Φ As we enter the main chamber of the tunnels, I see a giant building bigger than the mansion I grew up in in the centre. It has many different bridges coming out of it, leading to tunnels. As I look down, I see men and women drinking and eating, but they all let out a scream in terror due to Willow. Using the confusion to my advantage, I jump off Willow and say to Maple, “If I get overwhelmed, tell Willow to attack.”
“Wait,” Maple says, but Orb has already headed straight down. “Did that idiot forget that I can’t speak the saviour’s song, how am I going to tell Willow anything.”
Upon landing on the ground, I immediately used my legacy to freeze a large crowd of people in front of me. After that, I used my speed to get close to and knock unconscious most of the people who weren’t frozen from my attack. I then saw one person with a communicator’s hand, and he screamed into it.
“EVERYONE THERE IS AN INTRUDER, RETURN TO BA”, I knocked him out before he could finish his sentence.
I hear the sound of swords being drawn and strong footsteps. It seems some of them have regained their composure. They come at me, trying to kill me. They’re weak as all the others I have fought, but the issue is that there are ten of them coming at me, making it hard to dodge, and the sensory overload because of all the different noises that are being made in the cave is slowing me down.
I decided to focus on defending my vital spots while looking out for any form of poison; if I get hit with that, I am finished. So, the bandits come swinging their swords at high speed. I dodge but still take cuts here and there. Whenever I get an opening, I knock one of them out, and when lots of them get close, I freeze the area.
Creating ice taxes my body, and with the large amount I made to take out most of them in the beginning, I am already feeling tired. This and the fact that all the bandits in the giant building are coming out in droves has just increase my exhaustion; whenever I take one out, five more pop out to replace the person.
But the worst issue is these guys’ coordination. Individually they’re all weak, but they work together too well. When I am fighting five, I try to take one out, but in that moment, another six of them come in to attack, me making my attack stop. I try to freeze them all after they do this, but then the initial five will back out as quickly as possible, and two of the six who jumped in would move back as well making it that I would only be able to freeze four of the eleven I could of.
I still persevered and continued my assault, but after their repeated attacks, I started to lose focus, and it the moment I was distracted, one of the bandits swinging a giant hammer came at me. As the hammer hit me, I was able to freeze it solid, but the impact had already sent me flying into a wall. At the speed I was going, best case, I get a concussion. Worse case, I die. This isn’t good. I was too overconfident, dammit. If I make contact with my hands first, it might soften the blow on the rest of my body. It is a stretch, but I must do something other than leaving it to chance.
As I make an impact on the wall, I feel softness. As I look to see what happen, I see snow. Did I create that? As I get off the wall, I see the snow come down with me. While moving my body, I notice the snow follows the movement of my hands, and when I turn my hands 180 degrees, the snow turns to ice. I start to grind as I say to myself, “I can work we this.”
Φ “Boss, you shouldn’t come down here. It is still dangerous. That beast over there could still attack us.”
“No, we are fine to look around. He hasn’t killed a single one of us. If he wanted to, all he would have to do is tell that monster to stampede over us, but he has done no such thing. This brat doesn’t want to kill us. Isn’t that cute?”
“I see, sir.”
“Well, if you do stop SITTING ON YOUR ASS, I NEED TEN OF YOU TO GO UP TO HIM AND KEEP UP THE ASSAULT! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU RETARDS?”
“YES, SIR!”
“GOOD, NOW THE ONE WHO CAPTURES HIM GETS TWENTY PERCENT OF HIS SALE. YOU KNOW HOW MUCH LEGACIES GO FOR!”
An enormous scream erupts throughout the area. God really does love me, to think a legacy would run straight into the heart of our base. I know of people who have earned titles of high nobility by selling Legacies. This is my chance to make it into the big leads. Life is just going my way.
As my soldiers runs towards the boy, he approaches us at high speed. That freaking idiot, seems like he wants to get cut down faster. As he gets closer to meeting my soldiers, he twists his hand and pulls it back. The brat has gone insane. What the hell is he doing?
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I suddenly hear a big rushing sound behind me. I look behind to see that all the frozen men are back to normal, and a large amount of snow is rushing towards us. “The fuck”, I say before the snow hits us in full force. I
push through the snow and stand up; seeing it now covers everyone. I try to get my legs out of it, but the moment I try, all the snow turns into ice, and I see the boy moving at extreme speeds, knocking every one of my soldiers out, and as he gets to me, he says, “I heard someone call you boss, we’re going to talk later.” And with that, the boy knocks me out.
Φ “VICTORY”, I shout after knocking the boss out. I look around to ensure everyone is down, and as I expected, the only ones who are still semi-conscious are the ones whom I unfroze, but their bodies are frostbitten, so they’re no threats to me as they are now.
“MAPLE, COME DOWN, WHERE SAFE”.
As Maple quickly rushes to my side, she says, “Good job, but I wish you would be more careful.”
“I was careful even if I could have defeated them all. Worst-case scenario, Willow steps in and knocks them out, probably killing a few of them in the process.”
“You say that, but you almost cracked your head against the wall and were cut sixteen times, like right here and here.” Maple then starts pointing out where I was cut.
“How the hell did you even see all that accurately up there.”
“I happen to have amazing eyesight.”
Well, I guess she did snipe that waptor the first time we met. “Well then if you do, keep a watch on any of their movement as we move,” I say as I pick Maple up and start running towards their base.
As we get inside, I start running around frantically, looking for anything I could recognise. While inside, I see how well-organised this whole place is. Not only that, but it is also very well built. I wouldn’t have excepted a bunch of low-life bandits to be this methodical though they have shown they can coordinate.
After running around for a while, I hear something. “Maple; I hear something over in that direction. Keep being a lookout and scream to me if you see anything strange. I head toward the noises, eventually leading me to prison. I see men, women, and children as I look through the cells, but when walking past all of them, I eventually see people with clothes from the village. “EVERYONE,” I scream as I get close to the bars.
“Orb,” they say in response. I freeze the prison bars open and start breaking everyone’s cuffs. “Are you guys all ok, especially you, Pine? You’re an old lady. I hope they weren’t too ruff with you.”
The moment Pine gets out of her handcuffs, she smacks me across the head, “Do you think I am some fragile baby.”
“I was just worried”, but as I say this, I see Pine stumble. “Please be careful, Pine, your age is affecting you.”
“It is not that, you idiot, they barely feed us, and when they did, something was put in the food that made us weaker.”
It must be the same thing that Cole did to us. “Well, let me help you out of here then.”
Hitting me in my crotch Pine says, “Go free the people in the other cells first.”
“But I need to help you guys first.”
“Stop being an idiot. You know how resilient we are, and we have only been here for a little while, unlike all the other prisoners who are in much worse shape than us, so go free then first; YOU HEAR ME, ORB.”
“Loud and clear,” following Pines instruction, I go to free the prisoners in the other cells, and just like Pine said, these people have desolate expressions and are also malnourished.
As I break their cuffs, I tell the kids, “Don’t worry, the bad people can’t hurt you anymore. You’re free”, and after a while, I get everyone out.
As we all slowly walk from the cells to meet Maple, she runs over and gives hugs to some of the villagers. But then she asked me, “Was Willow there?”
Nodding my head from left to right in response, I say, “Most of the men were nowhere to be found.”
“Willow, where are you,” she says despairingly. Maple slaps both her checks and says, “I can’t do anything about this, so right now, let’s look after these people.” Facing them, Maple says, “You all look hungry good thing there is a lot of food around”, so me Maple and everyone else able-bodied start grabbing the food that was left around and some that had been stored away and presented it to everyone. “I know this has been hard for you, but now you can eat all you want.”
Everyone started having their fill of the ridiculous amount of food the bandits had. Many of them had tears flowing down their faces while eating. While that was happening, I explained to the adults from the village all that had happened involving both Cole and Sequoia.
They all had varying reactions. Some broke down, and some rejected my words, but one thing everyone shared was the sadness of knowing not only their leader, but their home was gone.
I get on my hands and knees in front of everyone and say, “I am so sorry. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t come to the village.”
Maple getting down beside me, also says, “I should also apologise, if I had taken extra precautions when bringing both Orb and Cole back, we would have all been safe, and my father would be alive. I am so sorry.”
Pine brings us both in close and says, “You both did well. Don’t blame yourself for this, even carrying all this shame and worry. You two kids have accomplished a lot. If it is anyone’s fault it is ours, for being such useless adults. We should have protected you, and for that, I am so sorry.”
“No, don’t apologise.”
“He is right, Pine. It is my fault.”
“Well, since we all want to claim responsibility, how about we all decide to let this go and blame no one? Isn’t that a fine compromise?”
“Yes, it is.”
So as our conversation ends, one of the other prisoners comes up to us and says the men out there are starting to wake up.
“I guess it is time to go question those scumbags.”