"How old are you?" Anser asked with a smile.

The little girl held up a soft white hand covered in crumbs and spread all five fingers. After thinking, she bent her thumb slightly. "Clara is four years old."

She leaned against Anser without the slightest fear of strangers.

Elves were a long-lived people whose lifespans could reach seven hundred years. For an elf, four years old was astonishingly young.

Anser studied her eyes with deep curiosity.

Clara had black hair, heterochromatic eyes, and white skin. Her features did not fully match those of the predominant sun elves, moon elves, or wood elves. She was probably of mixed elven heritage.

"Stay at the Moonshadow Quelin for now, and don't think about leaving yet. Your mentor is in the Rivington district and may come looking for you." Anser did not intend to involve himself any further. What he had done today was enough to repay the favor.

He wanted to see every corner of the world, and adventuring and battle would undoubtedly be unavoidable. Bringing a child along would be absurd.

"Mm." Kafka was no fool. He understood Anser's unspoken meaning.

He had heard his mentor mention the Moonshadow Quelin. Supposedly, it had originally served only elves, half-elves, and halflings before later opening its doors to everyone. It had operated for decades and possessed a good reputation.

Silence settled over the group, leaving only the sound of their footsteps.

Before long, the group entered the northern part of town, where the crowds quickly thinned.

"Screee—" An eagle's cry came from overhead.

Finn stopped short, then turned toward Anser. "People are moving to cut us off!"

There had been too many people earlier for the gray hawk to distinguish their pursuers. Here in the quieter streets, however, those people had nowhere to hide.

"Those slavers? How many?" Anser had not expected them to be so brazen and utterly unrestrained.

"It's them. Sixteen or seventeen, split into four groups. They have firearms..." Finn spoke urgently.

Anser frowned. Slavers were nothing if not pragmatic. Since he had not exposed them, they were unlikely to mobilize so many people merely for revenge.

If their retaliation failed, their "business" would inevitably be ruined as well.

That left only one possibility: little Clara was worth far more than he had imagined!

"Keep telling me their positions."

As he spoke, Anser pressed the holy symbol on his chest through his cloak and immediately initiated a planar summons.

Those few seconds felt unbearably long.

Suddenly, the air ahead grew hazy. A magnificent black horse leaped out of nowhere and trotted eagerly toward them.

'No saddle.'

Anser cursed his oversight. Nornoth had removed the saddle before leaving, but there was no time to worry about it now. They had to break out before the enemy completed its encirclement.

A head-on fight would inevitably cause casualties. Their only option was to stay mobile and keep the enemy at a distance.

He pushed aside Nornoth's large head as the horse nuzzled him, then placed Clara on its back.

"Everyone, come here and put a hand on me!"

None of them understood, but they did not hesitate.

Anser concentrated. Spirals of magical wind whirled around him, and the sea breeze suddenly intensified.

Metamagic: Twinned Spell + Longstrider!

With time running short, he did not conserve his power and cast the metamagic-enhanced spell twice in succession.

A magical aura settled over the horse and all three people in succession. Each of them immediately felt lighter on their feet.

"Which way?" Anser asked urgently.

"East!" Finn understood at once.

"Run!"

They broke into a sprint. After running more than thirty feet, they all turned right, moving far faster than usual.

The enemy was approaching from the docks to the southwest. Although they had split into four groups to intercept them in advance, the eastern group had not reached its position in time.

"They changed direction. A hundred and fifty meters behind us."

Anser looked back. Four figures in leather armor appeared at the intersection behind them, firearms in hand. The bearded first mate of the Conch led the group.

The bearded man looked furious. He had been on the verge of trapping his prey, only for them to discover the ambush early, find the gap in the encirclement with uncanny precision, run absurdly fast, and somehow acquire a black horse.

What should have been effortless had suddenly gone wrong. The setback was maddening.

The bearded man's eyes shifted. Pointing at the black horse, he bellowed, "Guards pursuing slavers! Stop them! One hundred gold bounty!"

"You bastard!" Anser's temper erupted instantly, and his gaze turned frighteningly cold.

'I have nothing tying me down, so why the hell should I swallow this? None of you are leaving alive today!'

The bearded man's scheme failed, however. Few people were nearby, and Nornoth looked so extraordinary that even the most oblivious person could tell he was not to be provoked.

"Alley ahead on the right!" Finn warned.

Anser patted the horse's back. Nornoth immediately accelerated past the others and reached the mouth of the alley ahead.

Four people more than a hundred meters away were sprinting toward them. When they saw a rider blocking their path, they instinctively raised their firearms.

For various reasons, firearms had developed slowly in Faerûn and remained predominantly muzzle-loading smoothbores.

The flintlocks carried by the Conch's slavers counted as relatively advanced. Their maximum range exceeded 150 meters, but their accuracy was abysmal. They were normally fired within 50 meters because only at that distance could one reliably hit a human-sized target.

At more than a hundred meters, they posed little threat. Even so, Anser had Nornoth unfold his neck armor to shield Clara as a precaution.

After a short phrase in Draconic, a sphere of dense fog rapidly formed dozens of meters ahead. In the blink of an eye, it expanded to nearly twenty meters in diameter and stood as high as five or six stories, hiding the surrounding houses and blocking all vision.

This was the 1st-level spell Fog Cloud.

It dealt no damage, but it frightened their opponents into halting for fear of a trap. After hesitating briefly, the four slavers chose another route around it.

Bratt and the others had already taken the opportunity to pass. The enemy had completely lost its chance to block them.

Sure enough, several minutes later, the four slavers converged on this street as well, pursuing from opposite ends along with the bearded man's group.

One hundred meters, one hundred ten, one hundred twenty... The distance only continued to grow.

Everyone knew the slavers' plan had failed. They persisted only because they could not accept defeat.

An idea struck Anser. He gripped the neck armor with one hand to steady himself and extended his other palm toward the street behind them.

Without the slightest warning, the wind began to blow!

A breeze became a gust, the gust became a gale, and the gale became a storm... In mere seconds, the wind's force soared. A column of air almost thirty meters long and four or five meters wide formed before his palm, filling the entire street.

The next instant, he thrust his hand forward. The violent wind swept down the street, stripping plaster from walls, tearing tiles from roofs, and drawing every clod of dirt and loose stone into itself with terrifying force.

Everyone stared in shock. The slavers scrambled for cover, only to discover there was nowhere to hide. Some turned to flee, while others tried to scale the walls, but all of them were too slow.

Aside from the bearded man, who crouched and braced himself against the blast, the slavers were hurled away one after another. They covered their heads and tumbled through the gale for several meters, some more than ten meters.

[You cast Gust of Wind on First Mate of the Conch... First Mate of the Conch was hit and took 3 bludgeoning damage. Current HP: 31/34...]

[You cast Gust of Wind on Conch Sailor... Conch Sailor was hit and took 4 bludgeoning damage. Current HP: 2/6...]

A succession of combat records passed through Anser's mind. The result looked spectacular, but no one died. All of the damage came from debris carried by the wind or injuries sustained in their falls.

There was no helping it. Gust of Wind possessed little offensive power of its own, and he could not normally release it from his hand. Once the gale traveled away from him, it rapidly weakened.

Fortunately, this was his only spell-like ability. Empowered by his high Charisma, both the wind's force and his control over it were strong enough to let him cast while mounted and launch the attack away from his hand.

'That's exactly the effect I wanted!'

Anser handed Clara to Bratt. "Take both of them and go. Finn and I are going back to slaughter those bastards."

(End of Chapter)