Fourteenth-seventh day of Sat’xahr, 4043 AOT
Wave 5, Arbhur City Zone-0, Aesbyl Region
Azalea wakes up feeling unpleasant even though the injuries in her body have completely healed. The large stab wound in her abdomen is gone now. Despite her inability to fall in deep sleep, the rest she had should be fine enough to push through another day. However, the heaviness she feels inside has not gone away.
Nevertheless, she needs to continue moving forward. She has to leave the region as soon as possible, and go to a place outside of the Shilan’s influence.
“I really messed up this time…”
She has not planned carefully. Maybe it is also because she let herself be driven by emotions. It is already quite infuriating that Brandon Shilan is chasing her for no good reason, yet she also went and pissed off the older brother. She got a bit of revenge but she also bought herself another sack of trouble. It is something that she should have ignored and let pass. This country’s problem is none of her business.
“Damn… I just woke up and I’m already tired…”
She steps out of the narrow paths in the canyon. It looks like a good hiding spot a few hours ago, but now it just looks cramped. It has not been that long since her last battle but there is already another group watching her while hiding behind the stone walls of the canyon.
“How are they able to find me this fast?” She grumbles. “I might actually die soon if I don’t leave this damned place.”
It is going to be another day full of squabble. She heightens Pulse’s sensitivity to learn the positions of the enemies. The spell usually works within five meters radius around her, but she can extend its range up to ten meters radius if she focuses on it for a limited time. However, this technique is even more exhausting. She feels ten people hiding close-by, but her intuition is telling her that there are more of them hiding out of her reach. By looking at the structure of the canyon, it is evident that there are plenty of hiding place. It is a maze of ambush points.
With all the running, chasing and fighting these past days, neither group are able to get a good rest. Azalea thought that it should be to her advantage since she is trained and used to this much pressure. However, even after beating up a number of them how is it possible that there are still a lot of them left? After all the severe injuries, their healers must be tired now. She has observed the groups that are following her, she is certain that none of them are dedicated healers. The best they have are mages that learned basic healing for emergency purposes.
“Am I the only one getting tired? Something’s off… I think I might know what it is but I have to confirm first. This’ll be one hell of a shit show if my suspicions are true.”
Meanwhile, this group that has surrounded her is watching out for an opportunity to strike. After what happened to the other groups that attacked, they are trying to be more careful. They might not lose their life but losing a limb might as well be a death sentence to their carrier.
“Boss, how do we go about this?”
“Nobody makes a move on their own.” The bald guy issues an order.
“How are we going to catch a brat that strong? How the fuck is she not tired after all the bashing the others did?”
“She got one hell of a wound yesterday.”
“It’s gone now. She healed herself. Must have used a lot of mana.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The bald guy makes a signal. “She be dead or alive, we'd be paid. Sooner or later she’s gonna tire herself. Easy win.”
People tend to underestimate their opponent when they do not have enough information. They have reasons to believe that Azalea is already too worn-out to keep fighting. Recovering mana takes more time than recovering stamina.
Azalea suddenly appears in front of the mercenary’s boss. He immediately backs away while leaving a few small bombs behind. He feels as though something is off with the way she got close to him. She is not aiming for him or harboring any intent to attack. It’s as if she just wants to get a good look at him.
With the small explosions, smoke and dust also spread in that narrow space of the canyon. While their vision is obscured by the dark gray smoke, two people attack Azalea from behind. Without seeing when exactly she has cast the spell to create two fire swords, they are caught unprepared to defend against it. She retaliates by cutting off their arms. The heat of the fire sword burns their wound close, preventing any drop of blood from splattering on the arid ground. They fall on their knees due to the shock and the pain. Azalea kicks one of them and then stomps at him face down. She stares down at the person for a moment before turning away.
“If you want to take my head…” She says softly but coldly. “Then you better be prepared to risk your own.”
“Everyone, attack!” The boss yells.
Azalea focuses her attention to Pulse again. She senses twenty people around her. Fortunately, there does not seem to be any territorial monsters around. The weaker ones most likely have run away when they sensed the danger. If there are strong monsters around them, they may be attracted to the battle and join in as a defensive territorial response. In that case, they will get high ranked monsters mixed in, then the situation will be messier. Then again, it may allow her to use the confusion to escape from this precarious situation.
“I’m so tired…”
Now she knows their positions and possible attack trajectory. She just wants to finish this as fast as possible and get a few more days of rest. She casts multiple fireballs around her making the enemies hesitate to recklessly attack for a moment. When she detects their movement, she fires the fireball at the speed of a bullet towards the attacker’s location. Explosions followed by rumbling of rocks echoes in the canyon as gray smoke arises.
“Every dumbass who are injured and useless, just get your asses out of the way!”
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Azalea follows the source of the voice. The faster she defeats the leader, the easier it will be to deal with the rest of the gang. While the thought plays in her mind, she notices some black spherical things rapidly moving and then sticking to her right arm.
“These are-!!” She used pulse to get a feel of what it is. “Small bombs!”
Azalea swings her arm to get it off but those bombs are unusually sticky. She tries to grab the black spheres but they do not budge. It feels like there is some familiar energy that keeps them attached to her. That is when her attention returns to the leader.
He smirks at her.
“It’s him! An esper with telekinesis, maybe level 3…”
She knows she cannot take it off on her own. She clenches her fist while moving her fire sword towards the leader. He tries to evade but his feet are caught by Azalea’s earth trap which is composed of hands made of hard earth holding his feet.
He looks straight at her anticipating to see the bombs detonate and rob her of her arm. This time she will be the one to lose a limb. Some glowing orbs are suddenly forming and rotating around Azalea’s arm before the bombs detonate. At the same time, the fire swords stab through the leader's chest without mercy. He screams due to the excoriating pain, as if he is burning from the inside out.
Aside from that pain he cannot remember anything else, not even the moment when he passed out. It is as though he died.
It is like everything went white for a second. When they returned to their senses, the sky is already starting to dim.
“W-what happened?... I… I died… didn’t I?,,”
He looks around and finds his people lying unconscious all over the place. They all look fine. The ones who supposed to have injuries are healed as if they were never hurt. The area have destroyed rocks and rubles spread around. It is clear that they really were fighting here a while ago, so everything, along with the pain and feeling of death could not have been a dream.
“I’m alive… not dreaming… it felt so real. That pain is so real but a little off…”
That is when he remembered the Illusion Magic. That mage used it before to escape. She also beat up everyone and healed them. He cannot understand why she would waste mana on them when she knows that showing mercy to her enemies only allows them to once again hunt her down.
Is she just a benevolent fool? Or is she that confident on her abilities and power?
∞×∞
Sixteenth day of Sat’xahr, 4043 AOT
Wave 5, Arbhur City Zone-0, Aesbyl Region
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that…”
“Maybe I should have just left this place…”
Different thoughts echoes inside her head as she enters the residential area of Wave 5. She lost her pursuers for now. These mercenary groups that have been chasing her have territories in Zone-0, which means that they cannot simply leave their territories for long and invade another. There seems to be some set of rules that these gangs are following to keep the peace and order in this lawless land.
“Seriously… What the hell am I doing?..”
She walks into another secluded corner. It will serve as her temporary hiding place. She sits and leans at the corner, laying her spear down. She notices more scratches and cracks on it. She looks at her burned right arm that still has not fully healed after two days. She can only sigh. It is still early in the afternoon, but she already feels so tired, she wants to just close her eyes.
“I ran out of food and I can’t access my account in Zone-0.” Azalea contemplates her circumstances. “I got rid of most of my luggage. I can’t enter the city without getting caught… In short, I’m dead broke. I had no proper meal or rest these past days. My body is reaching its limits. Still, it is too dangerous to let my guard down even for a moment.”
Since she got rid of the last batch of those mercenaries, maybe they will not be able to find her so soon. This filthy corner might not be the safest place but it is good enough for a hiding place.
“I need rest… I want rest.”
She recalls the last fight that burned her arm. In order to make her illusion more real, she projected the pain of the burn to the opponents surrounding her. Most of them just fainted due to shock. She healed the ones with fatal injuries before marching away in a hurry. She wants to go as far as possible without consuming too much stamina. Her abundant mana saves her the trouble of conserving it for battles as she can use as much as she needs and there will still be plenty left. For her, stamina is something that is more limited and she needs to build up.
∞×∞
Seventeenth day of Sat’xahr, 4043 AOT
Wave 5, Arbhur City Zone-0, Aesbyl Region
While Azalea is asleep, a young man notices her unconscious body lying in a narrow alley. He gets curious about it and decides to take a peek. It would be great if this person have something he can take. Terror takes over him as he looks at the messy and dirty get-up of what seems to be an abandoned corpse. Even though he is afraid, he is unable to resist his curiosity.
“Does this dead body have some valuables?” He gathers courage as he approaches the corpse-looking body.
When he is about to touch it, the corpse suddenly grabs his collar and then slams him onto the wall. An icicle forms around her burned right arm. As it increases in length, the sharp tip is pointing closer towards his neck.
“Aaaaah-!! W-wait-! Stop!!!”
“Who-?...” The half-asleep corpse is gaining consciousness before the growing icicle pierces through the boy’s neck.
He looks straight to her cold lifeless eyes as sweat rolls down his chin. “P-please let me g-go. I’m sorry.”
“Ah-… Sorry.” She lets the boy go while the icicle dissipates into thin air. After observing the boy that has brown hair and black marble-like eyes, she then looks around. “Where…? Right. Kid, what day is today?”
He coughs while stepping back. He frowns while making eye contact as he distances away. “You… What are you? Suddenly attacking people… looking like.. a goddamned zombie…”
Azalea forces a laugh. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah, seems so… Everyone living her have something complicated about them… and they don’t really wanna talk about it. But why do you look like that?”
“I’m being chased by some people.”
“Hmm?.. Well, if you’re going to do something bad then you better not get caught.”
“Yeah? Just like what you were doing a while ago.”
He clears his throat. “D-do you need help?”
“No, I just want to leave this place.”
“I know, everyone thinks the same. You need a place to stay? Other than this stinky place? My gang can take care of you.”
“A brat like you have a gang?”
“I don’t think you’re any older than me! You’re a brat too!”
“I’m fifteen.”
“You’re just a year ahead!”
“Still-” Her stomach growls. “Damn.”
The boy raises the plastic bag he is holding. “I got some bread. If you follow me, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the gang.”
She sigh. “Fine.”
“The name’s Jad. You are?”
“Umm… Lea.”
“Sounds fancy.”
Azalea goes along with the little lad. He leads her to the edge of Wave 5. There, a small ruggedly built house stands. She notices that outside the house there are more kids playing. They are probably younger than twelve years of age. There is not a single adult around.
“Great more brats… What a pain to deal with.” She grumbles.
“Those are my brothers and sisters. We may not be blood related, but they are my family.” He says proudly as he increases the speed of his strides.
She stares at him while all the other kids excitedly surrounds him.
“Jad! Where have you been?” One girl with orange hair nags.
“B-boss! Boss-!!” A younger boy runs to his side. “Who’s she? You got a new member?”
“What member?!” The girl raised her voice. “You mean more mouths to feed!”
“Brenda.” Jad clears his throat. “That’s not nice. The old man didn’t raise us like that. Romi, call everyone and tell them I got some free bread. I’ll introduce you to the new kid, she looks dirty but she has a custom armor so I think she’s got some useful skills.”
“Yes boss!” The boy salutes.
“Useful? The heck you talking about?”
“I told you, this is our gang and family.” Jad puffs his chest. “Our gang is family! You see, there are other groups of kids that are backed by adult hunters. If we don’t gather strong allies, we’ll be taken over by them.”
“I see. A kiddie gang fight.”
“You won’t be looking down on us when you see what we’re capable of.”
She sees three younger kids following Romi, and one of them is even carrying a baby.
“What the shit… Seriously?..”