After the intense intimidation that Asura demonstrated against them, the goons picked themselves up and slowly departed from the building. On their way out, they helped the man get up before two of them hoisted him over their shoulders. Due to the height difference, his feet barely touched the floor as they slowly trudged away.
“Stop!” The man’s commanding voice made them stop. “Turn to face him.”
They slowly turned around so that the man faced Asura with a deadly look on his face.
“We won’t forget today! When I come back with my men, we’ll rip you apart! You hear me? We’ll tear you limb from limb!”
Asura did not reply but glared back at him with an equally matching menacing expression on his face. The man seemed to wait for a bit, waiting for some kind of reaction from him, but soon decided to leave since his opposition showed no sign of reacting to his provocation.
Once they left, Asura turned around and noticed the many eyes staring at him apprehensively. They must have been very frightened by the immense pressure he exuded as well as the menacing display of strength he exerted in defeating the people that had been terrorising them for a long time.
He momentarily wondered what he should do about them, but he decided there was nothing to be done. So, he firmly walked past them without a single glance and began climbing up the stairs while they continued to watch him leave.
Remembering the direction in which Zayden’s room was located, Asura followed along and soon arrived to stand behind a flimsy looking door. There was a knob on it with a number digit pad to enter the passcode to enter the room.
“A fancy number lock for this kind of door?” He muttered to himself with a raised eyebrow.
Disregarding the strangeness of it all, he entered the six-digit passcode and soon heard a click sound. He turned the knob and the door swung open easily, allowing him entry into the room. Stepping in, he shut the door and flicked the lights on that were located right next to the entrance and the entrance of the room turned on.
He momentarily narrowed his eyes to shield himself against the sudden brightness in such a dark room, but he soon saw that it was a small shabby room. There was a bed right next to the entrance and towards the back was located what looked like a kitchen and right next to the kitchen was a door, which he opened to find an attached bathroom and toilet.
“Not exactly healthy to have this right next to the kitchen but it’ll do,” he muttered to himself with a sigh.
It was a not a hospitable place but he accepted that there was nothing to be done about it as the choice to live here was not made by him. Zayden made that choice out of necessity due to the severe financial situation he was under. However, he felt the feelings that Zayden had felt while living there, feeling of being grateful of having a roof over his head compared to having no roof at all. This further made Asura feel sorrow for the young man that was no longer there.
“Anyway, I better get things in order,” he muttered to himself and shook his head to get rid of the unnecessary feelings.
He walked back to the entrance and took off his shoes and stored them under the bed located right next to the entrance. Then he emptied the contents of his pockets onto the bed and looked incredulously at them.
“She really bought too much for me,” he muttered, referring to the wild shopping spree Lina had taken him on.
Despite grumbling about the clutter of boxes he would have to unpack, a faint smile appeared on his face. Sighed deeply, he began stretching his body and sniffed himself before making a disgruntled expression.
“A bath is a must…” he muttered with a disgruntled look.
As such, he checked at the curtains and noticed that they were quite transparent, so he decided to switch the lights off, returning the room to semi-darkness with the only light coming through the curtains of the end of the day sunlight.
He took his clothes off and headed into the bathroom to have a comfortable bath. Once inside, he struggled to figure out what each of them did and Zayden’s memories did not give him any hint on how to operate these things. As such, he accidentally got splashed in the face by the hand shower when he turned it on and immediately doused himself with water from the head shower when he turned the knob in the middle completely to the other side.
It took him a while to finally get things in order and begin having a bath. He sniffed at the soap out of curiosity and liking the smell, he began to use it earnestly to rub himself all around. Then he watched himself off completely with the hand shower and then proceeded to have a shower with the shampoo located to the side.
All of this took place in the span of half-an-hour before he finally stepped out with a sigh of relief with a towel wrapped around his waist. He had forgotten to take spare clothes into the bathroom, she had to dry himself inside and then wrap the towel around himself as he did not want to walk around his room naked.
Once outside, he headed to the side shelves with clothes folded neatly on there. Asura looked sympathetically at the nearly folded clothes as he remembered how carefully Zayden had taken care of them. Then he took a pair of shirt, pant and underwear and quickly got dressed before walking over to the bed and sitting down comfortably on it.
“This is hard…” he muttered in slight annoyance.
The bed was hard and did not feel that comfortable as he felt like he was singing into the frame of the bed and the flat board hitting his buttocks. This experience was terrible in comparison to the bed he slept on in the super human assessment area and worse than the bed he slept on during his recovery at the hospital.
He let out another sigh before muttering, “I’m sighing too much. I need to get used to this.”
Asura thought back to the times he had to sleep on the ground while on an expedition for war back in his during his time. Thinking about the hard times from then made him feeling his current situation was slightly better.
“Anyway, what do I do now…?”
His question was not about his purpose for being there, which he deemed for now to exact revenge against all those that put Zayden in his current predicament, but he was concerned about what had happened earlier.
“Sensing his hostility, I can tell he is someone that holds a grudge and will see to it through to the end,” he muttered to himself in a quiet voice, voicing his thoughts out loud, “but what will he do? Who will he bring? How many will he bring? When will they come? How long will it take for him to gather what he needs to come? Where will they strike from? What kind of men would they be? Will there be super humans among them? Could he have ties to villains? Could be have ties to guilds that do dirty work for money?”
Asura had bombarded himself with question after question with a very serious expression on his face while rocking back and forth on the bed.
“Can I beat them? Do I stand a chance with my current pathetic self?” He asked himself and looked down at his two hands.
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He clenched his hands and unclenched them, wondering how strong he truly was. He does not possess a single prideful bone in his body, or at least in his spirit since he believed the current body did not belong to him. So, he was always been able to assess himself properly and accurately before any kind of battle in order to make preparations for him to get stronger to meet the challenge.
“I know in time I can become stronger if I train harder but… time… Do I have time?”
The one fact he knew vividly was that there was no one in this building that would be willing to help him, stand up for him, or even bother to call the authorities in case of danger. The number of weeks that Zayden and the occupants spent in terror made that painfully clear.
“There’s also a high possibility that the local authorities around here were tipped off by that gang to not get in between their business,” he muttered and furrowed his eyebrows with an intense look.
From everything he could think off, he realised he was at a dead end with not a single way out. Normally, this would make anyone give up, but he was not an ordinary person.
“The odds are stacked against me,” he admitted to himself coolly as if it was obviously, “but even so, I’m not giving up.”
It was never in his nature to surrender or give up no matter the crisis he had faced. Even when he was in the middle of an intense life or death battle, he continued to fight on with high spirit and valiantly to the very end until his eventual victory. Compared to those times, he almost smiled at how simple the current situation is.
“I can get stronger if I train regularly, but how long would I have to get stronger before him and his men come back with a larger force,” he began muttering again his thoughts as he imagined a possible scenario that might occur. “I should expect no less than a week before they return. That’s not enough time to get this really weak body to the level of strengthening that I need it to be.”
“In that case, should I look for help?” He asked himself unashamedly. “There’s no shame in accepting help where necessary. I accepted Lagron’s help during that time when my army was about to be wiped out due to an ambush.”
This made him think of that time back in his original world, he had been waging war against the high elves, who were notorious for wanting to horde knowledge and claim all land as their own. They did not heed his creed to surrender themselves under his rule and put up a fight, so he and his army charged towards their homeland to conquer them.
At first, both forces had put up equally fierce fight to stop the other with everything they got. However, the high elves began losing as Asura entered the fray himself like he always does to quicken the battle and not shed any more blood.
The magic attacks that the elves launched at him were completely ineffective as he was a fierce warrior that did not know any defeat and would not simply allow himself to take a beating. After their volley of attacks, he and his men return fired and had dealt a severe damage to their magic unit.
“Sir, we’re soon approaching their barrier!” One of his men reported as his men charged forward.
“Don’t let up! Keep on pushing!” Asura ordered them, and his men let out a battle cry and continued to push on.
It was that time that time that several explosions occurred from their rear, and he turned around in shock to find the infantry unit of the high elves charging from behind. That was when he realised that the other race had let the infantry unit to leave the safety of their barrier far earlier before Asura’s army arrived so that they could ambush them at the right time.
As such, the battle quickly turned in the favour of the high elves as Asura’s army began to take heavy casualties from the sudden attack from behind. Asura attempted to leave the front to return to the rear to support his men, however he was stopped by the commander of his army.
“Sir, you need to leave!”
“What?!” Asura yelled angrily. “I will not abandon my men!”
“Sir,” the man said seriously, through blood and sweat, “this war is lost. You must retreat.”
Asura’s expression turned white from the shock of hearing the finality in the man’s voice and understood quickly that he was right. The infantry unit had taken them by great surprise and were quickly wiping them out before the men could recognise and return fire.
“Even so, I’m not giving up!” Asura shouted at his man and turned as he readied to join them.
“No, sir!” The man shouted and grabbed his hand to stop him. “You are running low on energy. If you push yourself too far, you will seriously hurt yourself.”
“But I cannot simply abandon you all! We can still win this!”
“Sir!” The man drew closer to him and said pleadingly, “if you fall here, all of our sacrifices will be wasted. You must return alive and prepare once again to face off against this cowardly scum. We are fighting for the future, correct?”
“Even so—!” Asura began, but his underling shook his head in denial.
He ordered for one of the cavalry men to take Asura back to the base camp immediately. Just as Asura continued to resit while his men forcefully got him onto the horse, they heard a loud familiar voice calling out a technique name.
“Dragon Slam!”
At that moment, a silhouette appeared from high above and it shot down incredibly fast before landing firmly on the ground. At the same time, he had brought his fist towards the ground with it surrounded by an unknown energy.
A moment later, there was a massive explosion of power as the ground erupted on all sides, causing both armies to stumble and become off balanced. As the dust spread in all directions, the attacker straightened up to face the infantry unit of the high elves, who had quickly recovered.
“Strike!” They shouted, and once again they charged forward towards the man.
It looked like the man was grinning at the sight of this army charging towards him before he held his hand out. In the palm of his hand, he began to gather energy in it before a small red ball of energy had formed in it. Then, with a wicked grin, he swung the charged energy back with his hand and shouted the technique while glaring menacingly at the charging army.
“Dragon Burst Cannon!”
With that, he swung his hand forward and aimed at them while exerting the energy in the palm of his hand. It got unleashed as a massive red wave of destruction that soared straight towards the charging infantry unit.
Seeing this incoming attack, they quickly brought their shields up and shouted a technique name that could not be heard from the bellowing noise of the attack. A barrier like magic formed around each of them after casting the spell, but to their horror, the attack soared forward, smashed into their barrier and effortlessly broke through and completely evaporating them from existence.
As the devastation completely rattled the enemy army, the man turned around and looked towards Asura with a grinning.
“I thought you needed a hand, Asura!” He called with a wide grin on his face.
Asura stared at the man in disbelief before muttering his name being, “Lagron.”
As the memory of that incident finished, Asura remembered how the Lagron’s army arrived and quickly encircled the disoriented infantry unit, allowing him to focus on the war effort and soon breach the barrier protecting the high elves home land, resulting in his victory.
“I took help from him in that critical time, so why can’t I do it now?” He muttered with a faint smile. “But… who would be willing to help me that I know of?”
The only people he knew personally that he felt he could speak to with his hand. They were Pina, the super human assessment staff member, Wonder Man being a member of one of the top guilds in the country, Berserkers, and finally Lina, the daughter of the guild master of the very same guild.
“I don’t know about Pina, and I don’t know how to contact Wonder Man. That only leaves…” he muttered and looked towards the phone he put aside on the bed.
He remembered her parting words from earlier when she dropped him near the apartment.
“If you ever need my help, make sure to call me. Don’t hesitate,” she told him confidently.
“But I already took so much help from you. I don’t think it’s right,” he replied in a concerned voice.
“Don’t be stupid,” she scolded him, much to his surprise. “Don’t try to be so honourable in a day and age where the meaning of honour is disappearing.”
“What?” Asura reacted in surprise as he was not expecting to hear something like that.
“I sincerely offered you my help, and you should just take it. You’re a good man and that’s why I’m offering you my help, okay? Besides, you never know when you might need my help, right? So don’t put yourself in unnecessary stress because of useless feelings. It will get you killed.”
Asura was quite taken by surprise from hearing her words, but he could understand the emotion behind it.
“You may be right, Lina, and you might be right. Even so, I won’t give up,” he muttered with a faint smile.
Taking a deep breath, he breathed a sigh before making up his mind and picking up the phone. He searched the contacts list in the phone and began to ring her number. For a few seconds, he heard the sound of something ringing inside the phone before he heard it get picked up and her voice saying his name.
“Zayden! You called. How are you?”
“I’m alright. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I’m at home relaxing. Did you get to your apartment safely?”
He momentarily paused at her question as he remembered the incident that occurred almost an hour ago.
“Yes. I’m home safe and sound,” he finally replied.
“That’s good. So, what did you need to call me so soon?”
“You know how you said I should call you if I need anything?”
“Yes? Do you need help with something?”
“Yes, and I’d like to talk it over with you tomorrow if that’s okay?”
“Sure. I got tomorrow off, so I’m down for that. Where should we meet?”
“Thank you, Lina,” he replied in an appreciative voice and smiled as a plan began forming in his mind.