In a residential district with fewer than forty buildings, they had somehow caught eight mind flayer symbionts. The proportion was astonishing.
Every one of these symbionts was young. Most were only in their teens, and the oldest was barely over twenty.
A chill settled over Anser, but he had no time to interrogate them. He continued searching elsewhere.
Perhaps intimidated by his presence, the fighting in Middle City gradually died down.
Most of the symbionts stopped resisting. They couldn't escape, and fighting meant dying on the spot. Surrender was their only option.
Anser looked down from above. There were no longer any mind flayers in sight.
'Either they're dead or they've fled.'
According to the experience notifications, five mind flayers had been killed in Middle City. Anser had killed two, while Stoll, Iris, and Delira had each killed one.
Lower City and Upper City had also scored kills, bringing the total number of dead mind flayers to eleven. Just from True Seeing and Intellect Fortress, Anser had received nearly five thousand experience points.
Eleven was certainly a sizable number, yet Anser couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
'No intellect devourers, and no hosts...'
According to their earlier deductions, the mind flayers should have been using intellect devourers and mind flayer tadpoles to parasitize and control the city's residents, then disguising them as ordinary people and having them live normal lives. When necessary, they could activate them all at once and seize the entire Rock of Bral.
That was exactly what they had done during the previous mind flayer disaster.
That night, Anser had discovered quite a few hosts and killed many intellect devourers as well.
Just then, he suddenly sensed that one of the True Seeing spells he had cast earlier had ended!
True Seeing didn't require concentration, but the caster could still sense it—at the very least, whether the spell was still in effect.
'Something happened. Who was it?'
Upper, Middle, and Lower City were arranged like three tiers of terraced fields. From his current position, Anser could easily overlook Middle City and Lower City, and could see part of Upper City as well.
He swept his gaze across them. There was little fighting left, and none of it was particularly intense.
The underside!
He immediately sent Sendings to Sollfrank and Froidin, asking what was happening.
The first Sending failed.
"Help, President!" Froidin's reply was exceptionally brief.
'I knew it wouldn't be that simple!'
Without time to think further, Anser slipped into the Ethereal Plane and plunged straight down through the ground.
The Rock of Bral was an elongated asteroid. A "gravity plane" perpendicular to its height divided the Rock into two halves, with one side forming the top and the other the underside.
Upper, Middle, and Lower City were all on the top, where the overwhelming majority of Bral's residents lived.
The underside was the opposite face of the asteroid. Because of the "gravity plane," up and down were reversed for those living there compared to those on the top. The two populations effectively lived foot-to-foot, separated by a massive layer of rock.
Bral's underside wasn't open to outsiders, so little was known about it. Most people only knew that it contained farmland, prisons, the Royal Navy headquarters, and the army fortress.
Anser sped downward while sending messages to Stoll, Evan, Rand, Delira, Valera, and a select few others, informing them that something had happened on Bral's underside.
Considering the possible danger, he didn't call Iris or any of his other subordinates.
A minute later, he emerged from the rock layer, and vast stretches of farmland came into view.
He transformed into a bird, then quietly returned to the Material Plane. His vision immediately cleared, though everything before him appeared upside down.
He turned around, spread his wings, and climbed, bringing the entire underside of Bral into view.
Farmland stretched everywhere he looked, filled with fruits, vegetables, and grains in a variety of colors, all bursting with life.
The most striking feature was the military fortress at the center. It stood dozens of meters tall, with massive walls and gray-black stonework that gave it a truly imposing, solemn appearance.
Two long, narrow, roofed passages extended from the fortress, connecting respectively to the Left Tower and Right Tower.
Each of those towers extended three more long, narrow passages. At the end of every passage stood a small tower positioned along Bral's perimeter, equipped with ballistae and cannons.
On one side of the fortress stood two rectangular barracks connected to it by narrow walkways. The words "Prisoner Barracks" were written on them.
At a glance, Anser spotted the fortress gates hanging half-open and army soldiers fleeing in every direction.
'The Cozar royal family really is a failure. So they were hiding right in your own backyard.'
Rather than investigate immediately, he turned toward the Royal Navy base at the head of the Rock of Bral. It was just as chaotic, with the sounds of battle carrying from afar.
Four spelljamming ships were docked at the harbor, and for the moment, the fighting hadn't reached them.
Anser immediately slipped back into the Ethereal Plane and headed straight for the docks.
Froidin, commander of the Royal Navy, was still alive. Saving him came first. Besides, those spelljamming ships were worth a fortune and couldn't be allowed to fall into enemy hands.
Wind roared past Anser's ears as he rapidly closed the distance, reaching the naval base in only a few dozen seconds.
No one was in the air. On the ground, the two sides were locked in a chaotic battle.
One side consisted of Bral's navy, more than two hundred strong. Froidin was among them, directing the battle from within the formation.
Blood was running from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. From the looks of him, he'd taken a serious beating.
The opposing side numbered nearly a hundred. Their clothing and equipment were a chaotic mix of navy uniforms, army uniforms, and prisoner garb. At their head were three mind flayers.
The mind flayers weren't flying either. They hovered close to the ground, using the others as human shields against musket fire and occasionally darting out to unleash a Mind Blast.
The wide-area psionic attack was making life miserable for the naval soldiers, inflicting significant casualties every time it struck.
'Why aren't the mind flayers running? How many people have they taken control of?'
Anser had plenty of questions, but right now, all he wanted was to kill.
He tightened his grip on the Arcanefire Longbow, activated Transcendent Form, and approached through the Ethereal Plane until he was directly above the three mind flayers.
The three were relatively spread out, with more than twenty meters between each of them.
'Good. I'm betting your Plane Shift can't be cast instantly!'
Magic Power surged around him. He lightly drew the bowstring and flashed back into the Material Plane.
His fingertip flicked.
A glimmer of magical light burst forth.
Innate Sorcery + Metamagic: Enhanced Quickened Spell, Enhanced Heighten Spell, Twinned Spell + 6th-level Hold Monster!
The instant the mind flayers sensed him, three invisible waves struck them simultaneously.
The slowly curling tentacles on two of the mind flayers' heads immediately went limp. Their bodies became paralyzed, and they dropped straight to the ground.
The third mind flayer barely succeeded on its Wisdom saving throw, but before it could act, a second wave of magic struck. Its body stiffened, and it followed its companions down.
Anser could concentrate on multiple spells simultaneously. Following up with more crowd control was nothing unusual for him.
[You cast Hold Monster on a mind flayer, forcing it to make a Wisdom saving throw. Saving throw failed...]
Anser didn't pause. He cast again.
Innate Sorcery + Metamagic: Enhanced Quickened Spell, Enhanced Subtle Spell, Maximized Spell + Sunburst!
Beneath Anser, dazzling golden sunlight suddenly erupted, instantly forming a colossal sun more than seventy meters in diameter. Boundless light and heat swept through everything as the air distorted and waves of scorching heat rolled outward.
The brilliant sunlight brought no hope—only pure destruction.
After an exceedingly brief lull, a second sun erupted in blazing radiance, even brighter than the first.
At the heart of the suns stood Anser, like a descending god.
Unfortunately, almost no one could see him.
Only a few naval officers in the distance, enduring the stabbing pain in their eyes, stubbornly kept their gazes raised toward that indistinct six-winged figure.
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