With a shriek of a Shaolin fighter, Osip delivered the first well-directed strike to the guard’s pressure point. He tried to dodge the next one when he realized that the blows were too weak. Osip wasn’t strong enough to fight with him. The guard knocked him down and began to pound Osip with his huge fists. All poor Osip could do was to cover his head with his hands and shout for help. Unfortunately, his group was in no hurry to join the fight, and Kyon couldn’t possibly get to him.

The guard spared no effort. He kept thrashing Osip until the latter stopped showing any signs of life. Osip fainted, and it saved his life. Babil's angry watchdog slowly rose and went to help his brothers-in-arms, who were currently unsuccessfully trying to catch Kyon.

Kyon ran of his explosives and had to find a way to the nearest bucket with amber stones. There were three men on his way: the two brothers and John the Bitten-off-Ear.

The ugly thugs were trying to catch the nimble guy, like wolves chasing a rabbit. They were yelling angrily, contradicting each other: «Freeze, asshole!»... «If you stop, we might spare you the pain!» ... «Fuck! My ear... you're dead!»

With little wiggle room, Kyon managed to get past three big guys and grab a bucket of amber stones. He infused them with Synergy and launched a handful at his pursuers.

The brothers burst into malicious laughter:

«Ha-ha-ha, just look at him! The boy is raving mad! Rest in peace, buddy.»

The small stones weighed almost nothing. They couldn't do any harm. Or so it seemed…

*B-O-O-O-O-OOM*

A deafening roar shook the tiny cave. Everyone but Kyon, who had covered his ears, was shell-shocked. The injuries were minimal, but the noise and effect of surprise disoriented the three of them.

Kyon rushed forward, delivering a heavy blow to one of the brothers’ solar plexus, holding a stone in his fist for greater effect. The man fell on the floor, trying to take a breath. His diaphragm was paralyzed and didn’t let the lungs open.

The second brother bounced off, his head ringing. John was swinging the pickaxe like a madman, trying to hit the blurry outline of the boy, when Kyon deftly rolled on the ground, avoiding the dangerous piece of iron, and punched the shell-shocked warden in the leg.

«AAAAAAAAH!» - One-eared John screamed his bloody head off when his knee bent backward.

As the miners watched Kyon perform the stunts, doing away with the thugs, their jaws dropped to the floor. At first, he seemed to be lucky, but soon his smooth and unpredictable actions went beyond their imagination! Many of them started to doubt if he was a human at all. The main supporter of this theory was the witness of the weird things that had happened to Kyon.

The guard stopped punching Osip and ran up to one of the brothers, who had already come to his senses. They both took out their pickaxes and swung them menacingly, approaching Kyon.

Babil and the two men he had assigned to block the way were shocked by what they saw. The warden ordered in a trembling voice:

«Get rid of the dickhead! I'll wait here!»

By then, four attackers had been crippled. There remained another four and Babil, the big mean prick.

To avoid problems in the future, Kyon had to defend himself without killing anyone. That’s why he didn’t take the pickaxe from John the Bitten-off-Ear, also known as John the Inward Knee. Instead, he barricaded himself behind the rock with a pile of amber stones which he had to use right away as two thugs were already approaching him. The rest of them were still far away.

«Go to hell!» - The second brother yelled at the top of his lungs when Kyon’s well-aimed shots reached the target. Adrenaline was pumping in his blood, he could barely feel any pain. Finally, he was at an arm's length, swinging his pickaxe to crush Kyon’s skull with a single blow when Kyon did a sliding tackle and, with an accurate quick blow, hit him right in any man’s weakest point.

«Oh...» - The miners, who were afraid to breathe until now, reflexively grabbed their precious balls. They could physically feel that hellish pain. The most impressionable among them collapsed on the spot.

A second before the second brother’s balls got crushed, a huge amber stone hit the remaining guard in the hip, thrusting him aside.Then all of a sudden, Kyon appeared out of nowhere and tried to deliver another blow! If the guard had grabbed Kyon by the hand, he would have finished him off, but the damned trickster quickly turned away and broke into a run…

Babil was scared out of his wits. He didn’t see it coming. Just when he thought that enough was enough, that he’d better skedaddle before things went south, someone roughly shoved him between the shoulders, sending him crashing to the floor. Before he reached the ground, Babil found out that Mob had come to Kyon’s rescue.

Two thugs were trying to help the guard chase the young miscreant when they heard their leader squeal like a pig and instinctively turned around. They froze with their pickaxes in the air when they saw Mob rushing at them like a furious boar. At the next moment, suffocating weakness swept over them. Everything went dark before their eyes...

Mob was moving twice as fast as anyone else with the help of pure energy. The thugs were for him like flies without wings.

Before the guard who was chasing Kyon knew it, he was taking a nap with his companions.

In the end, there were ten bodies lying on the ground. One of them, battered and bruised, belonged to Osip... No, wait, a couple of miners were lying unconscious on the sidelines, but no one had hurt them. It was something else. Those standing nearby turned out to be tougher, they were only at a loss for words. Kyon had survived! He had defied the system and successfully avoided the consequences!

Kyon finally took a breath. A smile of joy lit up his face. He had fought off nine thugs at once! Well, almost at once. Actually, his chances were slim. If the cutthroats had rushed at him all together, he wouldn't have survived. Luckily for Kyon, the idiots attacked him in small packs like in some stupid action movie.

Earlier, Mob had checked in the mercury mirror the working area of the 9th group and found several points-wardens in the place where they weren’t supposed to be.

Yesterday Mob overheard a conversation about Kyon's card tricks while he was handing out bag lunches. It was not hard to guess that the horde of big guys wasn’t there to treat Kyon to tea and buns.

So, Mob rushed to Kyon’s rescue as fast as he could to impress the woman he loved who held the boy dear for some reason. And he did protect the boy! However, something just didn’t feel right... He did away only with four of them, the rest were unconscious when he arrived. Mob felt something fishy was going on.

He shook off his hands and threw a suspicious look at Kyon who casually dropped a stone.

«What the hell has happened here?» - Mob growled menacingly, glaring at the unconscious bodies. Then he noticed eight more dumbfounded miners, who had finally summoned up the courage and began to crawl out of the corners.

Kyon plaintively mumbled in response:

«They had conspired to steal my money, but I was lucky to hold on for a while.»

Mob winced at the crystally honest look in Kyon’s eyes and yelled:

«Good luck, you say? Do I look like an idiot?»

Kyon shook his head:

«No, you look like my savior…»

«Hmm, what should I do now...» - Mob quickly checked each body’s vital signs. - «We need to get them to the hospital at once. You are coming with me, boy...» - He took out his sound transmitter.

{They are all alive, and most importantly, it’s not me who has to report for the accident.} - Mob planned to dump all the responsibility on Byron.

Without a moment's hesitation, Kyon went to Babil.

«Why do your subordinates throw a massacre here!? Come here at once, fucking leader!» - Mob was yelling at someone in the sound transmitter, swearing and arguing…

Meanwhile, Kyon cleaned out Babil's pocket, where he was lucky to find a big wad of cash, which he readily added to his belongings. Then he dragged the fat man to the rest of the bodies that underwent the same procedure. His looting brought him in total 352 thousand rupees. In a few minutes, Kyon had become 390 thousand rupees richer, which would have taken him 11 years of honest work, in the best case scenario.

As soon as Kyon was done with the sixth body, Mob came up to him. He ran his fingers through his hair and said quietly:

«Alright, boy. Look here. You will tell Martha it was me who took care of everything. Make her believe that you were in mortal danger. Do you understand me? By the way, this story deserves a little embellishment, don’t you think?»

Kyon nodded:

«No problem.»

Mob sneered. Then he decided to inspect the pockets of his subordinates and make a quick buck, but he was a bit too late. When he found nothing, Mob frowned in disgust and spat:

{Ugh, damned peasants. So much for being a warden.}

Of course, theft was strictly forbidden, but it was an opportunity too good to miss.

Kyon could hardly keep a straight face. It turned out, the miners were given the currency of the mine to buy something or exchange it for money.

Mob appeared to detest the lower class, and Kyon was no exception. He was being kind to Kyon only for Martha’s sake.

Soon, Byron showed up.

«Fucking shit!» - He had no other expression in his vocabulary at the sight of the bodies lying on the ground. His eyes darted over Kyon - thank goodness, the kid was fine - the next moment, Byron rushed to Osip who still showed no signs of life.

«Ugly bastards! Why did they do this?» - Byron glared at the rest of the bodies, wishing to make mincemeat of them. With an effort and will power, he suppressed his anti-humanistic impulse.

Mob gave Byron a shove in the shoulder:

«Your incompetence has led to the bloodbath your subordinates arranged here. Fortunately, no one died, or you would have to deal with that... It’s all your fault, and it’s your responsibility to appoint the new wardens. These penniless sacks of meat and bones are no longer able to perform their duties.»

Byron nodded humbly. He didn’t even think to deny his guilt. As a leader, he had to see it coming. He was willing to take all the responsibility on himself:

«I’ll take care of it.»

They heard barking outside the narrow passage, and then the huge black dog ran into Osip’s working area. Bob appeared a few seconds later, out of breath. He had been informed about a strange gathering of wardens in one place. Before Bob could catch his breath, he was out of it again, this time because of what he saw:

«What... What’s happened here?»

Mob's mind was reeling, so he just waved him off:

«Ask fewer questions! We must take them all to the hospital!»

Byron exchanged a few words with the miners and regretted it at once. The fools were not making any sense. They kept saying that Kyon was inhuman, that he had beaten all those guys by himself, that Mob came up only at the end of the show. It was pure nonsense.

Byron, Bob, and Mob hauled up three unconscious bodies each, squabbling non-stop. Rogash took the last troublemaker by the collar and obediently scurried after his master, ploughing the ground with Babil’s face. Kyon hastily hid his backpack in a safe place and followed them. The loaded company went to the hospital, leaving the bewildered miners behind.

«First you're late for work, then you beat up a bunch of wardens... What's wrong with you?» - Bob continued to pry, feeling deeply annoyed. The guard's hand kept getting him in the face.

«Chill out! If need be, we will write in the report that they battered each other. The next auction is only for the 3rd ranking slaves, so they were trying to get downgraded...» - Mob waved him off again to finish this pointless conversation.

«It's not even funny! Damn it, I wish I had your fucking problem-solving skills!…»

Byron lagged behind those two, quietly asking Kyon about what had happened. When he found out that they had held him up on purpose, Byron angrily clenched his fist. Someone's unlucky elbow joint crunched. Byron looked at the body in panic but breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it wasn't Osip.

Mob had called Martha well in advance, so the doctor was anxiously preparing to receive the battered patients. The three men barged into the hospital with bodies on their backs. The dog was dragging one on the floor. Kyon was wrapping up the procession on foot.

Martha got flustered and began to give out instructions. She gave Kyon an icy stare and turned to attend to the patients. Mob and Bob did the nursing job. Under Martha’s orders, they obediently ran back and forth, bringing in tools, bandages, ointment…

{I’ll deal with… with the killer later.} – Martha thought to herself along the way.

But Kyon wasn’t a fool. He immediately noticed a change in her mood: {Did... did she work it all out?}

While Martha was examining the next patient, she asked Mob what had happened. He pointed at Kyon and stuck out his chest proudly:

«These assholes attacked Kyon because they had lost in the card game. The boy was lucky I was there... Ask him what happened then.»

Mob thought Martha would get interested in the situation, and he would be her hero, but she let it go and didn't ask anything more. She kept examining the patients.

Mob sighed sadly. Women were too hard to read.

Martha had to suppress the impulse to examine the boy, too. She was too angry with him, so angry that she even caught herself thinking that she wouldn’t mind if the little rascal had been punched in the brawl at least once. But the next moment, Martha was already scolding herself for being too cruel.

The patients were badly injured. Martha wondered why they did not give up, why they attacked the powerful supervisor.

{Have they all gone crazy to attack Mob?}

Two patients came to their senses. One of them whined in pain, the second muttered something incoherent, swaying in bed from side to side: «What did I do to deserve this?... Gods, how is it my fault...?»

When Bob did everything he could, he said goodbye to Martha and returned to his post. He told Mob to join him, but the latter waved him off yet again.

«Screw you! Next time, you will do my hours! Just try weaseling out of it!»

Byron stayed in the hospital for a while until Martha gave him a sign that everything was all right, he could go. They would talk later.

Meanwhile, Kyon had been musing when he could have messed up. He had left no evidence, had he?

{It’s just bad luck... I have to act decisively now.}