Seeing Fia stop in her tracks, Claire whispered an explanation.
“The Church needs to execute those infected with the Darkspawn Disease to calm the public after yesterday’s chaos.
This kind of thing happens a lot in Aurora City.”
“Yeah, I know.”
As she spoke, Fia used Wind of Detection to scan the plaza.
Maybe they were on alert because of her, the elf princess, or maybe they were afraid of another Darkspawn attack.
Either way, a considerable number of Paladins were lying in ambush around the square, most of them between the second and third tier in strength.
What puzzled Fia was that among the crowd, there were four rare third-tier individuals.
At first, she thought they were plainclothes Paladins disguised as spectators, but after withdrawing Wind of Detection, she realized their aura didn’t match that of Church members, and they didn’t act like undercover agents either.
When they looked at the priest on stage, their eyes were filled with visible anger.
At that moment, the knight on stage had already pushed the first Darkspawn Disease patient onto the guillotine.
The Darkspawn patients were innocent.
Fia frowned.
She had to find a way to stop the Paladins.
The plaza was packed with people—using magic might hurt civilians by accident.
Just as Fia was thinking this, the four people from earlier suddenly sprang into action.
The blue-haired girl in the lead summoned a massive ice spear and hurled it at the priest.
The sudden turn of events sent the crowd screaming and scattering, and the Paladins on stage were too busy protecting the priest to deal with anything else.
Nice move.
Fia decided to use this chance to rescue the three poor souls.
As for the main fight, she’d leave it to these people who looked like they’d jumped straight out of a story.
They might not be classic heroes saving damsels in distress, but they were still heroes fighting injustice.
“Claire, I’m going to step away for a bit.”
“Need my help?”
“I’ll be fine on my own.”
There was a chance she’d be discovered, and dragging Claire into it would be bad.
Even though Claire had the curse of being forgotten, if any of the Paladins had known her for a while, they might still remember her and trace her back to the clinic.
After getting Claire’s nod, Fia used her incredible physical abilities to leap across nearby buildings, quickly reaching the tallest structure around the plaza.
From here, she had a clear view of everything below.
They might be the protagonists of a story, but… are they fresh out of the tutorial village or something? Fia quietly sighed as she used Wind of Detection to compare both sides’ strength.
The four, led by the blue-haired girl, were all third-tier.
That sounded impressive, and in a small town in the middle of nowhere, they’d be revered as heroes.
But their opponents were just as strong—three third-tier Paladins and over a dozen second-tier ones.
Unless these four had some secret technique to turn the tide, they were just being reckless, charging in without properly assessing the Church’s strength.
As Fia speculated, the blue-haired girl’s actions gave her the answer.
—They were acting on impulse.
She charged straight for the three poor souls on stage, switching her short staff for a scythe, completely ignoring the seasoned third-tier Paladin lurking in the shadows of the platform.
That Paladin was already prepared, eyes locked on her.
As expected, the moment the blue-haired girl passed over the priest’s head, the third-tier Paladin would strike.
Unless she knew Flight magic, there was no way she could change direction mid-air to dodge the ambush.
Helping others was noble, but only if you were sure you could pull it off.
Fia quickly calculated the trajectory in her mind and summoned ten fireballs, each a meter in diameter, firing them one after another along the path the seasoned Paladin would take to ambush the girl.
It’s worth noting that Fia didn’t unleash a full 360-degree barrage on the Paladin.
First, out of respect for Claire’s wishes—she wanted to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
Second, she didn’t want to draw too much attention and have the Paladins abandon the blue-haired girl to come after her instead.
Sure enough, things went just as Fia predicted.
The Paladin launched his ambush the moment the girl passed over the priest, but thanks to Fia’s Spirit Fire, he was blasted away by the fireballs before he could even touch her.
Maybe I should learn Ice Bullets or Snowballs—something a bit gentler.
Spirit Fire is still an explosion, and explosions are way too lethal for living beings.
Wait, if I could learn Ice Bullets… Considering Spirit Fire can summon 120 fireballs at once, wouldn’t Ice Bullets let me do a full-on spray attack, like a Maxim machine gun from ancient times? Actually, even the Maxim’s rate of fire wouldn’t match mine.
Spirit Fire can only summon 120 at a time, but my mana is practically unlimited.
No one said I couldn’t just keep summoning them over and over.
Come to think of it, aside from magic theory, the World Tree Continent also has a field called Magi-Tech, which focuses on creating magical weapons and tools.
If I could get into that, maybe I really could build a magic version of a Maxim gun.
That’d be way more fun than slowly chanting spells like a traditional mage.
Maybe she didn’t expect someone to help her, but the blue-haired girl clearly froze for a second after landing.
Instead of standing there stunned, I’d really prefer if you just finished off your opponent and went to help your teammates.
Fia muttered in her head, glancing at the rest of the plaza.
The Paladins were clearly prepared.
The moment the attack started, they quickly formed groups of three to five and surrounded the blue-haired girl’s three companions—let’s call them the Blue Team.
Every time someone from the Blue Team tried to break out and attack, the targeted Paladin would dodge, and the others would immediately close in, leaving fresh wounds on the Blue Team members.
