Roland panted heavily while holding two hands. The two girls looked at him with worry in their beautiful eyes. They offered many times to just alternate between the two of them for transportation, but Roland just wouldn’t have any of it. No matter what, his pride as a man wouldn’t let him to sit back and relax. Besides, this was his escape…not theirs.

“I…uhh…ahh…will…ah…be fine…uhh…” Roland managed to say between deep breaths of air. Eventually when you ran out of magic, you used your physical stamina. After the stamina was exhausted, your life force was forcefully taken. Unfortunately, his skills took stamina instead of magic, making that much faster to deplete. Thankfully, his abuse of the unstable [Shadow Step] wasn’t that great yet. This didn’t stop him from feeling like he would be better off dead, however. That, and his class was definitely not helping him in any way. Anyone ever hear of a rogue or thief who could travel great distances in an instant from the beginning? No? Exactly.

“Are you sure Jake? I don’t mind just travelling between me and Christina.”

“I’m fine…” Roland caught his umpteenth wind. “Look, see that dot in the distance? That’s the next city. We are about 50km out…I can take it.”

But you are the one who is slowing us down…Christina swallowed the sentence in her mind. Not even yesterday he was telling the two of them to not slow him down. Oh, the irony.

After they left the forest around the castle-city, they came upon an open plain that stretched as far as the eye can see and probably beyond. Thankfully, after the first 20km, the inquisition force needed stop for some reason or another. This let the trio get a much larger lead than they would have been able to get if they were still being followed. After 60km, they finally couldn’t see the inquisition anymore, so they resumed flashing, disappearing, and warping on the road. There were even a couple times that Roland fainted from over use of his unstable skill and had to be carried secretly. After all, with a plain such as this, everything looks the same, right?

Roland staggered for a little while before Jessica insisted on a rest. With great reluctance, he finally collapsed onto the ground and laid still…seemingly passed out. His insides were a mess, while his mana was fluctuating wildly again. This brought him no small amount of pain.

The two girls looked at each other and giggled. “This counts as him sleeping, doesn’t it?” Jessica asked with a sly grin.

“Totally does.” Christina replied with an equally sly smile.

“Well it was a tie after all…even though you cheated.” Jessica said.

“Please, we both know that your [Illusion Road] ignores all obstacles in its path, whereas I need to manually dodge them. How is that fair?” Christina said.

“Hmm so a tie then?”

“A tie indeed.”

Both girls look at Roland lying down on the grass without a care in the world…and smiled softly as they moved closer…

***

Roland woke up feeling strangely refreshed for some reason. All of the exhaustion he felt was gone, like it was never there in the first place. He slowly got up but was shoved back down onto the grass by the two beauties who were lying next to him.

"Relax the Royal Inquisition is far behind us. We have a few days' lead already" Jessica spoke up.

"We need all of the time we can get." Roland looked into the distance and saw the dot that was the next town. "We're almost there so lets just get it over with."

He sat up once again and they started their four-legged race once more until they arrived at the fortified city. With every shadow step he did, he felt something wrong inside him. Each use was slowly tearing away at something and the fluctuations were becoming unstable. His mind was not only growing weary but the hellfire in his heart was slowly becoming rampant.

After a few hours they arrived at the fortified city, only to see wanted posters of them posted on a signboard at the gates. With this, they would have to skip this city and keep going forward without rest.

"I thought you said that we had a few days' lead?" Roland cursed at the girls. They both looked elswhere in the plains, finding the grass particularly interesting for some reason.

"Relax, look over there." Jessica pointed by the gates at a carriage that was standing by. "I remember that carriage was the lead in the convoy. I don't think they would leave it there as a sentry, and instead leave a different one. They are probably taking a break at this city."

Christina nodded and added, "Also-" she pointed up at the orange tinted sky "It's dusk. They aren't going to continue marching into the night, whereas we can with just the three of us. We can have quite a large lead by the time they wake up."

Roland had to admit that they had a point. He closed his eyes and resolved himself to bear with his internal issues during the trek. "Fine. Lets leave when night falls. We're going to have to sneak around this city and go to the next one. We need to head northeast for about eighty kilometers."

The two girls cringed a little after hearing what he said.

"Ugh...thats far." Christina groaned. Unlike Jessica's illusion road, she had to use stamina for her skill, much like Roland. "Hey Jess, can't you go farther than two kilometers with each jump?"

"Hmm...." Jessica thought for a moment. "...I can but you wouldn't like the cost that would incurr for us. Right now, they are tracking us, but don't know where we went since we have been using low-energy hops. Jake and Your skills use stamina while mine uses mana, and mana is easily traceable. I've been keeping it at two kilometers so that we don't give the enemy a magical beacon to follow us by."

That makes sense. Roland thought to himself. Also, since it kept coming up, he decided to tell the two something.

"Alright girls listen, can you please stop calling me Jake? My name is Roland." He said flatly. "I don't know how you two know me and quite frankly I don't really care right now. However, you've been pissing me off for a while now by calling me that. So dont, got it?"

The two paused and looked at him. Roland? They knew that something was different but didn't expect him to be a completely different person. In a split second they backed away from him in unison.

"You arent...Jake?" Christina said hesitantly, while Jessica simply stared at Roland with narrow eyes.

Roland looked at the two and sighed. "Technically I am Jake, so yes...Look, It's a long story and we don't have the time for-"

"Then. Make. Time." They coldly replied.

"Fuck off. I don't need to explain my fucking life story to some girls I've never even met." Roland began but he was immediately cut off by an aura so cold that it stopped his internal mana from fluctuating briefly. It even seemed to be scared.

The girls walked up to him and slowly said: "You never met us?" Christina and Jessica paused.

"You really think that you haven't met us...that we are strangers..." Jessica said sadly. "You are so far from the truth that it might as well be the polar opposite."

Christina lifted him by the collar of his shirt and looked him dead in the eye. Her eyes lost of all expression before Roland saw...it was fear. There was a primal fear in her eyes. As soon as he noticed, he saw two tears fall down her cheeks as she simply stared at him. That stare said more than any words could ever say.

What does she think of me to bring out such pure, raw emotion in her eyes. Such sorrow and frustration...

"You've saved my life...Roland. You've saved both of us." Christina slowly said. "You saved me physically and Jessica emotionally. Without you in our lives, we would have long been gone."

"We would have forever stayed behind in that bunker." Jessica added on. Her eyes showing just as much emotion and grief as Christina.

The two girls looked at eachother and nodded. "We honestly can't live without you, and nothing else matters for us...so please don't ever say something so sad ever again. Promise us."

Roland looked at the two girls' ernest confessions and tried recalling Jake's life again. He felt some resistance as he clawed at the memories to come to him. He kept going, and going. The headache becoming magnitudes worse than he's ever felt, not giving up until...something broke.

"AAAAHHHHH!" Roland knelt on the ground. His mind bracing itself against the torrent of information flooding from his soul. The two girls swooped in and caught him, looking at him worringly. His internal mana fluctuated dangerously high and with an extreme intensity when everything calmed down at once.

"...Christina.....Jessi-ca?" Roland muttered before fainting.

Alarmed, Christina felt his pulse and found it was weak, but there. His breathing was also shallow. He needed medical attention now, Royal Inquisition be damned. Chrsitina looked at Jessica.

"He needs help Jess. He's getting warm to the touch."

Jessica looked at him sadly and knew that if they made the jump to the next city, they would get swarmed with soldiers soon after.

"...Fuck! Alright Fine! Get ready for combat Christie. We may be jumping into the lion's mouth here." She cursed. This would definitely cause no small amount of issues in the near future. "After I do this, carry me too. It's going to be up to you to get us to a safe place." Jessica groaned.

She focused within her and summoned out an almost translucent energy into being this wasn't mana but rather her life force. It took a tremendous energy to shatter space in a short time. She gathered all of the elements around her and focused them into a single point with her essence. Slowly, ripples could be seen on the grass around them as fluctuations got stronger and stronger in their surroundings. You could see Jessica's eyes start to become bloodshot as the stress on her body was visible to the eye. Blood trickled down her cheek from her eyes and nose shortly after. Christina looked off to the side and saw the lesser knights start to swarm out of the gate, banner in hand.

"Jess hurry the fuck up! The knights are here!" Christina yelled.

"You think this is fucking easy? Breaking space isnt exactly a walk in the park-!" She paused as she added even more force into the point of energy. Slight cracks then started to appear before her. "Almost there! Hold them off for me."

Christina grabbed her sword and brought it down onto the ground. [JUDGEMENT!] Immediately, spikes of various sizes spread out like a lotus flower around them. "Are you fucking done-"

Space in front of Jessica shattered as she yelled at Christina. "GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!"

Jessica felt vertigo as all of her mana and stamina was spent, causing her to fall to the ground. The act of using life force instead of mana for a spell would kill a normal mage, regardless of their class. Only the most stalwart of mages would even attempt to use it after years of planning and dozens of precautions. The fact that she used it without hesitation spoke volumes about how she truly felt about the two next to her.

Christina used a physical strength enhancement and grabbed the falling Jessica and lying Roland. She shifted them into a more comfortable holding position and jumped into the portal with the knights mere steps behind her. Once on the other side, she dropped the two immediately and slashed at the portal with her blade coated in aura. This caused the portal to collapse into a flurry of mana and unstable energy. Christina ducked down and covered the two unconsious people before the explosion hit.

BOOM!

The three went flying together but Christina was holding onto the other two, making herself land first to take the majority of the impact. Her vision flickered but she gathered her wits in a few seconds.

Can't pass out yet, these two come first. She entrusted me with our Roland and herself...our family comes first.

Shakingly, she tried standing up but failed and collapsed a few times. She recalled her deceased father who was ex pararescue for the airforce. His father's unit had a slogan that she wanted to live by.

Christina grit her teeth. For them...I'll go through anything for the two of them. Hell or HIGH WATER...!

With a sheer force of will, she slowly stood up with her legs shaking. Her vision flickering with stars, threatening to black out.

This I do-

She breathed in after locking out her legs to stand.

So they may live...

She steeled her will and took a few deep breaths to collect herself. Still shaking, she grabbed the arms of the two unconsious people, put them over her shoulders, and limped toward the city...

Hang on you two I'll keep you safe no matter what-