Chapter 47

Tower Conquerors (VII)

Though the explosions were loud, they were still incapable of completely cutting off the screams of agony, panic, horror, and pain as they rippled out from the large group hit by the massive attack. Cain hurriedly pulled the other three back with him a good fifty feet away, the look in his eyes slightly crazed. Shit, shit, shit... why is my luck so goddamn rotten?!!! Of all the joints and all the places... goddammit...

In the meantime, the group in front of them had begun scattering in panic, running in full sprint backward, completely ignoring Cain and the rest. The ground beneath still rumbled softly even half a minute later as the dust slowly began to settle, revealing several grave-deep craters in the ground with scattered rocks laying around them in spades.

Six mangled corpses were lying within the craters, wholly unmoving, blood giving the earth's color a darker shade. Cain quickly located the culprit and his suspicions were immediately confirmed. Though she looked a bit younger than he remembered, there was no mistaking 'The Crazed Sword' even if he tried. She had long, blonde hair tied up into buns, an oval-shaped face, and a pair of angry-seeming sapphire-blue eyes that appeared to be glowing as she turned to face them. Cain flinched, unlike Emma, Diya, and Jamal who merely glanced at the girl curiously.

Without the preconceived notions that Cain had, all three saw was a decently strong teenage girl who helped them out from what she believed to be a life-threatening jam.

“Hello,” Emma greeted her with a smile. “Thank you for helping us!”

“...” the girl remained silent, looking to the side where they could still see the scattered remains of the group running away.

“Uh, what’s your name?” Emma hurriedly asked, afraid the girl might go after the rest and growing worried that she seemed to have no reaction to killing six people in a single strike.

“...” the girl turned back toward them but said nothing, walking over to the six corpses instead and rummaging through them, much to Emma’s dismay.

“Uh... do you really need to do that? If you need something, maybe we have it...”

"You guys are too soft," the girl said in a tone void of emotions. "This is a kill-or-be-killed world. The only reason I saved you is that I wanted this guy's item," she said, pointing at the corpse of the leader. "And you distracted them. If I were you, I'd turn around and never come back into this place ever again. You'll get killed otherwise."

“...” Emma frowned, glancing at Cain who appeared a bit pale-faced, surprising her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Uh... n-nothing,” Cain forcibly pulled himself out of the terror, wiping his forehead full of sweat. Relax--she’s just a teen girl now. Not that psycho bitch that set half the LA on fire ‘cause she got hit on... relax... “Khm, let’s just leave her be.”

“But she--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cain interrupted. No matter how much he talked himself into her just being a ‘teen girl’, the fear of her was rooted inside his soul. It wasn’t that easy to ignore it. “She clearly knows what she’s doing.”

“Alright,” Emma nodded after a brief silence. “Well then -- thank you for saving us. We’ll be off now.”

“Just a second,” the girl said in a cold tone, standing up and pointing a sword at them -- no, ten swords, Emma quickly realized, and each and every one of them was hovering above her. “Hand over any useful items that you have first.”

“... is she fo’ real?” Jamal asked with a strange expression.

“I think she might be...” Emma smiled bitterly. Though the mellow reactions of their group seemed to surprise the girl, the expression on her face was a short-lived one -- yet, it pulled Cain completely back into the reality. She is just a teen girl, he mused. Likely with a story to tell. If this was her in the past, she’d just kill us and take whatever we had without saying a word...

“Why are you using the weapons that the Shrine gave you?” Cain asked. While none of the three on his side knew what he was talking about, the girl clearly did as she glanced at him with a shocked look in her eyes. “You have to keep wasting Mana to restore them, and they’re barely better than just using ordinary iron rods.”

“What are you talking about?” the girl asked, frowning.

“... let’s go.” Cain merely smiled at her and turned around, heading toward the mountain in the distance.

“I said to wait!” the girl sped forward and slashed the swords in a downward arc toward Cain. He, however, didn’t turn around. Instead, Jamal’s expression dropped as he charged starlight into his sword and slashed it in a wide angle, shoving out a massive array of milky-white light that burned through all of the falling swords, turning them to ash and shocking the young girl.

“Did yo’ mama not smack you enough, kiddo?” he growled at her immediately. “What the hell you doin’?! Tsk, kids like you should be at home studying algebra, not in ‘ere pretending they’re some kind of a big shot. You--”

“Oi, that’s enough,” Cain interrupted him, slapping the back of his head. What if you make her go crazy, you idiot?!! “What are you showing off for to a kid? Are you that desperate for attention?”

“... I just saved your life, dude.” Jamal shot him a dirty glare.

“She wasn’t even aiming at me, just in front of me,” Cain sighed. “You couldn’t even estimate that? Good God, just how bad are you...”

“...”

“...”

“Khm,” Emma coughed awkwardly as she pushed Jamal and Cain to start walking again. “Anyway, thanks a bunch! Be careful, though! Lots of crazy people, as you can see, in this place!” and with that, they were off, leaving the somewhat stunned and confused girl behind.

Cain took out and lit up a cigarette under a continuous barrage of Jamal's dirty glares, managing to settle his nerves slightly. I’m too quick to go off, he sighed inwardly. Most ‘terrors’ from back then are just the beginners now... some haven’t even been born, for crying out loud. I really thought traveling back in time would have been much easier than this...

“She was fairly strong,” Diya said suddenly. “Shouldn’t... shouldn’t we have asked her to join us...”

“...”

“...”

“AH!” Emma, Jamal, and even Cain exclaimed at the same time, but when they turned around, they saw that the girl was gone, nowhere to be seen. “Shit, we could have also asked one of those guys to stay with us... we don’t have five people yet, and who knows if we’ll even run into anyone anymore!” Emma added, dispirited.

“... I’m sure there will be someone.” Cain said, sighing. Even if, indeed, they never ran into another human until their destination... there were still Tower natives lying around. Naturally, however, he couldn’t just outright tell them that, so he played along.

“She couldn’t have been older than fifteen-sixteen, right?” Emma mumbled suddenly.

“Yup...” Cain nodded.

“What the hell happened to her for her to be like that?” she sighed.

“Have you not met a teenager before?” Jamal asked, scoffing.

“No, I know,” she said. “They’re arrogant and all that -- but they aren’t murderers, Jamal. They’re just kids trying to find themselves in a world that keeps telling them to fuck off. While annoying, I don’t think that’s ever prompted someone to coldly kill six people and then desecrate their corpses in search of something. Usually, more shit precedes that...”

“... she has her story, just like everyone,” Cain mumbled, taking a puff of a cigarette. “We respect that, but we also move on.”

“...” Emma glanced back and bit her lower lip, sighing after in regret. Though she knew most of the things in the world were out of her hands, and that girls and boys like her would keep appearing no matter what, it still felt off to just leave her to continue falling deeper and deeper into the hole. “How much of it is Mana and how much of it is her?” she asked hopefully.

Cain looked at those expectant eyes and felt being stabbed in the heart. Was he ever this hopeful about others? No. A vast, vast, vast majority of people weren't. People like Emma, those who could look at the infernal hell that the Towers truly were, and look at the people committing one heinous act after another without an ounce of regret... they were rarer than the SSS+ ranked items. “I don’t know,” he lied, smiling lightly. “Hopefully, it’s just Mana messing with her as well as us... I mean, look at Jamal,” Cain’s call-out caused the man to glare at him once again. “Outside the Tower, he’s this meek, proper, well-spoken and educated man, but in here... he thinks he’s the shit and can’t wait to show it off to everyone.”

“Dude, could you stop tossing me under the bus... for one minute?!” Jamal growled more so in disappointment than anger. “

“I think he’s mostly just trying to show off to you, though,” Emma suggested with a somewhat bemused expression. “For some reason, he looks up to you, you know?”

“... is this true?” Cain asked, his expression strange.

“Of course I look up to you,” Jamal sighed, relenting. “Your ass is constantly calm and collected no matter what happens. Is it wrong for me to want to be like that?” Ah, good thing you lot can’t read minds...

“...” Cain chuckled lightly, shaking his head.

If someone told him just a year ago that he’d be a target of awe, envy, and respect by so many good, genuinely good, people, he’d have likely punched that someone in the face. Is it really that easy? He mused inwardly, taking a puff of the cigarette. To just move on and wash away everything I did? At least... these guys are making it hard not to...

Three days, at least by their rough calculations, would pass before they reached the bottom of the mountain, a heavily wooded area with several dozen roughly-outlined paths leading up. Cain stood and looked at the behemoth, the mirage that collapsed tens of thousands of minds during his last lifetime. From the outside, it looked so innocent -- just a tall mountain whose top was covered with grayish mist, with the rest outlining the process of life, starting lush at the bottom and thinning out toward the top.

“Don’t ever step further than ten feet from me,” he warned abruptly in a heavy and grim tone, one that shook everyone’s hearts and froze the blood in their veins. “If you do, I’ll bend you over my knees and spank you so hard it will never become your bedroom kink. Got it? Got it! Let’s go, then. To the Mountain of Dreams!”