They had walked for half a day, when they heard some voices in the distance. Of course there was a chance it were only some tradesman that held an everyday conversation but Willbur knew better. He changed course without saying anything and Core followed.

“Did you hear anything suspicious?” he wondered. It wasn’t long before they arrived at a street that could barely be called a street but wasn’t a path anymore. On it there were five guys and a woman. The five guys seemed normal enough, just the rough kind of men that felt at home in the woods just minding their own business and mugging people. There wasn’t anything special about them, two of them were armed with swords, the biggest one had a rather threatening morning star and the smallest one was doing the talking. The last one stood a bit further in the background and also was the only one who had realized they weren’t alone anymore, but didn’t raise the alarm to his comrades so far.

The woman on the other hand was anything but normal. Everything about her made one think of rich spoiled brat that had run away from home. She had excellent quality boots, but they were really muddy, worn and poorly maintained. She had no actual weapons, just a wooden staff of a wanderer. She had white bright clothes, which would probably count as a weapon of blinding people with brilliant reflecting and stupidity if the expensive dress wouldn’t have also been covered mostly in mud and dirt. Her face seemed sweet, but she was rather young, maybe 17, probably younger. Also she had beautiful long blonde hair that somehow wasn’t all dirt covered, but instead gave a notion of how blindingly radiant she must have been before reality of living in the woods for some days had catched up. She was shaking immensely but not crying. In short, if it wouldn’t be so obvious that she was their third party member Willbur would just get the fuck away and hope that she wouldn’t be stupid enough to get killed. But if he did that he would antagonize Core and also just delay the inevitable. She would show up at their campsite sooner or later, a bit shaken and roughed up and join their team anyway.

The small mugger was talking in a calm but threatening voice and Willbur could just hear the last sentence of what he had said.

“… really don’t want any trouble. Just give us everything you got of value and you can go. We won’t kill you and we won’t even tie or beat you up. But we will if we have to. And we have to if you don’t cooperate.” Core who was just by his side likely had also heard the last few words and tensed up. He already had his sword drawn and Willbur felt a bit sad that these everyday muggers would be slain by his fate even though they seemed of the decent kind.

Before Core could do anything stupid Willbur made a last effort to settle this without anyone dying.

“Oy! Bad day for you guys I guess. Leave her alone.” He shouted. Now he got the attention of everyone, not only of the one guy standing back a little. The small one went from surprised to shocked to angry to calm again in mere seconds and faced Willbur.

“Oh how nice. There seem to be a lot of fools in these woods today. My nice sir, you seem like a sensible person. And a strong one too. I see you could probably kill us all with your sidekick, but then this lady will die and all of this would be pointless.” The small guy started to negotiate with him. It was really rare that someone with that kind of intelligence turned into a mugger, but then again he seemed to be the leader of a band of five thugs, even though he was the smallest one of them.

“I propose you just give us that highly decorated sword of your companion and we free this lady from her superfluous knickknack like we were just about to do and nobody has to die.” The leader seemed self-confident, but his left eyelid had started twitching as soon as he had seen Hellfire in Cores hand.

“I have different proposition. You fuck off and I don’t kill y’all. I don’t care about the >lady<, if you want to kill her do it fast.” Willbur laughed back. If they really did it maybe he next got one of the quiet female companions that longed for him in secret and assumed their love a one-sided tragedy. Which of course was right but at some point she would still assume that Willbur loved her back anyway.

At that moment though the expected carnage started to unfold. The young woman screamed in a high-pitched voice and a ball of brilliant light shot out of her staff in the back of the thug-leader and imploded. The poor guy didn’t even have time to scream as the ball carved in his flesh and made a head-sized clean hole in form of perfect sphere in his back. The big thug screamed something and swung his Morningstar at the woman but Core had already moved and sliced up his legs with a quick motion. The legs started burning violently and the guy collapsed to his knees screaming. Willbur had already used the moment of confusion to storm forward and slice the head of the nearest sword holder clean off. The other one cursed and faced him, but Willbur was more concerned about the fifth one. As expected he was of the odd kind and had drawn several throwing shuriken of which 3 were now ready in each of his hands. Willbur made a quick assertion and faced the other sword-guy first. Core would be finished with the big guy any moment and had a big advantage in form of being a lot closer to the odd one than him. Also the second sword guy was in the line of sight of the odd one so Wilbur probably wasn’t going to get a shuriken in his face. Willbur took an overly open stance with the sword held high above his head and as expected the guy immediately rushed forward to take advantage of this opening. Willbur however just kicked up some dirt in his face and took a step to the side. The sword guy stumbled and a moment later his head was split in two.

Core had closed the distance a little bit to the shuriken thrower, but that one was dashing backwards at a mad speed and throwing his weapons at Core at the same time. Core had turned up the heat of Hellfire to the most he could bear so the shuriken just bounced off of him. Willbur didn’t know if it was due to the intense heat or some other bullshit reasons but Core seemed to be confident in handling this alone so he just watched.

Core also seemed to have come to a decision and suddenly the flaming inferno around his sword disappeared. Several shuriken buried itself in Cores forearms and shoulders he had put up in front of him to protect his face, but at the same time Cores feet were on fire and he dashed forward in an impressive leap. He landed directly in front of the mugger who made a sound like “Tsk.” And drew a knife. But it was a losing battle now and at the end Core had him pinned down defenceless. The guy waited for his death, but Core hesitated and finally sheathed his sword.

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“You lost, but it was a formidable fight. Get lost.” He told the guy. Willbur face palmed. This was going to be one big pain in the ass. Now it was probably granted that his guy was the secret officer of the damned army or some shit. This was going to cost them months of questing and also now Core was probably the only one ever being capable of killing that guy. The thug didn’t pause and raced in the woods. A moment later he was gone and it was just the three of them left.

Willbur was going to where Core was standing and looking after the disappeared criminal.

“You goddamn idiot. What were you thinking? Now you got several wounds, in joints on top of that. How do you think you are supposed to swing a sword the next months?” he scolded.

Core just grinned a bit embarrassed.

“I’m tough, I heal fast. I just need a night of sleep, that’s it.” He defended himself half-hearted.

“Bullshit. You got a goddamn shuriken right there right in your shoulder. The moment I pull it out the blood will start squirting out and you could die. We have to somehow get you to a healer now in this condition.” Willbur continued. Letting the boy heal the wound naturally was a non-starter. A festering wound for weeks or month normally was bad enough, but with continuous fighting it was almost certain death.

“M-maybe I can help?” the woman interjected his rant. Willbur looked at her and he understood instantly.

“Ah. All right. Go for it.” He acknowledged the proposal.

“J-just like that?” the woman stuttered in disbelief.

“He seems like a big bad guy, but he is actually a pretty nice and awesome old hero you know?” Core added.

“He was also the one who instantly knew that something was wrong. I could just barely make out some voices and he already had rushed to your side to help full speed.” He continued his tale. Well that was one way of seeing how this had unfolded.

“Anyway, if he says you can be trusted, you certainly can!” he said and grinned his annoyingly wide smirk.

“All right. Here we go.” The woman nodded and touched Cores wounds. The boy really had guts when he didn’t even flinch when the white orb of light came out again. This time there wasn’t a hole that ripped someone open though, instead all of Cores wounds started healing so fast you could watch how they ejected the shurikens by themselves. The woman had her eyes closed tightly and some sweat could be seen at her forehead. When she was finished she opened her eyes and was still touching Core. Her face became red like a fountain of blood and she almost jumped half a step back. Core didn’t even seem to realize.

“Wow its like its new! That’s amazing!” he marvelled. The woman looked away in another direction; probably in the hope Core wouldn’t realize how much she had blushed. Ah young love. So that was how this was going to play out. He had already wondered why the fuck he should be interested in a 17-year old. Normally the woman he got as teammates were at least in some primal part of his brain to his taste.

“It- it’s the first time that I am trusted like this. And now its from two people at once.” The girl wondered. Well she was right about Core, but that was because he was an idiot. Willbur simply knew what a healing ability looked like. And he also knew of the dark side of the healing arts. If you could fix flesh and blood and veins by touching you could also twist and rend and even annihilate like she had done. Also a female beautiful healer as a team member was a classic. But there was no reason to let her know all that so Willbur just grunted and turned around. They would still need some time to rest. Core wasn’t wounded anymore, but he had surely strained himself hard to win this fight. The other two followed him and kept blabbering. Willbur chose a clearing nearby and on the first possible opportunity he excused himself and told the two lovebirds he had to take a shit.

He went back to the small street, where the dead bodies still rotted in the dirt. First he went to the big guy whose legs had been burned off to charred stumps by Cores ability combined with Hellfires properties. Naturally Core had forgotten to finish him off. He squatted down to him and patted him on the back with his open palm violently.

“You can stop playing dead now. I know you’re still alive.” He told the now 20 centimetre smaller giant. A fearful groan could be heard from under the guy’s head and he slowly turned around. He had puke and snot and tears all over his face and in his wild beard. Willbur really didn’t like these clean ups, but what he thought earlier for the guy that Core hat let gotten away was also correct for this scaled down giant. Maybe he wasn’t some rich kid, but he could have an influential cousin who took the counter-ambush personal, or maybe he had some demi-human blood and someone would start a war because of that. It just wasn’t worth the risk.

“Look its nothing personal.” Willbur explained to the poor guy.

“If you have any kind of last wish I’ll honestly do my best to fulfil it. I’m not a monster.” The big guy nodded had had stopped whimpering, even if he still cried silently.

“Please bury us properly. I don’t want to be turned in an undead or eaten by predators.” He told Willbur. Willbur nodded and then with a quick slash it was over. Afterward he dragged the dead bodies in the woods and made a little hole for them where he unceremonical threw them in and buried them.

“Rest in peace. It wasn’t your fault, you just were in the way. Wrong time, wrong place, it could happen to any of us.” He spoke to the silent grave of the 4 dead men.

Then he went back to the encampment he had chosen. He was ridiculed by Core that he’d taken so long to take a shit, and the women, who’s name was Emilie, blushed again but she also rebuked Core he should have a little respect for his elders. Willbur didn’t reply anything; he wasn’t really in the mood after this senseless bloodbath.

Core just laughed his ass off but he stopped eventually. They chatted a little among themselves and wow what a surprise, Emelie had to go to Lumia city too. So they were a party of three now. Still Emelie wasn’t as dense as Core, so Willbur had to up his game a little or he’d be mistrusted. And mistrust meant conspiracies and conspiracies meant more dead team members and civilians.

But something else bothered Willbur. Something that seemed to be just on the tip of his tongue but couldn't be quite graspe. And it wasn't the issue with trust or conspiracies. Core seemed to trust him completly and he was more important than Emelie.

“You know Emelie, he really does seem scary, but he’s a good guy. He even helped me with my sword training without wanting anything for it. He feels like a trusted master the moment you meet him and I think he just doesn’t like to talk.” Core soothed her. Emelie nodded and seemed content with that explanation, but Willbur almost had to sit down right there and right at that moment. The realization struck him like a lightning bolt and he felt the world spinning.

Everything clicked together the moment Core had called him his master. All the little signs he had ignored and overlooked since he met Core, all the words he hadn’t said out of apathy or boredom or bitterness. His thoughts raced to every interaction he’ve had had with Core, about exactly all the parts of his internal monologue that had been visible for Core all this time. And it all fit. Even the figh just now was just another proof. Core had taken out all the really dangerous guys, Willbur had just cut down the goons. It was a certain picture that had slowly and without him realizing been painted about him, and it was a picture he knew all too well.

He fulfilled all the stereotypes of the grumpy old master with a heart of gold that guided the hero and showed him the ropes on the first part of his adventurous journey. The boy indeed had it right from the beginning. Willbur was tangled up in the fate of Core, not the other way around.

Willbur wasn’t the protagonist hero anymore.