The Battle of Harbor Town

At midnight, in Harbor Town, the sleeping townsfolk were jolted awake by fierce flames and waves of raucous crow calls.

"Fire... there's a fire...!" "Help! Someone save me!"

After more than a decade of peace, the suddenly attacked residents of Harbor Town immediately descended into chaos. The streets were in disarray, with screams and cries ringing through every corner of the town.

Lynn stood atop the roof of a house, his eyes scanning the direction of the flames with the sharpness of an eagle's gaze.

This was a first-circle spell—Tik's Far Sight.

It allowed a wizard to possess the precise long-range vision of a griffin for a short time.

During his days in Harbor Town, aside from gathering intelligence and making Black Powder, Lynn had not neglected his study of new magic. He had practically worn out his copy of the Basic Magic Compendium.

"Is that Joanne and White Dove?" Lynn murmured as he watched the flocks of gray crows in the distance and the figures darting through the firelight.

Had they escaped ahead of time?

Wait...

Lynn quickly noticed something was wrong. The two Witches did not appear to have been tortured.

Perhaps... they had not escaped.

They were preparing to break into Harbor Town Prison to rescue someone!

Lynn immediately thought of this possibility, and his brow furrowed.

Before acting tonight, he had considered dozens of possible emergencies. He had even anticipated that the church might set a trap in Harbor Town and wait for him to fall into it.

Yet he had never expected Antioch to dare publicize the matter so extravagantly without capturing anyone.

The Archbishop was clearly making a huge gamble: gambling that the Wizard Apprentices had not managed to meet up. Otherwise, tomorrow's public ceremony would become a complete joke.

After all, this world had a True God. If they dared to find a few prisoners at the last minute and pass them off as wizards during such a public witch-hunting ceremony, it would be no different from blasphemy!

Clearly, the Archbishop had won his wager. Though Lynn had not stepped into the trap, Joanne and White Dove had tested the danger for him!

But since neither Witch had been captured, who had leaked the Ship Gang's information?

Antioch's personal arrival in Harbor Town, the sealing of the port, and all the measures directed at the Ship Gang could not have been faked. That was also one reason Lynn had believed the two might have been captured.

As he pondered, the cawing above Harbor Town grew weaker and weaker. This meant Joanne and White Dove were nearing their limit.

Lynn did not act immediately. Only a few hundred guards had surrounded the two Witches; Archbishop Antioch and his three thousand elite soldiers had yet to enter the fray.

This was bait as well, and he was the big fish Antioch wanted to hook...

"071, given the current situation, if we confront them head-on, what are our chances of winning?" Lynn silently asked in his mind.

His greatest trump card was the enormous quantity of Black Powder he had placed at the docks. As long as he exploited the information gap and the advantages offered by magical shaping to lure Antioch and the others there, he could blow them straight into the sky. But now, that goal would likely be difficult to achieve.

[Estimated chance of victory is below the safety threshold. As stated earlier by the agreed-upon target, extraterrestrials should not be included among protected targets. Under the Federal Citizen Life Safety Act, your first priority should be preserving your own life!]

Lynn fell silent for a while before asking again, "Then can you determine why Joanne and White Dove would risk their lives to enter Harbor Town?"

[There is a ninety-seven percent probability... they came to save you, sir!]

"So do you understand now, 071?" Lynn gazed at the distant flames and spoke to himself in his mind.

"Sometimes, extraterrestrials are people too!"

Meanwhile, inside Harbor Town's church, Archbishop Antioch stood lost in thought as he watched the chaos unfolding across the town.

The faint screams and wails reaching his ears made the Priests present change expression, yet Antioch seemed not to hear them. He turned to Adrian beside him and asked,

"Well? Have you extracted any useful clues these past few days?"

"My Lord Bishop, someone placed a powerful psionic spell within Hawke's mind. I have tried several methods, but I could not break through that restriction." Adrian explained with considerable shame.

A few days earlier, while the Archbishop personally led the elite guard to hunt down those Demon's Followers, Adrian had led men in a raid on Ur Town. Based on the intelligence previously obtained from Will, he had gone to the Drunkard Tavern and captured Old Hawke, who had not managed to escape in time.

However, to Adrian's disappointment, the man's brain was protected by some kind of psionic magic. When Adrian used divine arts to investigate his memories, he had nearly turned the man into an idiot.

Their only gain had been some intelligence concerning Harbor Town, discovered in a secret room within the Drunkard Tavern.

"No matter. We will soon have a new source of intelligence." Antioch spoke calmly, with no intention of blaming Adrian.

"Lord Bishop, should we send more men? If this continues, those two Wizard Apprentices may escape our control." Adrian glanced toward the disturbance in western Harbor Town and asked cautiously.

Because someone had used gray crows to set Harbor Town's granaries ablaze, most of the stationed soldiers had been dispatched to fight the fire. Only two Priests and three hundred soldiers were handling the pursuit.

If this continued, more and more civilians would likely be caught up in it...

Adrian silently swallowed the rest of his words. He had never agreed with Lord Bishop's decision to make Harbor Town the battlefield. It would only place those defenseless townsfolk in danger.

"Now is not the time to act, Adrian!" Antioch's withered face bore a trace of sternness as he stared at the Priest before speaking again. "A moment of mercy will only bring about an even more terrifying disaster."

"The Hellfire burning beyond Ur Town has yet to be extinguished. If we fail to capture that wizard named Carl this time, such a dreadful sight may be repeated in every corner of Nordland Territory."

"The merciful Lord will forgive the sins of you and me..."

Antioch turned back toward the flames blazing over Harbor Town and chanted in an extraordinarily hoarse voice.

"May their souls return to the holy land and receive eternal protection. May their true spirits never fall into the abyss of demons..."

The Priests in the church also wore expressions of pity. Soon, they joined in a melodious hymn, praying that the townsfolk who died in this conflict, having endured boundless suffering in life, would be reborn in the Lord's holy land...