-------

”That doesn’t look very good.” Valor commented dryly.

They were looking at their destination through an illusory projection created based on the Tower’s both magical and mundane sensors. The illusion showed a throng of demons in the process of surrounding the world and swarming around it like insects. It also seemed like calling what was happening swarming wasn’t an exaggeration, as it seemed like a huge portion of the demons seemed to be insectoid in nature and tiny in size. Once the illusion zoomed in, three spots around the world showed glowing domes of energy holding back the swarm, but otherwise the world was lost and the demonic insects were in the process of consuming everything living. It seemed that all three of the involved empires had created a holdout point of some sort, but it was unclear if they were just trying to stay alive, or if they were waiting for reinforcements or the completion of some sort of plan. And areas outside the three domes were a lost cause at this point.

“These insectoid demons are also new. I haven’t seen their kind in this universe before.” Hope had focused mostly on the enemy instead of the survivors.

“That’s because it’s not something that has been seen since ancient times. It’s not actually an almost endless wave of insectoid demons. It’s an example of a very special type of demon. A swarm-that-walks. All those supposedly demonic insects are just small parts of a single, more powerful demon. Or in this case three.” Karna didn’t mention that the last time these demons had been active, the fourth Scourge had also been around.

“You said these people you’re looking for would most likely end up dead by your hands, right? Seems like the demons are doing the job for you.” Envy pointed out. The obvious implication was to leave them to it.

“You would condemn all the people sheltering within those defensive formations to death, just to get at two people?” Valor asked with a bit of displeasure in his voice, and his smile got a little frosty.

"Those people wouldn't weigh heavy on my conscience. They're expeditionary forces from competing empires. There's likely not a single one I'd call an innocent among them. They came here to explore and take over a dangerous area to gain their own empire an advantage. They all knew they were taking a risk, all for some potential for greatness and resources. Opportunities are always accompanied by risk. They’re not exactly refugee camps Valor my dear, just like you weren’t an innocent after you decided to take part in the tournament.” Envy countered easily. Not that it would bother her all that much even if they were innocents.

“That doesn’t mean they can’t be good people. I agree to an extent with the principle of ‘If you live by the sword, you die by the sword’, but there’s a good chance many of those are builders, pioneers, and support personnel, not just warriors and explorers. If we can help them, we should. Especially if it doesn’t come at a large cost to us.” Valor argued reasonably.

“The point is slightly moot anyway, as there are several problems with just leaving them to the demons.” Karna decided to stop the argument from getting bigger, partially because Hope was giving her the look that told her that the Virtue knew she could and should end it. “The most obvious one is that we can’t really allow the world to fall into the hands of the Inferno. Even if we don’t care about the world or the empires involved generally, it’s bad for the Scourges to gain another world. Especially the swarms. Secondly, unless we get to see them in action, we can’t tell if the ones we seek are still present from where we are. Identifying a bunch of bones won’t work, and the swarms won’t leave behind an intact corpse for us to identify. I won’t make the mistake of assuming them dead, just to later find out that they left before things got this bad.”

“That’s good and all, but how are we going to deal with that?” Envy pointed at the swarm. “I don’t keep an army in my pocket, and truth be told my powers aren’t really suited for fighting against a bajillion tiny targets. I’m more of a hunter and a duelist.” Envy could of course deal with numbers to an extent, but this was a bit out of her field of expertise. She couldn’t even use subterfuge or scheming to confuse the enemy, another one of her favored methods, as the enemy was effectively mindless. It wasn’t like she was incapable of dealing with a threat like this, but the amount of effort she’d need to expend vastly exceeded what her rival would have to do, so she left it to the experts.

“I can defend us, and tear a chunk out of the swarms, but this is a bit…” Valor’s expertise was in battles between armies, and while he could use his Domain to deal some real damage, the enemy seemed likely to not run out of forces before he ran out of power. He could also ask for a more direct miracle from the gods, but he got the sense that Wrath really didn’t want to draw any divine attention at the moment.

“Hmm, my effectiveness is a bit better than these two, but it would be challenging to deal with the swarms while not affecting the people inside the protective fields as well. Strategic level magic tends to be target-agnostic after all.” Hope was a magician and could do horrific things with high-ranking spells, However, if she did something like dropping a meteor swarm on the bugs, she’d also hit the ones they were planning on avoiding. And that assumed the swarms didn’t have ways to defend against her spells. After all, it would be foolish to assume the swarms had no ways of dealing with that kind of magic as it was an obvious weakness of theirs. Any sensible enemy would try to come up with ways to counter obvious weaknesses.

“I have a way to deal with this. You don’t need to use a sledgehammer to kill a bug.” Karna reassured the others. This was her field of expertise.

“Could the tower deal with this? I seem to remember some spirit bragging.” Envy teased Zuellni a bit. As far as opportunities went, this was just too perfect to pass upon.

“I could deal with this easily!” Zuellni puffed her chest, before deflating a bit. “It’s going to take a while though. These demons can’t get past my defenses, but if they spread out, they’ll be able to diffuse the effectiveness of my weapons.”

The turrets of the tower were designed to slug it out with either a small number of heavy targets, or a larger number of lighter ones, but they were designed to be used against humanoid sized targets at the smallest, and they were definitely not optimized to kill trillions of tiny insects. Especially if the insects were smart enough to spread so that only a few of them would be hit with every beam. The main cannon was just about useless against tiny targets like these, as it was horrific overkill. And as much as Zuellni considered overkill to be the best kind of kill…

“I’ll take care of it. Or at least part of it. Just because we might want to give the people down there a bit of help, that doesn’t mean we want to do all the work for them.” Karna waved away Zuellni’s worry. She had an idea that suited the situation perfectly.

With a quick teleport, she was outside the ship. The sides of her face and neck were covered by small purple scales, and the colorful wings from her recent Awakening as Kun-Peng were on her back. She was starting to reach a point where using the advantages of her different Awakenings together for the best effect was getting viable. The wings were out for a very simple purpose. Despite its size, the Kun-Peng was known for its speed, reaching the kind of speeds that very few beings in existence could match. And it could do so from standing still, meaning the speed was combined with instant acceleration. The important thing, in this case, was that she could use that speed to also accelerate the magical effects she created, which would be something she needed to make her plan viable.

Tiny and weak targets like the swarms could easily be killed with a small application of force, but the trick was to hit all of them before they could react or adjust to your attack. She used her relatively new Scylla bloodline to create a simple sonic attack that would be enough to crumble any of the bugs it came in contact with, but not strong enough to penetrate the defensive barriers of the survivors. Then she overcharged the part of the spell that governed the area affected and accelerated the resulting sonic wave with the power of the Kun-Peng.

To everyone else it looked like she’d just opened her mouth to scream before a circular shockwave was shot out, expanding to cover the entire world and traveling across it in a couple of seconds. By the time the shockwave reached the other side of the world, and the final stragglers of the swarms, those hit first were already exploding into bits of goo, and the rest soon followed. In a matter of seconds, the swarms that had covered almost the entirety of the world had been wiped out. Karna couldn’t help a small smirk of satisfaction. This was what you could do with enough power and proper tools. A little bit of ingenuity was better than a whole lot of power if you used it well.

Of course, the shockwave hadn’t wiped out all the demons. The swarms were made up of more than just tiny demonic insects, as there were thousands of higher ranking insectoid monsters present as well, and there were also demons aside from the three swarms on this world. However, 99,9% present of the demonic numbers had been wiped away in an instant. And like she’d said before, they weren’t here to wipe out the demons in place of the three empires hunkering behind the shields. She’d simply given them a fighting chance.

“That was quite impressive.” Hope commended her as she teleported back inside the tower. “You killed only the enemies you wanted, and nothing more. Now that you showed me that trick, I’m already getting a lot of good ideas on how to deal with similar situations in the future.” In truth, she could’ve dealt with the bugs as well, but she wanted to see how Wrath would do it.

“A wave attack of some sort seems like the obvious answer in retrospect.” Valor also nodded in agreement. Now that he’d been given the idea, he was already figuring out ways to replicate the effect, even if on a smaller scale.

"The lazybums are getting their act together and attacking the remaining demons." Envy announced with her eyes locked on the illusory display. She hadn't doubted Wrath for a second. She'd already gotten used to the fact that her old friend and rival was an omni-tool of sorts that could deal with almost any situation given enough time and preparation. "It seems that with the swarms gone, they've managed to find the remains of their dignity they had misplaced earlier.”

"Any sign of our targets?" Karna asked.

“Not yet. They’re only beginning. We’ll have to keep an eye out.” Envy shook her head. Their information sources had provided them with pretty good descriptions of their targets and their abilities and Zuellni was monitoring everyone on the world below. Now that the shields were gone, locating their targets was only a matter of time.

“Should we keep helping? Instead of fighting the two empires our targets are from, we might be able to negotiate something in exchange for the two if we provide additional help.” Valor pointed out. The chance that the two empires would sell out their people even to the ones that had saved their hides was rather slim, but it was still there.

“I’d say we’re better off letting them exhaust what power they have left before swooping in and taking out our targets. If we’re lucky, the demons might get one or even both of them.” Envy provided a counterpoint, as Karna had come to expect. Both were ruthlessly practical, but Valor tended towards more honorable action, while Envy had no such qualms. She’d use any and all methods within her reach. Interestingly Karna was somewhere between the two in her own methods. No one could accuse her of being too dogmatic with her ways, while some would even call her inconsistent.

“There’s nothing that says we can’t do both. Contact the two empires once we spot our targets and say that we can provide assistance in exchange for the two. We could also imply that refusal will likely result in us becoming enemies.” Hope seemed to be willing to go with both plans.

“Let’s go with that.” Karna agreed. “We don’t want to antagonize these empires for no reason. We aren’t exactly incognito, and we don’t want to make enemies that will come back to haunt us unless necessary.”

-----

“They want what?” The leader of the Bandahir forces demanded angrily, while at the same time sending a wave of Qi crashing down on one of the larger demons remaining. Even his hooves itched with the remains of the bugs crushed under them.

"Your Highness, they want the young master." The heavily armored messenger reported. He’d been sent to both greet and thank the people from the weird vessel floating above them. Four powerful beings had disembarked on beams of light, and it wasn’t hard to figure out that this group was responsible for dealing with the demonic swarms earlier.

“They want my son? Why in the scourges name would they want my son for?” The Duke was barely able to contain his anger at the impudence. They might have helped his forces, even saved all of their lives, but this was just too brazen.

"You might want to ask your son about that." A female voice with enough power and gravitas to demand immediate attention replied. The Duke's head snapped around, almost allowing a blow from a nearby demon to land on him in his distraction. He wasn't usually so careless, but the voice clearly belonged to a greater threat, and that threat had managed to sneak upon him.

He was shocked to see the entire group of four only a few steps away, and he couldn’t sense how strong they were. That worried him greatly. The one who had spoked was the divinely beautiful woman at the front of the group. That wasn’t a good sign. A Godling. Were the Divine Planes involved? “You have a lot of gall asking for my son and threatening us in the process.”

"Your son, huh. I can see how you'd be reticent about that. I do wonder though if you'd be equally incensed if we had asked for another member of your group. Rather hypocritical of you if not.” Another woman, this time a feline beastwoman, had a small smirk on her face as she spoke. She too seemed quite attractive in a more wild and untamed fashion. The group clearly didn’t believe they were in any danger. And judging by how they had dealt with the swarms, there was a good reason for it.

The leading woman gestured for the smirking one to tone it down. “The fact remains that we traded the lives of your entire group for the life of one member of your group. And we weren’t asking. We will be taking the person we’re after, whether you agree or not. The only question is, do we have to waste his sacrifice and kill the rest of you as well.” The woman was practically oozing confidence, and why wouldn’t she be?

“Why do you want the young master?” The old advisor to the duke, another Centaur like most of their group, asked the important question again. His mage’s staff was glowing in preparation in case they had to fight the newcomers as well.

“Like we already told you. The person we’re looking for knows.” The woman refused to elaborate. The advisor gave a signal to have the young master fetched just in case he would be able to explain.

“Stop dancing around the issue and tell us! What do you want with my son?!” The duke insisted angrily. He wasn’t going to relent.

“I think you might have a slight misunderstanding. The fact that he’s your son is irrelevant to us. We have no interest in who the person we’re looking for is related to. The important thing isn’t who they are, but what they’ve done.” The woman elaborated slightly. “If the person really is your son, then that’s too bad for you, but at least the rest of your group will survive.”

“Father?” A relatively young male centaur galloped to join them, having heard the tail end of the woman’s words. You could sense a strong aura of stability and strength radiating from him. You could feel that he was almost as immovable as a mountain.

"Son, they're claiming to be here for you, and that you know why." The duke asked.

The young centaur looked confused for a moment, but they all saw it in his eyes when he suddenly thought of something. He wasn’t going to admit to anything though. “I have no idea what they are talking about.” He denied.

The woman made a condescending smile. “Your son has been warned against doing something several times, and he has ignored those warnings. He’s also been informed that there would be consequences to his actions. He chose to ignore those warnings. Well, now his actions have brought those consequences to you.”

"What is she talking about son?" The duke didn't want to believe, but for some reason, he knew inside his heart that the woman was not lying.

The young centaur’s eyes flashed a bit, and the four people smiled a bit as they felt their True Names being discovered. The young centaur blanched and his face went white. “Father, these…aren’t the sort of people you want to go against. Do not fight them. Do not seek revenge. This is my last request.”

"What is it, son?" The duke asked quietly. He had some idea. He'd never seen his son this scared before. Normally the boy was unflappable. Yet his son clearly knew something, and that something was enough to make him scared out of his wits.

His son looked at the four as if asking for permission and getting a shake of a head in response. "Just remember my words father.” He directed his next words to the four strangers. “If I come quietly, will you make it quick?”

“There can be some consideration given to those that don’t repeat their sin by fighting back by using the exact power they were warned against using." The leading woman promised without elaborating.

“Sin. Hah.” The duke’s son said mirthlessly. “I will come. Please help our people in return.”

With savage grins, three of the four strangers spread out to deal with the demons, while the leader extended a hand to the duke’s son in invitation before they both disappeared as a series of metallic rings surrounded them and whisked them away.