Bruno didn’t hesitate to launch himself after Eve’s ability ended. I used that to push past my queasiness and active Fickle Fate on Bruno through a Crow. A shower of blue sparks burst from the crow’s talons and him; a moment later, the Crow snapped forward through the air and smashed into the target.

Bruno's hands burst into flames as he charged after the Crow. One meaty hand yanked the stunned enemy trying to fend off the bird. He snapped a fist into the guy. I watched with horrified fascination as he tried to guard his face, only for the blow to catch at the wrong angle and snap his elbow from sheet force.

I ran in after, taking a quick count of our enemies. Six. One Lieutenant looked familiar—his straw-like hair and those dark sunken eyes. As he shifted focus to me, his jaw dropped and then kept dropping. It unhinged—smoke pouring free from his lips in a deep crimson color. An enemy Cultivator. My target. My crows changed trajectory and launched towards this bastard. Bruno could deal with his enemies by himself.

Eve scurried past me and smashed her knee into a guy’s balls as he tried to clock me from the side.

Two of my crows pincered the enemy cultivator—only to stop as the thick crimson smoke swirled into a wall between them and the Lieutenant. I watched in horror as a tendril of smoke solidified and yanked my Crow, pulling away directly into itself.

Pang rang through my core as feathers spewed out, along with a burst of red and blue lightning as it devoured my Soul inside of it. This guy was fucking dangerous. I wiped a bead of sweat, recalling my other crow. I let it perch nearby to prepare an attack but far enough away to be out of range. There had to be a way past his defenses, I’d lost sight of the Lieutenant, but the ball of smoke seemed to stay in place.

Maybe he couldn’t see us? That smoke didn’t drift toward me or my allies. If he was going to attack… he needed to reveal himself, which would give us a target. I turned, keeping half of my attention on the Cultivator.

Bruno laid into another guy. His fiery fists chipped away the guy’s skin in flakes of clay. Each of his blows shattered an outer shell that kept reforming. Bruno wasn’t having luck with the defensive ability, a stalemate for his power. Eve darted left and right, still engaging the Crimson Crow that tried taking a cheap shot at me. That left a grand total of two who hadn’t gotten into the fight; One of the bastards circled Eve.

I snapped forward before he could get a good angle on her, flowing over the field like water. My body spun with the arc of my foot, throwing as much force into the kick as I could muster—smashing the surprise roundhouse into the guy's face and sending him to the ground on his ass.

Kayson entered along with Suzaki, the spiders crawling out towards the remaining Brass King who’d pulled out a phone.

My eyes shifted to their Lieutenant—his head sat above the smoke. This was my chance. I called on my Crow positioned near him to dart in. It reached a foot away, then in a sudden burst of speed, the smoke curled forward, catching my crow and dragging it into the ball of crimson death. More flashes of blue and red as the smoke consumed my Crow. I gasped, dropping to my knees.

The dude I’d kicked in the head wasn’t out yet. He groaned and shifted. Our eyes met. Me being in a weakened state drove him to rally. He reached a hand towards me, only for a projection of the open palm to spring forward in a ghostly appendage that wrapped around my throat. I gasped, but the fingers closed and gripped, I tried to pry them loose, but the force was too strong.

Bruno smashed the second guy harder—flames surging and bringing the whole heat of the place up. He grabbed clay-guy by the back of the head and slammed his head into a butcher table until he stopped moving. He then yanked the butcher table off the ground and hefted it into the air with both hands. The Cultivator choking me out, got to his feet, shaking but with grim determination as he maintained his Soul Ability.

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He didn’t have a chance to see Bruno approach from behind with the table.

It crashed into him, shattering the table and sending the guy right to the ground; broken wood showered on him. I gasped for air as the phantom hand gripping my throat vanished.

Fucking hell. I had no clue that guy was even a Cultivator. I didn’t get any sort of sense of power from him.

That Crimson smoke sprawled outward; my remaining Crow flew to my shoulder as I got myself together and examined their Lieutenant. Once again, his head popped out of the crimson so that he could direct the swirling smoke toward us. He still maintained a thick enough shell around him to defend against me. Fucking annoying.

“Suzaki no!” Bruno screamed out suddenly, I turned.

The kid had a fucking emerald halo over his head and was charging the Lieutenant with a piece of lumber with nails jutting out of it.

My mouth flew wide open to shout for him to stop—but it was too late. He reached the edge of the smoke. It reacted instantly and closed itself around him like a carnivorous plant snapping its maw around a fly. Suzaki was gone—just a bugle of swirling crimson where he last was.

I needed to save him.

The Brass King was distracted from tearing Suzaki apart. I seized the moment of weakness and reacted to the shifting flow of the might. My Crow darted in and crashed into the skull of the Fourth Division Lieutenant. A shower of red discharged as I called Fickle Fate. The smoke shot towards my Crow, but in the scramble, it got free. The bastard sneered at me—then his smoke burst apart, and a wooden board and nail hit his face.

The guy swayed on his spot, a hole in his cheek and a line of blood running from it. He looked confused and then collapsed. Suzaki panted as the smoke diffused—his skin a blistered red with blood running from patches of it. There was a wild look in the kid's eye, and the emerald halo still swirled above his head. I let out a low whistle.

Guess if you went balls to the wall with that ability of his, you could do some damage. Though, I didn’t envy the aftereffect. Oddly, his skin recovered at a pace that outpaced my own under its power.

The fight proved easy to clean up after that. Me and Bruno helped Kayson take out the last guy, who could not use his phone thanks to the spiders. Eve handled her opponent with some clever twists and a dirty cheap shot. If you wanted to call it like that. In a fight, I didn’t believe in such things; everything was fair game. A win was a win.

Suzaki healed and then collapsed against a wall. I still had a bruise on my neck, but I didn’t feel like it warranted needing his ability for a third time tonight. I was already running low in the energy department—and now my Soul Seed strained due to the damage it’d taken.

There weren’t many other options than to press forward, so the best I could do was hope I could carry myself across the finish line of this mad journey.

Eve and Kayson dug into the place after tying up the enemies with webs. Kayson checked paperwork as Eve checked pockets. For a long while, I watched Bruno stare at Suzaki. He ground his teeth and swayed in place, but the big guy didn’t say a word to him. Personally, Suzaki impressed me with the guts he’d shown—I didn’t know Suzaki had that sort of thing in him. But I could tell Bruno wasn’t happy.

Was it because he disapproved of the risk? Or did he dislike someone else stepping on the toes of his barbarian-esque fighting style? However, if Suzaki wanted to toss himself onto the frontlines like that more, he needed to learn more about fighting and maybe work on his muscles.

Kayson stopped us from staring around and told us to break down the barricade to the backroom and free the Alchemist. We got to it, taking apart the nails and boards the bastards had slammed on the frame to keep poor James locked away.

When we got it, I was forced to admit that the conditions were better than the Crimson Eagles gave him. A desk, an actual bed—even a fan, and an assortment of meals. But a prison was still a prison, no matter what it looked like.

James felt reasonably wary of us; no doubt he didn’t entirely trust us to free him due to the results of our last meeting, but with a few nice words on my part. And some promises and explanations of the fact we’d gone and already pissed off half the city, James decided to go along.

Ten minutes later, we flew away on our bikes with the poor pale alchemist. I didn’t know what Kayson intended to do with the guy, but he was relatively easygoing about the whole thing. I wondered if he just enjoyed being out of the fucked-up confined places that people kept stuffing him into. Well, whatever, the little flame of hope burned in me after coming off two wins in a row.

Maybe we might have a real shot of pulling this off, and I’d walk away with an unharmed Alex. I could bring him home to Ma and apologize. A real honest-to-heart apology for what I’ve done to her.