Eli wrapped himself in a Silence spell (Fifth Tier), sound folding around him like fog, and he drifted after the bandits like a shadow under reeds.

Even without it, those brain-dead toddlers, eyes dull as muddy ponds, wouldn’t have noticed a drum beating at their noses.

A prickle of conscience needled first like a gnat under a sleeve, then the thought rose: was Eli the meddling type?

Turns out, yeah—like a moth to a porch light, he was.

He shrugged, shoulders loose as willow leaves, and kept tailing them like dusk hugging a ridge.

Cut to Miss Edlyn’s side of the stage—the girl sat in a woodshed, blindfolded with night-black cloth, gagged like a corked jar, lashed to a post like a vine-tied bundle.

Gloom pooled in her chest like rain in a stone well, and she vaguely recalled her father’s friend whispering that human liquor was meant to drown sorrow.

What sorrow did the Demonic Lord have to drown, crown heavy as iron and pride sharp as a blade?

She had transformed into the Demon Race, a high caste in name, yet into a Succubus, the limpest reed on a battlefield, and the irony cut like ice.

The unspeakable “requirements” of a Succubus stuck in her throat like thorns, and even her breath tasted like ash.

A male Succubus would be one thing, but now she wore a girl’s skin like borrowed silk, and rage bit like frost.

Offer herself to human men? Over her dead throne, over a river of fire—she wanted to flip a table to the rafters.

So the Demonic Lord drank herself under like a stone, and when she woke, the world was this messy pigpen of rope and dust.

“Mmph, mmph!” Edlyn’s muffled protest fluttered like trapped moths, but in the woodshed’s ribbed darkness, no ear stirred.

Half an hour crawled by like ants on bark, and thirst gnawed her dry as straw while weariness sank her like wet cloth.

Her threats—“Someone come! Do you know who you took? Release me or pay in blood!”—melted into pleas like snow under sun.

They became “Kind soul, save me, please. I’m so thirsty,” and yet all the world heard was “mmph, mmph,” like a rabbit under brush.

So her soft, weak moans kept echoing off the planks like ripples inside a barrel.

Roughly ten hours later, with dusk bruising the sky like a plum, Eli finally traced those jokers to their mountain stronghold.

Veins roped his temple like coiled vines, and his fists knotted like river stones; the Archmage wore a storm behind his eyes.

The five bandits swaggered in laughing like crows, while the two gate guards dozed like oxen under shade, and Eli slipped over the wall like a swallow.

When the five reached a lonely stretch, he dropped from the air like a hawk, shadow long as a spear.

He kicked the first bandit flying, boots cracking like thunder over hills, and his hands clamped the next two like iron tongs.

He smashed their skulls together with a coconut thud, then spun and drove a fist into each of the last two faces like hammers kissing anvils.

When the five lay scattered like broken carts, Eli blew out a muddy breath like smoke leaving a kiln and hauled them into a heap.

Then he set his heel, and he stomped them like grapes while he snarled, “That’s for getting lost, for squatting at a latrine, for sightseeing, for playing with cow dung!”

“Coming back early was so hard? Drag, drag, drag—drag my ass!” His voice cracked like a whip in cold air.

Five minutes later, refreshed like a cat after a stretch, Eli melted into the dark again, leaving five bandits mottled with boot prints, black-and-blue, eyes rolling like loose marbles.

Only then did the Demonic Lord remember she still had a pinch of magic, and she brushed a sliver of Transparency magic (Ninth Tier) over her wrists like clear water.

Her hand slipped free of the post with a whisper like reeds parting, and then she collapsed from mana drain, face-first, like a felled sparrow.

She sighed, breath thin as silk, because this little girl’s body held as little mana as a dry well.

So the Demonic Lord lay face to the floor, gave another helpless “mmph,” and tasted dust like bitter tea.

At last, a pair of guards clomped to the woodshed, and they found a little girl face-planted and motionless, mumbling “mmph” like a trapped vole.

“Uh…” one guard scratched his head like a rooster, “should I tell the boss the girl’s… not very bright?”

After grilling a handful of bandits like chestnuts over coals, Eli finally learned where they kept the girl.

It was the woodshed by the gate he’d slipped past, door plain as bark and luck sour as vinegar.

Wind fussed through his hair like a teased banner, and Eli felt off-balance, like paper caught in a gust for no good reason.

“Why don’t I have an Eagle Eye skill?” he muttered, memory of Birand’s other-world game flashing like a minimap in rain.

He’d passed the woodshed and meant to peek, but a certain young lady kept “mmph, mmph”-ing like a rabbit, and he took it for a hutch.

Their “bride of the stronghold” wouldn’t be locked in a place like that, he’d thought, and so he went to beat those five like rugs.

After a whole day of running in circles like ants on a hot wok, he’d finally found the target, and he sighed that being good was a boulder uphill.