章節 52: Meeting Again
James happily arrived in front of the shop while carrying two meat buns, which he 'accidentally' got from meat bun vendor. He took a bite on a meat bun, his eyes slightly widened as he moaned at the savory taste of its stuffing.
Seeing the wooden tab on the door was flipped on the 'opened' side, he entered the shop to get cover from the snowfall. As soon as he entered in it, he spotted Anna who was curiously inspecting a tiny sprout on a pot by the corner.
The kid kept looking around, and saw Allen checking a plant inside the aquarium. He approached the shop owner and handed out the other meat bun.
When Allen saw the meat bun, he gave an emotionless glare towards James. Although there were no change of countenance on Allen's face, the latter felt that it was a glare of disappointment.
"It was an accident, mister! You see, I...", before James could finish his sentence, Allen shook his head and silenced the kid. Afterwards, the shop owner took the meat bun and started eating it.
"It already happened, there's no need to explain.", Allen said.
When James heard Allen's sentence, the former felt more shame to the point he nearly wanted to hide his face from the latter. Allen didn't show any displeasure nor any tone of disappointment on his voice, but the kid unconsciously felt that Allen was dismayed.
"I got a temporary job for you.", Allen said to ease the atmosphere.
After finishing the last bit of the meat bun; with an eager look James asked, "What is it, mister?" He wanted to redeem his bad image from Allen.
"Tour that girl throughout the city.", Allen pointed towards Anna.
Anna also heard what Allen said, and she turned around to see James. When the boy heard what Allen wanted, he was about to refuse but the shop owner gave him another gaze which made him slightly afraid.
"Alright, I will.", seeing that he was being forced to do so, James could only comply. He was going to tour the person who he had a small fight yesterday, he thought that was really absurd!
"Introduce yourselves.", Allen said.
"Hi, I am James, nice to meet you.", James reached out his hand in a bid to shake the girl's hand.
"I'm Anna.", Anna reached out her hand and they started shaking. Actually, Anna wanted to refuse the tour, because number one, she could do it by herself, and number two, she was going to be toured by the person she had a small fight with. However, she took into accord Allen's status and complied.
After James and Anna left, Allen also temporarily closed the shop and left while wearing white robes.
***
"That's the marketplace where you will find a lot of food an necessities, bonus the pickpockets.", James joked. After which, she looked towards the Anna, and saw the pockets on her robes. "Ehh, won't your pockets get picked easily by their large sizes?"
"I don't put important objects in my pockets.", Anna stated with an annoyed manner.
"Oh.", James said, and he thought in an irritated fashion, 'Why did Sir Morgan even made me tour her?'
They treaded through the populous market, the two of them almost lost their sights on each other but they luckily made it and reached another street.
As soon as they made a turn, James pointed to a clock tower, "That's the famous clock tower of the Eastern Horizon City, it was said to have been built when the city wasn't even established yet."
Across the street, they saw a church with its towers protruding to the sky.
"There's a Retollian Church in this city?", Anna orally pondered when she saw the symbol of the church in front of the chapel. Which was a golden urn, behind it was a golden staff with unreadable words carved on it while there was a scroll of also unreadable words under the urn.
"Rerollian what?", James was baffled. He never heard such a weird name before.
"Retollian Church. How could you not know... oh wait, you're just a commoner, you won't obviously know.", Anna mocked and showed a tone of taunting.
After a pause, she added, "Come on, let's go inside it." After which, she sprinted towards the church.
"Alright.", James agreed and walked towards the chapel.
"Huh?", James noticed his eyes became a bit blurry and he started to become dizzy, making him slow down on his tracks. When he got even closer to the building, his legs became weak and almost fell to the ground.
Anna turned around and saw what was happening to James, she immediately rushed back and supported him.
"Are you okay? What happened to you?" The earlier tone of annoyance and ridicule was gone and was replaced with a worried one.
"I... suddenly became dizzy and weak.", James answered.
Anna then looked towards the church, afterwards she said, "On second thought, let's just go somewhere else."
"Err... okay.", James nodded and walked away with Anna's support.
***
Allen was currently far away from the Horizon Mountain, where the Eastern Horizon City was. During the time that Allen left the Eastern Horizon City, only several minutes had passed.
He was currently lying on the ground with his stomach facing it. He spied the road that came from the south, waiting for something.
After several minutes, a caravan could be spotted from afar. They were comprised of merchants and their guards, and even some mercenaries. However, Allen knew they weren't really merchants, but smugglers!
The smuggler caravan was delivering illegal goods and probably even slaves towards the black market of the Eastern Horizon City. The mayor of the said city always wanted to crack down the smugglers, which wasn't a total success, because, there were some other lower government officials that were the agents of the black market.
Allen was actually near the road, but the caravan couldn't see him due to his white robes that camoflauged him among the white snow of winter.
As soon as the caravan passed by him. Allen stealthily crouched towards three guards on the back, and he took out a dagger from his sleeves.
-pshew-
Without making the slightest sound, the lights of the guards were snuffed out. While slowly walking along with caravan on the back, Allen took a look inside the covered cart that three people were guarding earlier, however, he didn't see anything other than four armored men!
Faces of surprise could be seen on the four men, but they immediately composed themselves and charged towards him. In response, Allen backed away from them.
Now, one of the armored men shouted to alarm everybody else. The whole caravan heard the yells of warnings and stopped on their tracks, afterwards, most of the men guarding it went to the back and saw a man with a white eyepatch on his right eye.
"Attack! He must be the one stealing some of our goods!", one of the smugglers shouted. Since Allen came to Eastern Horizon City, he has always been secretly stealing from the smugglers, now, the group where the smugglers came from got ready for him. Though at the first place, he was only stealing a few goods from the smugglers.
Unluckily for them, Allen was no ordinary thief.
The armored guards and the mercenaries charged towards Allen without any hesitation, after all, he was only one person.
"I guess I have to annihilate all of you.", Allen muttered. He didn't place these people on his eyes at all!
Rather than retreating, Allen charged forward towards the enemies, and a bloodbath ensued in that particular location.
...
"No... please, don't kill me! I have a family to feed!", a smuggler was on the ground and was being cornered to one of the carts by Allen.
Nevertheless, Allen ignored the plea of mercy and unhesitatingly used (Dagger Flash) to end the smuggler's life. Most slaves were either kidnapped or were forced to become one due to lack of money, but they don't know that becoming a slave was worse than dying.
After the short battle, Allen was the only one left outside, there were corpses everywhere and several decapitated bodies that would make one feel a chill on their necks. In the first place, he didn't want to slaughter all of them, now that he did so, he figured that it's better to save the slaves now.
Allen then wore a white mask on the lower part of his face and searched the carts and carriages.
After searching everywhere in the caravan, he stumbled upon a large cart full of people. The people inside it wore worn out clothes, some didn't have clothes on their upper bodies, of course those ones were only men as they most likely gave their clothes to the women.
There weren't just grown-ups, there were children younger than teenagers.
Most of the people, specially the women were frightened when they saw Allen, but the latter immediately said with an indifferent voice, "I'm not going to hurt you. You're free."
However, the people didn't say anything. Allen entered the cart and crouched towards the people. When he got into the middle of them. He saw somebody familiar.
-whoosh-
Suddenly one of the people took out a dagger and stabbed it towards Allen. To prevent the same mistake of not surveying the surroundings, Allen has always been activating (Energy External Sense) that he learned from Melissa when he entered the cart, and sensed that there was a dagger on the man's sleeves.
He swiftly dodge to the side and avoided the dagger, he then grabbed the man's arm where the dagger was and broke it with his elbow.
"Ahhh...", the man shouted in pain, but his neck was suddenly firmly held tight by Allen, preventing him to shout even louder.
He immediately brought the man out, and killed him. He couldn't let the children see it, or else they would be scared of him even more.
After killing the man, he went back to the cart and comforted everyone, "It's alright now."
The people inside the cart heaved sighs of relief. They didn't dare do anything rash earlier because of the man with the dagger was beside the children.
"Before coming out, cover the eyes of the children.", Allen added.
The grown-ups and some of the older minors followed what Allen ordered and went out of the cart; there, they all saw corpses everywhere on the ground, specially at the back of the caravan.
They widened their eyes and covered the eyes of the children more tightly.
"There are clothes there. You can also bring that cart full of food for your supplies.", Allen pointed to two carts.
"Excuse me, sir. We don't know where to go, can you show us the way to the nearest city?", one of the man said.
"Follow this road, it'll lead you towards Eastern Horizon City. When you get to the gate, tell the guards that you were freed from a smuggler caravan and they'll take care of you. Wear thick clothes because it'll be very cold for you up the mountain.", Allen pointed his index finger to the direction of the mountain.
"Thank you sir.", all of them said.
Some of the men took a few horses from one of the carriages and connected it to the cart full of clothes and supplies. Afterwards, they started to leave while wearing new clothes.
"You, the boy on the back.", Allen suddenly said.
A boy behind the group of freed slaves stopped on his tracks and turned around to Allen.
"W-what is it sir?", the boy asked nervously. He saw the numerous dead people on the ground and discerned that the man in front of him was the one who slaughtered them.
"Stay here, let them go far away first.", Allen said.
The boy didn't dare disobey Allen and let the people go far away from their location.
"W-what is it that you want, sir?", the boy nervously asked again and played with his hands to ease his unsettled feeling.
Allen took off his mask and breathe out cold air, "Help me store the goods in the remaining carts. Your name is Edwin, right?"
創作者的想法 
Celestially_Mortal
Celestially_Mortal I published a chapter today because from December 15 to January 5, there would be daily releases of chapter (still uncertain how much per day) in the said time period.
So instead of publishing an extra chapter on December 20, I thought it would be better to release one today.
PS: The scheduled chapter release for November 20 shall remain.
每周推薦票狀態
-- 推薦票
榜單 
-- 推薦票