Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem

Zach and Kat soon found themselves at the command tent just outside the city with several of their other classmates receiving treatment for wounds similar to the one Kat had on her leg. Some had cuts on their legs as well. Others on their arms or torsos. There was even one guy who lost a finger.

Most if not all of the wounds were painful and bled a lot. But none of them were lethal unless left untreated. The students would recover in at most a couple of days, thanks to potions and healers.

Once again, the Underworld had done something useless.

Or so Zach thought until he looked at the expressions on his classmates.

He wasn't worried. He hadn't been even when he saw all the injuries his classmates got. And nothing had tried to attack him. Even if it had, it would need to be something powerful to get through his familiars and barriers and reach him. If it had been that powerful, Zach wouldn't have had any classmates left.

The Underworld was just doing something sneaky. Maybe the wounds were infected. Maybe they were cursed.

That wasn't it.

The students were scared.

The wounds and what caused them had frightened the students. None of them had seen anything. Noticed anything. Felt anything.

Suddenly, they had been cut. Their positions, situations, and locations had all been different. But within a span of minutes, almost all the students had received an injury somewhere on their body.

They hadn't even been able to think about defending since they didn't know they were attacked.

The only precursor to the incident was the fire taking over the dolls, which was still burning all over the city.

Fire and pain.

It was only natural that the students were unsettled and wary. Add on to that the fact they were attacked by an unknown enemy, Zach almost couldn't blame them for being scared.

He went to find Violina.

She had also noticed it after getting the students to calm down and share what had happened to them one at a time. She looked at the dancing orange light escaping from the city's streets into the evening air while thinking about the situation.

"Zach." She noticed his arrival when he stood next to her.

"Did you notice anything?" She asked. She had requested his presence in the city for exactly a situation like this, after all.

Zach glanced at his familiars for a moment.

"Nope." He shook his head. "The dolls started burning, and then I heard a scream. I found Kat and brought her back. That's about it. I didn't see, hear, or sense anything other than the burning dolls."

"Any ideas?"

"I was thinking it could be an invisible underworlder, but…"

"Doesn't make sense. If they had a unit like that, they would use it for more than just scratching our classmates. Hell, they could have killed all of them!"

"Mm. Either there's a reason for not killing everyone."

"Or they couldn't. Which means whatever did that isn't powerful."

"It's just impossible to detect."

Zach's and Violina's expressions were grim as they looked at the city.

Their faces brightened slightly as Nessa returned from it.

"Well?" Violina asked. Impatient for information.

"The dolls are on fire, but the fire isn't spreading. That black blood is what's burning. It's like oil or tar or something. It does not look like it will stop anytime soon."Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"Could you put it out?" Zach asked.

Nessa raised her arms in a shrug.

"I tried stomping on it. Hitting it with a plank. I even pulled up some water from a well. Did nothing." Nessa didn't have anything more to report, so she stood next to Violina and also looked out over the city with a grim and thoughtful expression.

"Was it hot?" Zach asked after a minute of silence.

"...Was what hot?" Nessa hesitantly asked. Violina's face was stoic.

"The fire?" Nessa's hesitance made Zach question his question. But she had just been a little weird.

"Oh! Uh…Now that I think about it, I don't think so?" Nessa crossed her arms and tilted her head as she remembered how it had been to walk the streets littered with burning doll corpses. It had felt maybe a little hotter than usual. But there weren't any warm breezes drying her skin or making it hard to breathe like one might expect from a city almost on fire. It had felt like a warm summer's eve.

Violina's eyes slowly widened in gradual realization. Long-lasting fire that wasn't hot.

Either the doll's blood just didn't burn that hot. It wasn't impossible. A lot of things didn't burn hot. Violina couldn't think of any such materials off the top of her head, but that didn't matter. She didn't know what the Underworld had access to anyway.

And while she knew the Underworld was handy and performed tricky experiments that might have led to the creation of a long-lasting flame that didn't burn hot, there was also another entirely possible explanation.

"Magic," she said.

The other two looked at her.

"Unorthodox magic, that is," she clarified.

It didn't make it much clearer.

"Can underworlders use magic?" Nessa asked. She hadn't even considered the possibility before.

"Is there anything that says they can't? And if they got a human mage and made them an underworlder? I would even say it's highly likely that there is some kind of magic in the Underworld. It might resemble orthodox magic or it might not. But magic would explain the flames. It might even explain the attacks."

"You're saying, what, an underworlder mage used a spell to attack everyone in the city at the same time?" Nessa asked. A mage capable of that would be incredibly skilled.

"Not quite. I was thinking that the dolls and fire was part of it. But I'm not an expert on magic. So, until we can read up on it in the library or ask a skilled mage, you're in charge of clean-up Zach?" Violina patted Zach on the shoulder and left.

"Clean-up?" He asked her back.

Violina gave an encouraging thumbs-up without looking back.

He looked at Nessa.

Nessa shrugged and, before Zach could say anything, chased after Violina. There was no way Zach was dragging her into helping him take care of the city while they researched.