The Prince in Question Is Not Stable

Chapter 59: The Marbas (1)

In the eastern evacuation route of the Crescenda estate, the movement of people was steady and controlled.

They were completely conscious and were moving willingly; the only factor that was minimised in their bodily functions was fear.

And the plan seemed to work perfectly.

Darin stood along the edge of a fractured column as his gaze followed the movement of the crowd.

There was a pattern to it; everyone was told to maintain an equal distance.

Elyra stepped up beside him, brushing a strand of hair away from her face as she glanced at the passing line.

"You’ve been staring at them for a while now," she said quietly.

"Find something suspicious?"

Darin thought, looking at the flow of the people.

"I’m not sure... but something irks me," he said.

Ahead, Clara had already taken position along the path, directing a cluster of civilians past a narrowing turn between two structures.

Her posture was rigid, and she was signalling people with small gestures of her finger.

"Don’t bunch up. Keep moving. If you slow down, you slow everyone behind you."

"They’re not troops," Vesper murmured under her breath. She was standing a little far from Clara.

Sera stood further to the side; her attention was not on Clara or the civilians, but on the two mind-mages maintaining the flow.

Their hands were subtly reinforcing the calm that held the crowd moving together.

*Swoop*

Just then...Darin heard something. He looked in the direction, but couldn’t find anything odd.

He looked in the direction, and someone had been there in the crowd.

Someone was missing. He didn’t know who, he couldn’t...but he had a hunch.

Then his focus drifted to a woman in a dark shawl, walking slightly off-centre between two others. Her steps had been slower than the rest. And that made him notice it.

And then it occurred...the woman was pulled down, as if knocked and dragged within a fraction of a second.

The two beside her continued forward without a clue. The continuous use of mind-magic was putting a toll on the conscious mind of the civilians, which is why they were unable to notice anomalies or missing neighbours.

Darin straightened. "Elyra"

"What?" she followed his line of sight.

"There was someone there."

Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the crowd.

Clara noticed something, too. She turned to face Vesper and pointed at the crowd where Darin was looking.

"Someone’s missing," she said.

Vesper nodded, but before she could investigate, Yumi was already there.

She was crouching slightly as her fingers brushed the stone surface with deliberate care.

"There," she said.

It was a faint mark.

A thin, shallow drag across the ground, cutting diagonally from the path of civilians toward a narrow side passage between two buildings.

Leon focused immediately, and his attention shifted toward the upper edges of the walls.

Darin, without hesitation, followed the trail, leaping above the edges of the wall.

"Wait...we shouldn’t split," Clara said.

"We already did," Darin said, looking in Leon’s direction, who was following his own trail.

She clicked her tongue, and Darin ignored her.

And so...the team that was supposed to watch the evacuation crowd split in three. Yumi and Sera followed Leon, while Clara and Elyra followed Darin. Vesper stayed within the crowd for protection.

Near the far end of the passage, partially obscured by the narrowing walls, was something Darin had never seen.

One long arm was wrapped around a civilian’s torso, holding the body close against its side.

The head of the body in its arms lolled slightly, alive but knocked out, a woman.

The creature looked like a fox...a humanoid fox. Demons that attain humanoid form are considered B-ranked and above. And it wasn’t just one here. There were three of these fox-demons that paused the moment their eyes met with Darin’s group.

Darin, Elyra, and Clara didn’t say anything. They steadily put their hands on their weapons as the foxes growled and crouched, compressing the muscles in their legs.

"Clara, high ground, Elyra...stun them the moment you get the chance," Darin said, pulling out the sword from the hilt, and they both nodded.

"Sword of the Moon – Dawn", Darin mumbled, and a white hue surrounded his blade, followed by the darkness that covered the alley, and then...he moved.

Within that moment- that occurred within one-tenth of a second, a silent path, a white hue appeared that traced the foxes, and passed through them, without touching the civilians.

Darin’s sword followed that path, and during that very moment, even the foxes noticed.

The one at the forefront couldn’t dodge the path as the sword sliced through its head without leaving any mess, but the remaining ones flashed their eyes open and ducked away from the white hue of the path.

"..." Darin stood at the other end of the foxes, to the naked eye, it might have seemed he vanished, but the movement was so fast that even a fox whose whole physique is built for speed and harvesting couldn’t avoid it face to face.

"What...how?" Darin mumbled, because he only got one, the remaining two ducked not only his path, but the stun circuit of Elyra, and the arrows of Bind by Clara.

But Clara not only shot at them, but she also shot at the edge of the ceiling, and the entry of the alley. Elyra considered those arrows as marks and created a stun circuit that formed a cage, utilising the terrain.

Thin arcs of pale current stretched between Clara’s arrows, and the alley itself became a confined space.

The fox-demons didn’t panic. This was the first thing Darin noticed.

The one that had lost its head collapsed without resistance, its body slack as the civilian slipped from its grasp and hit the ground with a dull sound.

The other two changed their postures, facing with their backs to each other. They were slowly moving in circles, rotating to look at Clara, Elyra and Darin.

They lowered their stance, positioning themselves slightly upward. It seemed that the explosive launch needed compression of muscle fibres, and extensive compression for them came at a cost of time.

"Don’t let them reposition," Clara said sharply, already drawing another arrow.

Elyra’s fingers tightened; the current within the circuit intensified.

"-Eclipse-" Darin mumbled, and the sound ceased to exist.

Sword of the Moon is a sacred and lost art that was known to be taught to the warriors of Luna. Silence is the first form, Dawn is the second, and Eclipse is the third.

Not even the ancient scriptures discuss of the art that Darin practices, but a mere Professor at his academy was aware of the art, and that thought always stays within his mind.

Darin cannot go past the Eclipse for now, but he was certain that it was enough to take care of two B-ranked demons who don’t intend to fight back.

The absence of sound was followed by the absence of senses as Foxus stumbled, thinking something was wrong with their bodies.

But before they could process anything, they saw the world turned upside down as their heads fell and rolled on the cobblestone floor of the alley.

In the complete opposite direction of the alley, Leon dropped from the edge of the wall without warning, landing between the foxes and their intended path.

Yumi appeared on one end, and on the other, Sera.

"It’s a clean one-on-one..." Leon said and smiled.

Unlike the alley Darin had entered, this stretch of the estate opened into a layered terrace of narrow homes stacked along a descending slope.

Balconies overlapped, stairways intersected, and the stone pathways twisted in irregular angles that broke visibility every few steps.

Darin’s group had an archer, Clara. A magician, Elyra. And a warrior, Darin himself. Their immediate strategy was containment, which Clara thought and Elyra followed.

But here, Yumi is a dual-sword warrior. Leon is a warrior. And Sera is a blood-mage.

Three fox-demons burst from the gaps between the stacked homes, each with an unconscious civilian.

Leon charged first. He slammed into the centre fox like a ram. The creature released its prey and tried to use its blinding speed to circle behind him.

Leon didn’t let it; he grabbed the fox’s outstretched arm mid-leap and used its own momentum to hurl it into a wooden balcony railing.

The wood exploded into splinters as the demon crashed through and kept falling two stories before slamming onto a lower terrace.

Yumi was already moving on to the second fox. She sprinted along a narrow ledge, as her dual blades spun in a silver whirlwind.

Her blades cut through the air in a controlled arc, forcing the second fox to abandon its grip on the civilian.

The body slipped from its arms, but unlike Leon, who would’ve let it fall, she adjusted midstep retracting her blades before she caught the weight of the body in her arms.

*BOOM*

Just then...the ground trembled.

A distant rumble of the collapsing ice wall of the inner perimeter.

"It was reconstructed right now..." She mumbled.

The ice wall created by the inner circle, cadets of third years would usually take several hits before collapsing, and then being reconstructed. But it fell in one single slam.

A force beyond A-rank is needed to break a wall that is being fueled by top-ranked third-year cadets, and some of the finest magicians.

Leon stopped mid-motion, and Sera also shifted her focus after securing a civilian.

Across the terraces, the fox-demons froze. As if going limp from fear.

Their heads turned all at once; even the ones hunting for civilians just went limp in fear.

Yumi straightened slowly, feeling the pressure in the air turn heavy.

An extreme demonic presence that even sent shivers through demons. They weren’t able to see it. But that presence that could be felt miles away from the inner circle wasn’t of someone who can be marked on a power scale.

The fox that had suffered extensive injuries from the battle with Leon shifted its stance, lowering its head. And Leon noticed that.

They weren’t doing it under control. But simply fear. A demon that can make other demons submit willingly.

"...You’ve got to be kidding me," Leon muttered.