Having spent quite a few hours mucking around inside the completed hull of the toy ship, then chatting with Ariel, Alex took the hint that she should probably stop being so antisocial and check in with everyone else. The ship was coming along but it could wait.

  “Has anyone checked in on the maids?” Alex asked the sea elf, dusting herself off and standing up.

  “They went back to the cabin and some of them headed back to their families.” Fufi had apparently been keeping track of things. “I think two of them had retives amongst Zeke and Trudy’s family.”

  “You might want to talk to Aqua.” Ariel looked towards the exit to the shop. “She’s been corresponding with her cousins and knows more about what is going on outside.”

  So they did just that. A fmingo, a sea elf and a human girl headed down to the ke’s edge close to where Professor Copperpot’s camp was.

  “Is Aqua visiting the professor?” Alex asked Ariel.

  Ariel jumped into the water. “No, st I saw her she was down here gardening.”

  “Under water?” Alex boggled. “How do you even do that?”

  “It is just a hobby of hers.” The sea-elf shrugged. “She’s got a css simir to Ki’s but not with all the leadership stuff. Leading nereids is like herding cats.”

  Not sure what to say Alex just shrugged.

  Ariel dove into the water and came back up with a small spsh. Aqua popped up out of the water after her.

  “Hello Alex.” The nereid smiled and came ashore, dripping the whole way.

  “Hello.” Alex smiled in greeting.

  “Rumor around this little community is that you caused quite the stir in the north.” Aqua smirked.

  “It wasn’t on purpose.” Alex recalled the overpowered ballista experiment.

  “Hopefully you got a level out of it.” Aqua said.

  “Sadly no.” Alex shook her head. “I am about halfway to level 6 through.”

  “That’s not very high.” Aqua gave Alex a look. “But it isn’t a race. Not everyone is cut out for power leveling like that revenant you found on your trip to the capital.”

  “I think what was supposed to happen was for Alex to level up using the dungeon Luna charged.” Fufi added her two coppers. “But that didn’t work out. Sometimes it is like fate is conspiring to keep Alex’s level down.”

  Aqua shook her head. “Fate isn’t a deity in the system. So I doubt it is that, though likely there is some divine interference taking pce. It wouldn’t be the first time that some things were nudged in a certain direction to change an outcome. Anyway, there is nothing we can do about those kinds of things so it is best to just roll with the waves.”

  Alex frowned. “Do I need to level up faster?”

  Ariel shrugged. “It is up to you. Though, becoming too big of a threat too quickly might backfire. I was leveling fairly steadily until I got above level ten. Picking off demons at sea worked well. It pyed to my advantages but when I lost my ship then I hit a wall. Everyone needs to stop and take a while to reflect once and a while.”

  “I thought about trying to clear out the demon camp.” Alex started. “But the weather and terrain was not great, plus we were not sure what all was out there. Cooler heads said that it would be really risky.”

  Aqua nodded. “From what others have said about that temple, I suspect that there is a whole compound for the ice cn set up there. Can you defeat one or more tier 3 demons?”

  Alex shook her head. “No, I still struggle against tier 2 demons without help.”

  “It is not a hard fast rule.” Aqua expined. “But the demons tend to not form big groups unless there is one of them of at least tier 3. How many demons do you think were out in the gciers harassing the temple of Catalina?”

  “I got a few hundred with the avanche.” Alex reached for her phone but decided being exact wasn’t super important here.

  “My guess would be that they number in the thousands then.” Aqua taped her chin with her finger. “Doing more than taking pot shots from a safe pce wouldn’t be wise. Are you pnning to go back and keep harassing them?”

  “I would rather not.” Alex defted. “I don’t have good memories of that pce. It pained me that some of the maids wanted to be left behind. I’m worried they might end up being transformed into copies of the priests.”

  “They are probably only attacking the pce to justify their contract to the demon queen.” Aqua expined. “If they actually cleared that pce out then they’d have to find another group of humans or be forced back to their home pne.”

  “And they are not fire cn.” Fufi figured it out. “They’d have to carve out a spot in the kingdom from existing cims.”

  “How do they get more imps to repce their losses?” Alex thought that the logistics of keeping a demon camp in such a remote pce would be weird.

  “Demons are manavores.” Fufi answered. “They don’t need to eat or drink. They just need to cultivate their element to sustain themselves. As for how they get more demons out here. Originally they came on human ships but now they lose them faster than they can produce them I think?”

  Ariel nodded to the bird. “Yes, resources to build ships are becoming rarer in demon controlled nds. Also, people like me that sink them have been slowly whittling away at the fleets they can use.”

  “You’d think the demon presence would be harder to maintain in remote areas then.” Alex thought it didn’t make sense. “If they can’t repce their numbers as fast as they lose them. Imps don’t have a long life span right?”

  Aqua nodded. “You are right. But demons are sneaky. If any human goes to magic school in the capitol they really are only allowed to pick a single css.”

  “What css?” Alex looked at the nereid.

  “Demon summoner.” Aqua sounded dramatic. “The thing about summoners is that they are a cost heavy css. Summoning an imp is not expensive, but the higher tiers require a lot of sacrifice. And maintaining the magic cost of keeping an outsider on this pne falls on the summoner. So in most cases the duration tends to be short.”

  Alex furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t sound right. Unless the cost of summoning a group of imps is low and they can stay for a long time, how is it even possible to occupy a kingdom that way?”

  “Let me finish.” Aqua’s tone was patient. “It is the contract with the demon queen that lets it happen. If they are passed off to her after summoning then the demon summon doesn’t have to bear the cost of keeping the demons here.”

  Alex got it. “And because she’s a ruler css, then she also isn’t really bearing the cost personally. It is her nds. And because the other rulers are vassals of her, it is also their nds.”

  “You see how it is a sad thing then.” Aqua made a dramatic slump. “The demon queen is the only thing holding up this invasion. If none of the demons could use her contract they wouldn’t be here for long enough to have an occupation.”

  “Does that mean the ice cn has demon summoners?” Alex guessed.

  “Can’t really tell without getting a good look at what their compound is like.” Aqua shrugged. “They might, or they may just be getting imps that were summoned that are not part of any cn who don’t want to deal with being on the bottom rung of the tter that is the fire cn or something simir.”

  “A toy airship would be nice to have to spy on the demons.” Alex gnced back at the shop.

  Aqua agreed. “Flight is very powerful in this world against demons considering the accords.”

  “The accords?” Alex looked around. “I don’t see what that has to do with flight.”

  “A certain magical girl is like the devil to the demons.” Ariel beamed. “She is like a bde hovering over their heads.”

  “Yeah,” Alex got it. “But she can’t do anything because she’s too powerful.”

  “Yes and no.” Fufi expined. “If someone breaks the accords she can do something. But also, the accords only apply to Terre.”

  “Oh.” The bck-haired girl fiddled with the green streak in her hair. “You’d think the skies would still count.”

  “You would also think that preventing us from finding partners on Terre would count as vioting the accords as well.” Fufi grumbled, grinding her beak.

  “What she is trying to say,” Another fmingo decided to fly in and nd next to Ariel. “Is that Cosmos takes potshots at demons in the air if she notices them.”

  “I don’t know if using pnar dismissal is taking a shot.” Fufi strutted over to Funi. “I saw her do it once when I was searching around the pnet. The demon just vanished in a fsh.”

  “It is the most frustrating thing about the current state of the world.” Ariel made a fist with her webbed hand. “Magical girl cosmos has the perfect abilities to counter extra pnar creatures but she is supposed to sit on the sidelines.”

  “I imagine that she is not happy with how things are.” Alex allowed.

  “Yeah,” Ariel beamed. “Cosmos’s story is why I accepted Fumi’s offer to become a magical girl. The goodly deities have been distancing themselves from Luna but I think she’s going to fix things.”

  Alex agreed. “If someone could get to her level I bet they could just shake some sense back into the demon queen. Have the other races not had any luck against the demons?”

  “Nothing other than skirmishes.” Ariel said. “My people would fight them at sea but never a prolonged battle. The demon queen’s castle has a portal that can summon all the demons she can get to come. So any battle on that continent will eventually turn into unending waves of enemies. The only mistake that the other races can make that they can’t run from is to harbor humans. The demon queen’s imps can pursue humans to the ends of the earth and they will if they can.”

  “I get it.” Alex grumbled. “Sakura’s pn to just wait for humans to become extinct is not that unreasonable tactic for the longer lived races.”

  Aqua nodded. “I doubt it is just Sakura. When Ki gave the warning about the winter court I suspect that is something that she feared.”

  “That the winter court will want humans gone?” Alex stated.

  “Yes,” Aqua nodded. “When the winter court comes then expect the way they deal with humans in their nds to be much harsher.”

  Alex remembered the non-insignificant numbers of humans turned into shrubs. “If the summer fey are nice I shudder to think what the winter court is like.”