“Come on. Give us the phone and we won’t hurt you,” one of the men threatened.

“Please! Please don’t do this!” the girl begged, clutching her bag tightly. “Please let me go.”

“We told you to give us the phone!” another said, pulling out a smaller knife than the one that I was carrying.

She paled when she saw it, so she started quickly rummaging her backpack, pulling out another one of those phones and handing it over. “That’s it. Please let me go now.”

“Nah, that wouldn’t be enough,” the one that took it said with a mocking tone. He then moved to wrap his arm around the girl’s shoulders while pointing the knife to her stomach. “How about we go somewhere else and you give us a bit more?”

The girl was paralyzed momentarily, and I could tell that she was on the verge of tears. However, now that the man that had been blocking her from my view was wrapped around her, she saw me approach, and her expression turned to one of surprise.

“Let her go,” I ordered when I was just a few steps away.

“Huh?” all the men exclaimed, turning to look at me with a mix of hostility and surprise.

“If you don’t want to get hurt, then give her back her black mirror and walk away,” I repeated myself, taking a step closer to them.

“Don’t meddle into things that don’t concern you, love,” one of them replied, before looking me up and down with a smirk, “unless you’re willing to pay for it.”

“Oh! You’re right! That one looks even better!” the one that was wrapped around the girl said, letting her go and pointing his knife at me. “Why don’t you come with us?”

I glared back at them. “You’ve been warned, don’t make me repeat myself.”

The one that was closer to me smirked and made his way to me. He stretched one hand to grab me. “Come on, baby, if you don’t want to get hurt either, then you’ll come with us.”

I slapped his hand away when he tried to put it on me, surprising him. The other men heard the sound of the slap and moved to surround me, similarly to how they had pinned the other girl before.

“You wanna play hard, huh?!” the one that I slapped said as he readied his arm to stab me.

I rushed to move as well, circulating mana in my body to ensure I could take them down without any issue, and as I was taking the knife out of the pockets I felt mana surging from somewhere behind the men.

“Hah!” the girl from before shouted, and the mana transformed into fire, which was flying in this direction.

It hit the one that was in front of me, creating a small explosion that hardly burned the man; let alone move him from his spot.

“What the hell?!” he exclaimed, causing the other men to also turn and look at the girl.

“She’s a Mage!” another exclaimed.

However, the last one didn’t react the same, smirking as he turned to look at her. “Well, it seems like we got ourselves an even better reward,” he turned to look at the other men. “Let's grab her and take her to the boss.”

“W-wait! I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry!” the girl shouted, raising her hands in front of her while desperately shaking them and taking a couple of small steps back.

The men started going after her, and I used the opportunity to strike them. I didn’t use the knife and simply swiped with my legs at their feet, easily kicking them off and forcing them to land on their sides on the ground. Before they had the chance to react and stand up, I swiftly moved between them to stand close to the girl.

“It’s okay, I’ll take care of these evil men,” I confidently said to the girl, who seemed surprised at my sudden movement.

“Motherfucker!” the one that threatened to take the girl exclaimed as he stood up from the ground, followed by the other two.

“Another one?” one of them followed up, half limping as he tried to stand up.

“We should get out of here, this one seems to be much stronger,” the last of them said, taking a step backwards.

“No! Fuck that! I ain’t going back empty handed, and I ain’t letting that bitch get away with fucking with me!” the first one shouted, putting away his knife and taking something else from behind his back.

It was a strange tool. It was black, with a small tube connected to what seemed like the small handle of a crossbow; however, it was lacking the strings or the bolt to fire it, so I couldn’t really tell what it was for, only that it might be more dangerous than it seemed.

“Wait! Please don’t shoot us!” the girl behind me screamed, covering herself with her arms as she cowered.

From her reaction, I confirmed that it was indeed a dangerous weapon, so I reacted even faster than the man, by lifting my left hand in front of me, and circulating mana beyond my body, coalescing it in front of me and giving it shape to harden into a half-transparent blue bubble that would cover both me and the girl. I was a bit rusty with using my mana alone, since I’d always empowered everything I did with Holy Power, but even without the Holy Power, I was one of the best at using mana in my world, so the Mana Barrier formed in an instant.

The man moved his hand after a short moment and pulled on the trigger, which created a loud bang from the tool. I managed to see what the tool did thanks to my mana empowered body, and saw for but a split second how from the small tube a short burst of fire came out, followed by a small metal object that looked like the rounded up tip of an arrow.

It flew extremely fast, faster than any bolt or arrow could ever fly, hitting my Mana Barrier with great strength, and creating a shockwave all over its surface. The impact was so strong that I even felt how much of my mana was consumed by that one impact, but I still had more than enough mana to take more of those, so I stood firmly with my hand raised and the barrier in place.

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The girl behind me crouched and held her head between her hands, and the man kept on firing that small bolt at me, one after another without rest, causing the girl to tremble every time. Each impact was just as powerful as the last one, making me concerned that I would run out of mana if he could do that forever, but after a dozen shots, the tool stopped functioning, leaving only a clicking sound as he kept pulling the trigger.

“Fuck!” he shouted, pulling the knife out before turning to the other men at his sides. “Lets fucking end her.”

“But dude, didn’t you just see how she—”

“I don’t give a fuck!” he shouted and started rushing me.

The other two didn’t move from their spots as they watched the other one coming at me, and I readied the knife to fight back with this man. “I shall painlessly send you to meet the Holy Gods.”

“Huh? ‘Meet the Holy Gods’?” the girl mumbled while on the ground. “Wait! Don’t kill them! Just subdue them!”

I was momentarily surprised. These were evil men, after all, so ending their lives would be the best course of action. Unless there was another reason to not kill bandits… which was, of course, to turn them in for a reward; likely what the girl thinks is better. Doing so wouldn’t be an issue, so when the man was a step closer to me, with his knife ready to stab me, I reacted by blocking his knife with mine.

He tried to grab me, but I easily swatted his hand away as I kept deflecting and blocking the next few stabs that he was quickly trying to land on my stomach area. I wasn’t about to let him go on the offensive any longer than I should, so on one of those, I parried the knife away, forcing his hand to go up; giving me the opening to headbut the man right in the middle of his face, breaking his nose and forcing him to take a couple of steps back.

I swiped at his feet again, causing him to fall down just as before, and this time, I used my mana similarly to how the girl did, only that instead of turning it into fire, I turned it into rocks that would clamp around the man, leaving him immobile on the ground as a few rocky rings wrapped firmly around his body and feet.

The other two saw what happened and started running away. However, letting them run away, would mean letting the rewards get away, so I did the same thing to them, forming my mana into rocks around their feet and body, and causing them to land on the floor. They all struggled to break free from the bindings, but I made sure that even someone with magic power would have a hard time doing so.

“Okay, go ahead and find the guards, I’ll wait here with the bandits,” I said to the girl who was still crouching.

“Eh? Guards?” she asked back.

I nodded, both in response to her question and in understanding that she was likely still stunned from the whole ordeal. “Yes, get them so we can claim the reward for taking down these bandits.”

“Bandits?” she asked again as she slowly stood back up; her face of complete confusion. “You mean these robbers?”

She was much more stunned than I expected. She didn’t seem to be hurt or under any charm, so she’s just having trouble knowing what happened. “Find someone to hand over these evil-doers to them.”

“Oh right!” she exclaimed, finally snapping out of it. “I’ll call the police right away!”

However, the girl didn’t move from her spot, and I furrowed my eyebrows, wondering if there was something just inherently wrong with her or if that small fireball she used drained her of so much mana that she can’t get her bearings right. But just as I was about to ask her if there was something wrong with her, she carefully made her way to one of the bandits, searching his body for a moment before pulling out the phone they had taken.

The girl brought it up to her face just like the lady from the building had done before. I waited for a moment to see if she also talked to someone, or if those phones were a way to directly talk to Salrak.

“Hello?” The girl said after a few seconds, and I readied myself to find out who it could be, going as far as to think if I should snatch it away from the girl, but she continued, “Yes, I just got attacked by a group of robbers who even shot me!”

Sadly, from here, I couldn’t quite pick the voice that was coming from the phone—or the painting, now that it was glowing. So I took a couple of steps closer to the girl, who only looked at me without changing her expression or moving from her spot.

“I’m a couple of blocks north from the National Institute of Magic, uptown campus—and no I’m not hurt, a very powerful person saved me,” she continued, listening to whatever voice was coming from the artifact and smiling at me after she said that last part. “Yes, I’ll wait here. Thank you!”

She looked at the glowing painting for a second before it turned off, replacing the painting with the black mirror. She then quickly shoved it back into her skirt’s pocket and looked at me with a smile.

“So…” I trailed off, unsure on how to ask her who she talked to or if it was Salrak.

“They’ll be here soon—at least that’s what they claimed anyway,” she replied to my short inquiry, not quite clearing my doubts.

“Who will?” I asked, hoping that she would give me a straight answer this time.

“The police, of course,” she answered as if it was obvious before her expression turned into a bright smile. “Anyway, you’re amazing!”

“H-huh?” I exclaimed, taken aback by that seemingly random response.

“You must be a very high ranking Mage! Using Kinetic Barriers, and even Elemental Magic!” the girl continued while excitedly looking at me.

“I-I u-um… it wasn’t much,” I replied, not sure about how to deal with this strange girl that went from being paralyzed and not knowing what she was saying to being full of energy.

“Amazing… I can only do Fire Elements… Do you go to the Institute too? No, with how powerful you are, you must be a Professional Mage, working for a big multinational,” she said, her eyes almost sparkling as she looked at me.

“I… uh… I don’t really—”

“Fuck you bitch!” shouted the man that I had headbutted, spitting some of the blood that had gotten in his mouth in my direction, but missing completely since we weren’t close enough. “We’ll fuck you!”

“Uh…” the girl next to me said with a wary voice as she hid behind me.

I, however, stood tall, and looked down at him with a serious expression. I had heard plenty of such threats by men like him who were much more powerful. “Then I’ll take you down as many times as I need to.”

“Wow…” I heard from the girl behind me.

The man struggled and grumbled on the ground, trying to break free from his restraints with no success. The girl behind me didn’t say much as she seemed to have been scared by the bandit’s threats, so I turned to look at her while thinking up a way to soothe her, but just as I did I heard a loud high pitch noise coming from the road that was closer to us.

When I turned to look at what could possibly make such a loud noise, I saw that one of those ‘cars’ was stopped. This one was similar to the first one I saw, only that it had a combination of white and dark colors with a few other symbols painted on the side with the words ‘police’ written close to them.

To my surprise, the side of the car suddenly opened—similar to how a carriage would open its doors—and a man dressed in dark blue clothes walked out of it. They were similar to the man that was guarding the glass gates at the building I was before, but this one had other symbols on his chest, numbers, the word ‘police’, and a name close to it—his I’d guess.

“Officer!” the girl hiding behind me called out to the man. “Here! I was the one that called!”

The ‘officer’ seemed taken aback when he saw the men wrapped in rocks laying on the floor, but he seemed calm, so he turned to look at the girl with an expressionless face before changing into a frown when he looked at me and the knife I was holding.

I realized that this man was likely to be a guard and that me holding a weapon was going to put him on edge, so I threw the knife away to the side, far away from me to ensure that he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

“What happened here?” he said as he walked closer to us. Stopping momentarily to look at the bloody man that had stopped struggling by now. He put his hand a black box that was on his shoulder while turning his face to it. “I need medical care here.”

I wondered why he did that, but soon after, I was taken aback as a voice came out of the box, “Copy that, we’ll send them right away.”

The officer then looked up at us again. “Now, please tell me what happened here.”