Clinging to Tati City's wall, Anawen didn't pause. She opened her mouth and let out a shrill, mournful wail, as if declaring her arrival to all with this eardrum-piercing sound.
Seeing the giant man-eating-flower maiden open her mouth, Ningning instinctively clapped her hands over her ears, using her max-HP body to tank this wave of defense-ignoring sonic attack head-on.
Anawen's mournful wail flooded the whole city, shaking roof tiles loose, going on for a full thirty seconds before it gradually died away.
Every one of Ningning's internal organs ached from the sonic shock, her throat gone sweet and coppery, nearly bringing up blood.
She hurriedly cast healing magic on herself while looking up to survey her surroundings—
Most of the pedestrians on the street had already been knocked flat by the sudden sonic assault, their organs wounded, spitting blood, at death's door.
The scant few still barely able to stand were, without exception, decked out in all sorts of equipment, clearly adventurers.
But they looked to be in a bad way too, some clutching their ears, some crying out, their hearing plainly dealt a heavy blow.
With a single scream, Anawen had all but neutralized every non-combatant in the city.
So this was the strength of a cadre of the Demon Lord's Army?
As for the Hero, Winnie, at Ningning's side...
She had, of course and unsurprisingly, been knocked out cold.
Blood streaming from every orifice, abdomen burst open, gore pooling across the ground.
"Tch, this is big trouble."
Ningning knelt on the ground, one hand pressed to her still-ringing head, the other laid on Winnie's body.
Amid flickering white light, the Hero's body was gradually repaired, and before long she caught her breath once more, blinking in a daze:
"Huh? What just happened? It suddenly got so loud..."
"Get up, quick, take me to the others! A cadre of the Demon Lord's Army has attacked!"
Ningning cast another glance around at the crowd shocked to the brink of death and urged the Hero anxiously.
"Huh? A cadre of the Demon Lord's Army? Where?"
Winnie scrambled to her feet, rubbing her head, and the moment she looked up, she saw Anawen, countless vines sprouting from her body, lashing at the city wall:
"Wow, Ning-chan, look! I found a battle-pet!"
"That is NOT a battle-pet, it's a cadre of the Demon Lord's Army, you dolt!" Ningning shouted, furious. "Hurry up and take me back to the inn, we need to find Baiye and the others!"
"You got it!"
Seeing the wretched state of the street, Winnie instantly understood how urgent things were. She answered at once, grabbed Ningning by the collar, and swept the White Mage off toward the inn like a whirlwind, head down and barreling.
Ningning flew top-heavy and dizzy through the wind, the dull, thunderous booms of Anawen battering the wall coming up from below her feet, brick fragments flying past now and then to slam into the ground nearby, blasting out crater after crater and spraying stone shards everywhere.
The flight lasted a moment before the Hero suddenly slammed on the brakes, flinging Ningning off. She went headfirst into the inn's front door, crashing into it hard enough to see stars, then slid woozily to the ground.
"...Hero, are you trying to get Ningning killed? Ningning! Ningning, are you okay?"
Through the haze, Ningning heard Baiye's voice.
She shook her ringing head hard and reached out to brace herself against a slightly soft, spongy bit of wall beside her to stand up:
"I'm fine, barely still alive..."
Ningning steadied herself and looked at her teammates.
The Hero seemed to have just gotten a scolding from Baiye, curled up in a wronged little ball like a quail sitting on an egg.
Leilei held a blackboard reading 『I think I've gone deaf』 to her chest, two trickles of blood running from her ears.
Biluo stood behind the others as always, silent, though her contorted expression plainly said she was in a bad way too.
As for Baiye... where was Baiye?
Ningning looked around a few times without finding the captain, and just as she was puzzling over it, the wall she was leaning on for support spoke up:
"Ningning... do you still want to keep that hand of yours?"
"Eep-eep-eep!"
Ningning came to with a jolt, finally registering exactly what the warm, soft "wall" she'd been leaning on actually was, and hurriedly let go:
"I do, I do... Multi-Heal."
The light of white magic shone in the air, splitting into three beams that drifted lightly down onto the three who'd stayed at the inn, instantly healing the harm they'd just taken.
『Ah, I can hear again.』 Leilei's blackboard said.
"Ningning, is it an attack?" Baiye asked, flexing her limbs.
Ningning glanced at the Demon-race figure at the edge of the sky, more than half of it blocked from view by the inn:
"Yeah. It's Anawen, one of the Ten Great Cadres of the Demon Lord's Army."
"Anawen? You mean the plant-type monster, Anawen? Doesn't that kind of monster become unable to move again once it takes root?"
"Not if it uses spatial magic. And besides, that's no ordinary monster; it's a Demon-race being evolved to cadre rank."
"Anyway, there's no time now to agonize over how she got to Tati City. She's here, and she's launched an indiscriminate attack on the whole city."
"Mm, understood. We have to take her down as fast as possible."
Baiye too grasped the gravity of the situation, nodded at once, and began issuing orders in her capacity as captain:
"Then I'll carry Ningning, the Hero takes Leilei, and we rush to engage at top speed. I'll feint first to feel out the enemy's patterns..."
"Ah, I'll sit this one out."
Before Baiye could finish, Ningning suddenly raised a hand, cutting off her deployment.
"Why?"
"Because apart from her sonic attack, her trump card, all of Anawen's other attacks are weak. The kind you all can block easily."
"And her sonic attack needs a charge-up, so as long as someone keeps harassing her, she can't unleash her big move."
"But that sonic wave just now badly wounded a lot of people in the city. If I don't go help them, a lot of them will die."
Baiye opened her mouth to say something, but in the end couldn't get it out.
Setting aside the truth or source of this information, if everything Ningning said was fact, then sending her alone to save people was, of course, the most correct call.
But... was doing it this way really foolproof?
If the four of them got hurt and couldn't be healed, or if Ningning, acting alone, took harm from some other unknown source...
"It's fine, Baiye, relax, no need to worry about me."
Ningning gave a light smile, waved to the others, and, without the slightest hesitation, ran off toward the street:
"I'll come help you once I'm done over here! Do your best, everyone! Sustained Heal!"
Baiye's eyes were dazzled by the four beams of white light Ningning tossed out offhandedly once more.
She raised a hand to rub her sore, aching eyes, and by the time she opened them again, the White Mage was long gone.
This Ningning, she really did go her own way and do as she pleased.
Might as well let her be captain.
Baiye lowered her gaze to her own body, glowing faintly white, then clenched both fists:
"Ningning's right. We're the Hero's Party. If we ignore other people's lives just to destroy an enemy, what kind of Heroes would we be!"
"Right, right!" the Hero, Winnie, drew her longsword and cried to the heavens, "And that's the battle-pet I've got my eye on; I have to beat her down good and hard!"
『Ooh! Good and hard!』
"Then let's move!"
Baiye gave the command, grabbed Leilei by the scruff, sprang onto the inn roof, and charged out ahead toward Anawen at the wall.