CHAPTER 154
I'M DONE PLAYING GAMES (1)
Feeling his opponent’s, now enemies’ presence gone, he finally let go of his guard. His eyes were red and his mind was in turmoil. He stretched his hand and used a reverse SugarDrain on Cherrina. The moment she woke up, he hurried her to heal the bandaged Chris and Deli, he did all he could but he was no expert in handling the wounds, especially blocking the blood flow through green vegetation. The bare minimum he could do was to put pressure on those wounds.
One by one, his companions began to regain consciousness, their eyes falling upon Hans, who sat on a small rock, as his back screamed in silence. Cherrina was not a divine mana user, she was just a mage of water attribute with the ability to heal through mana transfer so her own output had a limit and her understanding stuck at second circle. So expecting a miraculous recovery was out of the question.
Instead of dwelling on what he couldn't change, Hans stared vacantly in the direction where the people who forced him to submit had vanished. “I really feel like shit!” he muttered, “I wouldn’t have felt this way if those bastards have beat me fairly. Heck, I wouldn’t even mind being ambushed, but this…this is not acceptable.”
Recalling the moment, his rage almost sent his blood boiling. He never felt this much hatred in his life. He was holding it in, waiting for Cherrina’s confirmation that Chris and Delimira were out of danger.
Far from them, the mastermind of the ambush, the mage tower captain, was distributing the loot and disbanding the ragtag the alliance. The knight captain who faced Chris, asked the mage captain, Arlin, before leaving, “Was doing all that really necessary? We could have won by ourselves —”
“If it had been solely my decision,” Arlin interrupted, “I would have obliterated them entirely. But our orders were to prevent Concordia from qualifying.” He sneered and continued, “Now that we've seized their spoils, they'll have to restart from scratch... as if that's even possible. The proctors will continue driving away the beasts ahead of them, ensuring those lowborns can't catch a break.” He laughed like a deranged maniac, while the association people left these psychos behind.
The whole night passed but Hans never turned back, his stare still stuck in some direction. “Captain…” Cherrina came at Hans, shaking her head, “I can’t help her, she lost too much blood, we need to take her to Dean Sierra.”
“Three days, buy me three days, anyhow —”
"Didn't you hear me?" Cherrina replied. “She is beyond something I could fix.”
Hans, still looking down in disappointment, inquired, "And what of Chris?"
"He might last a few more days, but he's in no condition to fight."
“So those darn bastards took out my most powerful people.” Hans muttered bitterly “And proctors are playing favourite.” He sighed, finally asking her, “How longer she could hold —”
“Captain,” Cherrina shouted, attracting everyone’s attention to them. “I told you, she needs help. Is her life more important or this rotten competition that we can’t win? Didn’t you say yourself, proctors are rigging this, we can’t win anyway —”
"We can win," Hans asserted, pointing towards the sleeping Delimira. "I know she can hold on, and she'd be furious at me if I gave up now.”
"How?" Cherrina raised her voice, and the team echoed her curiosity. Some were sceptical, pointing out that the proctors would continue clearing away the beasts. However, Hans had been thinking throughout the night and had devised a plan.
"We'll hunt in the inner ring," he declared
"That's insane!" Chris exclaimed, still struggling as he had just awakened. He had overheard Hans's plan to venture into the inner ring, home to class threes. "We're in no condition to face class twos, and you want to lead us to the inner circle?” He asked further as he gazed at Delimira's pale body and implored, "Let's give up, Hans. We can come back next year. God forbid something happens to Deli... it could be irreversible."
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"No, nothing will happen to her," Hans insisted, projecting a façade of confidence while harbouring his concerns. Delimira's mana wasn't recovering, and she was approaching a critical state. Hans acknowledged Chris's point, saying, "But you're right; she needs help. And I know who can provide it."
His will was heard by nature and their new hideout, a cocoon made of entire fauna, deep in the ashen forest, began to shift and move. "I'll be back. Make sure she stays conscious.”
Hans departed, his thoughts focused on his contingency plan: “If push came to shove, I could INGRESS them out to Grandma. so there is no way I would let something irreversible happen to her,” he assured himself.
However, Chris and the others were unaware of this plan. As their new hideout continued to move, an array of intricate traps, more complex than anything his team had seen, kept emerging out of nowhere. Hans had designed these new safeguards for their hideout with two primary objectives in mind. First, they would provide the team with a place to conceal themselves from unforeseen dangers. Second, they would deter any potential mutiny. Hans knew Chris's nature well, and he was certain that as soon as Chris regained a bit of strength, he would attempt to take Delimira away, even if it meant forfeiting the Glory Wars to save her.
However, besides Ingress, his team also didn’t know Hans had backing too. “Did these people think, only they have people at their beck and call? I have them too.” Hans said out loud, as he ventured deeper in the green. Dijkstra had provided him with a whistle for emergencies. Blowing it would signal the Parvian team, and they would assist him without question, even if it meant forfeiting their own loot. However, that wasn't Hans's primary objective. He recalled that Parv, being an advanced nation unlike the others, had a highly skilled healer, far more competent than Cherrina.
With this thought in mind, Hans reached an isolated location. Meanwhile, the Proctors observed from a distance, ensuring that any beasts Hans might encounter were already chased away. They were baffled by Hans's actions until they felt a sudden tremor. The ashen forest soon transformed into a lush, vibrant environment. Hans was exerting all his efforts, channelling everything into his SilvaOrtus to turn the area into his territory. He filled it with meticulously crafted traps, each one fully aggressive and deadly, while his vines slithered like snakes, possessing everything from poison to metallic leaves.
He said to himself, “I’m done playing games, heads will fly from this moment on.” He retrieved the whistle and blew it as hard as he could. Although no sound escaped the whistle, Hans had a gut feeling that his message had reached its intended recipients. Now, all he could do was wait for the Parvian team to arrive, but his trust in others had hit an all-time low. He was waiting with an attitude of going a full-on war with them, if necessary.
As he waited, various thoughts raced through his mind. One of them was his regret at failing to anticipate the alliance between the Mage Tower and the Knight Association, as well as the underhanded tactics of the Proctors. Dietrich had once told him that he had an obvious weakness: "Having unlimited mana is nice in theory, but what's the use if you can't even use it?" He was overwhelmed by self-blame, muttering, "If my father were in my place, this would have never happened. He would have been prepared for such situations. I'm not cut out to be a leader. I should have never taken on this role.”
Meanwhile, inside the hideout, a heated discussion raged among the eight team members. Chris vehemently argued against risking Delimira's life for the sake of seemingly pointless competition, while Cassady passionately defended the opposite stance. The team found itself divided into two factions, and it was Ricter, the usually silent defender of the group, who broke the deadlock.
“Let's trust our captain, I don’t know him very well, but he is your friend, isn’t he?” Richter suggested, breaking his silence. He turned his gaze towards Chris and continued while shifting his focus to Delimira, “He won’t let her die.”
Chris argued, “I’m acting this way because I know him very well. Those bastards made him submit, and he won't just let it go.” Chris stressed, “And we have what, three days? We have to kill a hundred of the Second classes in the inner ring where class third dominates.” He questioned, wanting to convince others, “Do you think it would be feasible? We're banging our heads against a wall. We can't win. His pride is running him now, not his head,” He looked down at Deli, continuing, “These both have the same useless pride. I’m just looking out for them. Hans needs to understand that not all battles can be won.”
However, Richter persisted in his plea for faith, although it stirred a different thought in Chris's mind. He couldn't ignore the fact that Hans's stubborn pride had once brought Delimira to the brink of death
But, checking his own condition Chris realised even if he wanted to, he couldn’t bring her to the checkpoint. Only one person needed to reach there to seek help, but that would mean withdrawing from the competition. Chris sought the support of others, and Garen agreed.
Despite the pleas of some team members to continue until Hans returned, Garen ventured outside, only to return in an hour, with a frown on his face, declaring, that their captain had caged them inside.
Nicolas, another defender, voiced his frustration, saying, "If Hans had this kind of foresight, why did we fall into that ambush in the first place?”
The once-united team was now fragmenting, with arguments flying in all directions. Some made sense, and some didn't, but ultimately, they had to come to terms with the fact that without Hans, no one would be taking a step outside their current situation.
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