Swearing, Jonathan rose from his seat rapidly, and raced for the door, Edgar in close pursuit. One of the guards tried to block them, but Jonathan rammed his fist into the man’s chest, sending him flying out the door. Cursing the bartender and their luck, Jonathan emerged into the street, only to see dozens of guards combing the road.
The two men took off, streaking down the street, as the door behind them burst open, revealing the platoon of guards. They ran after the two men, but the guards were too slow, and they were left in the dust. However, there were more guards up ahead, and they fanned out to block the two fleeing men. Jonathan grunted in annoyance, and forced his way through their ranks, clearing a path for Edgar in the back.
The man slammed one palm into the ground as he ran, and a sudden gust of hurricane force winds blasted the nearby guards backwards. Jonathan raced through the gap and cleared a path in his own way, with his fists and legs. Without his gauntlets, it felt strange for his fist to contact an enemy without anything in between it and his target, but it was almost the same, as his skin was as hard as iron now. He barely felt the impact as it was, and his strikes were more than strong enough to dent metal and drive his foes backwards. He was not able to kill any of them, a testament to their strength, but he was able to force them away from his path, which was all that really mattered in this case.
From what he could tell, there was no way that the two of them could remain in the city, as it seemed that there was a picture of them being circulated, and that the citizens would be more than happy to give them up, given by the bartender’s expression. There was most likely some sort of reward for their capture. Jonathan gritted his teeth as he tore his way through the guards, who were all coalescing on their spot, drawn by some unknown force. Soon, he would be unable to overpower them through sheer force.
“This isn't working! They’re going to swarm us!” He shouted at Edgar, fighting to make his voice heard over the noise of the fray. The sounds of fists on metal and the screams of the wounded were almost too loud to hear anything. However it seemed that Edgar was able to hear enough, and the man nodded, starting to recharge his mana to strike again, blasting the tightly packed soldiers apart.
Edgar leaped over the heads of the reeling fighters, and landed next to Jonathan, sending out another blast of wind towards his nearby enemies. The men were torn off their feet, clearing a small area around them. There seemed to be no end to their ranks, and hundreds of them were streaming this way from all corners of the city, trying to bury them beneath their numbers. They would not be able to defeat them at this rate.
“I can get us out of here, but I will be useless for about half an hour later. It will take up all of my mana, and quite a bit of my health as well. Is that understood?”
“Do whatever you need to do. It’s better than dying.”
Edgar nodded, and then began to draw in power form the air around him, creating a cloak of swirling wind around his form. The man gritted his teeth, and the cloak extended over to Jonathan, enveloping his form. A moment later, they were in the air, levitating on a cushion of air. They streaked off through the air, borne by solidified wind, and they were quickly dozens of feet above the heads of their enemies, and quickly leaving the area. However, something had changed on the horizon, and a blindingly bright red light was forming on the top of the tower near the center of the city. There was a moment of silence, when all the color in the world seemed to be leached out from the world around them, and then a beam of pure power erupted from the tower, crossing the distance between it and them faster than Jonathan could blink.
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He desperately angled his body away from the strike, but he was still clipped by the beam, and the energy field around him failed, causing him to plummet to the ground. Edgar was also affected by the attack, and his flight suddenly stopped and he fell with Jonathan. A burning pain tore at Jonathan’s side, and he looked down to see that a good sized chunk of his stomach was missing, cut away smoothly by the beam. A second sun blossomed into being a moment later, rising over the ash like the harbinger of the apocalypse. Far off in the distance, a mushroom cloud of superheated ash rose over the land, the result of the beam hitting something in the desert outside the city. Luckily Jonathan had been too weak to trigger the effect of the beam, or else he would have died in an instant. The attack had possessed the same power as a nuclear bomb, and Jonathan shivered as he fell, terrified of what sort of being would have that sort of power.
He flipped over in the air, and crashed down in the back of a tavern, behind a woodshed. He did not know where the wood had come from, but that was hardly the most pressing concern in his mind at the moment. His wound was bleeding heavily, and it refused to close over, despite his regeneration. At this rate, he would bleed to death. He quickly tore off a strip of his clothes, and bound up the wound, stopping the bleeding for now. His regeneration would do the rest.
Edgar landed heavily beside him, wincing as he landed awkwardly on his ankle. A few seconds later, a gust of blistering wind rushed over him, causing him to shield his eyes reflexively. The aftereffects of the beam were still in being, even now. It seemed that there would be no flying from now on. That attack had been completely overkill, and a weaker one would have been able to do the job just as well. They were still mid Tier 1s in the city of a peak Tier 2 being. Well, Jonathan was probably a bit stronger than that, but he was not anywhere near the peak yet. Anyone who had reached that level would have their own bonuses and titles to bolster their strength. In any case, if this was at all indicative of the later worlds, Jonathan would be in for a wild ride if he made it out of the Ash Heaps alive. Beside him, Edgar let out a deep breath, and Jonathan looked over at the man, who was shivering slightly.
“What manner of power have we called down upon ourselves?” The man asked, his voice grim.
“I don’t know, but at least we’re not dead. We need to get out of this place soon though, or else they might track us down,” Jonathan said, starting to move towards the exit.
They were standing in what looked to be some sort of walled enclosure for holding various odds and ends from the tavern that stood in front of it. There was a small gate to the side, and Jonathan quickly opened it, revealing a side street that he walked into. There were no other people around, which was good for their purposes, and they quickly ducked out of the place and into the street. This could not go on like this with their faces being known to everyone in the town, and they needed to find some sort of disguise if they were to survive here. Jonathan needed to get his possessions back, not least the book that contained the legacy of the church that had once owned the derelict city out in the wastes, and to do so, they would need to survive long enough to get to it.
They padded down the alleyway, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Neither of them possessed anything more than their most basic of clothing items, and as such, they had nothing to disguise themselves with. It was a disconcerting state of affairs, and Jonathan felt very vulnerable indeed, especially when he thought about the vast amount of energy that had been contained within that red beam. He could barely fathom the sort of spell that would have been able to make something like that. He made sure not to get lost in his thoughts however as he was wont to do, and he kept track of Edgar and his surroundings.
They were in a human sector of the city now, and they were at least not out of place in terms of race. Jonathan needed to find someplace to get disguises for the two men, which would be quite hard, given that all of their money had been taken by the forces of Granath. As Jonathan walked, he focused on his mana, trying to train it a bit as he moved, wanting to get as much out of this time as he could while there were no monsters to fight. He had no idea how people in a city ever grew stronger, and maybe the simple answer was that they did not. In any case, they were still wasting time here.