Ashton looked at the small group standing in front of him. It was around ten people, each one with a family member at the primary school. Sibling or child, or in the case of one of the teenage girls, her mother was one of the teachers.

  These were people that didn't have the means to make their way over to the primary school yet, although they really wanted to. Some folk had gone on their own, but these people were those that either weren't strong enough to be sure they could defend themselves, or simply scared that they would arrive at the school just to realise that the person they were there for hadn't made it.

  But now, Ashton was here. Not only could he defend everyone on the way, but he also assured them that the primary school was relatively safe, all things considered. Safer than this place, at least.

  Of course, that would change to some degree the more people were there; the protection of the Guardian of the Innocent would weaken depending on the percentage of children in a given group. If they had other ways to be protected, the constellation's power wasn't needed quite as much.

  However, if these people pulled their weight, they wouldn't make the primary school less safe, at least.

  "Is everyone ready to go?" Ashton asked, standing in front of the gate. It seemed that everyone was ready. They said goodbye to their friends that were staying here for the time being, though for all they knew, this could be the last time they saw each other.

  Ashton looked down at his watch. If they went straight to the school on the shortest route, he would be able to make up for all the lost time. He was pretty confident that it was possible to get there in the remaining time of the second quest, but he only had a bit more than three days left to finish the remaining two constellation quests.

  He had to kill and 'offer' five hundred monsters and ten elites, and then kill ten Marked and save the lives of a hundred people.

  Annoyingly enough, what he just did in Market Street didn't actually count as 'saving' them. That probably meant that they had to be in imminent danger, rather than just consider doing something that was essentially suicide.

  They were annoying quests, but Ashton had to live with it. What he would get out of this was much greater than what he was losing. Which was, for one, at least 2500 coins... If he was right, then by 'offering their lives', it meant that Ashton would give up the coin reward as well, which was kind of annoying because that was one of the things that he needed the most right now, to properly summon the Salesman.

  They were a deeply essential summon that Ashton would need to continue in the future. Since earth didn't have any useful, or easily accessible, information about the sort of magic that Ashton was familiar with, and it would take a while until earth figured out enough about mana for Ashton to be able to take advantage of. Not to mention, all the materials that he would need... his knowledge of materials and potential offerings was fully biased in that it came from a whole other world. Some of those materials came to earth as well, but not even close to all of them. Especially not the most important ones, at least not yet.

  But helping these guys was the right thing to do. He wasn't sure if they could make it all the way there without him, nor did he believe that everyone that tried going to the primary school before now managed to survive the way there. It was still quite the trek, and there'd be plenty of monsters in the way.

  As the group stepped out of the gate, Ashton made sure to keep an eye on all of them. However, because he was just one person, he decided to summon the sylph and channel it in the way that he had channelled the undine the other day, essentially giving him an overview of all the movements of air in his channelling range.

  Every breath, sudden jolt, or even just the way that everyone's movements pushed around the air around them. That way, if anything suddenly entered the channelling range, Ashton would hopefully be able to react in time and have the wisp shoot at it.

  Now that the magic elemental had the 'force' spell imbued into it, any monster could be pushed back even if just momentarily. That moment would be enough for Ashton to come and take care of it.

  And keeping everyone within his channelling range was definitely a lot easier than walking while keeping an eye out on both the front and back. Then again, even if he had done that and managed to do it somehow, Ashton wouldn't have noticed the thing that was coming for him. After all, it was coming from above.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  It was just a few minutes away from Market Street, when a monster swooped down from the sky. It had the body of a woman, but large wings instead of arms and the taloned legs of a bird of prey.

  Harpies.

  A whole flock of them, really. They had been hiding on top of a nearby building; or maybe they were just nesting there in the first place, and just noticed some tasty snacks strutting down the road.

  Ashton took control of the wisp and made it shoot straight toward the harpies. The first two were hit fully by the force spell and fell to the ground, and three others were slightly startled and stopped their approach. The rest, around four others, continued their descent.

  The ones that were hit directly seemed to have broken a few things and were injured, so maybe they weren't something Ashton had to prioritize.

  He whispered to himself, or rather, one of the constellations listening to him. "*From now on, unless I specifically state otherwise, I offer the next 500 monsters I kill to the 'Daughter of the Scarlet Heart'."

  [[Daughter of the Scarlet Heart] has accepted your intentions]

  [The lives of the next 500 Monsters you kill will be offered to [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  [0/500]

  A small counter appeared in front of Ashton. He pushed it aside, but it was still stuck in the corner of his eye. When he wasn't focused on it, it would slowly fade, but the moment he would think about it, it would return back into awareness.

  Annoying, yet useful.

  Ashton ran at the monsters, taking control of the wisp through his staff. He started spinning his weapon around, and it shot through the air, skilfully avoiding all the people in his channelling range and instead hitting the harpies before they managed to dig their claws into them.

  For now, all he wanted to do was push them back to get these folk to safety for the moment.

  "Everyone, to the side of the road! Stick to the wall! Nothing will happen to you, I promise!" Ashton yelled out, as he took control of the sylph with his off-hand and used its magic to create a blast of air that would at least temporarily stun these monsters.

  It didn't take long for the group to comply with what Ashton told them to do, and once they were far enough away that Ashton could focus on the monsters completely, he really started going at them.

  Every time one of the harpies tried to get out of his range, he would use the wisp to push them back into range, and used the sylph's magic to mess with the flow of air whenever they tried to get up off the ground in the first place.

  And for the rest of it, it was just a simple clobbering. Harpies weren't exactly hardy monsters, nor were they particularly intelligent. While they looked humanoid to some degree, they were far more animalistic than others that might look less humanoid.

  Not that it stopped people from getting uncomfortable at their sight, and not just because they looked like weird chimeras made from humans and bird, but also because their forms copied the appearance of a nude woman perfectly. Perfectly.

  Ashton had no idea what their origin was, though. They certainly didn't exist in Lumia before the system came.

  Maybe they were created through some experiment in a world where people looked more like humans, or maybe it was just a wild coincidence and to the people in their original world every part of their body appeared like some grotesque mass of horror. Whichever it was, right now, the people of earth clearly still didn't have their priorities right.

  He could see the way that that woman scolded her husband for looking at the harpies. From his expression, he didn't seem to have any attraction to them, but their appearance was clearly enough for his wife to become self-conscious. Maybe there was a story there? Not that Ashton cared. He expected that there would be a lot of weird things happening in this world in the future, and a lot of fucked up things, so... yeah. Maybe she wasn't self-conscious for nothing. More messed up things have happened.

  Ashton almost gagged at the thought, just as he crushed in the head of one of the harpies under his boot without another glance. While the monster's body slumped, a message appeared.

  [You have killed a [Harpy] and offered its life to the [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  "Urgh..." Ashton would see that message a lot over the next few days. Annoying. Hopefully he wouldn't be doing this for nothing. Though, 500 monsters was definitely doable. There were a few monsters he could think of that appeared in massive groups and were relatively easy to take out, and would yet give 5 coins each at least. Well, at this point in time, maybe not all of them would, but definitely most. A lot of them. Maybe.

  Since harpies were so fragile, it was easy enough to kill them. The thing that was mostly dangerous about them was if they managed to swoop in with multiple monsters at a time. Ranged opponents were always fairly dangerous. For now, Ashton channelled the Pen of Insight and tagged one of the harpies to get their info written down to cross-reference, and then later he would write down some more info to give to Sam to post into the community the next time he saw him.

  And then, the moment he tagged it and felt like the pen got all the info it needed, Ashton bashed its skull in and watched as it fell to the ground. The last one left alive was one of the injured ones that fell after being hit by the 'force' spell.

  Ashton took control of the wisp with his hand and hat it aim straight at its chest. He activated the force spell too, and watched as the harpy slammed into the ground and broke its spine. It died instantly.

  [You have killed a [Harpy] and offered its life to the [Daughter of the Scarlet Heart]]

  Ashton sighed and focused on the counter in the corner of his eye.

  [9/500]

  This would be an annoying quest to clear.