Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

\'Kill them, before they can blink.\' Aria, Mel, Erika, and even Lilith, all followed his command and darted out of the forest. Their sudden appearance was intentionally made known as Raven and the rest stomped their way closer towards Tymaan–the leader of the dark elves. \'Clear a way to him–the others will fall without a leader.\'

\'I can always plague them…\' Erika suggested and everyone except Lilith chuckled at her response. It even left her a bit baffled, as to how in the specter of a second that took them to get close to the surprised elves, Raven and his companions were making jokes to each other. But what she heard next left her even more baffled.

\'That\'d be too easy now, won\'t it?\' Was Raven\'s reply.

Before she could wrap her head around it, the world resumed its natural flow of time, and in the blink of an eye, the mage–the barbarian, and even the priestess were all covered in blood with dead elves thrashing to the ground left and right.

\'WHAT THE HELL?!\' Her senses were far too slow to notice the barbarian knocking the heads off of the elves with a single punch each, or to catch Raven\'s swift feet hiding him around to slice through their bellies or even the priestess\'s whispering curses that made the dark elves stab themselves with their own weapons.

"Maybe we over-prepared a little?" Raven muttered, and the last of the elven bodies fell to the ground.

Leaving a moment of silence to loom over the massacre, he left just enough time for the bystanding villagers and their chief to catch up to what was happening. And when they did, the villagers rushed away screaming while their chieftain stood before Raven, grunting a visceral grunt.

"Anyways," conjuring a dark knife in his hands, Raven flipped it around while circling the cornered chieftain. With a mocking smirk on his face, he kept his eyes glued to those raging brows across the chocolate elf\'s face.

"I\'ll let you choose, death for being such a pain in the ass to a certain goddess or you\'re gonna talk; tell us about the others and maybe then…death for being such a pain in the ass for a certain goddess."

A flit of joy made Raven\'s eyes glint with faerie mischief. He was loving every word of mockery towards the chief.

"YOU!" The chief attempted to raise his iron gauntlet against Raven, but the cold hand of an undead grabbing his leg shifted his attention to his feet. As he turned to look, the fallen elves were rising from the ground. Groaning and snarling they circled both Raven and him, but with the mage casually stepping out of the encirclement, it was clear who their target was.

"A single irrelevant word and I\'ll let them loose," Aria warned, her right hand held to the side and glowing the greenish hue of necromancy. She\'d inherited the spell from the tome during the trip to this village, and yet somehow, it felt like second nature–commanding the dead that is.

\'Another surprise skill from a party member…\' Still kept in the dark about the existence of the tome, Raven wanted some answers but they could obviously wait until the fight was over.

Even through all of this, the elven chief remained tight-lipped. He knew his fate if he talked and even if he didn\'t and so the best thing for him was to die fighting.

"Oh for the love of the goddess! Just wasting our time, you dead bastard!" Rolling her eyes at him, Erika turned her attention to the villagers who were still running away. Holding her right hand towards them, she bound them with a lasso of crimson mist and began dragging them closer to her. "If you don\'t care for yourself, what about your clan?

We can eradicate every single person here so there\'s not a speck of your filthy faces left on Atlaria."

The horde of people reeled in by Erika thrashed against each other in the lasso in a desperate attempt to escape. Tightening the mystic rope the more they struggled, she began squeezing them hard until their eyes began popping out of their skulls.

Tymaan\'s eyes wandered between his people and the party, as he still didn\'t want to give anything to them, even if it meant the complete eradication of his plans. That is until, the sounds of steps and a woman\'s cries creeped out of the dungeon steps. Glancing over to the entrance in the ground, his eyes widened in horror at the sight of Amedith dragging Flora along by her hair.

"How about now? Gonna speak or should I send her and your children to the devils as well?" Although barely holding himself together after that spell to conjure devils, Amedith\'s bloodied body warned Tymaan to not take his threat in jest.

"DON\'T YOU DARE TOUCH HER!" He screamed, but his voice was quickly reeled in as Liliyana who\'d just walked up beside Amedith began making herself larger. Following her height with his gaze, he watched and watched until her body shadowed the entire village under her shade.

"Don\'t you dare scream at him," warned the devil, her enraged sapphire eyes lighting the very shade over the village chief. "I may be a healer, but it\'ll take me one step to bury your entire village."

Between giving up information about the other clans or saving his future children, Tymaan had no real choice. His blood still boiled with anger and his teeth audibly creaked through his tightly clenched jaws, however, with a sideways glance at Raven, he finally made up his mind.

"Let my children live and I\'ll tell you everything…" He begged.

\'No mercy.\' Raven told the others but nodded to the elf\'s request.