The Spirit Master

Liam looked at Melany with a smile. "Want to join us in our quest tomorrow? We're adventurers, not a charity after all. And with your skills, I bet you can help."

Melany immediately nodded, "As long as it doesn't include killing people. I'm already sick of that." She stood and walked toward the pile of her clothes and weapons. "So I assume I'm relatively free now?"

"Of course. It'll take a while for me to get the tools needed to free you. I was hoping you'll be helping us with quests in the meantime." Liam replied with a smile, "Especially after I saw you use that skill."

"It's strong but quite limited." Melany replied as she started wearing her clothes back, ignoring that Liam was still in the room.

"You can also head to the guards so they can find a wizard to free you." Alice stared at her, "You don't have to work with us. We aren't here to put more burdens on you."

Melany picked her butterfly swords and sheathed them on her hips. "I was wishing I could stay with you even after being freed. It's not like I have anywhere to go, and I fear the assassins might come back at me." She stared back at Liam… The way he dispatched the others and captured me, it's as if he knew our every move. Demon lord Oni said that if we failed this mission, no search party would come to us and that we'd be left to die, but can I really trust that? We didn't know anything about his location or plans so even with torture they can't get anything out of us.

Melany sat on a chair and took a deep breath. This man Liam, he's strange, yet powerful. When I tried to cleave his head off the shadows, he reacted way too quickly, and even my shadow spirit got sliced in half out of nowhere.

"You want us to protect you?" Alice looked at her with a worried face. I was hoping to live quietly for a while longer.

"Depends on who sent you. Are they someone bad enough that we should not help you?" Liam stared at her with glowing red eyes.

"The one who sent us already has you two on his list, for clearing that dungeon." Melany stared at them with a worried face. "It's demon lord Oni."

Alice's face paled, "What?! Oni? The real one?!"

"Sadly, it's him. The over one thousand-year-old war general of the previous lord of destruction Asura." She looked at them, sweating. "I know he's bad news, but I really believe he won't send anyone after us, we're fodder."

"This… we should get it to the kingdom. We have no way of fighting such a monster." Alice gasped.

"No, we're not telling anyone. Oni gets bored quickly, he lacks the attention span to care. I doubt he'll bother with us anymore." Liam replied. If I know the bastard well, he sent those assassins to us out of spite; the dungeon must've been a part of one of his plans. Sending an assassin after us is out of character for him, but it's possible he changed through the years… no, this is something that woman Gobi would do. He remembered that ten-foot-tall purple-skinned demon woman with one horn on her forehead.

Melany stared at Liam as he was thinking. I'll wait until he frees me to tell him that I have a sister captured there… but I'll never tell him that my older sister is the hero.

"How do you know that about Oni?" Alice stared at him.

"The demon lords are famous, all the twelve of them. You'd be stupid if you didn't know anything about them." Liam replied and he was right. If there was a team of twelve overpowered evil bastards trying to subjugate the world, every person and their mothers would know about them.

"Melany, what can you do?" Alice asked.

"I'm a spirit master. With what I have now, I can do this." She disappeared into the shadows and appeared behind Alice with her butterfly swords drawn.

"Short-range teleportation from shadows to shadows. Now that's hard to deal with." Alice looked back at her with a grin.

"My range is thirty feet and I have about five seconds cooldown." She then looked at Liam. "You already know that, don't you? You knocked me out right away."

"All casters need to chant or make hand signs. Stopping you is easy after seeing it the first time." He replied.

Liam started walking toward the door. "Rest, you can use my room tonight. We have a lot of work tomorrow."

"Liam, wait." Alice called him. "We need a wizard to check that house, not a spirit master."

"They do the same thing. We need her to confirm what's inside so we can act." Liam walked out and left the two staring at each other.

"Sometimes, I don't even know what he's thinking about." Alice sighed.

"But he's strong, isn't he?" Melany smiled.

"I won't say he's strong, just reliable. You can count on him to get things done." Alice said, remembering how he dragged her out of the demonic shrine dungeon.

"What is your relationship with him?" Melany asked, glaring at her.

"Me? He's my benefactor, he saved me from a tough spot and we've been together since." She replied with a smile.

Downstairs, Liam lay on the couch and yawned. Now that we have a spirit master, taking on that spirit should be simple enough. But I need to get Melany registered at the guild so she could rank up…no, if we did that, won't Oni be able to find out that she survived?

I don't want to draw his attention now, I know how strong he was in the past, and I'm certain he's gotten stronger now. I won't feel comfortable challenging him at a level lower than fifty.

The next morning came and Liam headed toward the mansion with Alice and Melany after they delivered the assassins' corpses to the guild. The guild did ask what happened, but Liam quickly explained it by showing them a tattoo that was on the corpses, it links them all into a single group which the guild had started investigating. The guards did come to interrogate Liam and the two girls, and they even wanted to arrest Melany as she looked suspicious of them, but Liam managed to stop them thanks to the city lord.

Currently, the guards pretty much know that Melany was one of the assassins but they are only ignoring her presence due to Liam being around. If she were to leave his group, they would arrest her and send her to interrogation then execution within a week.

But even with all of that they managed to reach Jakory's mansion in the early morning and the investigation resumed as planned.

"This place is cursed." Melany said with a worried face, staring at the mansion's gate.