Moving quickly, Kelsey climbed up the ladder and opened the trapdoor leading into the cabin. She paused as the door opened only a few centimeters as her domain expanded and she saw several people standing in front of the door of the cabin, clearly waiting for her.
She counted four people in total. There were two men, one woman, and one child. She even recognized one of the men, and had a pretty good guess as to who the other was. The woman and one of the men were holding torches so they were able to see in the pitch black cover of night.
The man she recognized was Bertrand, the one who told her about this cabin in the first place. I knew that bastard was involved. Why did he tell me about the real place connected to the vault? Did he want me to find this place and put a stop to the kidnappings, or was this just a trap? Overconfidence?
She considered simply killing all three of the adults here and now, but there was a problem; Bertrand had a hostage. In front of Bertrand, with a dagger to his throat, was a young boy, maybe 7 or 8 years old. Bertrand and the boy were standing behind the other man; the one with the torch. The man was dressed in incredibly fine clothing. He had long black hair, a short well-trimmed beard, and was wearing what must have been thousands of gold worth of jewelry. Everything about the man told Kelsey that he was nobility. Probably the Viscount.
The third person she didn’t recognize and didn’t have a clue who she could be. She was a tall, muscular, and well-built woman wearing full plate armor, including a closed helmet, and a greatsword on her back. Kelsey couldn’t make out any of her features clearly through the armor as the mana the armor was giving off interfered with her domain. Enchanted armor; could be a problem.
She had been told a bit about enchanted armor when she was traveling with Owen and Lisa. From what she understood, all enchantments on armor interfered with the use of magic, which meant that the only people who really used it were warrior types without an element. Enchanted equipment became almost completely useless after someone reached Gold rank due to the magic interference. This was good news for Kelsey as it meant that this woman was very likely under Gold rank.
Kelsey was pretty confident in being able to beat a low Gold rank monster. She was equally confident in her inability to beat a Gold rank Classer.
The trio were all standing in a rough triangle with the noble and armored woman in front and Bertrand with his hostage in the back. If Kelsey didn’t have her domain, their trap may have worked. Unfortunately for them, she was going to be somewhat prepared.
Hoping no one would notice, Kelsey used her domain and Telekinetic Creation to create a blunted sheath around the edge of the dagger so the boy would be safe throughout whatever happened next. She then summoned her telekinetic saber and prepared to confront the group. She could have potentially killed them all from the safety of the cabin, even with the hostage, but she wanted to get as much information from them as possible beforehand, which meant she needed to do a bit of acting.
These morons just handed themselves to me on a silver platter.
So, she gave them what they wanted. She activated her teleport, arriving behind them quietly. As she did, she purposely ruffled some bushes, pretending to push through the dense woods towards the cabin.
"Bertrand! You came too! Great, I won't have to investigate the cabin alone..." Kelsey shouted, and then paused for effect, staring directly at the knife and the hostage as Bertrand turned around to look at her.
"Why do you have a knife at that child's throat!? What's going on?" Kelsey asked, trying her best to act as surprised and scared.
All three people turned around menacingly, clearly trying to intimidate her to the best of their ability. As they did, Kelsey took a calculated nervous-looking step back.
“Well, well, well. You were right Bertrand; she really did show up, you will be getting paid very well for that piece of information.” the nobleman said with a sneer on his face. “Thankfully, we happened to get here before her, this should be much easier now.” he said with a chuckle.
Now that she knew Bertrand was certainly in on this whole situation, she let her scared little girl act and locked eyes with Bertrand. "If that boy gets hurt. You're dead. I'll kill you and throw your head into the streets of the slums" Kelsey said as casually as she could. She was still extremely angry about what she had seen inside the vault, and it was difficult not to attack them outright.
All three of the adults burst out laughing. “You? Kill us? Ms. Kain, you don’t know who I am, but suffice it to say I know who you are. Once Bertrand here told me you would be coming, I decided to read the Guild reports on you and I know that you are a very low Silver rank adventurer who just arrived in the city three weeks ago.” the nobleman said with a tone that indicated he thought he was speaking to a toddler.
“I also know that you were on a training trip until earlier today which had to be canceled early because, and this is a direct quote from the report, ‘My partner and I were unable to train Kelsey properly, we fear she may be unteachable’.” he said as the other two adults began laughing again.
Unteachable? That’s kind of a rude way to put it Owen... Whatever, I can yell at him later.
“My other associate here that you just so rudely threatened is over level 70 so I would be careful what you say next.” he said as he pointed to the woman next to him.
Level 70... that should be manageable. If what Gregory said about my Mageblood body attributes are true, I can probably win that fight...
Kelsey looked the nobleman dead in the eyes. "Think whatever you want. You can all make it through this night alive if you simply hand over the child and turn yourselves in. If not, I won't hesitate to do whatever it takes to get the child out of this safely."
“Adorable, Whitebranch’s own little vigilante. Emelia, deal with her.” he said as he glanced over at the woman wearing the armor.
Not good, I need to stall. Don't the bad guys always like to hear themselves talk?
Kelsey threw up her hands in a pausing motion. “Who are you!?” Kelsey shouted, trying to let some fear leak into her voice. “Why are you doing all this?”
“Me? My name is Viscount Earl Watson, as for what we are doing. We aren’t doing anything my dear. We are simply worried about someone trespassing on my property.” he said with feign ignorance. "This cabin is owned by my family. My dear Bertrand told me that you were planning on breaking in, we are simply here to protect one of my assets."
“Trespassing? Then why do you have a hostage?” Kelsey asked as she took a few steps to the side in preparation for the start of the fight.
“Hostage? That boy is Bertrand’s son, Milo, why would you think he was a hostage dear?” he said in a condescending tone.
Before Kelsey could respond, Emelia, the armored woman, dropped the torch she was carrying on to the dirt, drew her greatsword and charged at Kelsey. She was fast. But, not fast enough.
Ramping up her perception, Kelsey did a few things as quickly as she could with her skills. First, she created some wires and used them to rip the dagger from Bertrand’s hands, launching it into the forest. Then, she created some more wires at Emelia’s feet and wrapped them up so she would trip. The final thing she did was create dozens of telekinetic wires, wrap them around the boy, and begin dragging him towards her.
She accomplished all of these tasks in under half a second. As Emelia tripped and began falling, the boy came close enough to her for her to enact the second phase of her plan. She wrapped him up completely in telekinetic energy which she attached to herself and then activated her Teleport.
She had done some testing with Owen and Lisa during their downtime at The Bunker and learned that it was possible, it just required an insane amount of mana to pull off. Thankfully, the child was small, so it was much easier to teleport him with her.
Teleporting herself with the boy, Milo, took nearly 8,000 mana. Thankfully, mana was something she currently had plenty of. The worst part of teleporting someone forcefully like that though wasn’t the mana consumption, it was the mental strain that came with it. Kelsey’s head burst into intense pain the moment she began activating the teleport.
But she wouldn’t let a little pain stop her.
After arriving at her destination 130 meters away from where they left, she dismissed her creations letting Milo drop softly to the floor. “Stay here, I’ll come back for you.” she said before activating her teleport again and arriving in front of the trio of kidnappers.
She saw that Emelia, the armored woman, had slammed into the tree that Kelsey had been standing in front of, just like she had intended.
Shock was written plainly on both of the men's faces as the Viscount stammered in fear “Wh- wha- what are you?” clearly afraid, the Viscount dropped to the ground and began scooting away. “Emelia, get her! Kill her!”
The armored woman had just finished standing up as the Viscount gave his order, and instead of rushing towards her like Kelsey had expected, she entered some sort of strange fighting stance with her legs spread wide and her greatsword held high. Moments later Kelsey could see mana rushing from her chest to her hands and then to her other extremities and then, finally into the greatsword in her hands. Her legs, arms, and blade were all exploding in the burnt orange color of fire mana.
That can’t be good.
Then, Emelia stepped towards her and swung with practiced precision, almost lazily. This movement however was significantly faster that her charge before. Kelsey activated all her buffs and forced her mental speed as high as she could in preparation for the attack. As the armored woman’s foot touched the ground, her sword erupted in white hot flames and a large wave of fire exploded from the weapon, clearing the distance between her and Kelsey in the blink of an eye.
Great, didn't know about 'that' kind of enchantment...
Not having time to dodge, Kelsey created a wedged wall of telekinetic energy in front of her in order to divert the roaring flames. Thankfully her plan worked and as the flames slammed into the wedge, split in half, and exploded into two streams of fire that torched the ground and trees behind her for over 20 meters.
Leaving the wall standing, Kelsey gripped her saber tight, teleported next to the armored woman, and swung as hard and fast as she could at the woman's extended arms. Emelia's reaction speed was good however, and she noticed Kelsey’s attack before she was able to strike. Emelia withdrew her arms quickly and Kelsey's blade scraped off the side of her bracers doing seemingly no damage to them, or her target.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
With her Telekinetic Enhancement and attributes, Kelsey was clearly stronger, and faster than the armored woman, but the woman clearly had more experience in fights like this and that experience meant that Kelsey spent the next handful of seconds just barely missing attack after attack with her saber. Emelia was able to block or divert each and every one of Kelsey's strikes effortlessly.
I really need to practice with my sword if I want it to ever be useful in a fight against someone who knows what they’re doing. Seems like my magic is just so much more effective right now. Although, I guess I am a mage...
Giving up on using her saber, Kelsey quickly leapt backwards into the trees.
After creating some distance, Kelsey began creating telekinetic projectiles as was her specialty. After her time in The Bunker, she could now spend 162 mana per second on projectiles and never run out of mana. So, she used every last bit of that mana and created dozens of short thin spears every second and launched them towards the armored woman, careful to avoid any vital areas. She knew that the fewer people she killed here, the less likely she was to be arrested.
This tactic worked wonderfully. Try as she might, Emelia was simply unable to block or dodge that many spears and she quickly began being pushed back, taking dozens of shallow wounds along the way.
Kelsey thought she had won the fight cleanly when she saw the woman fall down to one knee, but she had one more trick up his sleeve that Kelsey didn’t notice until it was too late.
Creating the projectiles took nearly all of her concentration and so, she didn’t see that Emelia had been pouring fire mana into the ground beneath her feet.
Starting in the ground below the woman, a thick pool of fire mana rushed towards Kelsey, and once it arrived under her, it exploded in a column of flame upwards. Kelsey didn't have time to fully protect herself but was able to create a thin shield of telekinetic mana to protect her from at least some of the inferno.
The fire erupted all around her and she felt her clothing, and skin catch fire, instantly beginning to melt. She howled in pain until the threshold for her Pain Tolerance skill was reached and it activated automatically. Once it did, Kelsey regained her ability to think clearly and wrapped herself in as many layers of telekinetic protection as possible until several seconds later, the fire finally ceased. By that point, Kelsey’s body was nearly destroyed. Many of her muscles and tendons had burned away completely and she was extremely close to death.
Without her telekinetic barrier, she would have certainly died.
She activated Mageblood regeneration and poured mana into it under the cover of smoke created by the fire.
Deciding to play it safe, Kelsey teleported away behind the treeline and continued regenerating. A few seconds later, the smoke cleared and she was nowhere to be seen. The trio looked around in shock, and Kelsey heard the Viscount say “She must have been completely destroyed by the flame. There's nothing left of her.”
They surveyed the site for a few more minutes before Bertrand said, “Let's find my son, we can throw him in the cage with his sister and my bitch of a wife.”
Milo really is his son? What a disgusting creep. She thought angrily as she regenerated. Knowing that she was going to be low on blood and muscle mass, she pulled out some food and water.
Thanks to her Mageblood body, she was able to eat and process the food much more quickly than someone with a normal body. This meant that she could get her muscle mass and blood back relatively quickly.
The trio split up and began walking in different directions, trying to find Milo. Thankfully, none of them would find him quickly, which gave her some time to fully regenerate and come up with a plan.
A few minutes later, she was ready.
First, she was going to go after Bertrand who was the closest to finding Milo. As much as she wanted to simply kill the man, she knew it was in her own best interest to let the monster live, so she was going to.
Using her domain, she first created a telekinetic gag around Bertrand's mouth, and then once he was unable to make a sound, she teleported in front of him. She was now wearing a new set of clothing she had created and designed with Telekinetic Creation. It was similar to leather armor in texture and durability. It was form fitting, like a bodysuit, but she was wearing a large and long cloak made from spatial mana over it that covered her entire body. Owen and Lisa had said that she looked like some sort of purple ghost when her hood was up, which is exactly the kind of terrifying look she wanted to display right now.
“Hello Bertrand.” she said as she appeared in front of the gagged man.
His face flushed with fear and white-hot rage as he tried to scream for help. She could hear the sounds of muffled yelling through his gag.
“None of that now.” she said as she backhanded him across the face, sending him falling to the ground.
She knelt down next to the fallen man and looked him in the eyes. “I’m disappointed in you Berty. You lured me into a trap at the real location where you all do the kidnappings and torture from? How stupid are you, really?” She said before pausing for effect. "At first, I almost thought you might have directed me here intentionally; to put a stop to all of this."
"But, no, you actually did put your own family in those cages and then pointed me towards the actual location... You are somehow even dumber than you are evil." Kelsey shrugged. “I guess you really just underestimated me. Oh well, live and learn, right?” she asked before slamming her fist into the side of his head, knocking him out instantly.
Summoning some rope from her vault, she bound Bertrand in the most secure knots she knew. She then picked him up and carried him back to the cabin where she dropped him before leaving for her next target.
Next she chose the armored woman, Emelia. Kelsey wasn’t sure what the best way to deal with the warrior would be, and she very much didn’t feel like getting in a long, drawn out fight with the woman. Kelsey didn’t have any doubt that if it came down to it, she would be able to kill Emelia. She had already been intentionally fighting in a way so as to not kill her by accident...
Deciding that the best course of action would be the straightforward approach, Kelsey activated her teleport and appeared in front of Emelia.
“Hello... Emelia, right?” Kelsey asked as she appeared.
The woman stopped, silently staring at Kelsey for a few long seconds before answering. “So, you lived.”
“Yeah, I’m kinda hard to kill. Anyways, I just wanted to say that if you surrender now, we don’t have to fight again. You can surrender, let me tie you up, and spend some time in prison. But you won't die...I will warn you, that if you attack again, I won’t pull any punches the second time.” Kelsey said, trying to sound as casual as possible.
Please. Please don’t attack.
“Sorry babe, too much money on the line.” The armored woman said before she drew her greatsword and flame mana began once again charging into the blade.
That’s disappointing. Kelsey thought as she created a small telekinetic blade behind the woman's head and launched it into her neck. Killing her before she was able to charge her first attack.
*ding* You have defeated a [Flame Conqueror - lvl 72]
*ding* Mageblood Arcanist has reached level 65 - 10 free stat points have been awarded!
Why did you have to be so stubborn?
Kelsey quickly distributed her stat points before walking over to the body and head and storing them in her vault. She then teleported back to the cabin and dumped the woman’s body next to Bertrand who was still unconscious.
Her last target of the trio was the Viscount who was at that very moment stomping through the forest yelling out Milo’s name. Lying to him, saying things like “Come out buddy, we stopped the bad woman. We won’t hurt you. Your daddy is worried about you!”
This is a man who deserves no mercy. But, like Gregory said, killing the Viscount would likely get me killed. Plus, I bet he won't love being stripped of his titles and thrown in jail himself. She thought with a small grin on her face.
So, to that end. Kelsey didn’t bother gagging him. She simply teleported in front of him.
“Viscount Walter.” she said as she appeared. “Your bodyguard is dead. Bertrand is unconscious and tied up. Milo is safe. You are alone... But, you’re in luck. I’m not going to kill you tonight.”
“How are you alive!?” the Viscount shouted while backing away in horror. “And Emelia can’t be dead, there’s no way you could defeat her, no way!” His eyes were wide with fear and denial.
Kelsey summoned the head of the fallen bodyguard and threw it at the Viscount’s feet. “No, I didn’t want to kill her earlier, I wanted to bring you all in alive. Unfortunately, she was difficult to take down without killing her, so I decided it wasn’t worth it.” Kelsey said simply.
“Oh, and one final thing, I activated the teleportation circle before you arrived and freed all the prisoners before I came back here. They have likely already made it out of your estate and the Guild will be sending someone through that circle any minute to come check the other side of it.” Kelsey said matter of factly as she summoned one of the papers she found in the locked room. “I also found these.”
As if the universe was listening to her, the trapdoor opened and with her domain, Kelsey saw a man ascending the ladder into the cabin. Kelsey grinned with interest as she recognized who it was. What are the chances of that?
“Well, that's interesting, looks like I can see the future. Your cabin has another visitor.” she said with a satisfied grin. “Why don’t we go meet them?”
“No! No please! Let me go! I didn’t do anything!” the Viscount was screaming at the top of his lungs, tears of fear streaming down his face.
Knocking the Viscount out with the back of her hand, she picked him up by his collar, stored the bodyguard’s head, and made her way to the cabin to meet the newcomer.
As she arrived at the cabin, the Guild Classer was inspecting Bertrand, who was still unconscious, and Emelia’s body. “Hey, long time no see.” Kelsey said as she threw the Viscount down to the ground next to the other two men.
Hunched over in front of Kelsey was the Classer that had arrived to help Caroline and Charlie make their way to the plains bridge. This time, instead of wearing a cloth shirt and jeans, he was wearing incredibly expensive looking leather armor and had a single one-handed dueling sword strapped to his hip.
“Oh, it's you. How have you been?” the man asked, standing up straight.
“Could be better. Hey listen, these three are the only ones that were here when I came back, but there are six other men that traveled in the direction of the slums about 30 minutes ago. They were all wearing black clothing that covered everything but their eyes. I think they were on their way to kidnap more people.”
“There is a Gold rank Classer watching over the slums as we speak. If there is any trouble, they’ll deal with it.” he said as he checked the rope that was securing Bertrand.
There was a certain tension in the air, and Kelsey was beginning to feel nervous. There was always a chance, as slim as it might be, that this Classer was working with the kidnappers. Not that Kelsey thought an Immortal would have anything to gain from something like this. According to Thadius, someone like him could take a single Platinum rank contract and live comfortably for decades.
“You need to leave before someone else arrives.” The man said while looking Kelsey directly in the eyes “If someone else sees you, I’ll have no choice but to arrest you. Come back in a year or so after the legal mess is over, and no one will even talk about your involvement in all of this.”
She eyed the newcomer suspiciously for several moments. There was always a chance that he was involved in the kidnappings. She had seen him with Caroline and Charlie on the road, and he would have had the opportunity to pull something like that off. But, no, she needed to trust that Gregory knew what he was doing and wouldn't have sent the only Immortal Classer in the city if he didn't trust him.
Kelsey nodded with understanding. As she summoned the woman’s head from her Vault and placed it on the ground. “Thanks for the heads up. What's your name by the way?”
“Theodore Artos.” he replied quietly. "I go by Theo."
As he told her his name, Kelsey began pulling the documents she found out of her vault and piling them next to Theo's feet. It took her almost a full minute to finish.
“These were all in the prison, I took them in case they got to them before the Guild did.” Kelsey said as she pointed in the direction of Milo. "There is a young boy in that direction hidden in some underbrush. He was a hostage, please make sure he is safe."
Theo nodded his head in understanding. “Noted. Now leave before someone else arrives.” Theo said urgently.
Kelsey nodded her head back in thanks, activated her teleport, and began her journey south.