"Pant… pant…"
Emma’s heavy panting resounded throughout the tunnels of the underground city.
She was running as fast as she could, completely bypassing the guards, who remained confused by the sudden burst of air.
’Hans wasn’t answering the phone so I thought there was a high chance of him being in here, but seeing the guards I almost had to think again.
However… I can feel these tremors from hundreds of ters… they must be fighting!
Please, just please… let get there in ti!
Emma ran without looking back, she had already sprinted through the whole city, but that didn’t stop her from hasting through the underground tunnels.
She finally spotted a door in the distance, a little cloud of dust covered the lower part of the entrance, but the actual door was lying a few ters from it, shattered in many pieces.
Just this was enough to alert Emma.
She carefully approached the entrance and watched inside as the dust slowly subsided.
Only one last thump was heard coming from the room, leading Emma back to her worries, she had no ti to be wary, rushing inside the cloud of dust, and the woman entered the room.
She wandered for about a second, lost inside the dust before finding a way out.
As she erged wary of her surroundings and scouting for Hans, she found a person lying on the ground…. A black-haired man, mildly handso, with two thick brows and a serious expression on his face… even if dead.
His body was pierced by three ice spikes, that pierced him from side to side.
The spikes were slightly lted, probably by the temperature of the man’s body before he died, but the lting seed to have stopped as the body beca as cold as the spikes.
"This…"
Emma observed the person in front of her… the right-hand man of the crimson lady… the eight-tier mage.
’So he… already killed him.
Fuck! Where is he? Hans must already be going head-to-head with the crimson lady by now…
Fuck! Where are they?!’
Emma was readying herself to do sothing to remove the giant cloud of dust enveloping the room, but before she could do anything, the words of the young man just a few ters away from her, shielded by the dust, reached her ears.
"Wh-
What…
What are you doing here…
Mom?"
’No!’
She imdiately exclaid inwardly, however, her words didn’t co out of her mouth.
Her overwhelming fear of sothing terrible happening kept her words stuck in her throat as if it happened in a dream.
She ran through the dust in the direction of the boy’s voice.
She desperately tried to prevent what was about to happen, as the words that were stuck in her throat finally ca up.
"No!!"
Her scream imdiately drew Hans’s attention, he turned his head right and saw the woman co out of the remaining dust, he looked at her funny, trying to figure out why she was there, but her words imdiately made him turn his head back to the beast woman standing in front of him.
"Look out!"
She desperately scread looking at him with her eyes wide open.
His body didn’t feel anything, he was still pointing his sword right at the woman’s throat, but that sword was soon lowered…
His mama hyperboost had ended.
His body was on the verge of bursting, not a hint of energy was left in him, and the pain coming from all the muscles in his body was enough to numb anything else he felt.
However, one thing bypassed even that… it was a loud call… it was… a scream….
It was very disturbing… annoying even.
"-ns"
"-ans"
"Hans!!"
’What?’
He barely looked at her, his eyes were on the verge of closing from exhaustion, and his vision had beco foggy…
’What’s going on right now?’
However, he couldn’t utter a single word, instead, blood flushed out of his mouth, covering his body.
’The backlash’s already hitting… fuck, that shouldn’t be… what…?’
Hans barely turned his head again, he looked at his abdon.
A strange shape took form under his eyes, he couldn’t clearly tell what it was since it was blurred.
A black… what was that… he didn’t know.
One person, however, could clearly tell what was happening, she imdiately dashed and stopped just beside him, her arm extended, holding sothing in front of him.
He couldn’t see… it just felt… surreal.
The overwhelming taste of blood in his mouth, the unbearable pain… it was so horrible that he couldn’t even express it.
But more than anything… he felt like a poked balloon.
He felt like he was losing air… no… blood.
His energy and blood drained, as his body tried to reconstruct itself.
It was cold… freezing.
’How?… it shouldn’t be…’
He closed his eyes, uncertain he would ever be able to open them again.
A tear slid off Emma’s cheeks, she held Hans’s hands and finished what he had begun, sliding his sword inside the crimson lady’s throat.
Then, she looked down, the woman’s arm had beco a sharp blade, like a praying mantis’s.
It was inserted in Hans’s abdon, tearing through it as if it were butter, half of the blade ca out of Hans’s back, and a river of blood ca out of his holed body.
She observed the scene as she held back her tears.
’Fuck!’
She whispered biting her lips.
Hans was losing too much blood, the woman’s transformation had worn off, and her arm had returned to normal, making loads of blood flow out of the boy’s wound.
Emma took the woman’s arm out of Hans’s body before bringing him to the ground and letting him lie on the concrete.
She tore part of her shirt off her body and imdiately slid it under his body, right where he had been badly hurt, to avoid letting too much of his blood leak onto the floor.
Emma kneeled on the floor beside his body and gathered her hands above the young man’s wound.
A cloud of purple mana began emanating from their palms and surrounded the two as she chanted so words no human on Earth would be able to understand.
The purple mana in the air moved in a strange way, it seed like it was standing still, but everyti one glanced at it they could see it change shape.
As almost a minute passed, the spread-out mana gathered towards the boy’s wound.
Blood stopped flowing and the boy’s complexion finally stopped worsening, but just a few seconds later, when all the purple mana in the air returned to the woman and vanished towards the boy’s wound, Emma imdiately felt her throat clogged with liquid.
A huge chunk of blood was barely coughed out by the young woman as she kneeled and helped herself up with her hands.
A few minutes passed, and when she finally felt like she had enough energy to move around, she wrapped Hans’s arms around her neck and walked away, leaving the now crystal-clear room empty and silent.
All that remained were the traces of the fight, taking the shapes of countless holes and cracks in the floors and the walls, the two lifeless bodies of the crimson lady and her right-hand man, and two puddles of crimson red blood left behind by the two young trespassers.
The lights inside that place had gone out, nothing but the hall in itself remained since even the doors and the throne were wiped away by the fierce fight.
Two carcasses and four bloodstains… that was everything that soone would have found if he were to enter that place at the ti… a bit underwhelming when thinking of the trouble created by just two dead bodies.
Even if ghosts don’t create as much trouble as people do… they still always find a way… to get back at the people they resent the most.
…
"What do you want to say?"
Under the warm light of the setting sun on the highest floor of a skyscraper, an old man was touching his temples, his deep grey eyes set on the man in front of him.
He had asked a troubleso question.
"I am sorry for my mistakes sir… I, I will give up my position as an apology"
The middle-aged man’s dead eyes watched the floor emotionlessly.
"You think your position is worth as much as a human life?"
The old man asked back, but he didn’t receive any of the insecure replies he usually did.
Just a long and heavy sigh…
"I know it isn’t… but getting myself out of here might prevent other lives from being lost, I will not resign, but I am not fit for this position… making decisions and giving orders… is not for "
"The most you can do… is leave your responsibilities to soone else?"
"That’s…
You always told you would fire , maybe it’s ti for you to do that isn’t it?"
"Sigh…"
"You know that… I won’t do it even if you were to pay "
"Not even if I beg?"
A serious voice asked.
"Giving up is for the weak…"
"Who tells you we aren’t weak? Most of us awakened have weaker ntal sanity than civilians"
"That is true but… civilians need soone to protect them, right?"
It was the first ti the middle-aged man had seen a faint smile appear on the old man’s face… but he wasn’t surprised….
He was just...
Tired.
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