TO CATCH A THIEF

Any bad boys and girls out heeere?

If I find you, you're in biiig trouble!

It's been a few days since that suspicious bunch broke into the baby bloodsucker's family's mansion.

During that time, the Demon Lord's been holed up in the Bottom Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

What's she doing down there?

I'm curious, but if she's not gonna move, I'm certainly not complaining if it means I don't have to constantly worry about her catching up to me. So, since I'm able to relax a little for once, I've been spending my free time dealing with robbers.

If you couldn't tell by the way the baby bloodsucker's carriage was attacked, there are lots of robbers in this world. Living outside the city, they terrorize passersby to steal their food and money. These thieves are very belligerent and surprisingly cunning.

They prey on the weak but they're smart enough to keep their distance from the strong. Since they live outside of town, their group must be strong enough to defeat the monsters in the area without a problem, making them generally more dangerous than the local monsters.

That's an excerpt from the Spider Press publication An Illustrated Guide to Dangerous Creatures.

It's true, though. The robbers really are worse than the monsters here. Because they're choosing to maliciously attack people. I mean, at least the monsters that attack other living things indiscriminately are just following their instincts.

On top of that, the thieves in this neighborhood seem to be directly connected to the elf organization that's after the baby bloodsucker. One of those elves has been sneaking around outside town, meeting with them and stuff.

As I suspected, those robbers who attacked the carriage were connected to the elves' plan. But why are these elves acting like the mafia?

I thought elves were supposed to be peaceful, nature-loving tree huggers. But these elves aren't hugging trees at all! In the end, I decided that if these robbers are working with the sinister elf organization, might as well throw 'em in the garbage. It does benefit me, too, you know. Humans give tons of experience points.

'Cause their own EXP tends to go more toward skills than stats. Humans generally have lower stats than monsters, but in exchange, they have a lot more skills.

This means the EXP they give is pretty high, considering how weak they are. Especially for the thieves who've built up their skills like crazy to survive outside of town.

Humans who kill other humans give extra points, too.

They've built up lots of EXP from killing other high-EXP-granting humans, after all.

But now it's their turn to provide EXP for me! If I kill thieves, the residents of the town are happy, and Baby Drac's family is happy, too, since that means fewer enemies for them.

And I'm happy because I get lots of experience in the process. Forget killing two birds with one stone. This is at least three or four.

I'd be a fool not to! So I use Panoptic Vision to search around the area for robbers. And boy, do I ever find them. We're talking triple digits here, in all shapes and sizes. Why are there so many?

Like, that's definitely overkilled.

Are they supposed to be a bad rodent infestation or what? Seriously, talk about an unsafe area.

Or is this the normal way of things in this fantasy world? If so, this place is pretty scary.

These enemies are stronger than monsters, and they're swarming around in droves. What kind of impossible game is that? Actually, what I really wanna know is why all these guys are thieves in the first place.

But I guess I don't really need to know their backstories. To prepare for my quest to exterminate these robbers, I picked up a few new skills.

Since I gained the ability to use Evil Eyes even on super-distant targets when Clairvoyance evolved into Panoptic Vision, I figured I might as well pick up a new Evil Eye or two.

I went for Sealing Evil Eye for three hundred skill points, Antimagic Evil Eye also for three hundred skill points, and even Warped Evil Eye for a whopping five hundred skill points.

If you add these three to the four I already had, plus Future Sight, that makes exactly eight eyes. Now my eyes are all fully loaded. I've finally completed the combination I've been aiming for since I first found out about Evil Eyes!

So these are the three I just picked up:

<Sealing Evil Eye: Deals Seal-attribute damage to anything in the user's field of vision.>

<Antimagic Evil Eye: Deals Antimagic-attribute damage to anything in the user's field of vision.> <Warped Evil Eye: Deals Space-attribute damage to anything in the user's field of vision.>

Yeah, I know. The explanations don't really explain anything. First of all, it turns out "seal" is a status condition that can prevent the target from using skills. That definitely sounds promising, but judging from my experience so far, I'm guessing it's going to be pretty difficult to use in reality. But I picked it up anyway in the hopes that I might be able to seal the Status Condition Nullification skill down the road. If I can do that, then I'll really get a chance to unleash the fury of the other Evil Eyes.

Seal is itself a status condition, so it seems entirely likely that it won't work in the first place, but I think it's worth a try.

Next, there's Antimagic Evil Eye, which, as the name suggests, prevents the target from invoking magic. It's not unlike those dragon-scale skills that have given me so much trouble in the past. I do have a lesser version of those skills that I absorbed from Mother called Dragon Barrier.

But the nice thing about Antimagic Evil Eye is you can start inhibiting the opponent's use of magic as soon as you see them. Put another way, skills like Dragon Scales and Dragon Barrier dampen the power of magic that's been invoked, but Antimagic Evil Eye makes it harder to start up the magic in the first place. All in all, I can use Antimagic Evil Eye to hinder someone's use of magic, then block the incomplete spell with Dragon Barrier.

Combined with my high base magic defense power, does this mean I basically won't take damage from magic anymore? Anyway, last but not least is Warped Evil Eye.

This nasty thing can warp space in any place you can see. I tried it out a little bit, and it's super-hard to control. But since I'm pretty familiar with controlling Spatial Magic, I was able to warp things pretty freely once I got the hang of it. Warped Evil Eye is also considered a Space-attribute attack spell, so if there's anything in the space you're warping, it'll get twisted around, too. Snap!

Just like that. I tried it on a tree, and it hollowed out the trunk.

Snap!

Just like that. That's pretty cruel.

Well, I can use this from a long distance thanks to Panoptic Vision.

And unlike most Evil Eyes, this one targets space instead of living things, so I can warp whatever I want.

Doesn't that mean I could hollow out the inside of someone's head if I wanted to, too? Snap! Just like that.

Although, since its target is space, that means it can actually be avoided, unlike my other Evil Eyes. Gotta take the bad with the good, I guess.

If you're wondering why I picked up this Space-attribute Evil Eye even though I have Spatial Magic, it's because Spatial Magic attacks are insanely hard to use. Sure, there are attack spells in Spatial Magic.

Ones that cut through space and stuff like that. But to use Spatial Magic, unlike any other magic, you have to set up a designated target area. It's basically defining where the magic will be activated, but it's also a huge hassle.

Since you have to do that on top of the rest of the magic process, it's slower than any other magic I have. That's all well and good since in exchange it comes with the way-too-useful Teleport spell.

But in battle, where a moment's delay can mean life or death, it's usually safer to use a different magic attack besides Spatial Magic. It was almost like I didn't have a Space-attribute attack at all.

That's why I picked up an Evil Eye with the Space attribute, even though I technically have the magic already. Now I finally have a Space-attribute attack I can use instantly.

Taking my new Evil Eyes out for a test drive, I wiped out a big bunch of robbers. And now it's time for some initial reviews! First is Sealing Evil Eye. It's stupid and hard to use! It takes a super-long time, and when it's done, it can seal only one skill.

One! I know it's probably because its skill level is low, but that's pretty awful. To the point where I'm kinda regretting picking it up in the first place. Next, Antimagic Evil Eye.

Sooo, about that. Since I was using Panoptic Vision to attack from a distance, I didn't really get a chance to try it. I mean, my targets can't even see me, y'know?

So of course they didn't use magic, and of course, I didn't get to test out Antimagic Evil Eye.

Yep.

Evaluation pending! Finally, Warped Evil Eye.

This one's kinda hard to pin down. Unlike other Evil Eye attacks, this one targets the space in my field of vision, not the enemies.

So it doesn't get a guaranteed hit like the other Evil Eyes. If the enemy moves out of the space I'm targeting with the attack, it'll miss. On top of that, if there's an object in the space I'm targeting, it makes it more difficult to twist it based on how solid the object is.

Sometimes that delay meant my target moved before the spell activated. That said, being able to directly attack the opponent's body is pretty sweet.

You can just target places that won't be hard, like, say, brain tissue. Just give it a little twist. It'll literally blow your mind!

Yep, pretty nasty. As of now, Jinx Evil Eye is still way more powerful and convenient, but who knows?

Maybe when this one's skill level gets higher, it'll have uses of its own. So that's the analysis of my new Evil Eyes.

I'm not quite sure how to feel, really. But since I defeated a ton of robbers in the process, I gained a huge amount of experience and even managed to level up.

That's a victory in my book.

I wonder if more robbers will show up soon?