章 13: Attack!

Steve faintly recognized one of the men chasing the woman... it was the guy that stopped him last month from entering Acrine!

"It's the Obsidian Corps!" Steve shouted, trying to be of help.

All agents stopped their training and took up their weapons and armor. It seemed like a fight was coming, although it seemed like the Silent Legacy would have the advantage. There were only 5 men chasing after their companion, Lily. The 5 men would quickly be outnumbered.

As the woman entered the barrier surrounding their camp, the men kept chasing after her.

Once the men entered the barrier, they stopped in their tracks and had a baffled look on their faces.

It had to be known, that when they entered the barrier as well, they could all of the sudden see the outpost. Where at first they just saw trees, they were now greeted by quite some men, ready to fight. The Silent Legacy wore fierce facial expressions, as they didn't exactly want to be friendly with any associates of the Obsidian Corps.

"Well, well... what have we here?" Butch started saying, "Looks like we have some scum following our flower around..."

Some of the agents got a grin on their faces... On the other side, the 5 other ones started getting a rather depressed look.

"They kept calling me a beautiful girl, they wanted me to cooperate with them... imagine what they wanted to do with me..." Lily said towards Butch while pouting. Some sweat could still be seen on her face, it seemed like she was quite traumatized by the chase.

Some of the other female agents audibly gasped. Were those men trying to defile her? On the other hand, the male agents were rapidly turning hostile towards the other 5 men. Nobody would touch any of the outpost's women as long as they were around!

"You're putting me in a rather annoying situation, gentlemen..." Butch said, spatting that last word out as sarcastically as possible, before continuing. "See, I can't let you run back to your boss... as you'd reveal our secret little outpost. On the other hand, if you guys go missing... There would probably be a search team coming..."

"No!! We... we didn't want to cause any trouble... We just wanted to ask who she was and what she was doing here, never would we try to do anything to her!" One of the 5 men said, clearly panicked by their opponent's words.

"Men, catch them and tie them together! We'll decide their fate later," were the last words Butch said, as he felt they didn't deserve any more attention.

It wasn't even a hard fight, the 5 men weren't prepared for a fight as they hadn't seen it coming. Thus, they had quickly surrendered. They had no hope of winning the battle, they might as well hope the others wouldn't kill them.

---

Butch, Cara, Olivia, Lily and Steve had a small meeting after the incident.

"What really happened, Lily?" Cara asked the girl.

"I was making my tour through the woods, inspecting all the traps I had set up to catch some food. One of the traps had a fox in it, but when I approached the fox... I heard some noise behind me. I quickly found myself surrounded by 5 men. They had hidden themselves while waiting for someone to pick the fox up. It was an ambush!"

"I was lucky I have been training wholeheartedly, or they probably would have been able to catch up with me before I had arrived here." she finished her story, still flustered by the events.

"I see... they must be up to something if they were trying to capture someone in the woods. I'll try to get some information out of them." Butch said.

"How are you going to do that?" Steve asked innocently.

The bunch looked towards him as if he had asked the dumbest question in the world.

"Magic, of course..." Steve said as he got embarrassed, he had once more forgotten he was in a magical world now.

"No you dimwit, we torture them!" Olivia said, with a faint, evil grin on her face. It sounded like she would enjoy torturing them.

When Steve saw her expression, he thought she must be a reincarnated devil... Wasn't she supposed to be a cute, innocent girl?!

---

After a couple of hours, the men hadn't released any information yet. It seemed they were really loyal to their leader. Either that or they were too scared to face the repercussions they would receive from their boss should he find out they couldn't keep their lips sealed...

They had tried all kinds of evil torture methods, Steve was actually quite horrified by the cruel methods they had used. It seemed this really was a tough world, where leaving your opponent some time to cooperate wouldn't work at all.

Each of the 5 men had tons of bruises, cuts and burn marks on their bodies. The only 2 mages the Legacy had were happy they finally had some living guinea pigs to practice their new spells on. The two had a satisfied expression after they had exhausted their mana.

Butch was also happy he once more got to test the sharpness of his butcher's knife.

"Looks like they really won't leak a word... Guess we only have 1 choice left then," Olivia, who took charge of the tortures, said. This time, she did look quite a bit sad at her conclusion. Which really meant something seeing the pleasure she had torturing them earlier.

"Prepare the cage," she said, with an eerily devilish voice.

The 5 men finally started showing some signs of giving in, just by hearing what she had just said. A look of horror appeared on their faces, it seemed like they knew all too well what the cage implied.

---

Later that night, a cage could be seen a couple of kilometers away from the outpost... The 5 men were inside of it, completely unarmed and undressed. It would only be a few moments until night would arrive.

Butch and Olivia stood on top of the cage. They each had a rabbit in their hands, the rabbits were struggling to break free.

"This is your last chance! You better start talking quickly, or we'll conveniently drop these 2 rabbits inside with you. I'd like to remind you, night is approaching quickly."

They shuddered at the thought, but in the end... they still chose to remain silent. It seemed like they had accepted their fate.

"Whatever," Olivia said, dropping the rabbit inside the cage when she sensed the rabbit was on the verge of transforming. She then started running away from the cage, towards Steve and Cara who were watching from the sidelines.

Butch swiftly copied her actions and quickly arrived next to them.

It didn't take too long, or both transformed rabbits had already decimated the 5 men.

"Why not just kill them?" Steve asked, shocked by the scene he had just seen. He had managed not to puke this time, although he still gagged quite a few times.

"There's a chance they'll just think these guys got killed by the monsters once they find them. Lets quickly leave for now, before we get surrounded by monsters. First thing in the morning, we remove this cage before anyone finds them." Butch said.

Steve couldn't help but notice that this likely wasn't the first time they had done this...

'I have to remember not to get on the bad side of Olivia...' he thought, as they swiftly started running towards their outpost.