Merumeru, Alex and Ariel had breakfast at the tightly packed table of the Orca. One of the downsides of a concrete boat was that it had a smaller inside than a wooden boat.

  “Meru!” The slime girl procimed.

  “Yes.” Ariel agreed. “We won’t be able to take any of the clockwork ships too close; they'll have to stay anchored out here if we want to sneak in. We almost got caught a few times when we were collecting pipes back in the summer.”

  “You were taking Merumeru that close to the capital?” Alex gave the little fairy a bit of a condemning look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Ruuuuu.” Merumeru said.

  “Merumeru thought it might worry you.” Ariel transted. “She said that you don’t like it when she does dangerous things.”

  “Anyway, what’s the pn?” The bck-haired magical girl tapped the table. “Maybe we could use the balloons on the toy flying cloud and Ariel can look down on them?”

  Ariel shook her head. “I doubt that would work. My guess is that there are demons that have better senses than any of us and flying high enough to avoid their notice would mean that we wouldn’t be able to see much of anything.”

  They got more people involved and people had a lot of concerns. Ariel was easy to notice because she sparkled. Alex didn’t have good physical stats so she would be spotted easily. Even Merumeru vetoed the doll proxy. Alex could use an underwater doll but couldn’t get too close because it was also not stealthy. Clockwork dolls tended to be loud.

  Merumeru and Mariel were the best choices to be in charge of gathering information because the slime could sneak into pipes and spy on people from the sewer system and Mariel had really good perception. Most of the combat cssers were from the tribes and only a few actually had experience acting like someone in the kingdom’s demon dominated society expected them to.

  While everyone wanted to get levels from defeating demons, they agreed that taking a day to scout the area and come up with a more detailed pn to get what they wanted quickly and be out the same day was very prudent.

  When night came, a group of combat cssers set off in dinghies. Merumeru and Mariel didn’t need that because they could operate in the water quite well. Of note, the rebuilt air boat had to be left behind. Like the dolls, the clockwork mechanism that powered it was loud. It was just ores and strong arms that quietly carried the combat cssers to a nding point hopefully far enough away from the city to not be noticed.

  In fact, Merumeru took out a card that had a picture of a frog-suit on it. She deployed it, and it made an outfit for her to change in. When she donned it, she hopped like a frog and on nd her movements were very awkward. But when she hopped into the water she was able to go quite fast.

  Marina saw this, put on her transformative magical item and the two of them raced off, quietly into the starlit winter night.

  “This waiting is driving me crazy.” Alex fidgeted uneasily. “I feel like I’m useless.”

  “You are not useless.” Ariel flew a loop around the inside of the boat. “You had a hand in all these boats. We’d be stuck either on the isnd, or even in the wastend if not for them.”

  “I know.” Alex continued shifting uneasily. “I just don’t like waiting. Trusting in other people to do something important like this just makes me consider how many things could go wrong.”

  “It hasn’t even been an hour yet.” Fufi interjected. “Nothing bad should have happened already.”

  “What about that mountain demon?” Alex considered what the most dangerous part of this city was. “Is it still busy cultivating or has it taken notice?”

  Ariel nodded. “I assume so, if that absolutely huge pile of rocks moved the ndscape would change.”

  With that tier 4 cultivator looming in the distance, everyone felt uneasy, and didn’t sleep much.

  Merumeru came back first, carrying a doll that looked just like the missing sailor doll from the summer.

  “You found the doll?” Alex reached out to the frog-suit wearing slime girl.

  “Meru!” Merumeru handed the doll over to Alex.

  Alex inspected the doll and frowned.

  Ariel transted for the slim girl. “Merumeru said she talked to her friends underwater and saw this doll from the window of a big building. So she snuck in and snatched it.”

  “I know my work.” Alex pointed to the seams of the sailor outfit. “And this is a copy. I’m not sure why they would do that but it isn’t my doll.”

  “ru..” Merumeru sounded sad.

  “Merumeru will keep looking.” Ariel also sounded sad. “She is very good at sneaking into any building with a sewer system.”

  “Any other news?” Alex asked, hoping that at least they got a good update on the flying cloud.

  “Marina and the other humans are sneaking around, collecting information.” Ariel stated. “You’ll have to wait until at least tomorrow for some of them to come back.”

  After getting some tea and berries, Merumeru set out again, vowing to try to find the correct doll this time.

  The next day Marina came back aboard their ship with juicy gossip. “It turns out that there was some kind of civil war between the ice cn and the fire cn to the east. Thousands of demons were lost, and not all of them tier 1.”

  “Does that matter?” Alex figured their numbers were endless. “They can just get more.”

  “Yes and no.” Marina waved a hand. “You see the kingdom of Jass is effectively under an embargo right now. They would need to get a bunch of support to unch another army across the ocean where the real stronghold of the demon queen’s forces are. But demon summoners can summon more demons. The entire magic academy is devoted to raising up more demon summoners. But they have problems.”

  “What problems?” Alex tilted her head.

  “Like any combat css, they have to defeat enemies to level. And a level 1 demon summoner can only summon a single tier demon at a time. Also, it requires a lengthy ritual.” Marina expined.

  Ariel nodded. “Yes, this is the weakness of the demons in the Jass kingdom. They are isoted and can’t summon powerful demons if they lose one. Almost all of the demons here started out as imps and cultivated to get where they are now.”

  “Can’t they just go level up somehow?” Alex didn’t seem to get the implications. “Demons count as monsters to defeat. Maybe they could just defeat the demons they summoned, or one summoner can summon a demon and have it fight another summoners demon?”

  Ariel shook her head. “The system sees that as cheating. Someone with a demon summoner css can’t get levels that way. So the most they can do is summon an imp and have it contract to the demon queen to let it stay here as part of her contract.”

  Finally, a light turned on in Alex’s brain. Losing an imp is not a big lose for the demon queen’s forces, but the imps that had broken through to the next cultivation level took more time to repce.

  “As for the flying cloud.” Marina continued. “It is no longer in dry dock. They got in the water and the masts and sails attached. But not everyone they wanted to put in it is built yet. They had a shakedown cruise scheduled but the civil war and the more recent troubles in the north had caused an indefinite dey.”

  “Do you think we could steal it?” Ariel sounded excited at the prospect.

  “Yes,” Marina nodded. “But it doesn’t have any supplies. I haven’t done more than sneak around and listen to rumors but know that it won’t have any supplies. So taking it more than a day’s sail might be really risky.”

  “If we can get her to the open ocean I think we could get her back to our home port and finish things up. Do the shipwrights want to escape and come with their ship?” Ariel asked.

  Marina shrugged, not knowing the answer.

  Alex furrowed her brow. “That Donald guy betrayed me to a succubus. I don’t think he’s very trustworthy.”

  Ariel didn’t seem to care too much. “Anyone is untrustworthy if they are affected by a succubus’s charm. They are tier 3 demons after all.”

  “Anyway,” Marina continued. “It turns out that our skeletal friend’s been busy. There is a big uproar about someone being a traitor and giving him gear. He’s been sughtering thousands of demons every day and making his way down the coast. They said that he even defeated a tier 3 demon.”

  Alex blinked at the news. “I’m gd he’s doing some damage. But it was expected. He’s immortal and lives to kill demons. You’d think that they’d be able to predict this?”

  “That’s where it gets juicy.” Marina smirked. “In the winter, many of the high nobles come to the capital. The st time this particur problem showed himself it was because someone in one of the dutchies released him in another dutchy. Lady Yvne’s duke is under a lot of scrutiny. They think that he is behind this mess. Because the knight has gear so someone had to help him. So there is a big fuss about disloyal plots to destabilize rivals. Some are even ciming that he’s already reached level level cap and is going to come for the general again.”

  “That big mountain?” Alex gestured in the general direction. “I thought he failed to defeat him.”

  Marina nodded. “Over the course of decades, he’s fought him many times and always lost. But the demons hate fighting him because of his ability to use energy drain. The st time that that mountain of a tier 4 demon was disturbed from his cultivation he made a point to eliminate any of the demons in charge of the high nobility. So they are scrambling to bme someone and force one or more of the tier 3 demons to defeat him. No one wants to fight him but at the same time, if he comes this far and the mountain has to fight him again that would be much worse.”