As I walk between the forest lines, I stumble upon something rather unexpected as I hear voices from within the bushes around me. I curiously approached the voices, of course, and just when I got close enough, I managed to eavesdrop on some shady individuals talking among themselves.
"The head of House, Wesson Auri, has gone mad," One of the shady guys says. I couldn't make out who they were due to the poor lighting of the whole situation and the fact that they all wore dark gray robes, which hid their faces quite well.
"My father has also gone mad. He thinks that House Stark should continue to support Auri, but I disapprove, and my legions do as well." Another voice cuts right through the forest as I carefully hide myself in the bushes so they don't see or hear me. I still couldn't help but be careful.
"I've got the support of House Micho as well; their leader is far more prudent and cares more about our people than Auri does. I'd say we overthrow his government when he leaves." The other two guys soon take their robes off, finally letting me see their faces, which seemed a little familiar thanks to all of them being family-related.
"The problem is that Auri is the current sovereign over the Phoenix force; nobody can defeat him on our side." Says the guy who talked about House Wesson in the first place, who gets cut off by the one representing House Stark.
"There's no need to worry, is there?" The guy directs their looks over to House Micho, who simply nods and reveals their ace card. "We have the Pope's support, who has promised to send us one of Julius's servants to help us beat Auri." After hearing the Pope, the last guy doesn't seem very happy and just asks what they wanted out of the war.
"The Pope only wants our territories to become hostile to Witches, and he said he would leave our people alone! It's the perfect deal!" All of the members of the party nod along at the idea of receiving help from the Pope and his demand until I step on a branch by accident, which places all of them on high alert.
"Who of you two is the traitor!?" One of the guys asks, pulling his sword right away, followed by the other two who do the same thing and basically ask the same question until one of them finally spots me with the light from their lantern.
"Fuck! It's that Witch Kid! We have to get them before they run away with our plans!" Well, there was no more hiding, so I simply chose to come out of the bushes ready to beat them up without fear in my eyes, which was highly apparent by my dried tears, which left my eyes red.
"Hey there, gentlemen, I am not in the mood for a fight, so how about we talk it out? Are we not civilized enough for a talk?" My question gets only met with fire as one of the guys throws a fire spell at me, which doesn't even manage to penetrate through my dense pocket of dark energy.
"You're the one who has brainwashed Deus Auri! You won't brainwash us as well!" The man who threw the fireball at me angrily chucks another one of those to no avail as I simply try to keep it together since I was still distressed from my friend's trust betrayal and now this.
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"Fine then, spatial hooks!" Without further ado, I simply put all of them down with my newfound punching technique that came up to me at the moment, but that ended up working better than I expected.
If I threw a hook in the direction of someone nearby and it hit them, I thought I would be pulled toward them, but what happened was even better than that as the person my spell hit got pulled toward me right on the perfect trajectory to meet my right fist.
In any case, since the guys were still kind of strong, they all tried to escape with me chasing after them one by one with the help of my hooks and my newly found passion for battle, which was all thanks to my desire to kick Julius's ass more than ever before.
I'm not sure if hating someone that much is a healthy habit, but at this point, it was the only thing that could keep me sane, so I had to do it for my sake if nothing else. "Wait! Not in the face! Not in the face! UUUGH!" One of the guys pleads with me not to hit them in the face, which I purposely target right after he says it, making sure to hit him harder than the other guys.
"I only need one of you to tell me all about that plan with the Pope, and it seemed to be you, Micho guy!" With all of the guys taking separate routes of escape, I didn't really have much of an option anyway, as taking custody of three individuals would be difficult even for me as I couldn't wrestle all of them at the same time for miles.
As for the one who I chose to chase after, he simply ran over the forest trees, which made it a little harder to catch up to him until I managed to hit him in the leg with one of my hooks, pulling him toward me at a high amount of speed that frightens him a lot "AHHHHHH!!"
"I got you now! You'll spill all you know, or I will punch you!" I say to the man while posing as if I were about to take a swing at him once he is at my feet, crying like a little kid who got caught eating from the cookie jar when they shouldn't have.
"You're dumb if you think I will ever tell you anything!" The man responds with such wits I can't help but respect his courage while at the same time feeling annoyed that he turned out to be one of those guys that will never say a damn thing about their teammates if it compromises them.
"Listen, man. I would be charitable and all, but my best friend just broke my heart, and I also recently got my ass kicked, so I am feeling very inclined to beat someone up to a pulp, so talk!" I say again to the man, who starts sweating buckets once I tell them the mood I'm in but still refuses to confess, leaving me with no other choice but to punch him in the gut as hard as I can.
The man feels what I could hope would be indescribable pain as his scream is silent, just like when Julius punched me, which I knew all too well was painful. "You're not supposed to hurt a person under custody." The man says, right after which I answer with another bit of violence by slapping him.
"Don't highroad me like you're some beacon of justice. Now speak before I send you to the underworld." I once again tried to threaten the guy, but he still refused to speak, which finally pushed me to place him under official arrest so I could take him back to the mansion to turn him in for questioning, as I did not have it in me to keep beating the poor guy up.
Punching him felt nice and all, but I knew I did it out of frustration and not because he deserved it, which only made me feel bad about it. Seriously, how did Julius sleep peacefully after spreading so much violence and committing so many heinous crimes against people who didn't deserve it?
Man, I had to find a way to defeat him and get rid of him and his servants, as these guys called one of them. Julius is just such a prick and also simply serves to spread hatred and violence; he is a net negative for this world. He had no other purpose other than being the scumbag of this world.
Suppose Julius hadn't killed the Witch Queen and the Elf patriarch. In that case, there's a good chance that fewer people would've died in this most recent battle, and for sure, none would have been killed during his crusades on our territories also; the Demon King would have never attacked; he is just such a careless baby that needs to be disciplined!