"Not a single one."
"You sure?"
"Absolutely and completely sure!"
Anser had already made two full laps around the shelter with Detect Evil and Good active and hadn't found anything unusual.
"Good, good." Osborn let out a long sigh of relief.
"Aren't there still two more shelters? Let's hurry." Anser wanted to finish the inspections quickly so he could head into the city and farm some experience points.
Now that Osborn's worries were settled, he could team up with him without hesitation. Having one of the local top-tier thieves at his side would make their operations both safer and more efficient.
"Let's go." Osborn waved a hand and immediately led him away.
But instead of using the main entrance, they entered a pitch-black hidden passage through a corridor on one side. The tunnel twisted and turned.
A few minutes later, the two passed through a concealed door and entered another shelter, slightly larger than the previous one.
This time, Anser didn't waste the charges of the True Sight Ring. After all, each use only lasted ten minutes, and the ring only had three charges total.
One cast of Detect Evil and Good was enough to handle the job easily, though its detection range wasn't nearly as far as true sight.
A moment later, he let out a breath and gave Osborn a slight shake of the head.
Osborn immediately beamed with satisfaction, his face full of pride. "Looks like all my years of hard work weren't wasted. See? It's paying off now. Safe as can be."
"Yeah, yeah," Anser agreed casually.
Gathering together had both advantages and disadvantages. If a Mind Flayer managed to sneak in, the entire shelter could end up wiped out in one go.
"There's still one more," he urged.
"Nope. The last shelter hasn't been activated yet."
"I see. I'm heading into the city to hunt Intellect Devourers and Mind Flayers. Coming with me?"
"Of course. I never let a friend face danger alone." Osborn patted his chest.
Ever since learning Anser's identity as a Paladin, he had known this was exactly what he would do, so he wasn't surprised in the slightest.
The two returned to the surface streets once more. After making a circuit around the deserted dock district, they headed back to Giff-town where the Giff people lived.
Even helping people required strategy. Some groups simply weren't worth helping—they wouldn't feel grateful, and might even morally blackmail you or turn around and blame you afterward.
The Giff had good relations with halflings and a solid reputation as well. Helping them would improve his standing in the Lower City and make future commercial trade much easier.
The moment the two entered the district, they ran into a middle-aged Giff man over two and a half meters tall. His shoulders were two or three times broader than Anser's, making him look like a walking wall.
He was the mayor of Giff Town. His real name was unknown, but everyone called him General Smokefire, a high-level professional.
After Osborn explained their purpose, General Smokefire was overjoyed. His huge mouth—big enough to rival a hippopotamus—never closed once.
He had previously sent people to the royal Starport Palace in the Upper City for help, but the royal family simply didn't have the spare attention for them. They still hadn't even dealt with the crashed nautiloid ship, so how could they possibly spare the manpower to care about the Lower City?
The three quickly gathered to discuss a plan. In the end, they decided to search the district house by house while dispatching several squads of warriors to guard intersections and key locations, preventing any Intellect Devourers or Mind Flayers from escaping if they sensed danger.
General Smokefire would lead the way, knocking on doors and calming the Giff residents. Osborn would handle scouting and security, while Anser used Detect Evil and Good to identify threats.
The three then began searching each house one by one. Whenever they encountered an Intellect Devourer, they killed it on the spot. If they found an infected host, the accompanying Giff soldiers would immediately restrain them.
To conserve sorcery points, Anser didn't even cast Protection from Evil and Good. He simply blasted their heads apart with Witch Bolt, locking them down with arcs of lightning and electrocuting them to death alive.
This method worked extremely well—safe and highly efficient in terms of magic consumption.
More than an hour later, the three had finished searching the only three streets in Giff Town. They killed three Intellect Devourers and discovered five parasitized Giff residents.
The infected were all taken away by the Giff people, and Anser didn't have the heart to ask for them.
It was like dealing with terminally ill patients. Everyone knew they were beyond saving, but as family, you still had to try to save them somehow. What if a miracle happened?
However, after Anser proposed continuing the search, General Smokefire arranged the district defenses and personally brought a squad of warriors along with him.
And just like that, Anser gained two top-tier bodyguards.
The moon above Rock of Bral was enormous and brilliantly bright. This place was extremely close to Selûne, and the Silver Lady's radiance illuminated every corner of Bral.
The three kept at it until daylight broke, carefully picking their targets as they fought their way from the Lower City all the way into the Middle City. The group around them steadily grew larger and larger. The weakest among them were elite professionals, and there were four high-level professionals in total.
Aside from Osborn and General Smokefire, there was also a hill dwarf and a Githzerai monk.
Shortly after entering the Middle City, they ran into a Githzerai hunting party searching for Intellect Devourers and Mind Flayers.
The Githzerai were not helping Bral out of goodwill. Their actions were driven purely by their hatred for Mind Flayers. Unfortunately, they were unfamiliar with the city and had disrupted the royal family's plans, so they weren't particularly welcomed.
After seeing Anser's team, a few of them shamelessly tagged along behind them. Before long, the four of them had effectively become a tight-knit powerhouse squad.
Anser was more than happy with the arrangement. Who would complain about an opportunity to farm experience safely like this?
Still, with so many eyes around, it became inconvenient to take away the infected. In order to win people over and improve his reputation, he ended up handing out more than a dozen bottles of holy water over the course of the night.
In the end, he only took away four professionals whose transformations had already progressed fairly deeply, temporarily locking them up inside the Black Tower prison.
During that time, he killed another eleven Intellect Devourers and gained more than six thousand experience points. The efficiency was fairly decent.
Unfortunately, despite everyone maintaining full vigilance and searching through the entire night, they never managed to find the mastermind behind the rampant spread of the Mind Flayer tadpoles.
All signs pointed to one conclusion:
That person definitely existed.
There were still many places in both the Middle and Lower City left unchecked, but Anser's magic reserves were completely drained, so they had no choice but to stop for the time being.
After persuading the others to disperse, he brought Osborn and General Smokefire back to his stone tower. Standing on the third-floor terrace, they watched the busy movements of the guard forces in the distance.
The security perimeter was still in place, but most of the personnel had already withdrawn. The royal court mage corps and that inverted pyramid were gone as well.
"Looks like they handled it." Anser rubbed his temples, visibly exhausted.
But all of it had been worth it. Not only had he gained a large amount of experience, but the ninth symbol had also fully lit up, and he had begun accumulating some reputation as well.
Thinking back on it now, every time he encountered Mind Flayers, he seemed to come away with some unexpected gains.
After resting, he planned to do another sweep. Daytime operations would probably be even more efficient. He might gather enough experience to advance into a high-level professional very soon.
"The real trouble is still ahead." General Smokefire's deep, rough voice carried a trace of indifference.
"The royal family should have some way to identify and deal with infected hosts, right?" After an entire night of work, Osborn sounded increasingly uncertain.
The parasitic infection of the Mind Flayers was far more troublesome than they had imagined. If left unchecked—or handled too slowly—then several days later, the entire city might suddenly collapse beneath a full-scale eruption of Mind Flayers.
"The Mind Flayers have been moving frequently lately. This time, they're probably determined to succeed," Anser said thoughtfully.
Mind Flayer tadpoles were not cheap insects. They were immature Mind Flayers, and raising them likely came at a considerable cost. There was no way they would waste them casually. They definitely had follow-up plans prepared.
First the Durlag Union, then the Rock of Bral—it carried the feeling of simultaneous outbreaks happening everywhere, utterly unrestrained.
'What exactly are the Mind Flayers trying to do? Rebuild their multiversal empire?'
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