NOVEL NEXT Chapter 397 - No One Wants To Be In Charge
Jason was worried about the effects of actually killing one of the cultists, but on the other hand, it was inevitable. Still, after another day, it becomes obvious that finding the cultist so close to the road wasn't by chance. Whatever was going down, was now fully in force.
Over the past week, he had been warning any place he had met along the way, but now that wasn't necessary. They bloody well knew there was a demon cult because they were fighting it. That or already dead.
Towns were besieged by cultists and demons of all sorts. Two demons that Jason can recognize right away are the dull witted flyers known as Vrocks and one or two of the strange Glabrezu. Though the fact that there are already four demon types that he could recognize is strange. The Abyss was known for having infinite levels so the fact that Jason could identify any at all could be seen as either a small miracle or a sign of how even if it represented chaos, reality forced some stability even for them.
Though with that selection of demons running around, especially the Glabrezu, Jason would have to be careful. He wasn't certain of what their actual level was in NeoRealm, but with his prior knowledge Jason knew that the Glabrezu were only at most seven ranks below the Marilith. That might seem like a lot, but they were more ranks above the Quasits than they were below the Marilith.
That pointed towards being at least level 200 and Jason was in no place to be fighting monsters in their seventh break. The fact that none of the demons had bothered dealing with Jason just showed that something was going down. Because he wasn't going to delude himself and believe that despite being within sight of such powerful beings, they hadn't noticed him.
Jason wasn't sure about the others, but for a demon like the Glabrezu, the chances of them not having some form of sense that could detect him was near impossible. Still, after three days straight of burned or besieged towns, things cleared up again. Though he had noticed that the area being affected was expanding. Of course, Jason couldn't be sure, but most likely the cult had encircled the city about a week's travel out and was now tightening their grip.
Upon realizing that, Jason decided to change his pace. Before he had been traveling at an easy going speed so that he wouldn't look suspicious or towards the end there, a full-blown run interspersed with moments of rest and hiding. Now he switched to a distance eating jog that he could keep up for hours without too much strain.
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Sure, it wasn't anywhere near close to his speed from the three-day run, but combined with his movement technique and the new title it allowed him to reach the next city in five days. This once again led him to stand out and attract the attention of the city guard. A useful thing as it allowed him to skip the line and talk directly to one of the guards.
Though when he asked if they had heard of the trouble back at Threerivers, the answer was to the negative. This didn't necessarily mean much as the people at the top might be keeping it a secret, but Jason doubted it. Still, in consideration that he really didn't want to get thrown in jail for leaking secrets or some other nonsense, he asked to see the person in charge of the city guard.
Of course, since he didn't arrive at a dead out run with warnings of demons on the horizon, this involved a lot more bureaucracy and so took a while. In fact, the only reason he got to see the captain of the guard that day was his worrying question about Threerivers. Once Jason saw the captain, though, things kicked into overdrive.
The captain couldn't take Jason at his word that somehow the nearest city was now facing a demon invasion, but a quick trip to the local church of truth cleared that. The captain even splurged on getting a more advanced truth spell cast to check on the objective truth of Jason's statements. Not that this was able to provide an answer, though the fact that it didn't provide an answer proved something was up in and of itself. Because while such spells could be blocked, they wouldn't ever be able to answer falsely. Well, as far as the System knew, but within NeoRealm that basically was the same thing.
Jason then experienced being dragged around like never before. In the last city, all he had to do was report to the army. This city, however, didn't have an army outpost and so no one was specifically in charge of a situation like this, nor did anyone want to be in charge of it. In the end, it took one of the local merchant lords offering a decent sized mana stone to power a transmission array for anything to actually get done.
Though this mostly involved the kingdom's Queen sending a very long and scathing set of orders. Along with that though came the offer of even more rewards for Jason, though he decided to turn it down and instead just receive 1000 gold. Sure, a full set of gear being made for him would have been epic and worth way more. The only problem was it would have involved traveling to the capital and sticking around for about a month.
Maybe if the capital had been one of his destinations to visit, he might have taken the Queen up on that offer. It wasn't though and honestly, Jason was still at a low level with a bottleneck not far in his future. More than enough people might get trapped at level 24, but Jason was a traveller and so could throw himself at a dungeon with reckless abandon if need be.