“Stay behind me.” Elena’s father told me as he pushed me out of the way.

He summoned a number of angels and an entire fortress around us. It lifted us from the ground and placed us on top of a defensive wall.

Why are we here? I want to go away; let’s get away from here!

Meanwhile, Julian Staffen was battling against the army of enforcers; most of them didn’t look like the one that first saved me; they were a lot smaller, a lot slimmer, and most importantly, the tool they used kept materializing itself from a number of cubes floating around their bodies.

They were capable of moving at insanely high speed, constantly repositioning themselves around Julian, keeping a safe distance, and evading the daggers he threw around.

Julian Staffen used the gun on himself to inflate his body once more; he did this to avoid getting crushed by the giant fist of the enforcer; his inflated body was then popped by the angel Elena’s father had summoned. It simply pointed its lance at its target, and a beam of light came out of it, piercing the inflated body and making it explode.

“Haven’t they told you, interrupting others is very rude?” The angel told us using Julian’s voice. His head was trembling beyond control while its fingers were slowly bending backward, making a haunting cracking sound.

Huh?

My body was frozen in fear; the same guy I hated and feared was out to kill me. He turned the body of the angel back into his own and then rushed forward towards me.

He flew past the other angels present there, and before Elena’s father could use another card, he had already landed in front of us, holding the angel's lance in his right hand. I summoned my weapon and attempted shooting at him; he did the same using the spear, and our projectiles canceled each other.

“I didn’t expect to see someone famous rotting down here. What happened, dealer? Was my present not to your liking? Why did you intervene in our affairs? Haven’t you learned from the past?” Julian asked him; in the meantime, the spear in his hand disintegrated.

"Oh, what a shame." He said in reaction to the lance turning into golden dust.

His devilish grin widened as he taunted him to take action, but strangely enough, Elena's father didn’t; he didn’t move an inch as Julian walked past him and didn’t react when he picked me up into his arms.

“Are you taking care of my kid? Oh, and condolences for your wife; I only recently discovered she passed away during childbirth.” He added with a sadistic tone, I didn't know what he was talking about, but the reaction from Elena's father was a raw scream filled with rage as he drew more cards out of his deck.

It was then that I saw a dagger stuck to Elena’s father's chest.

No! Please don’t! Don't die on me; otherwise, who's going to save me?

“How boring. Anyway, see you next—” One of the enforcers shot him before he could finish his sentence.

The projectile was incredibly powerful, so much so that it melted the defensive walls of the fortress that stood in its way. Julian’s body vanished into thin air after getting hit, leaving me to fall on the ground.

What should I do? There's no escape here; he already trapped us! No! No! NO! I don’t want to die here.

I turned around to run away and realized that the stairs that led to the ground had collapsed already, there were many holes in the defensive walls, and a tower behind us seemed about to crumble.

The scream of the people in panic trying to run away was clouding my mind; I too wanted to simply make a run for it but couldn't. The fractured wall was in too unstable of a state to allow me to simply escape.

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I loathed Elena's father for trapping us there. I felt like a cornered rat standing on top of those crumbling walls.

Since I was left without a choice, I headed back towards Elena’s father; he was still stuck in place, with the dagger planted in his chest. The dark dagger had a human hand instead of a blade. It had crying faces carved in its handle, crying real tears.

I hesitated before touching it, fearing it would’ve possibly sucked my soul or done something along those lines, but when an enforcer crashed against the defensive walls, I simply grabbed it without thinking and extracted the dagger out of his body.

As I extracted it, a number of fleshy bits began to spill out of his body; the fingers of the dagger quickly dried up and turned into ashes once it was out of his body.

I began to puke on the spot; it was an immediate reflex upon seeing a bunch of worms dropping out of the wound like a cascade; they were even flopping on the ground like fishes.

“Get down when I tell you to, get ready?” He didn’t seem okay; he was bleeding a lot and could barely keep himself upright.

“Now!” He shouted as he clapped both hands.

What? Now, I'll die!

Lightning sparks were emitted from his hands that quickly scattered across the desert field Julian created, striking various places until they left a crack on the ground in front of the fortress gate.

"The fuck are you doing? Jump!" He yelled at me, scared I followed his orders.

All the angels then suddenly stopped attacking Julian and attacked the crack in space he created.

I thought we were going to die when I saw all those beams of light beneath me, but thankfully that wasn't the case. When I opened my eyes, we were back in the city.

There we found ourselves surrounded by Julian’s minions; they all had rifles pointed at us, some had more than three eyes on their foreheads, some had multiple limbs, and some didn’t even look human.

They were holding Elena hostage, having gagged her mouth, her hands tied behind her back, and pinned against the ground. Her face was swollen and had turned dark purple, her lips were bleeding, and her nose had been broken.

She was currently sobbing in silence as tears streamed down her deformed face.

“You!” Her father was about to attack them when suddenly, the man pinning her down using his feet simply pointed his rifle against her head.

He was a bald man with the tattoo of a dragon stamped on the right side of his face, smoking a cigar while holding gloves made out of human skin. I could see semblances of a face, the empty eye sockets near the wrist, the nose on the back of his hand, and the lips over his knuckles.

I then heard guns being fired behind us as the thugs fired at the angels that were flying behind us.

“Honestly, you always manage to surprise me; your resourcefulness is impressive. It’s a shame this will be the last time we meet.” The man holding Elena at gunpoint spoke; his voice had a higher pitch than I expected.

He had a black shirt with rolled-up sleeves to show the tattoos on his forearm; I also noticed many scars on his right wrist.

“On the ground!” A couple of guards behind us used their feet to shove us on the ground.

“Handcuff the boy,” he ordered them while nudging his head towards me. “Is the car ready? We’ve got to leave as soon as possible; we don't have much time left!” He then shouted at the colleagues behind him.

“I’m sorry, sir, the cars have all stopped functioning a while ago.” Someone shouted back in response.

“Find the fucker who’s messing with us then! What are you waiting for?” He yelled out, filled with anger.

In the meantime, his subordinates put us in cuffs.

At least they didn’t kill—

Another loud bang. This was so close it made my ears ring. It wasn’t until I looked to my right that I realized what had just happened. They had shot Elena’s father in the back of his head.

“No! Stop! What are you—” To stop me from shouting, the guard pinning me down began to stomp on my face until I almost passed out, leaving me to face Elena’s father’s corpse.

His blood was dripping down the floor, making a small puddle in front of his soulless eyes. I could hear Elena's muffled screams in the background; I felt sorry for her until I heard another gunshot coming from her direction.

I… why? Is this really all my fault?

“Toss his body near the hostages; it should buy us some time against the incoming enforcers. Go find a functioning car or vehicle. I don't care what you bring back; you have at best… fifteen minutes.” The leader of the group said, as he walked up to me.

The group scattered around while the man picked me up and put me over his shoulder.

I was still boiling with rage, so the first thing that came to my mind was to bite his ears off.

“You piece of shit!” The scream of pain of that bastard was like music to my ears.

He rapidly dropped onto the ground and began to kick me repeatedly, cursing at me.

Suddenly, from the ground, a couple of hands emerged, blocking his foot. The same hands quickly covered my eyes and covered my ears.

Silence was what followed; the explosions caused by Julian and the enforcers ceased, his laughs no longer echoed through the city, and all that I could hear was the sound of flesh exploding all around me.

Mom!