‘I’ll see how that develops before I send support,’ John decided, keeping a close mental eye on the fight of his copy and maids against the knights and their lord. For the moment, it seemed even enough. Both parties were fighting defensively, not quite sure of the enemy’s full capabilities. Being careful in that situation was just common sense. ‘I guess it’s good to see they have some of that remaining,’ the Gamer thought and sighed.

The aftereffects of today would be complicated. Fundamentally, he didn’t want the Golden Rose to be his enemies. With all of the slavers and murderers he had fought, a faction that took justice too seriously was a nice change of pace. That being said, he was a firm believer in the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ model. That meant he had to give everyone a fair and equal trial with a high standard of evidence. As William Blackstone had said, it was better that ten guilty people escape than that one innocent suffers.

The Golden Rose seemed to operate on the opposite ideal and it wasn’t as if he couldn’t see the argument. Letting the ten guilty escape surely meant more suffering for the innocent who could then be affected.

Personally, John justified his stance by delineating between misfortune and tyranny. A murderer getting off once because of a high standard of evidence and killing again was incredibly unfortunate. A government having the ability to jail people on suspicion or very little evidence was tyranny. The former was saddening, the latter was depressing.

Also, people of a power-hungry mindset had a tendency to get in charge of even the ‘nicest’ forms of government. Giving them tools to easily persecute whoever they liked was just a recipe for disaster. John would go so far to argue that the current situation was absolute proof of that.

If William Brighton’s eagerness to burn the sinner didn’t underline the Gamer’s argument, then the iron fist with which the Demon Lord ruled surely did. Sure, he kept his subjects happy with semen demon breeding slaves, but beyond that this was a literal hellhole. Anybody who wanted to leave it was either killed or had their memories wiped. Not exactly the kind of society John wanted to live in.

‘I suppose it works for demons,’ he thought. ‘Maybe they’re inherently more comfortable in an authoritarian structure?’ He left that topic for later and turned his mind back to overseeing the current ongoings.

Salamander and Sylph were flying over the city, Siena was scouting things on the ground level, Gnome was busy erecting walls, Undine continuously split into as many bodies as she could sustain and Metra pushed back whatever strike forces the Golden Rose sent their way. All of the actions of his familiars were taken in an effort to guide the ongoing evacuation. They informed the people, fought the enemy and healed the ‘allies’ while trying to keep casualties to an absolute minimum.

For that reason, Metra was sparingly used.

For that same reason, Eliza was the only girl still with John in the pentagon’s chamber. It had been a long while since the pretty little psycho accidentally crushed kitchen appliances, but John didn’t trust her to measure her power against enemies she could kill by shouting at them with too much energy. Especially given her incandescent hatred for religious fanatics. If all of that wasn’t enough of a reason, then the potential of Thana deciding it was time to rear her head again, given all of the death around, definitely was.

As for the other two girls not directly connected to John’s mind, he wasn’t sure where they were. It wasn’t Nia’s or Rave’s style to just sit around and do nothing. He trusted both of them to do their best to help with the situation though.

Again, he checked in on the battle with Lord Brighton. Things still seemed to go smoothly. If Moira weighed in, things might get dicey. There was no way to know for sure. The powerful anti-scrying enchantments certainly neutered his guessing ability. At the same time, he didn’t know if William’s careful approach showed respect towards his strength, a general careful attitude on the Lord’s part, or that the timer was much longer than John wished.

He hoped it was the first.

‘Siena, new orders,’ the Gamer reached out via mental connection, ‘I want you to try and find whatever was used to invade the barrier. Should be around the oddly phased area – probably underground.’

‘I’ll see it done,’ Siena answered.

‘If nothing else, she’ll find who they were torturing down there,’ he thought to himself and leaned back. In the process, his gaze fell on the grinning Demon Lord sitting on his throne. “And what are you so happy about?” John asked in an irritated tone. “Your city is being invaded, the people you want me to save are in danger and none of this was part of your miserable little plan.”

“I suppose… I suppose I should be bothered by the loss of my legacy…” Galku spoke with heaving, failing lungs. Without Undine around, his wounds were quickly sapping the little vitality he still had from his frail body. “However… as a dead man… worry about the future is far from my mind…”

John was of half a mind to end the plight of the warlock immediately. It would have been an act of mercy for Galku and for the Gamer’s mind. However, he yet needed the man’s authority. The demons were all channelled into the mansion, and whenever one doubted the story that John was there to save them, the Demon Lord was there to reinforce the truth. Aside from such questions, everyone stuck to the mansion proper. Galku seemed to have drilled a deep respect for the centre of the pentagram into his people – to the point that none stayed there longer than they had to.

‘Sylph, move east and create a fuss. I want the Golden Rose people to take a special interest in the outskirts.’

‘Roger, roger,’ Sylph responded in her best mechanical tone and carried out his orders.

John turned his thoughts off, as best as his paranoid mind could, and just let information flow through him. It was difficult, if not impossible, to keep track of the entire situation. New Alexandria was a small Abyssal city, but it was still a city and stretched across roughly five kilometres. Even with two eyes in the sky and several more on the ground, the amount of intel he could get was limited in its scope both by distance and the chaotic ongoings of a battlefield.

Just like Rave and Nia, John had no idea where Moira was. He would have loved to send either Siena or Sylph on searching duty, but the things they had to do were of higher priority. Knowing the time they were under lockdown and saving lives were more important than the Shield Warden’s position. ‘Not by a lot,’ the Gamer had to admit, ‘Moira’s presence anywhere would meddle intensely with the control I have of that area… well, I’ll have to deal with it when I deal with it.’

John pinched the bridge of his nose, sent out a new wave of repositioning orders for everyone and then focused on Siena’s mind in particular. The shadow spirit was now in the cellar of the hotel and skulked through the rooms. They were universally vacated, even if little amounts of fresh blood still showed that the torturing had lasted until recently. A single corpse was all the Golden Rose had left behind down there. The, presumed, warlock seemed mostly unharmed. Whatever means the Golden Rose used to torment their prisoners, they were clean in the physical sense.

‘At least that makes it more likely that the item used is or was down here,’ John thought.

‘How does a lack of people get you to that conclusion?’ Siena wanted to know, ducking underneath a pipe. As was typical for underground rooms housing water heaters and the like, things were cramped and the ceiling too low for people of relative tallness.

‘There were things happening when I first went in there, but everyone vacated just in time. Whoever was down there is not part of the fighting forces. There was a coordinated effort to get the prisoners out before the battle started.’

‘Could have just been a scheduled thing.’ Siena leaned against one of the doors in an attempt to hear if something was happening on the other side. She could have easily sliced the lock open with her thin claws, but doing so would have made her presence rather obvious. For the moment, her body and her movements were still veiled, made invisible to the naked eye and inaudible to the unrefined ear.

‘For a schedule, there are too many bumps in the execution,’ John analysed. ‘William doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who sits in his office until the last second. Maybe the item has some kind of unreliable charge time?’

‘Then how did they move out before it activated?’ Siena wanted to know.

‘Good question. Warning signals up to sixty seconds before random activation?’ John gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. ‘I guess I’m just speculating on its function. If it even exists. Could be that we are dealing with a peculiar Innate Ability.’

Siena heard some movements behind the door and grinned. ‘Maybe we can find out,’ she purred.

One claw swipe and a barge of her shoulder later, the midnight elemental invaded the room. A large water heater in the centre of the room made it clear what it would have been for in the mundane case. The Golden Rose had appropriated that mundane machine, cut open a bunch of the pipes and the central barrel, and introduced a bunch of magical add-ons to it.

A total of eight people stood inside the room and looked at the door with wary confusion. They wore white robes and masks, the same clothes as the overseer John had previously encountered. Siena kept them in the figurative dark, charging at the farthest enemy with all of her speed. Perhaps they were just distantly aware of the clacking of her high heels or maybe they were just straining their sight enough to peel through the outer layers of her invisibility. Either way, the people followed her as she ran by, but were not able to catch her or intervene.

Siena’s clenched fist sunk into the stomach of her first target, causing them to bend forwards. In a flurry of movements, she stepped back, rammed her knee into the person’s face, then grabbed the neighbouring person by the neck with her tail and slammed them against the wall.

“By the Lady!” several of the other people in the room shouted as their comrades collapsed onto the floor. To them it must have seemed like a ghost had quickly disposed of their fellow Golden Rose members. Siena giggled with superiority as she dropped the invisibility.

“You wouldn’t mind telling me what you're doing, would you?” she asked, crouching slightly and seductively running a hand down her thigh as she spoke. Now that she knew how much stronger she was than these people, the ambush tactics were no longer necessary and she could fully indulge in her sadistic nature. “It’ll spare all of us a lot of trouble. That should make it worth your while.” She straightened up slowly, playing with her hair and her curves.

“We will not be tempted by a demon!” one of the overseers declared.

“Demon? How rude,” the midnight elemental giggled, casually slicing through a metal pipe with her tail. “I have more class than a succubus.” Her grin revealed her fangs. “And my bite is a lot less pleasing.” Her whispering voice caused two of the people to take an involuntary step backwards. “Now tell me what this is for.”

“Never!” one of them declared, faking the bravery to invigorate their heart.

“We’ll see about that,” Siena laughed and Unleashed.

‘Remember, do not kill them!’ John warned as the shadow-engulfed midnight elemental advanced on her opponents.

They had daggers drawn and their gloved hands glowed with magic. Siena didn’t care for any of that as she simply stormed at the first of the six remaining enemies and grabbed them by the throat. Overwhelmingly fast, she tossed the person at another overseer, smoothly transitioned into a roundhouse kick that sent a third person flying and then jumped over a slash. Rather than come back down, Siena held onto the ceiling. Her hands and feet stuck to the blank concrete through the power of magic and she scurried forwards, her tail grabbing the fourth combatant by the neck and dragging them along.

Like a child handling a racecar, she easily slammed the person into the wall. Then she dropped down, jumped on the fifth overseer. Her thighs wrapped around their face in a fashion that, in other situations, anyone would think they were lucky for. At that moment, it was the start of an overexaggerated wrestling move. Keeping them in the thigh-headlock, Siena did a cartwheel and then slammed the enemy down on some pipes.

The one person that she hadn’t attacked yet finally managed to conjure a spell. A flash of golden light flew in Siena’s direction. With a grin, she let the bolt of energy approach her, dodging in the very last second by sexily bending out of the way. Then she stormed forwards, dodged under the slow stopping strike of the enemy, and grabbed the extended arm. One overhead throw later, the final enemy combatant was on the ground.

All of this had happened in such a short time that the two people she had made collide still hadn’t gotten up. The brutality of her actions and sheer supremacy of her physical abilities had knocked most of the enemies out. Those two were the only exception. Siena’s tail grabbed one of them by the ankle while she took the other by the collar with one hand. Soon, both were dangling from her limbs, one upside down and the other getting pressed against the wall.

“Feeling talkative now?” Siena asked, leaning towards the hand-held overseer’s ear. “I can have a lot more fun if you say no.” Her teeth audibly clacked. The overseer pressed his lips together in a defiant gesture. ‘Do I have permission for torture?’

John rubbed his forehead and considered. Because he couldn’t cast Observe through his familiars, he couldn’t verify what the construction in the room was for. The chances were fairly good that it was at least related to the current state of the Illusion Barrier, but guarantees were something nice to have. To that end, torture was a necessary step towards confirmation. However, his goal to remain amicable with the Golden Rose after this was over remained and that would be quite a lot harder if he tortured their operatives. ‘…Not yet,’ he commanded. ‘Destroy the apparatus and stay there. If the effect doesn’t cease, we’ll have to consider things.’

‘As you say, Master…’ Siena sounded a little disappointed but obediently dropped her captives.