100 The Necromancer and the Priestess 32

Yin Mei had sneaked out with the help of Azurite using stealth and transformation magic, exiting the castle into the royal capital. The royal capital was a bustling place, filled with energy, despite the fact that their king had just been overthrown. Actually, it wasn't the commoners who they needed to be worried about - they didn't care who the king was, only concerned with whether or not their lives would change as the result of the king. It was the nobles that they needed to watch out for, always calculating things with their own interests in mind, save for that rare noble that thought about the people.

"Azurite, do you think you can find them?" Yin Mei asked, talking to the black cat on her shoulder. With disguise magic, Azurite had turned herself from a very stand out black dragon into a less noticeable black cat. As for Yin Mei, she now had short black hair, looking and sounding like a young man.

"A group of soldiers, with the king and prince," Azurite confirmed and Yin Mei nodded. Before leaving the castle, she had looked around for pictures of the royal family and found a family photo with the king, deceased queen, and prince and princess. The king was an older man with white hair and a beard, but still managed to look like some sort of warrior king. The queen looked similar to Eve, though with a peaceful and loving expression on her face. The prince and princess were both children in this picture, like a happy family.

Finding another painting, the prince was standing in one, a sword in his hand and wearing a red fur trimmed robe. He had on a dignified expression, looking like what Yin Mei thought a prince should look like.

Azurite began searching around with her magic senses, before shaking her head. She could sense that the silver haired demon that Yin Mei liked had arrived via teleportation magic, but stayed silent on that.

Yin Mei sighed. Did they already leave the city? If they were in the city, Azurite would have definitely sensed them. It seemed that the two of them would need to go outside to find the runaway king and prince.

Yin Mei would have liked to explore more of the royal capital of the demons, but no matter. There were more important things to do.

Meanwhile, in the castle, El was angry, but also couldn't understand. What in the world was Celes doing? She must know that going out was dangerous, yet she had still done it anyways.

It was the same when she had tried to reject treatment, even though she knew that her lifespan would shorten as a result, and she would also become unable to ever use stronger magic again.

He couldn't understand her reasoning for her choices - it was as if she was purposefully courting death. She clearly had no care for her life and death, and that made him upset.

Yin Mei wasn't purposefully courting death. She'd rather like to call it dancing with death. Or perhaps she was just too desensitized that she could no longer comprehend how dangerous the things that she did were.

Yin Mei was currently kneeling in the forest, one hand on a tree trunk as Azurite's tail swished back and forth.

Right when Yin Mei was about to move, she heard a notification sound from System 097.

"ERROR. Recalculating mission. Mission updated."

"New mission: Return to the dragon valley and finish recovery."

... Yin Mei was a little bit speechless.

She wasn't sure how to feel - was this her being so important to El that he no longer cared about the demon king's throne and instead just wished for her to finish her recovery?

But, she still couldn't understand why her recovery was so important.

In the end, Yin Mei didn't want El to be the one to suffer. She decided that if he wanted it so badly, then she should go ahead and just follow what the mission says.

The problem was, she had already come so far, wasn't it better to just finish what she started before leaving?

She stared down at the clearing in front of her, where a group of soldiers were setting up camp.

Mm, she would real quick finish things up here before going back. Well, that was her original plan anyways.

She confirmed the locations of all the people here, along with their power levels. Even though she had lost most of her magic, something as simple as this didn't require magic. But, just in case, she had Azurite do the same - after all, if someone was using magic like they were to disguise or hide themselves, then her instincts wouldn't be enough to sniff them out.

Azurite confirmed Yin Mei's suspicions - there was a total of four people who were hidden from her view with magic. According to Azurite though, they were not strong enough to contend against her. Although Azurite was arrogant, she was not so much so that she couldn't get a proper grasp of other people's strengths - especially after her attack had been blocked by a mere human, she had become more cautious when judging others.

Then, what Yin Mei needed was for Azurite to take care of those four, and any mages. Yin Mei wasn't an idiot - when it came down to it, the most magic she could do right now was a bit of physical enhancement, and maybe a fireball. She wouldn't be able to contend with a royal mage. Especially when her knowledge of demon magic wasn't that deep.

But, the group of soldiers. Those she could take care of.

This time, she really wasn't being arrogant. Honestly, with a dragon on her side, there was no mentioning of arrogance at that point. But, dragon aside, Yin Mei did have the experience and skills necessary to take these guys on.

"Alright, on my mark." She leaned forward slightly, the leaves crunching beneath her foot. But it didn't alert anyone, courtesy of Azurite's stealth magic. "Go." Azurite jumped from her neck, racing off into the trees, her figure quickly disappearing as Yin Mei lunged forward.

There was no clamor from the soldiers - Azurite hadn't released her magic. To them, she was still completely invisible.

Yin Mei unsheathed a knife, grabbing the first soldier, covering his mouth with her hand as she slit his throat. He didn't have any time to say anything, collapsing to the ground as weird sounds attempted to come out of his mouth, blood flowing from his neck.

There was an immediate clamor from the soldiers, as they quickly moved to protect the king and prince, uneasiness showing on the faces of some of the more green soldiers. Yin Mei could pinpoint one person who was clearly the leader - a handsome uncle with slit-pupil eyes, the only characteristic that differentiated his appearance from that of a normal human.

"What's going on?" The king said, narrowing his eyes.

"He collapsed just out of nowhere..." One soldier said in a frightened tone, pale faced.

"Shut up! They must be using some sort of stealth or invisibility magic." The captain said, looking to a robed mage next to him, nodding.

But Azurite's magic couldn't be so easily discovered.

The mage shook his head and even the captain felt a chill go down his back. The most likely reason was that the opponent had a magician of even greater skill then their own. And a stronger magician meant that they would most likely not be able to win.

He could tell that they would probably die here. He closed his eyes. So this was as far as they got?

Opening them up again, a resolute expression was on his face.

"Wow, I like that look," Yin Mei said, but even her voice couldn't be heard by the group.

She went up to the next person, a low sweep of her foot sending them crashing to the ground as she stabbed down at his neck. The other soldiers immediately swung their swords toward the person who had fallen - only able to vaguely guess Yin Mei's location. She swiftly dodged their haphazard blows, quickly slicing the necks of a couple of soldiers in the process.

Fighting an invisible enemy who you couldn't see, hear, nor sense was truly terrifying.

One soldier tried to throw dirt to catch the invisible body, but even if that did fall on Yin Mei, it would only become invisible with her.

The only thing that she was cautious about was, after all, that captain.

He wasn't the leader of the soldiers here for nothing. He was more skilled than her in combat. Yin Mei had never actually specialized in combat - in the cultivation world, she did learn more than enough, mostly from the memories of her host bodies, but that sort of combat also relied on cultivation. The rest came from her surviving a zombie apocalypse, but the combat she learned there was dirty and emphasized survival above all else.

In other words, compared to a real master like the one in front of her, she wasn't exactly sure how things would fare.

But, she also had the clear advantage of being invisible.

Suddenly, a spear of black crackling lightning flew out of the woods, piercing the mage right through the chest.

"Alexander!" The captain shouted, frustrated. What in the world was that black lightning? There was someone else here? From what he can see, the invisible person was using a blade. They had a strong stealth magic - probably from a different person, a powerful mage. That meant that the black lightning was from the mage?

Demonic magic was complicated. The variety of spells used was far wider than that of human magic, so even for someone who specialized in studying all sorts of magic, it would be hard to know what every spell was.

Especially for a knight like the captain, there was no way that he would be able to know what type of magic had just came flying at the mage. All he knew was that it was clearly dangerous.

It freaking one shot their mage! Okay, sure, Alexander was not the best mage in the demon world - no, their best mage had turned coat and gone to Azazel's side, for reasons unknown, but that was still a royal court mage they were talking about here.

The moment the knight captain was distracted, Yin Mei lunged forward, her knife swift as it shot straight toward his neck.

It hit, sparks seeming to fly as it almost seemed to bounce off, like it had hit armor. But it didn't. "What the fuck?" Yin Mei said, confused.

This was a mithril dagger that she had nicked from grandpa dragon's treasure horde. It sliced through normal armor like butter, let alone flesh and bone.

What sort of goddamned enchantment did this bastard have on that could actually block the mithril knife?

And because of that attack, the man immediately became attentive, clutching at his neck with a serious expression. For this person to so quickly and accurately strike at his neck during that moment of distraction, he could tell that they were skilled.

If not for his family clan's innate magic that protected his entire body like armor, he would have definitely died right then.

"Captain! What in the world is going on!" The king shouted, slightly agitated now. So many of their soldiers had already fallen, and he was afraid that he would be next.

But he shouldn't have said anything, because he reminded Yin Mei of his existence.

That was right. Why was she focusing on the knight captain? She didn't even need to kill him - all she needed was the king and prince dead.

"Your Majesty!" The knight captain also grew slightly panicked. Although he could protect himself from this invisible being, the king and prince were a different story, especially when he didn't know where the attacks were coming from. There was also the other attacker, who possessed that terrifying magic.

Yin Mei stabbed the king through the back, and broke the neck of the prince. They both collapsed on the ground motionlessly.

"... Well that escalated quickly. Much easier than I thought." Yin Mei mused as Azurite ran out from the forest, taking a leap and landing flawlessly onto Yin Mei's head, her tail swishing back and forth happily.

"Of course, these weak things are nothing before me, muahahaha!!" Azurite said proudly, laughing like some cliche villain from the stories.

Yin Mei nodded. That's true. It was all because of Azurite that things went this easily. Dragons weren't the strongest for nothing. "My Azurite is so awesome!" Thus Yin Mei concluded, a proud expression on her face.