Chapter 24: Gassy Grandpa’s Demise

Trip decided that he since they had not directly used magic in the process of climbing the wall he could tell the man everything. However he still noticed the man’s expression changing a lot when he described what they had done. After Trip had finished telling the old man that had happened the man looked at him in disbelief. The man called Alex back in and then began to speak.

“I must apologise for my previous behaviour, I thought that you were rich children, but it seemed that you really had good intentions when you offered to help. I misinterpreted as you being very arrogant.” The man said “My name is Willis, but everyone calls me Gassy Grandpa. We are like a family here and we are willing to help anyone who is in need of it.”

Trip and Alex were shocked by the man’s sudden change in attitude and decided that they would forget about their previous interactions and use this as a new start. Alex then respectfully said “Willis, ahem Gassy Grandpa. My name is Alex and this is Trip. Let us forget our past interactions and start anew.”

The man seemed pleased with this answer. Gassy Grandpa then spoke again “You seem very capable. I was wondering if you would be willing to travel along with us. With your intelligence it would make us particularly happy.”

Trip looked at Alex and they both had the same thoughts. If they were to travel with these people it would be a huge burden to them. Their training pace would go down; the speed that they travelled at would go down. There was no reason for them to stay other than making them feel a bit better about themselves by helping the people.

Thus Trip could only decline Gassy Grandpa’s request, saying “I apologise, but that was not what we had in mind. Sorry.”

Gassy Grandpa’s eyebrow twitched slightly. Not enough for Alex to notice, but Trip felt a strange pressure coming from him. Gassy Grandpa’s then got on his knees and begged “Please! Please! We need your help!”

For some reason, even though he was on his knees Trip felt as if Gassy Grandpa was standing taller than him.

Suddenly Grelin’s voice appeared within Trip’s head “Trip! Get out of there now, this guy is a mage!”

Trip grabbed Alex and tried to run out of the tent, but by the time they attempted to do so the area around the tent had turned into a thick dirt wall. It made the tent completely dark. Trip realised that Gassy Grandpa was an earth mage, and that he had conjured a dirt dome around the tent.

Trip immediately asked Grelin “How strong is he?”

“I don’t know, but I imagine he should be an intermediate level earth mage.” Grelin responded

Trip decided that they couldn’t just run away from him so he prepared himself to fight. He immediately summoned a water bullet and shot it at Gassy Grandpa. Gassy Grandpa managed to block it with his dirt magic, but the look on his face was full of shock.

“How can you use water magic at such a young age?” He asked

Before any answer could come Alex shot some fire towards the man.

“And you can use fire!?” Gassy Grandpa was incomparably shocked.

Trip and Alex continued to pressure him from both sides, they pushed him back into the wall. Until the man angrily shouted as he shot a heave mud brick towards Alex. The brick went to fast to dodge as Alex was immediately knocked out, leaving him with a serious head wound.

“Haha, you only caught me off guard. Even though you are strong I have much more experience than you!” Gassy Grandpa said

Without Alex’s help Trip kept getting pushed back by Gassy Grandpa. Trip kept getting more and more tired as he was expending a lot of his energy with each attack, whereas Gassy Grandpa only kept getting more and more excited and powerful. Trips was genuinely scared at this point, Alex was probably fine, but if Trip lost the battle now they would both either die or get captured as slaves for this man. After a couple seconds Gassy Grandpa had completely driven Trip into a corner, he then used earth magic to forcefully push Trip’s arms against the wall.

“HAHA! Looks like I got you! Now then…” He looked at Trip with a maniacal look in his eyes “time to teach you some manners.”

He grabbed a strange tool. After further inspection Trip saw that it was a massive double ended saw. Gassy Grandpa walked towards Trip and said “Don’t worry, this won’t kill you.”

He then proceeded to on Trip’s forearm. The saw was blunt and rusty, so it took a while to get through Trip’s skin, but it only hurt more than it would have it was sharp. Trip’s eyes flashed with rage, if this man cut off his hand he would never be able to recover from such an injury. He closed his eyes as he tried to calm down, but he couldn’t think with all the pain from the saw. It hadn’t gotten very deep yet, but it still hurt tremendously. At that point Trip couldn’t take it anymore. A strange light flashed in his eyes, and then his hands started to glow. A string of light exited from Trip’s hands and went right into Gassy Grandpa’s heart. After a second of that Gassy Grandpa fell to the floor, with any life having fled from his eyes. Trip could no longer feel Gassy Grandpa’s soul, it was certain that he was dead.

Trip suddenly felt really sick. As the dirt dome and restraints on his hands broke apart he covered his hands in front of his mouth. Even though it was the correct action to take in this situation Trip couldn’t help but cry and feel incredibly sick at what he had done. He started to breathe really heavily. He started to feel light headed, but he managed to grab a bit of cloth and wrap it around his wound on his arm.

Trip sat there for hours just reflecting his actions. He thought of every action he could have taken to avoid this situation. He was a murderer. That was how he felt. To experience such a thing was not pleasant for a nine year old, and he couldn’t take it. He felt strange how he shed tears over a disgusting old man who tried to torture him. Everything that he had done was completely right and he definitely took the right course of action, and yet he still felt like a bad guy.

When Alex woke up he saw Gassy Grandpa lying on the floor, clearly dead, and Trip shivering in the corner of the tent. It was fairly easily to see what had happened. Alex didn’t know what to tell Trip, he had never killed before so he wouldn’t know how to console someone who has done it for the first time. He grabbed a blanket and threw it over Trip, who wasn’t reacting to anything that Alex did.

After a couple of hours in the tent Alex had found many things. He had found a diary, which explained a lot of things about what had happened. It turned out that Gassy Grandpa was actually an elite mage who worked for the king, but he was dismissed for doing too many horrible things. After that he settled down for a while until the war broke out. In the diary he decided that he would start his own nation with the people he brought along with them. They would settle somewhere in West Hrior and create their own little place. He considered himself king over these people and would kill anyone who was against his rule. Alex was surprised by how clearly the diary explained the man’s life.

Trip had calmed down a bit, and Alex had read the diary to him. He reminded Trip that this man truly deserved to die, and that he had done the people here a massive favour.

Suddenly a man walked into the tent saying “Umm Gassy Grandpa. You missed break…” He suddenly stopped talking after seeing Gassy Grandpa lying dead on the floor. He looked up at Trip and Alex as his eyes teared up “Murder! MURDERERS!” He screamed.

At this point Alex realised that if Trip heard more of this he would become permanently scarred by this moment. However even as he was dragging Trip out of the camp he realised he was already too late. Hundreds of people screamed at them, shouting

“MURDERER! MURDER!” All of them were crying and were looked incredibly depressed.

After they had run an appropriate distance from the camp Alex looked at Trip and felt so bad for him. Trip was in a full state of shock. His face was expressionless, but tears were streaming down his face. Alex ran around trying to find a good shelter dragging Trip around. Eventually he found a nice lake which seemed like a nice place to sleep. He laid down Trip and just starting talking to him. He decided that what Trip needed right now was to be told that he did nothing wrong and that those people were stupid and brainwashed, but no matter what Alex said Trip just didn’t respond. His face remained expressionless with tears on his face. Alex remembered how he felt when he heard that his family died, and remembered how Trip had to take care of him for the whole time. He made a decision that he would take care of Trip.

They then went to sleep. Luckily Trip had more help than just Alex in this case. Grelin had experience with killing someone for the first time and he understood that what happened to Trip was truly very traumatic. Grelin understood how that felt and he also knew how it felt to be insulted and be called a murderer by large collections of people. He was the only person who could understand what Trip was feeling at this point. Throughout the entire night Trip could not sleep, but Grelin stayed awake with him, talking to him about it and explaining things to him. Trip would not recover within a day. He would not recover within two days. He might not even recover in a week. However with the constant mental support from Grelin and Alex he would recover. It would change how he felt about the world and how he saw certain people, but that was a part of growing up. That was what they would have to do now. They would have to grow up because of their surroundings.