The plan to save the students was very simple. One of us was going to distract the daemons while the other went to save the students.
"Are you sure you want to distract them?" I asked Katherine.
Katherine nodded. "… The daemons are not idiots. So I think that only a few of them will go after me… Your part will be the hardest."
I nodded. That was true. However, there was a problem.
I looked at the only tenth-layer daemon in the camp. A strong and relatively famous daemon known as [The Hound].
Although [The Hound] is just a tenth-layer practitioner, he is a bit famous around the continent. He has a track record of chasing and killing several human practitioners through the years, some of them stronger than him.
Moreover, he is someone that likes 'hunting'. Someone like him will surely take the bait once he sees Katherine, even if he knows it's a trap.
I remember seeing his face and information in a document a few years ago. That is the reason I know about him.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked again after telling Katherine about the tenth-layer daemon's information.
Katherine hesitated slightly and nodded.
"I'm going to do it."
I looked straight to her eyes and nodded.
"Okay, this is the plan…"
…
Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the crown of a tree while looking at the daemon camp, waiting for Katherine's signal.
Sigh, so troublesome. I can simply teleport to the camp if I want and kill all these daemons. That would be much easier.
But well, my purpose is to get Katherine's heart. The daemons and the girls caught are much less important.
Thus, I can only do this.
At that moment, I felt a magic fluctuation coming from the forest.
And suddenly–
*KABOOM!!!*
A giant fireball crashed against a tent, causing an enormous explosion.
Several daemons jumped out of the tent on fire screaming in pain. One of them had lost a limb, while another died shortly after leaving the tent.
That was a pretty powerful spell.
The daemons panicked after hearing the explosion, and two daemons on watch charged towards the place from where the spell came from.
However, they were stopped by a powerful-looking daemon.
"Leave the rat to me. The rest stay here in case the rat is a just distraction." The daemon said.
Then, two shadow-like wolves formed from mana left his body and charged towards the forest, with the daemon running behind them.
As expected, he took the bait.
According to the plan, I have ten minutes. Katherine will do her best to distract the tenth-layer practitioner for ten minutes while I rescue the female students.
Regardless of the results, though, I have to go to help Katherine after ten minutes.
Ten minutes, huh. That is a lot of time.
I will need much less than that.
Stepping across space with a wry smile, I appeared in the middle of the daemon's camp.
Coincidentally, a daemon was in front of the place where I appeared. He opened his eyes wide and looked at me in surprise. But before he could shout, I smiled.
Then, his head flew through the air.
Let's finish this quickly.
…
Katherine knew she was not a match for the enemy that was chasing her. In fact, even escaping from him was close to impossible.
Katherine was just a sixth-layer mage. As for the enemy chasing her, he was a daemon specialized in tracking and hunting enemies.
Therefore, since the start, her goal was only to last as much as possible.
She promised Claus ten minutes, however, she planned to last longer.
Her first attack was a fire spell. Normally, Katherine preferred using wind spells, but in the current situation, using fire was definitively a better option.
She used a trick with that spell though. Instead of casting the spell directly, she engraved a magic circle on a tree and activated it remotely afterward. She tried to use that trick to misguide the tenth-layer daemon. Even if she could only earn one minute with that trick, she thought it was worth it.
Unfortunately for her, the trick was less useful than she thought.
The tenth-layer daemon only needed thirty seconds to locate the magic circle, and twenty seconds later, he was already in her tail.
Katherine did her best to keep her calm. She took a deep breath and followed the escape route she planned beforehand. According to her estimations, the daemon would need two minutes at least if he wanted to catch up to her.
And she planned to increase that time as much as possible.
According to the information Claus gave her about the daemon, he could feel and track the fluctuations of mana of others. In other words, once he feels her mana, he will go directly to her.
But Katherine had several countermeasures against that. She had put several magic circles around the forest to serve as decoys. These magic circles had only one purpose, to emit mana and confuse the daemon.
Fortunately, her plan worked, but only once.
Afterward, the daemon used an unknown method to lock into Katherine and ignored the remaining decoys.
It was though he could easily differentiate the real from the decoys.
Katherine frowned. Only five minutes had passed, but the daemon was already less than two kilometers away.
With his speed, that time could be closed in one minute!
This time, Katherine tried activating the traps she had planted beforehand, but besides a few ones, most of them were useless. Katherine already expected it, but the daemon had a way to feel the mana of the traps, so they were useless against him.
Fortunately, Katherine was not without options.
After failing to catch him with another trap, she changed her direction. In less than forty seconds, she arrived at her destination.
She could feel the bloodlust coming for her, and she had been attacked twice by strange shadow-like wolves. However, Katherine's expression did not change. She kept her determined look and continued with the plan.
Without hesitation, she jumped off a cliff!
Then, she used [Sky Dance] to glide through the air. With this spell, she managed to widen the distance between her and her pursuer once more.
She turned around and saw the daemon behind her. Katherine had a smug look in her face, but that smug look suddenly froze.
Katherine saw the daemon smiling, then, he jumped down.
From an almost one-kilometer tall cliff.
When Katherine saw that, she wanted to curse.
'Damn, normally, you would have taken a detour, right!?'
Of course, jumping down the cliff could not be so fast as gliding through the air while using a movement spell, however, Katherine earned less time than she expected.
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to continue using the [Sky Dance] spell. Like that, she increased the distance a bit more.
But two minutes later, the daemon finally caught up to her.
"Little rat, are you not going to run anymore?"
...
P4TRE0N: patr-eon.com/aidnovels