[-Well!? Have you managed to capture the user of [Envy] already?]

  "N-no, sire! If it hadn't been for that blindfolded demoness or those idiots' incompetence, we would for sure-!" - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  [Don't give me excuses! If I had gotten at least even just a sample of that creature's mana...!]

  "Y-yes, sire. It is a deep shame. S-still, are we really trying to awaken...that?" - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  [Stop questioning my reasoning, lackey, or else you will be on the wrong side of the next sabbath!]

  "Y-y-yes, sire!! Please show mercy!" - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  [Dammit. Be glad your Hidden Hideout is of value to the Arch-Bishops. Now, how is the other 'collection' doing?]

  "I-it has gone smoothly. While some of the converted non-believers have been captured by the city guards, we are still on schedule with our original divine mission." - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  [Excellent. Be sure to make good use of the low-rarity treasures. They are not our goal, but even the almighty Chaos would not wish for us to waste such valuables.]

  "W-wise words, sire! Currently, we are using the mana inside the treasures to further fuel the 'Stake of Bewildred Awards' in addition to the fae horse your honor captured." - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  [Make sure the Stake stays intact. We have lost too many of them. At this rate, those blasted mercenaries and adventurers will find our real work of devotion to God Chaos!]

  "Th-that will not happen, sir! I will immediately send the other fae horses stored in our prison cells to the front line to fend off the adventurers!" - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  [I will be waiting for great results.]

  And with that, the message ended. The little rat, the owner of this hot spring Hidden Hideout, gave a deep sigh of resignation.

  "Even you guys can have it tough, huh?" - Garami

  "You said it." - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  "Yes. It makes me a tad sad about what will happen next to you." - Bloom

  "True. Sire is ruthless even for...hmm?" - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  Before his tired senses could piece together what was happening, I trapped this extra-class annoying Chaos Church goon in a glass bottle. Man, I wish all my villains came in such compact sizes.

  We could try to get some information out of him, but there's the risk that he might have the ability to mentally call on the monsters here, so I gave him a good shake, acting like a bartender preparing a Chaos Church mouse shake. Sounds disgusting.

  "Ehm, Master? We have a problem." - Bloom

  Bloom had found some other device that had been active ever since we entered. I came over to her and tried to understand anything of this mumbo-jumbo. I failed.

  "Give me the short story." - Garami

  "You remember the rat talking on the machine? That he mentioned something about setting loose fae horses?" - Bloom

  "Yeah?" - Garami

  "Short said, those creatures were already released from before the rat made the call to...whoever was on the other side. And those fae horses are currently chasing Noire and Lily." - Bloom

  "Say that sooner!" I shouted back, having already jumped out of the window again, the rat container stuffed into my bag. "Hurry up and tell me where they are!"

  "Y-yes, ma'am!" - Bloom

  Dammit! Don't tell me that those two are being chased by C-rank fae monsters! This is the worst!

  ---

  Bloom's directions across the rooftops, stealth our least problem now, allowed us to find Noire and Lily. The two of them had barricaded themselves on the rooftop of a three-story building, and a bunch of horse-like trolls, armed with weird clubs, were trying to climb up. The horse creatures luckily didn't have the same crimson fur as the specimen inside the mechanical tower; instead, they had fur more similar to common horses you could find even on Earth. Phew. I guess that means we're dealing with the D-rank variant here.

  "Master, this isn't the time to be relieved! Those horses may be 'just' Glashtyn faes, but they are still D-rank creatures!" - Bloom

  Okay, that's not good. There are around 10 of those glashtyns, way more than I wished they were. The rat spoke of them as a sort of hidden weapon, so they can't be that weak either.

  I announced my entrance with a Zahhak, swallowing the glashtyn that had tried to climb to the roof where Noire and Lily were trapped. The building is a far distance away from the others, so Lily couldn't jump off it without landing on the ground where the fae horses were waiting. Noire could fly, but for some reason, she's not doing that right now.

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  "Guild Master! How dare nya to leave us behind like that, meow!" - Noire

  Crap. She's so angry that she doesn't even care about the cat lingo anymore. I tried to calm her down by telling her I had caught the rat, so it was okay to do a tactical retreat now.

  "Why should I care about some rodent, meow! Are nya making fun of meow!?" - Noire

  Whoops. I forgot about the story's context there.

  "B-but we haven't found any peppers yet!" shouted Lily, still worried about the quest even now. Though her courage did drop a bit when a new glashtyn's large hand grabbed the edge of the rooftop.

  "No, you don't!" - Garami

  I jumped over the street and took out the vial of blue powder from that strange guy we met. With a poof, my body had returned to normal, which meant it had more weight behind it than the child-like Dwarf body. Loving the familiar feeling of my adult body, I took a spin in the air and delivered a crunching axe kick on the glashtyn's hand, forcing him to release and fall to the ground.

  "Tada~," I said, striking a pose.

  "Where did you get that magic item!? Give me!" demanded Noire, piecing together quickly the vial's ability to remove the effect of the Changeling pollen.

  "Nice to see you again, too." - Garami

  "B-b-boss lady, th-thanks. A-and the peppers-." - Lily

  "No dice. The Church has either used them all or hidden them. Not that we're in a position to go and look for them." - Garami

  I fired some [Gloom Bullets] at the glashtyns that tried to climb up again, blasting the part of the roof that their fingers were trying to grasp. The bullets don't have that much destructive power on their own, but by weakening those rooftop tiles with [Magic Eyes of Fragility], the Bullets are just enough.

  "We're doing a tactical retreat for now. Let's get outta here!" - Garami

  "B-boss lady? We have some...trouble doing...WATCH OUT!" - Lily

  Huh? Aw, crap! One of the glashtyns had his club up, with some weird magic light coming out from it. It didn't even register on [Intuition]'s attack prediction ability?! I transformed the scythe into its magic dagger form, formed the black blade of dark mana, and stood prepared to parry the magic blast that should be coming, ready to guard Lily, who was behind me.

  And color me surprised. The magic blast never came. It was just some weird purple light emitting from the club. A spotlight? But that stupid idea was rejected as soon as a change happened to my weapon. The magic dagger returned to its original scythe-form, with weird, fae-inspired runes scribbled all over it. The same runes could be seen on my armor. My blindfold and other accessories were spared, but the same marks could be seen on my body. And as the icing on the cake...

  "B-boss lady! That light is-!" - Lily

  "A sealing move. And a damn powerful one too, dammit!" - Garami

  All of the abilities of the affected items, plus the skills mentioned by the System Message, have been rendered useless. The [Seal] ailment is said to need the ability to inflict a high ailment stack value for the ailment to work on higher-tier skills like [Demon Spider's Thread], but that glashtyn managed to seal this much with just one spell. He has to have an Advance-tier class specialized for the [Seal] ailment, dammit. This is why I hate humanoid monsters that have lived long. They are more likely to have developed their abilities longer and better than wild beasts!

  "How bad is your status?" I asked Lily, now understanding why Noire just didn't fly away.

  "I am fine! But Noire had some of her magic rings sealed, along with three skills, her flight skill being one of them." - Lily

  Tch, I feared that. A normal bird can easily fly even without [Flight], since its body is built for that ability in the first place. The humanoid Flugels, even their Fallen evolutions, are not designed that way.

  "Noire, you sure did a good job losing your best... Noire?" - Garami

  I looked around and failed to see the fallen angel anywhere. Then we heard a large noise coming from inside the building. Both us on the roof and the glashtyns on the ground tilted our heads, none of us the wiser on what was going on. Then, a pair of voices was heard. One of prey and one of predator.

  "*SQEEEEEAAAAAKK*!! I am not fooooooodd!!" - Hot Spring Extra Skill User

  "Get back here, NYYYYAAAAA!!" - Noire

  Then the two came bursting out from one of the windows below. The rat-turned Chaos Church goon was rolling the glass bottle like a hamster wheel while Noire, still a catgirl, came lunging after him on all four. The bottle landed on the ground, softly, thanks to the grass down there, and Noire landed with the grace of a real cat and continued chasing the rolling bottle. But before that-!

  "How did he-!?" I almost shouted as I checked my bag, where I had kept the goon. It had opened up before I knew it.

  "That blasted rat! How did he escape without me noticing?" - Garami

  "It must have been his Extra Skill's stealth effect again!" shouted Bloom, solving that mystery. Damn, that skill is starting to become a real pain in the neck...!

  "Lily, Bloom, we're giving Noire support!" - Garami

  "Roger, Master!" - Bloom

  "S-support? What for...!" - Lily

  She got her answer before I could give it. The glashtyns started chasing Noire after they saw her chasing after the hot springs' owner and master. The monsters here seem to work in the same way as Dungeon Monsters in real Dungeons. I sort of already knew that, but it's nice to confirm the facts.

  "Just rely on any long-range attacks to irritate or pause them," I said while taking out a signal flare gun from my Storage. A large purple smoke cloud appeared above us, a signal to the other adventurers that we were in a pinch and needed help ASAP. I have no idea how far they are into conquering the main gate, but at this point, we need as many helping hands as we can get.

  "Master, do not forget. All your web-related skills are as good as useless with the seal on you." - Bloom

  Dammit! Losing access to [Demon Spider's Thread], the key to all my thread-related skills, as it's the one that lets me make threads on the go, hurts! And worse off is the seal on my equipment! I can still unequip them, but I don't have anything else to use! I've always trusted the weapons' indestructibility as Ex-rarity items, so I've never even considered taking a spare weapon outside some throwing knives!

  So this is the weakness of a character build that relies on a single set of equipment with multiple form changes. If I had known about this, I'd be like Mira and keep a ton of different weapons on hand! Heck, as a [Weaver], I could have prepared a ton of different clothing armors that I could change into whenever I needed! But enough self-scolding. We have a cat-and-mouse chase to follow!

  "...Speaking of which, how did Noire manage to catch onto that rat? Didn't he use the extra skill's stealth ability?" - Garami

  "Maybe because they are cat and mouse?" - Bloom

  "Aw, come on! It can't be that......" - Garami

  No, knowing the gods running this world, the odds of there being some weird masked data ain't impossible. I'll just thank our lucky stars that stupid joke of a function worked so well for us today. And hope they can share some extra luck in our attempts of stopping those ogre-like horse fae creatures. Because those guys are ripped as hell!

  Glashtyn]