Can monsters of the Night be reasoned with? That’s a great question. Personally? Fuck no. Oops, I meant to say I don’t really agree they can. I mean, I know there’s that one legend with Lorena. She was like a werewolf right?…Yeah, she was and was sick of what her little pack made her do. She quit eating people and became a Jaeger. I heard she was a total knockout too. Why are you looking at me like that?! Anyways, she died three years later, but she was pretty active in our hunts and was part of the Night. But she’s a special case…Oh! We also got sicko vampire fuckers whose children ar—I mean there are children born of a union with vampires and humans, known as dhampirs. They have the aura of the Night but have fought with us against their own kind. Listen, the long answer is all boring, will take too long, and is just some philosophical bullshit no one here really wants to talk about. This is supposed to be a quick lesson, and I needed to get drunk yesterday. So, here’s the short answer, you lil shits listen good. If the creatures of the Night kill, maim, hunt, and kidnap innocent children that can’t defend themselves, they can’t be reasoned with. They are the enemy. So, eliminate them all and make them regret touching the future generations. No mercy.
* The Fourth Illum, K-yo Illum. Recorded during the annual hunting houses cross-training summit “Q&A with the Six Leaders of the Hunting houses.”
NOTE: This event is no longer done, this was the last year of the summit. The crude and rude K-yo Illum was blamed for the fallout after he got drunk and challenged the other heads of the hunting house to duels. He fought them all and caused a big scene. The Fifth Illum spent most of his time playing diplomat to get back on the good graces of the other hunting houses.
EXTRA NOTE: The Fourth Illum has ordered me to record down the fact that he beat all five of the heads of the hunting houses during that fiasco. — Fifth Illum, Alaan Illum.
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Bartz slowly rolled off the table and landed near the unconscious body of his uncle. He lightly slapped at the Prof.’s face, gaining no reaction. He then shook his body, ramping up the velocity of the shakes over time to get a response. Yet the Prof. was still out cold.
Professor Higginbottom was House Illum’s greatest scholar in history. He was part of Sigurd’s personal force and has said that he was once a Jaeger that personally fought side by side with Sigurd. The Prof. was a reject, and many have claimed that he was lying about standing on the battlefield with the Eighth Illum.
It didn’t help that he just fainted and was currently unconscious when the camp of Jaegers needed him most. Bartz knew the truth though. While he doesn’t believe his uncle was truly a fighter in his past, what he did know was that his uncle was like any Jaeger sent here.
He and his uncle were told of this mission three days ago and that they needed to start their preparations immediately. It was Uncle Higs who worked with Granny Nan, Trevor (Sigurd’s right-hand man), and some of the other Elders to quickly set up Bartz’s rite ceremony. It was Uncle Higs who was with him the whole way here, doing his best to keep the hope alive for both of them. And it was Professor Albert Higginbottom who, while doing all of that, worked tirelessly researching the Raksha, their weaknesses, and the art of possessing and rebuking said possessing in order to try and gain any information to give them an upper hand.
Bartz used all of his strength to lift the heavy unconscious body from the ground. He dragged the body towards a spare bed the main tent had. After gently putting his uncle on the bed, he grabbed one of the blankets nearby on a table and wrapped it around the crowku.
Uncle Higs, you are braver than most, braver than me. Bartz grabbed another blanket and placed it on top of the first one. It was quite cold in the camp and he wanted his uncle to be as warm as possible. He stared at the exhausted and worried expression that was left on Higginbottom’s face. Rest, uncle. You deserve it.
Bartz jogged out of the tent and made way to the middle of the camp. There, a crowd of Jaegers and support members from the houses all stood there watching a sightscreen propped up against a wooden beam that was drilled into the ground.
Three Jaegers, each from House Ashsong, had their hands stretched out. Green hues of ather radiated around their arms. They were channeling their ather into their guardian beasts and the sightscreen. These three summon their guardian bat beasts as conduits to view the hunt going on. The summoners then used the sightscreen to project the feed of what their bats saw for the camp to view. The bats were still making their way towards the cavern and the tension was palpable. No one said a word, not even Elder Hollowfield who was still tied to his chair while staring at the screen.
I got to tell the Hollowfield elder about Marc…Bartz stopped himself and looked down towards the ground. If I tell him, I could cause an uproar. He would try his best to escape the chair and rush towards his death. Or send me…No, they changed the plan with Marcus in mind. I can just tell Lord Ashsong and they can go and assist the vanguard instead of waiting outside.
Bartz was at a crossroads. If Marcus wasn’t going to appear in time, that meant that the vanguard would fight valiantly waiting for reinforcements that would never arrive. If he were to tell any of the house representatives, they would send all the remaining forces and possibly be wiped out completely. There was also the factor that Chieftain Oshi, Lady Bulwark, Willam, and Cecil could succeed on their own and end the hunt swiftly. And maybe… just maybe, Marcus could still make it in time and the plan can succeed.
What am I doing? This isn’t the time to be thinking. I need to tell them what is going on! Yet his body didn’t move. He didn’t want to take that first step in fear that he would have to fight and be a Jaeger. He saw Cecil with his warm smile, heard the chieftain’s booming laugh, felt the loving embrace of his father and of Blaive, and then remembered the exhausted expression on Higginbottom’s sleeping face.
The pressure of being in a family of heroes crushed Bartz again. How many times was he going to go through all of this? He was in a cycle of destruction that broke his mentality. It’s not that he wasn’t good enough. It was just that he didn’t want this. He didn’t want to risk his life over all of this. Why should some vow said 200 or so years ago tie his fate to all of this?
“Take the first step Bartz.” Cecil’s words rang out from his mind, one of the core tenets taught by Gaia to his worshippers. But those words were ignored. Instead, Bartz continued to dwell on the same negative thoughts and emotions. Why should the people that want to do this not have this opportunity and choice? And should he feel this way at all? If he really cared about his family, he would have sucked it up years ago and been a good little wolf.
Again, the same doubts and frustrations he has been having all day arise. But instead of breaking down again, instead of crying, he just accepted those feelings and understood who the real problem was. He understood that he really was a failure like he told Cecil in private, that he was the problem. It’s not the First’s vow, not the fact that he was expected to be a Jaeger or that this hunt was chosen as his first (and possibly last) hunt.
“I will be waiting for you.” What could he do for Cecil and the other Jaegers?
I hate myself. Gods, I hate myself so much. He always had, and that feeling was eating him up inside stronger than ever. He knew he was wrong. But while standing here watching the sightscreen feed from the bats as the vanguard rushed into the cavern, he could no longer deny it. Staying here in the camp and not fighting as a member of House Illum wasn’t right. Yet he couldn’t move. He couldn’t take a step towards the cavern.
“I will do everything I can to protect you.” The last of Cecil’s words echoed in Bartz’s mind, cementing his feet in place.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered out. He wasn’t a hero, he was just a selfish coward. All he allowed himself to do was pray for the vanguard’s success, pray that Marcus arrived on time. He stared at the sightscreen as the bats had finally arrived at the entrance of the cavern and entered the domain of the Night.
///
A few Jaegers had entered the cavern before any of the house representatives arrived. It was ample and spacious enough to fit over a thousand humanoid bodies and still have extra space for more to fit in. Around the walls, it seems that the Raksha placed torches all around to light every area of the cavern. The bats flew upwards towards the ceiling to dangle themselves in between the stalactites. Those who beat everyone else into the cavern were treated with a truly horrific sight.
Hordes of Raksha, more than originally thought, swarmed all around and danced to unearthly sounding chants that came from each of the creatures. They were creatures that never bathed and were filthy beyond imagination. Their excrements piled in at one of the corners of the cavern next to decomposed body parts and piles of humanoid bones. The stench was thick that it was seeable to the naked eye and caused some of the Jaegers to throw up as they entered.
The Raksha had few differences between them. All of them shared pale gray skin with their barren eye sockets, except for one yellow orb of light that acted as their eye which shifted from socket to socket. Each Raksha was hunched over and some had bulbous humps that pulsed every few seconds as they danced around. Some of the Raksha had random deformities, like one arm being smaller than the other or a dead leg being dragged along the ground.
The arms and legs that weren’t deformed were quite muscular, and there were some Raksha that had no deformities at all. Most of them stood about five feet tall, with the shortest of the Raksha appearing to be about three feet tall like a child.
They wore rags or nothing at all, and each had ruined coarse hair or no hair. At the opposite end of the entrance, two altars of stone were visible from the entrance. The biggest of the two was placed in the center. The other stone altar was smaller and had a few Raksha dancing around it, this altar was placed to the far right(the Jaegers right.)
Both altars had a giant stone with what appeared to be a person on it. It was clear what these altars were for. They were sacrificial altars. The graviton spear sat at the base of the main altar with her legs crossed and her eyes closed in mediation. Her spear was at the ready next to her. At the smallest altar, one of the Raksha appeared to have a feminine form, as if the transformation hadn’t completed. This Raksha had a staff in her hands, moving it in a small circular motion over the body that was on the altar.
The staff radiated dark ather, oozing itself onto the body. One Jaeger had a pair of binoculars for them to see the body. She gasped and fell to her knees, covering her mouth in horror.
“Izei Izek Izei Izek,’’ the Raksha with the staff said. It had an eerie, high pitch voice. The other Raksha repeated the words in unison. The dark ather grabbed the body and crushed into it. A painful, agonizing scream echoed as the Raksha danced, a scream that never stopped and pierced the souls of the Jaegers watching in horror.
The dark ather was pulling and forming the crumbled body and washed over it, turning its skin pale gray. The body fell to the ground and a new Raksha was created. This Raksha moaned in pain as it looked around, frightened at what it was seeing. It still had two regular eyes, those of a human in its eye sockets. It wished to speak but didn’t have the capacity to speak. Instead, it started to sob incoherently, moaning out any sounds it could make.
“Mo…Mo…”
Another Raksha, a muscular tall one who had a bulbous hump on his back, carried a sword that looked just like the staff. It had a purple hilt and a darker tinted sliver on the blade that oozed out dark ather as he positioned the tip of the sword towards the newly created Raksha’s chest. The newly created Raksha began to freak out and make more noises, begging and pleading for the muscular Raksha to not stab him.
“Mo…mma.”
The sword went straight into its chest, and the Raksha finally found its voice. It screamed out once again as the sword glowed with dark ather and began to absorb light from the Raksha. Its eyes slowly faded away, leaving a vast, dark, and endless void. The muscular Raksha ripped the sword out and then hoisted the dark and bloody blade into the air, causing its brethren to celebrate and dance more.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The stabbed Raksha laid motionless on the ground until a yellow orb started to flicker into existence in the void of the eye sockets. The orb shifted and looked around, then the Raksha jumped up to its feet and joined the others in the chants and dancing.
The Jaeger who fell to the ground slowly turned to the others that had just arrived. “The…the…children. That was one of the missing children.” Horror grasped at the Jaegers as the muscular Raksha sheathed the sword and grabbed the bottom of its jaw with both its hands.
It pulled down, ripping its jaw muscles and stretching its mouth wide. The bulbous hump on its back began to squirm then pulse before deflating itself as the muscular Raksha vomited out a child onto the small altar. Its jaw became flaccid, and then it slowly began to reform and retract itself back onto its disgusting monstrous face. They cheered and began to chant again as the Raksha with the staff lifted it in the air and started the process all over again.
///
Elder Hollowfield looked at the sightscreen in agony as he cried rivers of tears. “Those poor children.” The entire camp had just witnessed the true evil of the Night. Some fell to their knees and sobbed while others began to pray, and a few of the people in the camp began to vomit from the unbearably sickening sight.
Bartz was of the latter. He hunched over and began to retch and heave until he couldn’t hold it down any longer. He ended up vomiting all over the ground. His hands trembled and then formed into fists that shook violently.
This is how they make new Raksha. Bartz reached into his satchel and pulled out a canteen to take a drink of the water inside. They kidnapped children because they are the ones who wouldn’t put up much of a fight, use the staff to twist and deform their bodies into Raksha, and then use that sword to…Bartz paused, trying to figure out exactly what the sword did. He took another drink, swooshing the liquid in his mouth and then spitting it out.
His eyes widened as he saw the humane eyes that disappeared being replaced by the lone yellow orb that Raksha commonly have. The sword absorbs their ather and soul, taking away the last bit of humanity from the newly created Raksha.
Bartz looked back at the screen and started to wonder why. Why were these creatures doing all of this? What was the purpose of the sword and its ability to absorb souls? Where was the last demonic gift, the tome filled with rituals?
Why do any of this? What purpose do these monsters have for killing these kids and people?
This was the first time he had ever seen the creatures of the Night in person and the atrocities that they committed. For the first time in his life, he knew true hatred. Bartz grabbed the strap of his satchel tightly and bore into the screen with a scowl of pure anger. “Those monsters,” he growled.
///
As Cecil entered the cavern, he saw the sobbing Jaeger on the ground. “Chief, angel boy, the kids! They are using the goddamn kids to create more of themselves.” A male dragoon Jaeger had knelt beside the sobbing Jaeger and held her close to try to comfort her.
“These vile creatures,” Chieftain Oshi said under his breath.
“The ones with the giant backs have children inside of them. I…I think they are still alive in the Raksha,” the sobbing Jaeger said in between sobs.
Everyone who was currently at the entrance began to feel a powerful aura. It wasn’t one filled with ather. It was an aura of pure hatred and rage, one that rippled forward, causing a few of the Raksha closest to the entrance to turn around and finally notice the intruders. It came from the “angel boy,” whose face was enraged with anger.
Cecil pulled his sword out of its scabbard and pointed the tip of his blade towards the nearest Raksha. That creature began to screech incoherent noises, getting the attention of the rest of the horde in the cavern. “Scum,” He growled, “The situation changed, Oshi. I’m going to pull these kids out of their prisons and then…” He formed a battle stance, bending his knees and shifting his body to ready himself. “I’m going to kill every single one of these bastards.”
Hathaway Style, Radiant Step.
Cecil pushed off the tips of his toes, causing the ground beneath him to break apart slightly. He was using one of the Hathaway techniques created in tandem with House Illum: The Radiant Step. He blitzed forward with incredible speed, holding his sword in one hand and preparing to swing it.
Hathaway Style, Arc-Slash.
He tensed every muscle in his right arm, gritted his teeth, and swung his sword with unimaginable force at the unsuspecting Raksha in front of him. In one swing, he bisected three of the Raksha at their stomachs. The swing made a powerful booming sound and caused the air around Cecil to arc around his blade.
It was a powerful swing, one that looked to be ather-powered, but it wasn’t. It was just a regular swing using Cecil’s own strength and technique. Even his radiant step was just Cecil using the core concepts of the technique without applying the ather to power it. To the Jaegers around him and the people at the camp watching, Cecil appeared to be using ather. He was just that naturally strong. He just trained himself to be strong enough to kill an entity of the Night in one hit.
The Raksha in his vicinity jumped towards him. A bald one held a club and swung at Cecil, who dodged it. As he dodged the blow, Cecil moved his sword into his other hand mid-dodge and lobbed off the head of another creature near him. The club held by the bald creature finally smashed to the ground. The bald Raksha was shocked to see that it missed Cecil. Then, as it turned to the white-haired Jaeger, it was even more shocked to see the head of one of its kin floating in the air, obscuring the bald creature of the Night’s vision.
The head of the Raksha Cecil sliced off.
It was the last thing the bald Raksha saw as Cecil stabbed through the severed head and then into the bald Raksha’s head. He placed his foot on the bald Raksha’s stomach and kicked it to the ground, pulling his sword out in the process. More Raksha jumped at him with rocks, clubs, and bare fists after seeing that display.
Cecil stood in place and turned on his feet to do a stationary Arc-slash that killed what appeared to be seven of the evil creatures of the Night. At this point, the other Jaegers of the vanguard had all started the hunt as well and began to strike against the Raksha.
Chieftain Oshi placed his thumb and middle finger into his mouth and whistled sharply. “Shaheen,” he said. A falcon with brown feathers appeared out of thin air. She had an orange scarf tied to her neck and wore a few pieces of armor on her body, on her talons, and on her wings. But those pieces of armor didn’t impede her flying. She was at least double the size of common falcons found in the wild.
“Master Oshi, who is my prey today?” Shaheen spoke in a seductive tone. She had sentient eyes like any humanoid/race that lived in Aiolia. Oshi lifted his arm and pointed his burly finger at the Raksha with the staff near the second altar at the back of the cavern. That creature had turned back to see the Jaegers pouring in and hunting its kin. It was moving its arms up and around violently, giving orders to the few Raksha near it. Shaheen soared around Oshi and did a flashy barrel roll before she landed on his outstretched arm.
“That one is our prey, Shaheen.”
Shaheen lowered her head, touching the back of Oshi’s hand. She extended her wings as far out as she could, stiffing them in the process. Her eyes turned white as she opened her beak and kept it agape. Taking his free hand, Oshi placed it near the guardian beast’s mouth and created an orb of energy. Shaheen then put her own aero ather into the orb. Combining the two energies together, Oshi pulled on the orb and created an arrow out of it.
The bow of Shaheen charged itself as Oshi waited for the right moment to fire his shot while charging his own ather as well. As all of this was happening, Cecil parried a club and immediately sliced off the creature’s left arm. It roared in pain then fell to its knees. A Jaeger nearby stabbed into its head. Cecil nodded in thanks and made his way towards another Raksha who wore torn rags of the Self-made One that were fused to its body, indicating it was one of the original cultists. It had a child imprisoned on its back.
Cecil tried his best to position his blade for a sure kill, but the creature with the bulbous back moved strangely. It was moving in a way that Cecil could accidentally stab the child, not to mention that Cecil didn’t know how the child was positioned and whether the other children were all facing in the same directions or ways in the other Raksha backs.
The Raksha took its opportunity as Cecil hesitated and stabbed its clawed fingers towards Cecil’s heart. There was no time to think. Cecil just followed the tempo of his enemy, the tempo of the battlefield, and tried to shift his body to dodge the blow.
His shoulder was pierced. Hot pain erupted from it as the Raksha twisted and turned its destructive fingers into the freshly made wound. Cecil had no ather energy coated around his body, so the pain he felt was a hundredfold. A normal man would have fainted and died from the pain right there.
But Cecil trained and honed his body for many years before his ather appeared. Pain like this is nothing compared to all the blood, sweat, and tears he, his father, and his cousin Kai did to hone their bodies and spirits.
He gritted his teeth and bore the pain to instead focus on the pain of the children whom were ripped away from their homes, the pain of their parents who lost their children and would never know how or what happened to them if he fails here. He focused on the pain of the countless people that were hunted by the Night everyday.
This is nothing! He screamed in his mind. Bear this pain, I’m a member of House Illum and of Clan Hathaway. I WAS BORN TO BEAR THIS PAIN!
So, he bore the pain and vowed in his mind to bore the rest of the pain he would receive in this hunt. The Raksha cried out in joy. And with its one yellow orb eye, it bore into Cecil and enjoyed watching the pain that twisted on his face gleefully. Cecil felt as if the creature of the Night was mocking him and all he stood for.
“You bastard,” Cecil growled out as he reached for the arm stuck in his shoulder.
Cecil darted his eyes to his right. He felt the tempo of the battlefield change. He grinned and cocked his head to the side, specifically to the left. The smug Raksha tried to pull out his hand out of his prey, but Cecil’s grip was too strong. He shifted the creature so that the bulbous back wasn’t in the way of what Cecil knew was coming.
“Enjoy Hell.” Cecil scornfully said.
The yellow orb grew in surprise as a beam of orange light sped through the air and went through its head, erasing it from existence. The beam was actually an arrow of terra ather and continued its course, gaining more energy the farther it flew and erasing the heads of 10 Raksha that were conveniently lined up.
The Terra arrow reached its mark, erasing half the body of the Raksha at the altar and the arm holding the staff. The body slumped to the ground. The staff was unscathed from the attack and bounced off the rocky earth. The Raksha near the body all began to freak out and pick up the staff to continue their ritual. Cecil looked back to see the chieftain standing proud as the guardian beast falcon jumped off his arm.
“Oooo what a lovely shot. It’s a shame I need to recharge.” Shaheen winked at Oshi and blinked out of existence. Cecil gave the chieftain a thumbs up and then carefully stabbed a hole near the bulbous back of the decapitated corpse before dropping his sword to the ground.
Oshi pulled out his long katana and walked into the fray, gracefully slicing three Raksha at once in a single motion. Two of them died instantaneously while the third had its legs cut off from Oshi’s swing. This one fell face first into the ground. It raised its head up and was crushed moments after by Oshi’s right foot as he marched forward, not even giving the downed creature a second glance. He stepped on the Raksha head, crushing it like the ant it was and not giving it a second thought.
Cecil jammed his left arm into the hole he punctured. It was disgusting and unnatural inside the protruding mass. It had a mucus-like texture that also attacked Cecil’s sense of smell. If he wasn’t a veteran Jaeger, he would have vomited uncontrollably at the combined stench of all the Raksha, their living environment, and the fluid and pus oozing out of the bulbous back down to his arm.
Jaegers gathered around Cecil and fought to protect him as he continued his search. Oshi was near Cecil and stabbed at one of the Raksha three times before lifting it up in the air and chucking the creature a few feet away into its brethren.
Finally, he found the child’s head. The child was upside down, so he rotated the child upward in the disgusting mucus to pull the child out with more ease. Cecil grabbed the child’s shoulder and then ripped the puncture wound wide open with his right hand. Pus and ooze roared out of the dead Raksha body like a geyser. Cecil then cradled the child in his arms.
The child was a human girl about 9 or 10 years old. She was still breathing, though it’s a bit shallow. Whatever the fluid was, it was preserving them and keeping them alive. The girl slowly opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry, a combination of what she endured and the fact that she needed bifocals to see.
She was aware of everything. She knew she was captured by those creatures and was locked away inside the Raksha for a long time. She squinted and stared intensely at the face of the figure that held her. A white-haired blurry mess of a person.
Is that…an angel? She thought and then her other senses came too. First, she gagged and choked on the vile stench and liquid that hurled out of her lungs. Then, she felt a warm and loving aura from the blurry white-haired savior, one that she knew all too well.
The little girl was an only child. She never had an older brother, nor did she have an uncle or was of an age to accept tutelage under the master of a craft or a veteran Jaeger. But she had a father, one who worked and toiled away in the dangerous fields of her homeland. She had a father who became a shell of a man after his only child disappeared one day, a father that loved her and wanted to protect her from the dangers of this world. Here in the arms of her savior, she felt that same aura.
She wept and broke into an ugly wrinkly mess of an expression. “Papa!” She clung to Cecil and wept uncontrollably. Cecil held her tight. There was no time to fix any misconceptions. But just as he was about to get up, a Raksha stabbed towards the girl with a short sword.
Cecil moved, shielding the weeping girl and tanking the hit on the right side of his abdomen. He instinctively grabbed his sword and swung upward, cutting the Raksha jaw off. Cecil looked around to see any allies nearby. Instead, more Raksha had appeared. A gang of them jumped on one of the Jaegers that helped Cecil earlier and bashed their clubs repeatedly on his now lifeless corpse.
Cecil let out a demanding “No!” while shielding the girl’s eyes from the horrors in front of them. Unbeknownst to him, the girl needed glasses to see anything at all. All but one Raksha of the gang turned their attention towards Cecil. That Raksha instead dragged the lifeless Jaeger’s corpse towards the back of the cavern where the second altar stood.
Cecil needed to hand the girl to a Jaeger near the entrance, but a Raksha stood a few meters away behind him while overpowering Jaegers left and right. Before he could even move, his senses roared and he shifted the girl’s body to his right. An attack is coming! He wouldn’t be able to dodge what he was sensing in time, not with the girl in his arms.
He braced for the impact, shielding the girl from a dark energy attack that hit the open wound on his shoulder. A Raksha near the main altar had fired the dark orb from its mouth. It danced around in place, proud of itself for not missing even though it aimed for the child. The pain was excruciating and Cecil wanted to turn his ather on to smoothen the burden. But that wasn’t how he fought. He fought the way he was raised to, the way he was born to, the way that he used to prove to everyone that even a reject can do good in this world and be something.
He believed in himself and believed in the surrounding Jaegers. That is why he endured the great pain that shook his muscles and nerves. Cecil looked over the battlefield. Every Jaeger was already preoccupied or had advanced ahead. He noticed that some Jaegers had defeated the bulbous prison ones and began to pull the children out slowly after following Cecil’s lead.
Those rescuing the children were defenseless and needed at least three to four Jaegers in a protective circle to ward off the attacking monsters around them. For this moment in the hunt, Cecil was a lone fighter surrounded by the Night while bleeding from his abdomen and shoulder. With an exhausted look on his face, he held the girl tightly and whispered to her. “You don’t have to cry now. I’ll protect you and bring you home.”
She believed him.
As the group of Raksha in front of Cecil dashed towards him with fierce fury, Cecil tightened the grip of his long hilt and just beamed a confident grin.
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