Matthew kneeled down at the edge of the pier as he kept enough pressure on the poor guy under his foot for him not to scream out in pain but not enough for him to outright suffocate
“What’s wrong? Is the water too cold?”
The 3 survivors didn’t answer him as they were still too busy trying to make it to the shore while fighting not to drown as they were still weighed down from their gear, armor and supplies, the wiser of the two had ditched their supplies and most of their gear and eventually reached dry land while the last had swallowed too much water and were dragged under, leaving the last 2 to watch
“NO! NICK!”
Matthew looked at the last of the three adventures that had landed in the river, he was wearing an impressive metal plate which had dragged him to the bottom of the river, where he still lay slowly being dragged along by the current
“So, how was the water? I figured it would be refreshing on such a warm day”
In response to Matthew’s answer, one of the two survivors on the other side of the river pulled a knife out of a sheath on her belt and deftly shifted her grip to the tip of the blade and pulled it back as she yelled at Matthew
“GO TO—”
Before she managed to throw the knife at Matthew, the two figures disappeared once more, Matthew looked up and then around before he shifted his weight slightly making a series of pops and then a crack sound out from the person under his foot before he removed it and turned to Alina
“Where did you put them?”
Alina didn’t answer, she walked over and carefully grabbed Matthew’s arm to inspect his wound, only to find that it was already closing at a rapid speed, only then did she answer
“I, I, I put them as high as I could in the direction of Turman”
Matthew blinked twice before he shrugged and picked up the fresh corpse he had just created and shifted his weighed and hurled it through the air towards the center plaza before he picked up the other and asked Alina after he had hurled it in the same direction
“Could you get the one on the bottom of the river?”
Alina nodded, she too felt no respect for the dead people that had tried to kill them, she like Matthew felt no hate for anything, the act of killing them gave her no satisfaction either and besides the brief flare of anger she felt when Matthew was hit she had nothing towards these people, only she did feel a slight amount of interest and voiced her thoughts after she retrieved the last corpse from the bottom of the river
“They are, are not treasure hunters”
Matthew looked at the corpse before he glanced at the gear that was being swept away by the current and cursed
“Shit… I see it now”
Alina nodded, neither of the 6 people that had attacked them had carried any meaningful amount of supplies, they weren’t a group of ragtag treasure hunters looking for trinkets, they were a part of scouts that weren’t too far from the larger, main group
“How far is the nearest city?”
Alina didn’t answer at once, though after a few moments she answered
“4 days on foot, I, I know why they are here, they are after the insect witch”
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Matthew shrugged and asked
“So if we apologize for killing this party of scouts, they’ll let us be in peace?”
Alina didn’t dignify Matthew’s dumb question with a response, no had he expected one, so he switched track and asked instead
“Have they tried to kill the insect witch before?”
Alina nodded
“Yes, 4, 4 times I am aware of, each time the legion of soldiers and mercenaries grows larger, last time a little over 300 made it to the outskirts of the city before they were driven back by hordes of insects”
Matthew let out a sigh and nodded as he quickly came to a conclusion
“Let’s run”
Alina nodded, fighting an army of over 300 was suicide, only there was a minor problem
“...Do you think we, we should?”
Matthew let out a sigh, sure he could properly carry Alina and outrun any soldier and mounted cavalry, but he couldn’t really carry the bio-repressor reactor on his back while he did, and while it wasn’t exactly the biggest amount of resources to discard if they course to scuttle it and run away it would be significant
“... Maybe a compromise would be the best”
-
“Princes Arimir, we really should wait—”
The old squire addressed the young woman that stood in front of him, she was half a head taller than the average man, her emerald green hair was fashioned into a long braid and the full metal plate armor she wore was polished neat despite obviously having seen extensive use on the battlefield, like her hair her pupils were emerald green and glowed visibly even at midday, next to her imposing figure a sword as wide as a tree trunk and as tall as her was planted into the ground
“Enough with the waiting! Jaric would have returned by now”
Sofie Arimir, 4th in line to the Arimir dukedom was widely known as a tomboy from an early age, Duke Arimir himself had tried to marry her off twice both of which had resulted in her beating her finance in official duels declaring that she would be the one to ‘break them in’ on their wedding night which swiftly ended both arrangements
“What about the scouts? If they aren’t back here within the hour, I’ll give them a proper spanking!”
Duke Arimir had with a mournful (relieved) heart sent his 2nd daughter to be educated as a knight, and had witnessed with great pride (horror) as she had been forged from the blunt object of power, into the razor sharp blade she was now, unfortunately the tough discipline had not curbed her rough demeanor nor her fancy for sadism and ramming metal rods up the behind of men
“Get my quarterstaff! Light a fire! And put some new metal caps on the end, they are too charred to heat properly!”
The glow in Sofie’s eyes intensified, her mystic powers were both the cause of her volatile temper but also enhanced by it and the old squire knew better than to argue with Sofie Arimir, even if she didn’t give him what Matthew would refer to as the ‘Glowstick’ treatment (Cracking him on the middle and waving his mutilated corpse around) Duke Arimir cared too much about the prestige of his name to let any perceived slight towards his daughter go unpunished.
So the old squire prayed for the scouts quick return.
At this point, hope was all he had left.
Luckily, before any mutilation took place, 4 of the 6 scouting parties returned and delivered their report, but this didn’t exactly raise the princesses mood
“Reporting, the 2nd party is suspected of being slain by an unknown mystic, the 6th party is keeping the city under surveillance… No insects or people have been sighted yet”
Sofie closed her eyes for a few moments as she suppressed her turbulent emotions and commanded
“Prepare to advance on the city at once!”
-
“Still a little loose…”
“At least you, you are wearing pants now”
Matthew nodded, he had swiped a pair of pants and a shirt from the corpses, Aea had cleaned the blood and gore off them too, which was nice
“What sigil is this?”
Alina looked at the sigil on the steel plate armor which Matthew had stripped off the corpse he had just thrown into the bio-processor reactor
“It’s, it’s the sigil of the Arimir dukedom, one of the three dukedoms in the Turman kingdom”
“Hmm… In that case…”
Matthew picked up the metal chest plate and twisted the bent the metal around the sigil, after a few times he managed to rip the sigil part of the metal off which he placed on the smooth surface of the bio-processor reactor
“Magnetize that and set its removal as the trigger for the countdown”
Matthew and Alina had decided to head North towards the Mountain tribes, which Matthew had figured would be more agreeable or at the very least easier to subjugate than the entire Turman kingdom
“Are you ready, Alina?”
Alina nodded while keeping her silence, she had lived her entire mortal life in this city and after her death she had seen her home city rot away slowly without being able to leave, Matthew picked up on her complicated feelings and rested his hand on the top of her head as he asked
“Should we hold our ground instead?”
Alina shook her head slowly, to which Matthew picked up her android body and began walking North, Alina kept silent and looked around at the buildings when Matthew walked out of the gate she spoke
“They see us”
Matthew nodded, and showed a smile
“They won’t see us for long”
Matthew gradually picked up speed, his jogging speed quickly turned into a full sprint, and soon he sped across the terrain faster than the 6 scouts that were tasked with surveillance could track, as he ran Alina were silent until she spread out her arms and spoke with child-like glee
“Is this what birds feel when they soar through the sky?”
Matthew showed a wide smile and picked up even more speed as Alina laughed happily for the first time in over 50 years, she was finally free from the ruined city of Babai and with Matthew by her side, free from loneliness