Aura had spent the entire day slacking off, and now her leisure hours had come around once more.
After sharing dinner with Linie and Jane, washing and putting away the dishes, Aura climbed the stairs back to her second-floor room.
The once-perpetually-idle Aura had, somewhere along the way, transformed into something resembling a model housewife — she'd picked up a little of every domestic chore.
Taking advantage of Nanoda's current period of secluded training, Aura had decided to secretly research a way to undo the Magic of Obedience.
Under ordinary circumstances, once the Magic of Obedience had taken hold, it was nearly impossible to break. It was a form of magic that reached all the way down into the soul and the mind — unless the one who cast it willingly released the subject, it simply had no solution.
But who was Aura, exactly? A Great Demon of over five hundred years. One of the illustrious Seven Sages of Destruction. She had made up her mind: she would crack the backlash flaw built into the Magic of Obedience itself.
In truth, the idea of Aura reversing the Magic of Obedience from the inside wasn't entirely impossible. Consider the case of Macht — a fellow Sage — when he encountered Serie's curse-reflection magic in the future. The reflected curse had turned his own transformation into gold, and yet he still retained the ability to undo his own gilding.
By the same logic, it wasn't out of the question for Aura to undo the Magic of Obedience binding her from within.
The catch was that Aura's particular variant of the Magic of Obedience was unusually delicate. One reckless attempt, one moment of carelessness, and she risked damaging her own soul and mind.
"Just have to try! I am Aura — the wisest of all!"
She cheered herself on with a burst of fierce self-encouragement.
She prepared to channel her mana and make contact with the layer of the Magic of Obedience that had affixed itself to her soul.
— Gaderia's city gate.
Under the cover of night, four figures in black lay concealed in the grass along the roadside. Draped in green weed-cloth, they pressed themselves flat against the ground without moving a muscle, blending into the lawn as though they were part of it.
Due to Gaderia's heightened alert, lanterns lined the city walls, casting light across most of the ground below, while tireless Demon soldiers stood their watch.
"Ha~" A gate guard stifled a yawn, then glanced at the Demon soldier beside him — standing ramrod straight as a wooden post, spear in hand, not so much as twitching. "Hey, Demon... brother? Standing like that from dusk till dawn — you really don't get tired?"
The Demon soldier did not reply. His gaze remained fixed on the darkness beyond the reach of the lamplight.
The four black-clad figures in the dark grass were moving — slowly, imperceptibly — barely making a sound. Around them, the night was perfectly still.
When they drew close to the edge of the lamplight, they stopped. They seemed to be waiting for something.
After a short while, a faint clang rang out, and one of the lanterns on the wall flickered twice — then went dark.
"What happened? Why did the light go out?"
"No idea — come give me a hand, it's pitch black, I can't see a thing."
Some discordant, confused voices drifted down from above, shattering the silence of the night. A bank of clouds rolled across the moon, plunging a stretch of the wall into shadow.
Seizing the moment the lamp went out, the four assassins moved as one — completely in sync. They latched onto the wall and began to climb, limbs spread wide, scaling the stonework like a cluster of spiders.
Up on the wall, a Demon soldier stood holding the extinguished lantern, head tilted to one side, expression blank — visibly baffled. The human gate guard stationed beside him was already calling out for backup.
From the other direction, someone heard the shout and came running toward the darkened section, a lit torch in hand.
The man groping around in the dark felt a sudden gust of wind brush past his back. He spun around sharply — and saw nothing.
"Hm? Must be my imagination."
He muttered to himself. A moment later, the other guard with the torch came jogging up to join him.
By the torchlight, they found the answer: a small bird had somehow flown straight into the lantern, destroying everything inside and snuffing the flame.
"Well, that's strange — how does a bird fly into a lantern?"
The Demon holding the lantern looked at the utterly baffled human guard, then gave a slow, dazed shake of his head to indicate he hadn't seen it either.
"Just use this for now."
The human guard with the torch passed it over.
And in that exact moment, the four assassins had already drifted silently over the wall and into the city — light as feathers — sprinting away until they were well beyond the reach of any lamplight.
The torch lent the wall a feeble, barely adequate glow. The breach had gone unnoticed.
One of the assassins had already slipped into Gaderia at dawn, scouting the layout and gathering intelligence. With his signal to guide them, the remaining four had infiltrated without a hitch.
Gaderia at night was quiet. A handful of late-night establishments still had their lights burning, the sounds of drinking and revelry drifting from within.
The assassin who had entered first gestured once. The others fell into step directly behind him.
They melted into the shadows and made their way silently toward the Demon Special Zone.
Within the Demon Special Zone, the largest building — aside from the New Demon Association headquarters — was Aura's house.
Most Demons had no particular standards for where they lived; a simple wooden hut was more than enough for one to stay in alone. For most of the Demon Race, rest wasn't truly necessary — lying down on the floor was a symbolic gesture, something learned and imitated from humans. As long as they had sufficient mana, they could remain alert indefinitely.
The five assassins moved to the five corners of the two-story wooden house. Each reached into their garments and produced a chunk of white mineral ore — roughly the size of half a human head — and pressed it halfway into the soil.
The five processed Mana-Sealing Stones activated in concert, their interaction forming a pentagram of white light — a barrier that sealed the surrounding area in its grasp.
"Hm?"
Inside the house, Aura — still in the middle of her attempt to modify the Magic of Obedience — felt her mana suddenly lurch and scatter, dissolving completely beyond her control.
The locked wooden door was pried open. The five black-clad assassins slipped inside like ghosts — not a single footstep made a sound.
The ground floor held only the kitchen, the dining room, and the parlor. The second floor had four bedrooms in total, every door shut tight.
The five assassins exchanged a glance. One stayed behind to guard the staircase. The other four split off and crept toward the four rooms.
Sensing that something was wrong, Aura rose from her bed. She was wearing only a thin purple lace nightgown. She didn't spare a thought for her state of dress — barefoot, she padded slowly toward her bedroom door.
Creak. The door she had locked from the inside swung open.
A figure in black entered — face masked, eyes utterly empty.
"Who are you?"
Aura extended one pale arm. The magic circle of her Killing Magic formed in an instant — but the moment mana surged from her body, no black-and-white column of light erupted. Only a small wisp of white smoke curled up from her palm.
Magic was completely useless.
In all her centuries of existence, Aura had never once encountered a situation like this. Her expression, for the first time in a long while, turned genuinely grave.
Watching the assassin advance on her with slow, measured steps, she made a split-second decision — and simply opened her mouth as wide as it would go:
"MURDER! HELP! SOMEONE'S TRYING TO KILL ME!!!"
____
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