First Meeting With Dark Hound

 "Who are you?" Ian asked, eying the emerging people with calmness.

 "Who we are did not matter. Just that you will die by today," without saying anything else, the group charged towards them.

 Fiona quickly cast Flame Ground, though the opponent use shoes with thick padding. However, while it did not hurt them, it did cause some of the shoes to caught fire. As less people come towards them, Euralle cast her spell, Arcane Shot: Curved Variant.

 The attack curve around, causing some of the attacker to dodge, however, as it make a U-turn, one of the attackers barely realize it before having his head blown up.

 Seeing this, the attackers quickly take a step back, with them doing the same thing. One of the attackers growled at them while giving glances at the dead man.

 "You will pay for this!" he exclaimed.

 Ian merely cocked his brows before gathering his mana for another spell. "Shield," after putting more protection on the two woman, he stare down at the attackers, his body in full alert mode.

 Seeing how hard it would he to take them down, the attackers began a slow retreat, though Ian and the rest did not went after them, of fear of it being a trap.

 Using his Mana Sense again, Ian quickly turned around and told the other two, "We should find the others, they might be in an even worse spot than us,"

-x-

 Meanwhile, for the retreating group, they are busy catching their breath.

 "What is it with this group of mages!? They are strong enough to protect themselves even without any melee fighter!" one of the man cried out, the rest agreeing with him.

 "Enough! The leader had given us order to take them down, and we will. Besides, the other squad should handle the others. With them joining us, we can kill them easier," the leader of the squad said, trying to raise moral.

 The rest nodded, agreeing with the squad leader. As he was about to say something else, a group of people come into sight. They turned only to gasp, the group come with less than half of their previous numbers with the squad leader, one of the higher-ranking members, not in the group.

 "W-what happened!?" the squad leader of First Squad asked. One of the man, someone that joined in at the same time as the squad leader did, answered.

 "We attacked them, all capable melee fighters. But we thought it will be easy. We are wrong," the man slumped on the ground, clearly drained.

 "We fight against them, and they killed half of the men easy enough. The only man even kill the squad leader with a single swing. I watched as he was cut in half right in front of my eyes," the new squad leader of Squad Two told.

 The man shivered as he watched the glare from the man as he turned his group into mincemeat.

-x-

 "You are attacked as well," Fiona state, seeing how there are some bloods on their clothing.

 "Yeah, and so do you, it seem," Lisa said, though it mostly from guessing rather than deduction considering with their ability as mages, most of their attacks are long range.

 "Yes, but we only kill one before Ian stack up our defense before Euralle killed a single attacker," Fiona told them of what happened to them.

 "For us, they attacked us nonstop but Kell killed most of them easily. Even the strongest attacker was killed by him in a single swing," Lisa told the other part of the party what happened.

 "Who do you think they are?" Ana asked, clearly disturbed by the fact they are targeted by some group.

 "I am not sure but I intend on finding out," Ian began to examine the corpses, flipping the dead bodies and searching for anything he can use to identify them and their groups.

 After all, from how well they are dressed, they clearly are not bandits. Ian quickly put them in the mercenary group for now, as they are no other plausible explanation so far.

 As he searched the bodies, he quickly find they all have some tokens on their bodies, with the head of a dog on it, ruby being used as the eyes of the dog.

 "Euralle, do you know any group that used this symbol?" he asked, giving on of the token to the alchemist. The pink-haired woman began to check the token, before shaking her head.

 "Sorry, I have no idea. The only thing I am sure off is this is likely a group from one of the gangs in the Midarna City's Underworld," she told him.

 "Underworld?" Ian is 90 percent sure she did not mean literal one, where people's souls go after death or something like that. He is proven right when the girl explained.

 "The Underworld is essentially where all the illegal happening occur, from smuggling, selling stolen goods, to even assasination. You can hire assassins from the underworld, though they are not one of them, as assassins are more covert. This seem like a special force of a gang that is send to hunt people down," the explanation cause all of them to nod, with only one understanding some part of it.

 "Are there any way to go to the city's underworld?" he asked.

 "I am not sure. Only those lurking in the shadow and born in it know of this stuff. Maybe some of the nobles and higher-ups know of it, but for common peoples, we don't know anything," she shake her head.

 "Why do you asked?" Ian turned to Kell before explaining, though it is also for the rest of them too.

 "It's because there should be informant as well as people who might knew who this symbol belong to. We need to know something about them if we don't want to be caught of guard," the rest make a humming sound, seeing where he is coming from.

 "Then, sorry, I don't know anything else," Euralle said with a said tone, making Ian and Fiona pat her head. The resulting headpat cause her to let an embarrassed sound out of her mouth.

 "We return for now. When we get home, we going to plan on how to find them," Kell decided, putting his foot down in this decision. 

 While the rest was not happy about it, they knew speculating will not do anything, and so, they return to their home, though all of them feeling nervous and paranoid for the night.