*BOOM*
Raindrops drizzled from the sky, falling as a light shower that encapsulated the entire town.
The sky sunny sky was now no more, covered in a blanket of grey and black clouds, thundering with lightning as the rainfall increased in output.
Chunks of the town's walls could be seen hurling through the air, dust, and smoke creating a trail behind them as they smashed into different buildings throughout the town.
A group of men and women shrouded in powerful auras and draped with black and white cloaks shot out of the hole in the wall, leaving nothing but corpses and rivers of blood behind them.
This was a massacre...
'Sh*t!'
Silas saw it the moment he entered the town, but he dismissed it almost immediately.
He had too much on his mind at that time, and if he were, to be honest, he expected Nymira to be much stronger than she actually turned out to be.
He expected her to turn out as a possible threat, yet in the end, she was a kid with no real battle experience, while Silas was a grown man who's lived in an apocalyptic wasteland for over 7 years.
Nevertheless, the signs of an invasion were all there; it just took Nymira to bore him out of his mind for him to finally connect the pieces.
The gazes. The priest. The subtle killing intent in the air. The weird actions of the monsters in the forest the day before. The cloaked men standing on top of buildings with some kind of crystal transmitter held to their mouths...
Yeah, it should have been more than obvious at that point, but the thing that really tipped him off was the fact that there were water magicians.
Despite thinking of everyone in Uladia as a number, Silas knew for a fact that there was no water magician in Uladia except him.
Magicians were a dime in a dozen. Those who awakened usually moved out of the town immediately and to the cities. It was a miracle that they even had light mages in the town, most likely due to the town's connections with the church.
But now, none of that mattered. Silas had one goal: to bring his family back to safety and swipe some human life forces while he was at it.
His grandmother was stronger than him, and so was his father. They could probably protect Syra and Lex... Right?
Looking at his family, Silas sighed in relief when he saw them all bunched up in one place. It would make it much easier to escape, or at the very least allow the kids...
'Wait...' Silas narrowed his eyes before clenching his teeth so hard that veins could be seen popping out of his forehead.
'You f*cking morons!'
"Where's Syra!?" Silas roared to his parents, and when they looked around, they quickly realized that she was nowhere to be seen.
'F*cking idiots. You had one f*cking job, and you screwed it. You stupid...' Letting out a deep breath, Silas calmed himself down.
His face returned to cold and indifferent, if returned was even the right word to describe it.
After all, this was not the expression of Silas Skylark. It was an expression that Seth used to wear at all times. It looked much more menacing when Seth did it since he had several wrinkles and the most terrifying face most anyone has ever seen.
Sometimes evil is etched into someone's face, you know?
But Silas didn't care.
Landing next to Silas, the burly figure of the chief stuck his chest out and spoke with an extremely loud voice-
"We're being attacked by a group of bandits. From my estimations, there are at least 25 of them, and at most 100.
If you can fight, fight for your homes. If you can't, go into your holes that you call shelters and cower in fear until we're done. Is that understood?" The chief commanded, his voice holding the weight of the world.
And in unison, every single one of them nodded at him before drawing the blades and weapons without a second of hesitation.
'These idiots should buy me a little time to find my sister. I can probably get her out in time and cower in a shelter... I'm a kid, after all. No one would blame me. At the same time, if I show that I can fight, will they blame me? Ugh, this is why I hate people.' Silas sighed and tried to launch away, but he felt an enormous hand on his shoulder.
Yet, without even looking back, Silas used fire fusion to slap the hand away. At first, it barely budged, but with a little more force, he was able to shove it off him before turning into a blur that left nothing but kicked up dirt and dust in his wake.
Shooting through the air, Silas landed on one of the buildings and looked into the distance with a squint.
'70-ish? 10 mages are quite a lot, though.' Silas thought before turning into a blur and appearing on the roof of the next buildings
He was using mystic eyes to their maximum extent to find Syra, but so far he couldn't see one with air magic except the a few near the shattered wall, Lochras, and Keira, as well as the few assassins who seemed to have infiltrated the town before the invasion.
*Swoosh*
The hair's on Silas' neck stood up as the threat of death seeped into his bones.
His head ducked on instinct, and he felt like something cold and sharp had just passed right over his head.
"Oooo. You're fast-" The woman wasn't even capable of expressing shock was an ice bullet with a sharp edge shot through her head and splattered her brain matter through the existing hole.
Silas was already far gone when her body dropped to the ground.
He had become a blur as he jumped from building to building to scour his surroundings, and when he finally saw someone with the air element in the distance, he could not help but frown.
There seemed to be 2 other individuals in front of her, slowly pushing her to a corner as she tried her best to attack her with the spells she knew.
The problem with traditional mages was, if you don't have good aim, you're essentially wasting your mana.
"Don't worry. We won't hurt you." One of the men spoke with a depraved expression on his face.
"Stop being a creep." The other man sighed and facepalmed.
"Oh, come on, man! Just one time-"
"Lay a hand on my sister, and I'll cook both of you alive and feed you to my bear friend." Silas' voice reverberated throughout the alleyway like a haunting echo.
They both unsheathed their blades and began to look around. Even the depraved fella seemed to have turned serious.
But when they felt Silas' killing intent, they immediately froze in place.
They couldn't move a single muscle.
Steam exhaled out of their nostrils and mouth.
"What do you think is more painful..." The voice spoke again, but this time it was right behind them.
When they turned around, they saw a boy with piercing emerald eyes standing at the alleyway entrance, his hands behind his back as everything around him was slowly being covered in a layer of frost.
"Freezing to death, or being buried alive?"
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