Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

'Sha! Another battalion is on our tail.' Raven informed the others, cloaked in a dark rag as a slave and walking by Amelia's side. Wearing dark armor from the murdered centaurs, the once princess was pretending to be a guard taking Raven down the streets with a chain around his neck.

Touching the passerby, the mage had already managed to alter many minds to be his slaves but kept the brainwashing behind a common trigger. He even slipped ethereal dark fairies into their clothes, just in case he needed to get rid of them or simply wanted to cause chaos through the streets.

His attempts to stay discreet, however, have clearly failed as the people began to subside to make room for the approaching soldiers. Led by a lance wielder, the entire group was headed for Raven's head. And so, letting down the mask of pretense, the mage slipped Amelia back into the gem and took a swift turn into the alley to his left.

The soldiers, although mindful, followed right behind him, not realizing that a sharp archer was already aiming at the entrance to the alley from atop an empty sediment building. Charging her arrow with a sparse bit of her magic, Mel aimed not for the leader himself but rather for the gap between him and his men.

'Treant, crush them!' Letting go of the arrow, Mel transformed the wood on it into a full-bodied Treant being flung through the air. However, instead of landing on someone to harm them, it crashed against the ground and stood towering before the soldiers.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Stopping at the rate that they were going, the soldiers bumped into each other and went crashing against the tree monsters.

Taking advantage of the situation, the massive tree spread its fingers like vines and began squeezing the monsters between them. Even raising them in the air, the summon used the very armored bodies of the centaurs to crush the rest of the soldiers.

'You want me to drop in?' Amedith asked Raven through the mind link while flying through the air alongside Liliyana who'd been using her magic to shrink both herself and her lover to a point that nobody could see them scouting the streets.

'No, I told you I wanna fight one of them head-on, didn't I?' Raven responded, the centaurian leader still inching closer and closer to his body with the massive lance.

'Yeah, that was supposed to be tomorrow after you've rested and not after altering the minds of thousands for a week straight.' Amedith complained, but at this point the mage simply ignored him.

Leading the leader into a corner, he quickly turned around to face him. The centaur wasn't dumb enough to charge in either, especially since none of his soldiers made it so far, and for all he knew, getting him here was Raven's plan all along.

Jerking his lance to the side, the dark-armored centaurian scoffed at the dark mage. He'd been hunting him for a while along with the rest of the battalion leaders but from what he'd heard, he didn't expect the person spreading so much chaos was someone like Raven.

"A mage, aren't you? Go ahead! Fire your spells!" He challenged, but to his surprise, undoing the cloak on his body Raven revealed that he wasn't wearing any armor.

What shocked the centaur even more were dark veins coursing through his chest and the darkened aura bleeding out of the mage's skin. It was an after-effect of consuming darkness from some horrors, but the soldier had no clue, thus making use of his confusion, Raven bolted forward–the darkness itself propelling him fast enough to leave an afterimage behind.

"Let's see how long you can endure." Conjuring a wire made of darkness–much similar to the one Lilith used as her weapon, Raven slipped it into the gap between his helmet and the chest plate before getting on top of the monster's back. "Now shut the fuck up and die!"

Pulling on the wire hard enough to bend the chainmail covering the soldier's neck, Raven squeezed his neck as hard as possible. Choked off of air unexpectedly, the monster couldn't think straight and desperately attempted to reach for the wire. However, since the gap was too small for his fingers, he moved on to trying to elbow Raven on the sides.

Frantically jumping with his animal body the soldier desperately kept trying to get Raven off of his back, but the more he struggled the more his body grew tired, and eventually his eyes rolled up and his mind shut down from lack of oxygen.

'I thought you were gonna fight him head-on?' Amedith questioned, still flying overhead.

'By head-on, I meant one-on-one. I'm not a barbarian you idiot, dark mages are essentially assassins that use magic.' Shifting his attention back to his body after quickly responding to Amedith, Raven noticed that the darkness in his veins was slowly dissipating.

It was almost like a bodily enhancement, the same as buffing spells, but from his own experience, the darkness was far more versatile in its implementation.

'And I can summon fairies and turn into that beast form so there's that too.' Done testing his skills, he connected his mind with everyone else again. 'Helga should've cleared another base closer to the coliseum. The security there will probably be more extreme so let's keep our heads low and get there, okay?'

Slowly but surely the party was moving closer and closer to the coliseum, and the further they got the more dense the security became. So far they hadn't been struggling much at all, but with at least a few thousand centaur–both brute and magic users camping the king's dwelling, it was safe to say that they needed to have a sure plan before barging right in.

'If the Mages are corrupted by some horror, their powers have to be similar to what I can use when using corruption which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, to be honest.' Raven pondered, not realizing that everyone's mind was still linked to each other.

'You're right, but that just means we have to work harder.' Said Mel.

'Harder?! I'm already tired of trying to control more and more of these bastards!' Aria complained right before Raven cut off their mental line.

"We don't have time to bicker…" He whispered, although even he knew that they had to get some rest tonight after that long week of hunting centaurians non-stop.

Maybe the Maze? Maybe just Athenia in general, a visit to the Boar Tooth or the Queen of their homeland? In the end, however, Raven knew that this was no time to go back even for resting, and instead decided on something special for the night in this city of monsters itself.

'I heard they have a bar close to where Helga should be hunting for a base.' Connecting their minds for a moment as they made their way through the shadows, Raven's next words managed to bring a smile to everyone's lips. 'Let's hope it's not closed when we get there!'

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