[Healer - Lv. 6]

Ivor looked at the woman’s tag and tried to reconcile her Level and Class with her bravado.

How could a Healer speak to him like that? Was she having a stroke? Did she hit her head and forget to heal herself? Surely, she must have checked his tag, right?

Who in their right mind spoke like that to a Fire Mage?

“Woman, don’t meddle in my business,” Ivor said, his face reddening and his neck swelling with two pulsating veins, “I am in charge of this village.”

“Sure,” Monica nodded wisely. “I’m not saying you’re not. I’m just saying that I’m about to take your teeth out. Are you hard of hearing?”

“Take care of her,” Ivor said to the two Warriors. “Don’t ruin her face. I might take her on a date later.”

“I mean, are you two sure about this?” Monica said with an apologetic smile. “Teeth are very important. You need to chew your food, right? You can’t just sip broth for the rest of your life, Ivor. Well, I wonder if a Healer can regrow teeth, too.”

As she was trash-talking, the level 6 Warrior walked just before her and tried grabbing her. Monica sidestepped with grace and hit him right in his liver. Her punch, powered by all the Attributes she had gained through levels and Phoenix Feathers, made him black out instantly. She didn’t know how she knew where and how to hit, and she just knew that these were all things that came to her naturally.

So, she fully leaned into her battle instincts, especially since Lucas had said again, while they walked to the village, that the Twin Phoenix was supposed to be the ultimate fighter.

Then, she crouched down and swung up, punching the man’s mouth with all her strength before he could fall. Being a Warrior, the man did have some resistance, but not in his teeth. With gravity pulling the man down and Monica punching up right into his mouth, after a few hits, her hand came back bloody from the swollen lips of the man. She stared at the level 7 Warrior who had just removed the sword from his scabbard.

“Come on, your teeth, too?” Monica smiled viciously.

Meanwhile, Dotty held Ronny close to her, and Ted slowly backed away from the scene: Ted, who was still clutching the mandolin Monica had given him, didn’t want anything to do with the vicious woman who had just broken all the teeth of an unconscious man.

When the burly man with a sword swung for her, she went for a dodge instead of using her golden forearm guards. Monica was more than happy to just dance around the guy as he swung the sword wildly and without any technique behind it.

What caught her off-guard was when the sword suddenly gleamed and went much faster than before, leaving her no time to jump out of the way. So, she could only cross her forearm guards in front of her to avoid being bisected.

What happened next surprised both.

The sword hit the golden bracers so hard that it snapped in two, the top half flying away and almost hitting Dotty behind her. The man looked at the sword with a stunned expression for a moment too long, and Monica, who had been barely fazed by the hit, jumped up and hit him in the temple with a spinning elbow.

Soon after, as the man collapsed on the ground, she crouched herself and punched right into his teeth, making sure that he would drink from a straw for the rest of his life.

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“So,” Monica said, dusting her hands and looking in the general direction of the piece of garbage that had evicted two kids just to snatch the nicest house in the lot, “how do you want to do this? The easy way or the hard way?”

Ivor looked frowning at her but then raised one of his palms in the air, and a globe of fire suddenly appeared.

“You are going to die, impudent Healer,” the man snarled.

“How,” Monica said, looking at the small globe of fire in the man’s hand.

“Like this,” Ivor replied, summoning another Fireball in his other hand and joining them together. Suddenly, they combined and swelled to the size of a man’s torso, singing the ground around the village chief. “This would kill a level 20 Black Wolf, Healer. Let’s see how you survive.”

Without saying anything else, the man launched the fiery magic against Monica.

* * *

Dotty saw the scene as if the world had slowed down to a crawl. She knew that Monica was strong, but after a good night of sleep she had somehow convinced herself that perhaps she had used some weird skill to weaken Sandoval. Dotty had basically convinced herself that the woman wasn’t all that strong, that it was almost a fluke what she had done back at the temple.

However, when Monica had brained the two Warriors, both stronger than her, just like that, she had swallowed hard. That had been proof that the woman could do serious damage. Still, now that Ivor had summoned a gigantic Fireball, the same that Dotty had seen the man use to destroy any monster that had ever neared the village and rowdy criminals, she shivered. Ivor might not have been the most courageous man around, but he had one skill that allowed him to combine two Fireballs into a Greater Fireball, something that was capable of dealing incredible amounts of damage.

And now, the Greater Fireball had already reached the Healer.

“Monica!” Dotty found herself screaming.

Ronny, behind her, had started crying.

The bolt felt the impact even a dozen yards away from the woman. Dotty felt her eyebrows and hair slightly singed, and she turned to hug Ronny.

“She shouldn’t have insulted me like that. What a waste of a good face,” Ivor said as he sighed and went about to kick one of his henchmen awake to resume the eviction.

However, as the smoke from the attack started receding, they all heard one cocky, crystalline voice say.

“So, about your teeth. I guess it will be the hard way.”

* * *

Monica felt the crunch under her fist and used the time it took to break Ivor’s teeth to reflect.

Things had gotten a bit ridiculous because of the reaction of the chief and his henchmen. Sure, she could have been more accommodating herself, but even if she didn’t know who she was, she thought it was unnecessary to come to terms with idiots like these. Now, she wasn’t going to kill them unless they did something worse than this. Some assoholery and forced eviction of two kids warranted getting your teeth broken, but it wasn’t enough to justify snapping necks.

For now, Monica thought. I don’t know if this man has done anything worse than this.

“Monica, enough! He’s out!” She felt Dotty grab her arm.

“Sure,” Monica coughed, having effectively forgotten to stop punching the man. His face was a complete mess, so much so that Monica felt the slightest pang of guilt.

When she got up to stare at the two kids, a jolt of electricity went through her spine.

As she studied Dotty for a second, looking at a nice pair of blue eyes and a small, cute nose on her face, Monica felt a small headache forming at the back of her head. And the more she stared, the more she felt the pressure in her head balloon, to the point where the girl said something to her, but her ears were whistling so loudly that she couldn’t hear her. Then, she heard a terrible sound akin to glass shattering, and everything went dark. Only a notification resounded in her head.

Quest Completed - ‘Memories of the Flame I/???’

Uncover a fragment of your past.

Reward: Memory Shard