutes, listening to the woes of the dead.

They were angry. Their voices dripped with contempt. They needed him. They wanted to be saved, to have their suffering stop.

Only he could help them. Only he could hear them.

He knew what he had to do.