The western duke is based further away and will have to fight his way here through the eastern duke’s forces. The eastern duke is probably trying to finish things here so he can turn his full attention to the western duke. The battle between the two of them will decide the outcome of the civil war.

  Or at least that is probably what they are hoping for, but it won’t be that simple. Even if the northern duke doesn’t get involved, I plan to interfere quite a bit. I still haven’t decided what I am actually going to do, but whatever it is, it won’t be good for them.

  The capital is a much larger city, so I start on the outside and spiral my way in as I scan. Even before I start scanning, I notice people sneaking out of the city at several points. It looks like they are the smart ones and have noticed which way the wind is blowing.

  Even if the invaders are being well behaved, being in a city as it falls isn’t a good idea. It is a much better idea to leave the city before it falls and then come back afterwards. Or better yet, just move to another city that isn’t under the threat of war.

  I was planning to ignore all of those fleeing, but then I spot a group that triggers my anger. Someone is leaving the city with a large group of slaves, I can see the restraints as plain as day. It doesn’t look like there are any beastmen among the slaves, but I still hate slavery.

  There are about fifty slaves, mostly female, and only ten or so people guarding them. I swoop down and attack, but I am careful that I don’t hurt any of the slaves by accident. I am well within view of the city’s walls, but no one comes out to help them against me.

  10 Humans defeated! 1,250 Exp gained!

  To my surprise, none of the slaves freak out when they see me kill their captors. I am in my normal form, the slaves should be terrified, but they are excited instead. I spread a little mana out and then use it to shatter all of their restraints to save time.

  Slave says “Thank you! Are you really going to send us to a country where slavery is illegal?!”

  “Yes, I am, but how did you know that?!”

  Slave says “I have a slight gift of prophecy. I dreamed of you saving us last night, but I found it a little hard to believe.”

  “Well, here in a second I am going to open a gate back to my territory. You will be fed and cared for and you will be able to choose where you want to go from there. I don’t have time to escort you back myself, I have other things that I need to do.”

  Slave says “It’s fine, we are just happy to be free!”

  I open a gate back to the fort and wait for all of them to go through before I close it. The personnel in the fort will take care of them without me having to issue any orders. By now, there is quite the crowd standing on the city walls watching me, but I ignore them.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  It isn’t like they can do anything to me and even if they know I am flying around the city it won’t matter. With my new speed, I don’t even really need to worry about siege engines. It would take a miracle for them to be able to hit me unless I stood still for them.

  Even if they did somehow manage to hit me, I doubt that it would do much damage to me. So, I return to the air and go back to circling the city and casting the detection spell. To my surprise, I quickly find a group of demons in the outer city, over thirty of them.

  None of them feel all that strong, but that is quite a few cores that I could feed to my angel. So, I fly over until I am above the building that I can sense them in and drop down through the roof. When I crash into the room, I not only find the demons, but also the human women they are abusing.

  To say that the demons are surprised to see me would be a major understatement. Since there are innocent humans in the room, I can’t just blast all of the demons like I had planned. So, before they can recover from their surprise, I start tearing them apart with my claws.

  As I do, I also spread out my mana to both protect the women and seal the room. I don’t want any of the demons to be able to escape, but I also don’t want more humans interfering. When they recover, several of the demons immediately try to run away, as expected.

  A couple of the demons even try to use human women as hostages, but it doesn’t work. In fact, thanks to my aura, the human women are healing as the demons are dying. I make sure to cut down every single demon and it feels quite good to do so.

  32 Demons defeated! 305,000 Exp gained!

  As soon as all the demons are dead, I quickly gather their cores and then open a gate to the fort. None of the human women object to leaving the empire behind and starting new lives. I have no idea what led to them being given to the demons, but they obviously don’t want to stick around.

  By the time I close the gate behind them, there are human soldiers trying to force their way into the building. Of course, since my mana is still sealing the doors they are not having much luck. In fact, the entire building is surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, I guess I attracted some attention.

  Just in case, I cast the detection spell again, but there are no demons within range. So, I ignore the soldiers and fly up through the hole that I made in the ceiling. Only then do I remove the mana and allow the soldiers to charge into the building.

  They are so focused on getting into the building that very few of them notice me flying above it. However, I ignore all of them and go back to flying around the city scanning for demons. With a group that big, I am guessing that I am going to find more around the city.

  As I am scanning the rest of the city I do find a few more small groups, but not as many as I was expecting. Since they are small groups of weak demons, I don’t bother to go after them. It looks like the big gathering was something special rather than something normal.

  There aren’t even twenty demons in the rest of the city, so it isn’t worth my time. The final area for me to scan is the imperial palace, which sits in the center of the city. When I fly over it and cast the detection spell I only detect a single demon, but it is a strong one.

  Of course, it is sitting somewhere in the center of the palace, making it hard to attack. If I make a move towards the demon every soldier in the palace will come after me. Normal soldiers don’t worry me, but the royal guard should be the strongest troops the empire has.