Supreme Monarch

In the dark and now emptied junkyard, Tyler stood at the same spot for quite a while as he blankly stared at his right hand with what others would consider a dumbfounded expression on his face. He squeezed his hand several times and replayed the last sensation he had felt in his mind.

'What, in the world was that? Some kind of defensive spell? ' 

His mind felt weird as he tried to make sense of what he had felt. The masked man's movements, his tone, and the way he carried himself had all told Tyler that he was indeed a man so what was with that sudden high pitch voice at the end.

Tyler sighed in a sudden wave of mental exhaustion as he threw the matter to the back of his mind, not wanting to stress about irrelevant things.

He had already spent way too much time in this place and could faintly hear the sounds of footsteps lazily approaching this place from a distance. Looking around at the current state of his current location, he could not afford to be caught here so he should not waste any more time just standing around.

This entire series of events hadn't gone according to his plans at all and he was once again reminded of how limited he was in a proper fight as he lacked a variety of utility skills and spells as all the low-level spells he knew were all too flashy and wasn't suitable to be used in the confines of a city.

It was a good thing he tended to make multiple backup plans which may or may not be a sign of his lack of confidence in his first plan from the beginning. Perhaps this would be considered a bad habit but now was not the time to think about it.

"Zelda."

The shadow underneath his feet moved and a shadowy figure of the beautiful pale skinned greenish-black haired girl with eerily glowing green pupils appeared before him and knelt.

Tyler had expanded his magic sense to the max and could not sense or locate the figure of that skinny fellow so he assumed she had moved him somewhere else. He gave her similar orders for all the corpses on the ground that hadn't been minced up by the storm.

Zelda nodded slightly and immediately went to work so Tyler took the brief moment and brought out a dark brown scroll from his spatial storage and proceeded to activate it. Since there was nothing he could do to repair the damaged area and although he hadn't even been able to silence everyone that saw his face, he still wanted to do his best in preventing any investigations using magic— from revealing anything about him.

Once Zelda was done moving the bodies a considerable distance away with the aide of her shadow movement skill, she came over and with his permission, she took Tyler with her to the location.

••••••••••

••••••••••

As their figure turned into shadows and disappeared into the night. Two chubby-looking guards holding magic lanterns walked out of one of the alleys and into the unlit clearing next to the junkyard.

"Oi! anyone there? Come out now!" 

A guard with short brown hair and an unkempt beard, wearing silver full plate armor and holding a magic lantern with his left hand and a long sword in the other, shouted into the clearing as they exited the alley into the clearing.

"This is Winged City's patrol force and this area is off-limits to commoners, surrender now." The second guard spoke next.

Although he sounded more commanding and professional, he looked the least motivated among the pair as his sword was still strapped on his waist and he walked a little clumsily as his plumped dark-skinned face was flushed a little red.

He was bald and had a trimmed black beard with brown eyes and a dark skin tone. A short horn protruded from the side of his head and a long tail drooped from his back to the ground as if to say, it was too lazy to move around.

The bald man yawned after his words and then proceeded to walk in a lackadaisical manner. They both also had one-handed crossbows strapped to their backs but they had forgotten to bring along any ammunition for it as they moved further into the clearing.

While the place was in a complete mess and there were shattered rocks and debris all over the place, the pair had simply ignored it as they felt the situation in this part of the south was mostly like this. However, as they turned their lanterns so they could see further into the dark since both of them did not possess Darkvision or any other night sensory-related skills.

Their eyes suddenly widened and their mouths went agape. The junkyard that was normally full of junk from the several ore refinement factories was now void of anything but sand and dust. Even the walls were now nothing but debris.

"What! Ar... Are you seeing this too or did I drink too much today?" The bald man spoke with his mouth still opened as he stared blankly at the empty space.

"I... My... What... What should we do."

They were just ordinary patrol guards with the minimum training required to join. Although most demons and even lesser demons were born with at the very least a Tier 1 magic potential. Both of them had still failed to achieve their potential in both magic and swordsmanship.

Although the patrol guards were usually required to be at the Tier 1 standard. The requirements for the ones assigned to the south borough were very loose.

The brown-haired man known as Gaap Namtar had never seen anything like this in his entire life. His mind could not process how an entire junkyard of that size was emptied in mere hours. He didn't know much about magic but he was sure no one that could use magic capable of this would need useless junks that even the streets rats in this place wouldn't touch.

He was so confused that his mind almost went blank. He reflexively took a step back but suddenly stepped on something squishy and he lost his balance and fell on his butt in a metal clank. 

Being startled by the noise, the dark-skinned balled man named Patric Pazuzu jerked back in fright. His drowsiness suddenly cleared as he intensely stared at his partner on the ground who looked suddenly pale like he had just seen a ghost.

"Oi, Gaap, what's wrong."

Not getting a response, he drew his blade, and with his lantern stretched out, he carefully walked over to his pal and tapped him with his sword.

"Oi Gaap, you okay."

As the blade tapped on Gaap's shoulder, he fell back with his eyes rolled up as he had passed out. Patric was shocked and pointed his lantern at the ground to see what his pal had been looking at.

However, 

What he saw immediately turned his stomach upside down as he felt everything he has eaten and drank was fighting its way out through the wrong hole. 

The ground all around them was covered in bloody fresh body parts from several demons and blood, goo, and brain matter were splattered all over the ground.

"What... What the hell happened here!"

••••••••••••

••••••••••••

—The next morning

As the sun forced its first rays through the thick ashen clouds, Tyler and Nadine promptly left the inn for the final time this week. They did not take any public or private transportation this time around as they opted on using their eye-catching carriage, heading straight for the city's gate right here in the west borough.

This was the day he had agreed he would meet up with the Hunter party that called themselves, Unrivaled. He also needed to find out more about the mission before they would head out of the city to complete the task.

The job the party had vaguely explained to him didn't seem like it would be legal and while Tyler hadn't originally not mind due to him wanting to be introduced to the underground society of this city. With the events that occurred last night, that was no longer an issue but Tyler still needed to accept this job because he urgently required a whooping sum of more than 30,000 DC so he could not afford to decline their mission no matter how troublesome it turns out to be.

Tyler was wearing a jet black long coat with red threads that designed its edges and a hood that was draped over his head and almost completely hid his face as he was now accustomed to doing although there was someone that may or may not be a man out there and was aware of his appearance.

If he was lucky, the man would not be able to tie the identity of Lix back to his appearance as he hadn't seemed like he was directly working with those thieves and had only appeared out of curiosity. With that, he should not have any information about him unless those buffoons had submitted a written report to him and that seemed unlikely. 

Tyler sighed inwardly, he had already taken the skinny man back to the castle alongside the corpses that were intact utilizing his spatial Teleportation. He had wisely delegated the responsibility of interrogating him to Albert and Z as he wasn't sure he would be able to ask all the right questions if he did it himself, not to mention he didn't even have the time.

After finding out about the events that occurred last night with Tyler, Nadine had been dejected because she hadn't been there to protect him although Tyler felts she was just sad she missed the fight.

However, she now seemed to be in a good mood again because Tyler had bought her some sweets from the inn and probably also due to all the adoring looks she got from the men around as she drove the majestic carriage that was pulled by the rare and exotic six eyed-bull as they headed for the main gate.

Since their inn was located at the central winged plaza in the west borough and wasn't that far off from the main gate, the trip took only a few minutes.

On arrival at the gate, they quickly located the five lesser demons that made up the party, Unrivaled standing by the side of the gate with several large wooden barrels placed neatly next to them.

The barrels were well made and were about five feet tall and three feet wide. It was lined with Steel and was tightly sealed so even air couldn't penetrate it.

Tyler couldn't help but wonder what those were about as their carriage pulled up in front of the party of five and Tyler noticed they were all fully geared in relatively high-level pieces of equipment and carried decent quality weapons. 

However, before he could fully observe their individual equipment, one of them had immediately caught his attention. The Succubi wore a similar revealing armor like the last time he saw her, albeit with the additions of some impressive-looking pair of metal greaves and vambraces that adorned her seductive figure.

Although she also draped on her usual brown cloak that hid most of her body, she wielded a massive battle-ax that looked like it would weigh a ton as she casually held it over her shoulders with a single hand.

Tyler was surprised, shocked even, simply because he had assumed a succubus would naturally be a magic caster that used support-type spells to aid her allies but as it turned out, she had enough strength to fight at the frontline and Tyler remembered Dohel had called her their ace once before.

'I guess you can't judge a book by its cover huh.' Tyler sighed inwardly as his interest in this girl grew slightly. His intense gaze at her although it was hidden under his hood still emitted a faint pressure that made Kylyra's nerve tingle as she moved slightly behind Larut to avoid his line of sight with a flushed face. 

The carriage came to a complete stop in front of the party of five and Dohel quickly welcomed Tyler and Nadine, who were still going by Lix and Lillith.

"Ah you've arrived, thank you. I surely never doubted you would."

Tyler saw the other party members of Unrivaled roll their eyes at Dohel's words and chuckled. He then alighted the carriage and shook the man's hands with his gloved hand. They exchange some pleasantries before Tyler went straight to the point.

"Now that I'm here, you can now tell me what this job really is about, am I right?."

Dohel wasn't surprised by Tyler's bluntness as he had expected this from someone as mysterious as he was. He gave a wry smile as he approached Tyler and spoke in a soft tone that prevented others from listening.

"We've secretly discovered an unexplored Grade 3 Gold mine."