“That small group is suffering a lot… I wonder if I should get involved?”
Jake watched from behind that tree halfway down the river course. His newly acquired analytical view of the world thought about all the possibilities, processing which one would be the best one to pursue.
"No. I definitely shouldn't help.” He concluded. “I don't know how to fight, and these kids, even though they are so much better armed than I am, don't seem to have been able to make even a scratch on this group of six. It makes no sense to get involved.”
His cold choice sounded right, and rightly so. There was no reason why this needed his involvement.
“My efforts would make no difference and, in the worst case, I would just end up dead. The problem is that I can't leave here either because I don't want to be detected.”
Seeing that he would have to wait until the hooded group left or at least were entertained enough not to notice, Jake opted to watch that fight.
He would not help the poor girl who pleaded so hard for her savior to come.
… … …
"Please... Don't do this... Let her go ... We... We already gave you what you wanted...!"
Her pleas fell on deaf ears, while her friend's throat was crushed by the firm hands of the man with unrecognizable features behind that cloak. His oddly white smile was the only thing that shone behind the robes.
“Yes, you indeed did…!” He replied in a manic voice. “You must be good children to make that decision…!”
“Let her go, you bastard...!” Shouted the boy.
He pointed the blade of his sword at the man, not knowing what he would do in the next few seconds. His gesture was big, but he didn't even have enough energy to sustain it. The cuts on his body, created by the knives of those death lunatics, gushed endlessly in copious amounts of crimson.
“This bleeding won’t stop…!” He complained to himself, trying to find strength. “If this continues like this… ”
He would die as pathetically as the bleeding was... They had been struggling for just over ten minutes against those guys, but the cuts kept the same appearance as always being fresh, their blood flowing endlessly.
“It can't be... ”
One of those crazy cultists licked his blade as red as the blood that dripped from it, throwing a wry smile, visible from under his hood. He might not be the brightest of the bunch, but did know how to detect when something was dangerously wrong.
“Those blades…!”
"That's right! Look at you… Guessing correctly what they are for from the get-go!”
As if he could read his mind, the leader of the hooded ones walked forward, holding their friend as if she were nothing more than a mere rag doll. The girl struggled, unable to land even a kick, unfortunately.
It didn't matter how much she scratched or tried, as everything made it seem that not even pain was a concept he knew. The scrapes of her weak claws against the aged, bony skin of his hands elicited nothing but ghoulish laughter from a creature that couldn't even be bothered by the fact that he was bleeding from the wrist.
Tendons torn from scratches didn't sap strength from his fingers, ruptured muscles didn't rob him of tenacity. He didn't need anything to spread that overwhelming, traumatizing violence.
He looked at the boy brandishing his sword, flashing a smile even more terrible than any other.
"They're cursed knives, silly!" He laughed grotesquely. “A cut by them forever keeps bleeding!”
The young boy felt as if his spirit was being pulled out by the news. More than anyone else, if someone knew the consequences of being attacked with something like that, it was him.
“Do you feel dizzy? Maybe weak? AHAHAHAHAHA! This is all the fault of your blood loss…!”
Suddenly he remembered one of the lessons given by his hired Guild instructor... And how he had failed him.
“Never, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be hit by a cursed weapon, Eldreus.”
It sounded simple and even a little too obvious at the time, but thinking back, the young aspiring Knight named Eldreus realized he should have taken the advice a little more seriously.
Not only was he hit multiple times, but he made the mistake of regarding the injuries as mere superficial cuts.
“Now you're going to bleed to death, little boy… And there's nothing you can do! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“No… I… Will I die…? On my… first mission…?”
The loss of blood made him dizzy, without the strength to react to anything else. He no longer felt the tips of his fingers and the only desire of his flesh at the moment was to fall right there, letting himself be thrown into a deepest slumber that promised to last forever.
“We... We will all... Die... ”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“Time to end the act…!” Said the hooded man.
His movements were extravagant, added to the superhuman leaps he took backwards, totaling two. Upon seeing this, the two already knew what their next action was about.
“Knife, please...!” he exclaimed, like a doctor asking for surgical tools.
Soon one of his cultist followers came, who silently handed him the same red dagger that so many times lacerated the group's swordsman, condemning him to death.
One was willing to accept their fate already, but the other...
"NO...! PLEASE...! NO...!"
The blonde girl jumped up, still hoping to prevent the announced massacre. Her clothes stinking of sour vomit spread a nauseating reek, but she didn't allow herself to stop.
“Enille ... No... It's no use...!”
The swordsman's call did nothing to stop her. In the end, it was like she hadn't even heard him. Resolute in her panic, the girl continued in desperate steps, failed attempts to break into a run.
"NO, NO! DON'T DO THIS TO LAYSHA...! NO...!"
Laysha seemed on the verge of losing consciousness, unable to continue fighting for her freedom. The girl was the Mage of the group, but none of her spells were able to do the slightest damage to those six.
“Laysha...? Ah, but what a cute name...!” Said the leader. “A beautiful name for a tragic protagonist!”
He had the knife in hand, the intent behind it already known to everyone else.
“Time to go, Laysha! I swear your great efforts were not in vain…!”
"DO NOT DO THIS...!" She protested, unable to reach her friend.
If only her steps weren't so slow and panic-stricken...
If only she had been as strong as Eldreus, standing up and facing destiny, even in face of the imminent decree of his death...
If only she weren't so useless...
Maybe she didn't need to be watching her so recent friend being thrown into the air, given the false hope of getting air into her lungs for the first time in a long time.
“Laysha ... Eldreus ...”
“The fun has only just begun…!”
That crazy voice seeped into her head, sticking like plant sap filled with sand. She didn't want to have to look at the result of her immense weakness.
“... I'm sorry ... Please, I'm sorry...!"
She didn't want to raise the visual field so that it was on the same level as those insane ones who could only have come from the deepest craters of the darkest hell.
She didn't want to see what was left of her friend one last time, once that hellish scream interspersed with the noise of her entrails being ripped vertically and pulled from her abdomen reverberated through the immensity of the forest.
“ AHAHAHAHA...!”
That laugh... How she wished to have the strength to make it cease forever and ever...
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Laysha's insides fell out in a single wet thud, mixed with all the blood still contained in that flesh. She didn't want to look. With all her might, Enille evaded the focus of her vision into the distance.
“How beautiful... How beautiful! The spectacle of dying... How wonderful...!”
The man cheered, dancing in circles with his followers, who circled him in perfect fashion, shifting their positions in a harmonic and impossibly coordinated fashion. His feet were sketching happiness — emotion that soon saw the puddle of entrails and chose, on pure purpose, to tap dance over it.
Drops of Laysha's blood painted her clothes a dead, dark red.
… … …
“They are doomed. There won't be much place to run from these lunatics, and the girl isn't in the best emotional state right now." Jake thought . “I think this would be a good time to leave. The hooded ones are amused enough with the happiness of their destruction to notice me, or at least that's what I hope.”
His remarks at no point took into account the possible survival of the small group of three.
“Judging from the way they behave and the fact that, until now, this world has come across as too stereotypical in the 'fantasy' department, I can say with some certainty that those three were adventurers of some sort.”
The delivery of the golden amulet with a ring also supported that theory. The girl's small party seemed to be focused on doing something related to that item.
“Maybe they wanted to hand it over to someone else? Maybe that's some kind of valuable thing? Well, I guess it won't be worth thinking about now, as I won't have any way to claim it for myself.”
His plan to leave as soon as possible was on track. All he would have to do was pay keen attention to his steps.
“If I avoid stepping on blades of grass or a stick, everything will be fine.”
It was no longer interesting to see the fate of the fight. The wannabe warrior boy had already bled out of consciousness and was still doing so, and the first girl was far more than a singular piece of dead flesh by then.
“Not just a single piece of meat, I would say… Huh, even my sense of humor died… Isn’t that's great... I would normally just laugh stupidly and then feel bad about it.”
Not having Heart and Reality anymore was an experience that could not be described with any terms, as that would mean, even indirectly, trying to attribute emotional significance to the experience.
“Although an opportunity to grab one of those knives wouldn't be a bad thing. Having something like that would make my life easy… A weapon that never allows the opponent to stop bleeding, no matter how small the cut is… ”
But going back there was out of the question. He might not have minded the sight of a body split in half or exposed viscera lying on the floor ready to be devoured by ants or some beast, but he still knew, on a rational level, the importance of self-preservation.
“Then I will just make my steps out of here, with all the caution in the world… ”
He started off with his right foot, carefully aiming for a spot where there weren't as many small rocks or grass, and as he did...
A powerful gale cut through the entire forest.
… … …
"Eh...?"
The six of them looked back at the kneeling girl, in a way that would have been comical had their cruel nature not been known. That was not a planned event, and the “ooh !” present collectively in the features of each one explained that.
“… This is a change…!” The leader announced the obvious. “A perfect change to our little adventure odyssey...!”
She was still staring at the floor, focused on her deepest thoughts... or lack of them for that matter. Her mind was taken elsewhere, floating on the wind…
… Wind that surrounded her as if she were the center of a tornado. The leaves moved, little by little torn from the nearby trees by the brutal intensity of the circular current that emanated from her core, shining in an intense greenish light, just like the color of those lost eyes.
“The bonds of friendship that were lost awaken the beast within you...! I see it now... I see the hero's redemption in their guilt for losing those they cared so much about...!"
Sand and small rocks added to the tornado, as the very air distorted around her.
“The old trope...! The well-known story of the champion who awakens his powers through rage...!” The leader exclaimed, holding his hood so the wind wouldn't expose it.
Inexpressive, the girl just pointed her right hand in the direction of the six, letting the wind escape through her lips, chanting the spell in the form of a breath.