“Jesus Fucking Christ, it’s one things after the other.” Mia said as the dungeon core fully disintegrated in front of her. It had tried to connect with her soul but it had only managed to send all the mana it had to Mia. Something that Mia had to make sure was just an accident and not a way for it to figuratively or literally put its eggs inside her.
“Ok, Ok, Good. Can’t feel anything wrong. Now I can just relax and wait for the dungeon to close and I can do… FUCK!” Mia was saying to herself when she suddenly remembered everything that happened just before she got inside the dungeon and began to panic slightly.
“Breath, breath! In, out, in, out, in, out…” Mia once again said to herself as she tried to calm herself.
After she calmed herself a little, she began to look inside her soul space to see the state of the two halves of her soul. Something that she didn’t like to do that much since it would leave her body completely unguarded.
Inside her soul space, her two halves, that before were connected by a thin thread, relatively speaking, were now connected by the equivalent of a highway of that thread.
The Mia part of her soul was now sucking all it could as fast as it could from her John part.
The strange thing was that it was ignoring memories, personal ideas, things like that. The things that made John, John. Only now that she got some control of herself that things began to return to how it was. The highway was shrinking and would soon become a thread again that would slowly vanish as it dragged the two halves of her soul to meet one another and hopefully merge peacefully.
“Note to self, check your soul space often. I might need some manual tuning to what is happening here every so often.” Mia said to herself before fixing an idea of how this whole thing with her soul should go in her head so it would actually become like that as it looked like that she needed to control some of what was happening and not let whatever was happening just continue by itself.
With one less thing to panic over, Mia left her soul space and began to panic about the rest of it.
“Ok, there is something with such bloodlust that pretty much everyone felt it and wasn’t that giant sea snake. So I have to prepare to find it. I also need to find out how the dungeon suppressed my mana as it shouldn’t be possible. At least it's over. When I get back I need to have a serious talk with my dad. Why did he give me a sword that chugs so much mana? I need some human contact. I am going crazy again.” Mia said to herself.
With nothing to do. She just waited for the dungeon to collapse and eject her.
Outside the dungeon – several minutes later
“Finally, I was starting to get bored.” The burly man said.
“You speak like we are going to actually fight anything. No matter who or what leaves the dungeon, it will not be in any condition to fight.” The human woman said.
“And even if whatever leaves is in any condition to fight, I am here.” The hooded man spoke.
“Yeah, yeah, you are no fun.” The elf woman, clearly annoyed, said.
“Get ready, its…” The sickly man tried to say but was interrupted.
“Are you sure we are in the right place? It will be night soon and I can’t see in the dark.” Katia asked.
“Trust Onyx a little, will you? Even if the path is not all that visible, he knows where Mia is and he can guide us.” Cassandra said.
“Woof!” Onyx barked as they approached the dungeon entrance and found themselves face to face with a group of people who clearly weren’t the guards supposed to be there.
“Who are you people?” Narissa asked. She spoke with the people supposed to be here once and those people she was seeing now weren't any of them.
“If it isn't the group of little geniuses. Welcome! You came just in time for the show.” The hooded man said sarcastically.
“She asked who you are!” Mathias shouted, drawing his weapon and pointing at the other group. Kaki, Luminus and Moon followed suit.
“Introduction will have to wait until everyone is here, just wait a few moments.” The hooded man explained.
“Ugh… Why did nobody tell me about how bad it feels to be ejected from a dungeon?” Mia said to herself as she walked out of the hole that was once the dungeon entrance and saw the scene with the two groups unfolding.
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“You are all here so let us introduce ourselves. I am the head apostle of the 14th step of power. Zignus.” The hooded man said as he introduced himself.
“Didn’t really want to do this but… I am the administrator of the followers of the 14th step of power. Peddle.” The sickly man said as he introduced himself.
“I am Nex! The enforcer of the 14th step of power!” The burly man almost shouted as he introduced himself.
“I am Morgana, a follower of the 14th step of power.” The elf woman said.
“I am Karin, a follower of the 14th step of power.” The human woman said.
“Null, follower of the 14th step of power.” The elf man said, finishing the introductions.
“This would have more of an impact if all of you posed like the big guy over there.” Mia said nonchalantly as she pointed to Nex.
“Mia! Are you alright?” Shishen shouted.
“Yeah. Just hungry.”
“Silence! And you little girl. Give the legacy to me and I might let you live.” Zignus said, emitting an aura of bloodlust that matched the one Mia felt when she arrived at the city. This time, everyone felt it.
“Well fuck!” Was all Mia could say at the moment as the pieces of what was happening began to come together in her mind.
“The legacy. I will not ask a third time.”
“Well good sir. It might be because I am actually so scared that I went around and I am not scared anymore. Maybe it’s the hunger or the fact that I spent days fighting something. But I am not afraid of you right now. Also, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Gina gave you something. That was the name of the shell that the old hag was using, right?” Peddle asked Mia.
It took a moment, almost a second. The moment the sickly looking man said those words, every single alarm in Mia’s mind began to sound.
“RUN!” She said as she unsheathed her blade as fast as she could and slammed it into the body of Nex who went flying and took Morgana and Karin with him. Following the opening. Mia dashed with all her power, grabbing every single one of her classmates and Onyx with her psychic powers and went into the forest, away from the city when all of them froze with her words.
“Get up, that might have been enough to send you flying but not to knock you out.” Zignus said to Nex.
“The girl really is powerful.”Nex said as he got up.
“I couldn’t tell if she had the legacy or not. We were going to have corpses on our hands anyway, a few more don’t make a difference. Kill all of them.” Zignus said coldly. He wasn’t a person that liked when people didn’t follow what he wanted. Even if Mia didn’t have what he was looking for, in his mind, she deserved to die just because she couldn’t stay in place and be useful to him by answering the questions he had.
As for Mia, her mind was working at a thousand kilometers per second. If someone in the echelons of power that Gina supposedly had was going after her, she didn’t stand a chance normally. She had to run and she had to bring her friends with her or they might get killed over nothing. And only when they were safe could she start to think on how to deal with this situation.
“What’s going on!?” Narissa asked once Mia finally got far away enough, in her opinion, and dropped her classmates to the ground.
“No time to explain. You need to run away, they are after me!” Mia desperately said as she signaled Onyx to come to her.
“We deserve something!” Moon shouted.
“They are stronger than me. The only reason I managed to attack one of them was that they weren’t expecting it. Pretty sure that didn’t even hurt him.”
“We need some…” Mathias tried to say but was interrupted by Mia.
“Look out!” Mia shouted as she used her blade to once again send Nex flying as he suddenly popped out of the ground.
“AHAHAHA! This might actually be fun. Shame I was the first one. There won’t be much game left after I am done.” Nex said loudly
“Game? What game!?” Katia asked, afraid and confused.
“Pretty simple. You are prey and we are hunters. We will take turns hunting all of you and anyone still alive in the morning can go. Except her. She dies one way or another.” Nex said as he pointed to Mia.
“Leave them out of this you…! Klaws, stop!” Mia said as Klaws suddenly dashed at incredible speed towards Nex.
“I’m not prey! I’m not prey! I AM NOT PREY!” Klaws began to say and then shout as he dashed with all his strength towards Nex.
Klaws fingers morphed into the claws that gave him his name as he tried his best to make mince meat of his enemy, to not much success. Nex wasn’t using any special clothes, just normal leather adventurer gear, minus a helmet that was being protected by something, so no more than a few scratches were being made on it.. If he wasn’t such a big guy, a man over two meters tall build like a tank, looking like the stereotypical big and tough guy from older cartoons or anime from Mia’s old world, his clothes would look like something an assassin or city thief would use to blend into the dark, not a piece of dark leather stretched to the limits in the shape of a body, which made the situation somewhat comic if seeing in a vacuum.
Everyone, upon seeing Klaws, got ready for action, except Mia. For a moment, one that felt like an eternity, the entire situation that was playing out was being processed by her mind so she could find a way to keep her classmates safe. She knew for a fact that she couldn’t fight those normally but she thought she had a good chance of fleeing. It was somewhat strange that she was just a step away from being able to be invisible by just blending into the background. Probably something she learned in her old life. The only problem was that she wouldn’t be able to place her classmates in a safe place and flee at the same time. Fleeing alone wasn’t an option.
Gritting her teeth she held her blade more firmly and dashed forward with her friends. It was a really bad idea but she wouldn’t let people be killed over her ever again.