pat! pat! pat! pat!

The rapid sound of footsteps echoed throughout the silent and seemingly lonely forest as a figure rushed past the lush vegetation with frightening speed. Dashing through the bushes, jumping over the trenches, narrowly avoiding the large boulders, the young boy showed no signs of stopping.

Legas' expression had warped under numerous emotions as he trekked through the dense thickets and vibrant trees. Exhaustion and pain contributed the most to his pale face. The blow to the stomach still stung like a needle, making his breathing far more erratic than normal and a malignant dark bruise could be seen just above his navel. The deep gash running along his back felt as if smoldering hot iron was being drilled onto the skin. The intense burning in his legs due to constant movement didn't help either and it could be considered a miracle that the boy still kept going at full throttle even under these agonizing conditions.

"Brother..." Lora whispered. Her tiny arms had coiled around boy's neck, getting a not so smooth piggyback ride on the rough terrain, and her tunic had been stained with drops of blood, Legas' blood, smeared all over it.

"I know," Legas replied. "Don't worry, I will return to save them."

"Un," the little girl nodded as she buried her face onto her brother's shoulder. Drops of sorrowful and heavy tears glided down the boy's chest that further distorted his face.

'Why must it be like this!'

The lumberjacks with whom he had periodically cut woods, the farmers who he had helped in plowing the fields, the retired soldiers who taught him the art of battle once in a while, they were all killed, and those savages had raided into the settlement. Lena, Beti, the other kids with whom Lora often played, just imagining their fates sent shivers down the boy's spine.

The moment he had stepped out of the soundproof basement, frantic cries and mourns from within the village had assaulted his ears. And while he escaped from the village with his sister, a wave of bitterness drowned the young hunter's heart as the desperate shouts got gradually fainter behind his back. The boy was forced to pick one side and had ultimately chosen his sister's safety at the end.

But for him, the harshest part was not the cruel decision itself, but rather the feeling of self-loathing that submerged his mind for the very first time. He knew, even if he had decided to fight those bandits, he would never have been able to defeat a single one in a frontal confrontation. He was not strong enough to help the villagers. He was weak.

'They can use Aura!'

Legas knew about this special power that warriors can utilize after years and years of grueling practice. It is something that fundamentally increases the basic physical abilities of an individual using the latent energy flowing within. But those bandits could even use the higher-level applications of this technique, being even able to materialize it to block physical attacks and even reinforce their weapons.

There exists a wide disparity between the two groups of fighters, the ones who can use aura and the ones who cannot. And unfortunately, this gap of strength was not something that could be covered up by using any desperate means.

Even after catching them off guard with perfect timing, Legas was barely able to escape from those three bandits. How far would he fare against an entire horde of them, he understood it very well.

titch!

The boy suddenly flinched due to the abrupt noise that stood out like a sore thumb within the silent woods. An ill foreboding emerged in Legas' mind which made him stop his legs in an instant, turning back towards the cause of the sound.

"Brother?"

Lora gazed around the trees with nervousness trying to find any anomaly, but nothing strange caught her eye. Perplexed, she glanced towards Legas only to see his face distort in anxiety and fear. At the end of his gaze lay a broken twig drowned within the lush foliage, one the boy had stepped on while running.

'Oh no!'

Legas' face contorted even further with uneasiness and a stifling pressure weighed down upon his mind. His back was drenched with cold sweat in an instant and the ominous feeling only grew stronger.

"Lora," he whispered. "Use that breathing technique you hate to practice. Make sure you decrease your presence as much as possible.", Legas finished the sentence on a stern note to which Lora responded with a weak nod before the siblings dashed forwards and disappeared behind the trees.

It was not long, before two pairs of hurried footsteps approached the exact spot, along with the faint murmurings of a conversation.

"Damn! How far has that kid run away! I'm kinda feeling tired now."

"Just shut up for a while will ya, we keep following the tracks, we reach him in no time. He is bound to get exhausted soon enough."

It makes for a near-impossible task to hide your trail while moving through a forest. An expert with plenty of experience could easily identify even the smallest of changes within the vegetation, like the slight bending of plant stems or crushed dead leaves sprawled on the ground. The still forests can provide crucial and exact information about any unnatural locomotion happening within it.

Legas had greatly underestimated the bandits' skill in this field who naturally habituated in such regions and his frantic sprinting had made for an easy path to follow. The two brutes in pursuit had almost caught them for a moment.

"Tch, the trail abruptly ends here," one of them clicked his tongue glancing at the ground. "What do we do?"

"Hmph! He must be hiding somewhere," deduced the other.

"In the end, he's still a kid. It's already astonishing for him to have enough endurance to come this far."

The two bandits separated going in opposite directions as they carefully searched around the area of the broken twig. Rumbling through the bushes, chopping down the thickets, circling the boulders, they made sure no place was left untouched. With the cost of failure being their very lives, the two men did not dare to be careless as they scurried among the trees with all seriousness for a good few minutes, until...

shua!

One of the brutes suddenly felt a figure pounce upon him directly from over his head and a frigid chill ran upon his back.

"Shit!"

After Legas had realized his carelessness, he had made a split-second decision. If he simply continued escaping, the bandits would eventually catch up and he would have been too exhausted to resist at that point. If he had to fight, he would rather strike first with an element of surprise.

The young hunter dived headfirst onto the brute, landing atop his shoulders with a thud! With a vice-like grip, he coiled around his arms at the man's neck and simultaneously wrapped his legs around the waist, before thrusting the dagger in an instant like an assassin. Reddish aura involuntarily emerged from within the bandit in response to the imminent danger.

But the boy knew he wouldn't be able to pierce deep enough into the skin to deal a fatal wound, and hence from the very beginning, his attack was aimed at the opponent's weak and mushy eye. The dagger whizzed through the air, aiming to skewer the bandit's brain through his sockets.

However, the bandit suddenly displayed a smile of contempt during his moment of peril.

ding!

"Got you~~!"

An aura coated sword blocked the dagger's path at that moment. Legas, with an expression of shock, gritted his teeth while he put all of his strength into swatting away the weapon, but it only produced an irritating metallic grind in consequence.

bang!

The bandit spun backward as he delivered a devious elbow right onto the boy's head with a bone-crunching noise. The young hunter was flung into the air like a pebble, crashing down as he slid atop the ground for a few breaths before halting at a distance.

"Uggh!"

Legas groaned due to the intense pain. It felt as if his mind was pummeled by a hammer in an antagonizing rhythm and he could sense the blood pulsing through the veins on his forehead. His fingers sunk into a slight depression on the skull and the torn skin let a trickle of blood flow to the chin.

"Heh! I knew you would try something like this again," the bandit mocked as he slowly advanced towards the boy who moaned in agony.

Legas desperately endured the waves of heavy nausea and dizziness as he got up to his feet with difficulty. His feet wobbled with the lack of strength and the upper body swayed to and fro due to the brain being rattled inside his skull.

"Heeeh! You can retain your consciousness even after that?" the bandit appeared genuinely amused.

"Hah!" the boy pounced upon the brute while crazily waving his dagger. His footsteps were erratic and he had trouble maintaining balance. It was akin to a drunkard trying to catch a fly that hovered around.

swish! swish! swish!

"It seems you still have some spirit left in you, eh!" the bandit easily evaded the lousy strikes for a while before he donned upon a vicious expression. Reddish aura rose from within his legs and...

poof!

"AHHHHH!"

The boy screamed after taking another devious blow, this time a similar and brutal kick right on top of the dark bluish bruise on his stomach. The momentum launched him like a bullet, impacting against a small boulder in the distance with a loud bang!

bleweh!

The agony felt could not be described in mere words. The boy intensely wheezed from the lack of air in his lungs. The heavy blow to the stomach, coupled with nausea in his head, made Legas barf out all of his gastric juices. He pitifully curled up in a fetal position below the boulder as his body trembled with vigor.

Two hits! It took only two simple strikes that reduced him to such a state.

"Yo, that's some real tenacity kid. But you need to understand, there's no way I would let my guard down in a forest. Unlike inside somebody's house, haha!" the bandit slowly made over, casually tapping the blade to the back of his neck.

"Kill...me!" Legas squeezed out the words with difficulty. Tears, mucus, and blood mixed all over on his face accounting for a dreadful sight.

"You remember the guy whose nose you broke? He kinda wants to torture you a bit~" the bandit refused with a wide grin, before adding. "But even if he hadn't said so, I would not have killed you."

"What...do you... want...from us!".

"Hahaha! Kid, you don't know how dregs like us survive. It is sort of a rule of ours to not kill any woman or children. You have more value to us left alive after all. Hahaha," the bandit laughed with a creepy smile as he crouched down, bringing his face right in front of the poor child.

Legas gazed at the bandit's smug expression while his mind got submerged into dark, uncharted territory. Numerous untimely and muddled up thoughts pounded the young hunter's head that made a sense of despair firmly take a root in his heart.

But the boy had not given up. Flames of willpower flickered ever so vibrantly within his pitch-black pupils. Shreya's words of advice and the responsibility he was bestowed with, served as the helping hand as Legas desperately tried to hold onto his last wisp of consciousness while he frantically planned a way out of this crisis. Aiming for a last-ditch effort, he slowly and sneakily tried to move his hand, and just as it neared his waist...

"Kyaaaah!"

Screeech!

An ear-piercing shrill scream resounded from the distance within the forests which was followed by a sharp whistle. Colour drained from the boy's face in an instant which had warped into an expression of horror.

"Urghh!", he began to crawl away in a pitiful manner towards the direction of the noise, but couldn't move further than a few inches before his body went limp on the ground, going completely still.

"Hehe! We won't be fooled a second time by you, brat!" the bandit laughed again, patting upon the boy's face in a mocking attempt to console him. "I knew you would resort to a trick like this. You should remember, never expect the same plan to work all the time.

"But, damn, from that scream, I hope he has not damaged the goods," he turned his head, looking into the direction of this scream.

Legas' mind snapped at that moment with the bandit's words serving as the final blow to his awareness, and the boy let go of the threads of rationality that he had strived hard to maintain.

Through the dark bloody bangs on his forehead, Legas' empty, pitch-black eyes gazed at the man crouching right beside with an eerie glint. In specific, he saw the bulge on the brute's throat that bobbed up and down as the man gulped down his saliva, and then...

CRUNCH!

A noise that could initiate a cringe of extreme disgust, echoed throughout the silent forest and the image was so horrific it would make anyone shiver in fright.

"[email protected]%$*&$#@!!!"

The bandit's guttural screams had turned into some kind of a demonic roar that seemed to originate from the cold depths of hell as the man's larynx was ripped off of his throat, destroying his vocal cords.

Desperate reddish aura emerged in an instant from the convulsing man as he tried to pluck out this monster of a child latching onto him. His fingers bore into the boy's skull as if wanting to crush it and shove it away.

Unfortunately, the man was a bit too late in using his abilities and the surprise attack had succeeded magnificently. Although Legas could feel ten bloody holes being drilled into his skull, he felt no pain as if he was in a trance and simply bit harder and...deeper.

"&%$#[email protected]&^"

The brute's face appeared hideous while his bloodshot eyes bulged, seemingly want to pop out of the sockets. An expression of absolute horror was planted on his face, along with the bitter feeling of regret. Never had he expected the miserable wretch to still have enough strength to execute such a beastly move and had relaxed at such a crucial moment.

Not long after, the two of them had switched positions with Legas being on top. The brute tried his hardest to shake off the boy, but the immense agony and trauma made his control over his strength falter. Death could be seen reflected in his petrified eyes.

RIIIIP!

Legas' ripped off a bloody chunk from the man's throat as he picked up the dropped sword. Spiting away the repulsive thing, he shoved the bandit's weapon into the bloody hole of the neck and...twisted it, emitting a horrific grind that ended any of the man's futile resistance.

"Must....protect ...Lora! Kill! I...have to...kill!!"

Picking up his rusty dagger, Legas wandered like a zombie through the trees, repeating the same lines over and over as if he was a broken record. His expressionless face exposed a dreadful set of teeth that dripped with viscous blood, and along with the empty, pitch-black eyes, his ghastly stroll could invoke a primal fear into the hearts of any being that encountered him within this eerie forest.

Walking into the woods, not very far from the corpse of the throat less bandit, a mind-numbing scene could be seen ahead.

In the distance, surrounded by the foliage, the second bandit breathed with fury as he painfully rubbed his deep red eyes. Blood dripped onto the grass from the edges of his weapon and right beside him, a figure was sprawled upon the ground, with the girl's body twitching in grievous pain due to a deep reddish gash running along her petite back.