Online Game: I Returned From Death With An Unbeatable Summon Class! Chapter 32: UNINVITED GUESTS

POOOOM!!!!

The sound hit the street from the north like sothing had decided the situation had gone on long enough and had sent an opinion about it.

POOOOM!!!!

Louder the second ti. Closer.

Then the soldiers appeared from both ends of the street simultaneously, organized formation, matched gear, moving with the practiced efficiency of people who had a thod for exactly this kind of situation and were executing it without hesitation.

The lead soldier stepped forward, hand raised, voice cutting through the chaos with the kind of weight that ca from a uniform and the authority behind it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

"Anyone threatening the life and peace of this city answers to us.".The kind of statent that didn’t leave room for negotiation. "Surrender or face the consequences."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ "Surrender or face the consequences."

The street went very still.

The skull masked man stood in the middle of the destruction he had produced, Vorrath behind him, soldiers closing from both directions, and looked at Marcus with the empty eye sockets of the mask. Sothing in the tilt of his head suggested he was doing a calculation rather than feeling a consequence.

"It seems luck." A pause. "Or would I say faith, has spared you this ti." He took one step back. "We will et again on your next path. Keep moving forward." Another pause, heavier than the first. "Unless your next stalemate becos your last."

Then he was gone.

Not retreating. Not running. Simply absent. The space where he had been standing emptied without drama, Vorrath dissolving with him, the summoning circle leaving nothing behind but a deep scorch mark pressed into the cobblestone like a permanent reminder of what had stood there.

The street was quiet except for the groaning of the injured and the stillness of those who weren’t groaning anymore. Scorched cobblestones. Overturned stalls. People who had been in the wrong place when Vorrath arrived and hadn’t been fast enough to leave it. Soldiers already moving through the wreckage, checking bodies, calling for dics, doing the grim work that followed events like this with the efficiency of people who had done it before.

Marcus knelt on one knee in the middle of it all, Dagon still in his hand, every hit sitting across his ribs and shoulder with the specific clarity that ca after adrenaline started letting go.

[HP: 34 / 100]

He was relieved. Barely. The kind of relief that ca not from winning but from still being present enough to feel anything at all. He hadn’t planned for this. Hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t had a strategy or a preparation or even a working understanding of what had just tried to kill him.

And it had nearly worked.

What next. The question sat there without an imdiate answer.

Liz was at his side before he finished processing it, her hand on his arm checking for damage with the focused efficiency of soone who had been a combat healer’s companion long enough to absorb the instinct.

"Are you alright."

"I don’t think I have an answer to that," he said honestly.

"Retain him."

Marcus looked up.

Three soldiers standing over him with the particular expression of people following procedure rather than making a personal judgnt. One of them produced a set of restraints and crouched to apply them with the professional detachnt of soone filling out paperwork.

"What—" Liz stepped forward imdiately. "He didn’t start this. He’s innocent."

"That’s for the city magistrate to determine." The soldier was not unkind about it. Just certain in the way of soone whose certainty ca from the job rather than the situation. "He’ll be held in city custody pending investigation. If he’s cleared he walks."

"You can’t just—"

"Liz." Marcus’s voice was quiet. She stopped. He looked at her directly. "It’s fine."

"It is absolutely not fine."

"Go find Corvan." He held her gaze. "He’ll know what to do."

She stared at him with the expression of soone who had several things to say and was choosing none of them because none of them were useful right now.

The restraints went on. The soldiers moved efficiently and Marcus let them because fighting city soldiers in a street full of witnesses after taking hits that had dropped his HP to thirty four was not a calculation with a good outco.

Liz stood in the scorched road watching him go, blade still in her hand, her expression doing several things at once that were going to take ti to sort through.

"I’ll get you out!" she called after him.

Marcus looked back once with a small smirk.

Then the soldiers turned the corner and the street was behind him.

******

The city prison sat two blocks north of the main thoroughfare, a stone building that had been built to communicate permanence rather than comfort and had succeeded completely. The intake process was brief and impersonal, restraints logged, na recorded, charge listed as involvent in a public disturbance pending investigation.

They put him in a cell on the second floor.

It was small. The kind of small that felt intentional rather than incidental, three people occupying a space that had been designed with the philosophy that comfort was not part of the arrangent.

The sll hit first. Damp stone and sothing older underneath it that had been present long enough to beco part of the architecture.

An old man sat cross legged in the far corner with his back against the wall and his eyes closed, hands resting on his knees, breathing with the slow deliberate rhythm of soone who had decided that wherever he was, he was going to be at peace in it. His face was lined and weathered and completely unbothered. He had been ditating when Marcus arrived and showed no indication of stopping.

Near the cell bars a young man lay flat on the stone floor with one arm thrown over his eyes, using his own coat as a pillow, asleep with the complete commitnt of soone who had decided the floor was acceptable and had made his peace with it. One leg hung off the edge of the low platform beside him, boot still on, clearly not planned.