Chapter 20

Looking For Revenge

Back at the mayor’s residence, the guards were still somewhat shaken over what they had gone through. Never had any of them imagined that someone would not only be crazy enough to actually attack them, but live to tell the tale. Since they had numerous armed sentries patrolling almost every possible place, most of the attacks to the area where the mayor lived at were stopped at the outer wall. If anyone actually managed to get inside, it usually didn’t take long for them to get caught.

However, now they had met someone who had managed to actually leave them as the losers. It was a tough thing to swallow for people who had been enjoying a perfect win record so far.

One of the guards, Berdo, a male dwarf, had never expected something like that to ever happen to them. Ever since he was a little child, he had been taught the importance of weaponry in war. The general rule was that the side that had more of the better guns would win easily. This worldview had been shattered in one day. Now the dwarf could only hope that he wouldn’t have to go through anything like that again.

“Goddamn it all… What a freaking mess this has become,” Berdo muttered to himself as he lit himself a cigar and puffed some smoke from it. “Maybe I should look for another job? I hear it’s pretty nice in the Eastern Continent in more than one way…”

The dwarf’s musings had taken his attention so much that he didn’t notice another guard, an elf by the name of Lyandel, sneak up behind him. The elf was grinning as he got close to his colleague, before enacting his plan.

“INTRUDERS! THE INTRUDERS ARE HERE! SOUND THE ALARM!” Lyandel yelled right into Berdo’s ear, causing the dwarf to fall to the ground from shock before scrambling to ready his rifle to defend himsel.

Upon seeing who it was that had scared him, Berdo’s face turned into a furious scowl aimed at the prankster. This was a common occurrence between the two of them, where the elf would do his best to scare the dwarf ever since they were kids.

“Dammit, Lyan! How many times do you have to keep pulling that shit on me!?” Berdo yelled angrily at Lyandel, who was busy laughing at his friend’s expense. “What does it take to stop you from doing this!? Death!?”

“Are you talking about me or yourself?” the elf asked with a smirk.

“Pick your choice… At the rate you’re going, I’m sure I’m going to have a heart attack one of these days,” the dwarf said as he got back up. “Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you? This shit you keep pulling isn’t even funny.”

“Oh come on, you gotta lighten up a bit!” Lyandel cheerfully said to the dwarf and patted him on the back. “This job might pay pretty good, but everything else about it sucks, so we might as well try to have some fun. What’s the harm in that?”

“Perhaps the fact that we just had people infiltrate this place and leave a few of us dead! How you can be all chipper and shit after all that is a goddamn mystery to me!” Berdo answered angrily. “Do you have any idea what you could have caused if someone else heard your moronic gag!? There would be panic!”

“Meh. I’d say it was worth it just to see your reaction,” the elf said with a shrug, causing the dwarf to sigh. “Anyways, I think I heard you say something about wanting to move to the Eastern Continent?”

“Just a thought that’s worth considering. It could be a change for the better, after all,” Berdo replied. “While I can get work that pays well around here, what’s the point? All the fat bastards in charge take all the good stuff for themselves while we are barely left with anything. I hear people working for the higher ups there at least get to enjoy themselves.”

“Yeah, I hear the prostitution is really great around there. Any possible taste can be satisfied, as long as you’ve got the coin,” Lyandel said with a smirk. “That’s the reason you’d like to go, isn’t it?”

“THAT’S NOT IT, YOU ASSHOLE!” the dwarf yelled angrily. “The reason I want to go there is because I’m sick of all the crap I have to deal with around here! Just going couple of feet outside of the town’s limits is practically a gamble with your life, not to mention trying to go any further! To make this just the perfect of shit places to be, now we’ve even got people breaking in here! For the last few years, that had never happened!”

“I know it was a shock and all, but aren’t you exaggerating a bit?” the elf asked. “I mean, I get that they left quite the mess behind, but that was just a case of bad luck for us. Hell, thanks to General Lune, we almost got them. They might have gotten away, but they’ll probably never come back here.”

“Tell that to all the guys that got killed,” Berdo said. “Besides, I wouldn’t talk so highly about that asshole general. His idea to not sound the alarm upon finding out something was wrong might have worked as a means of drawing the people in for an ambush, but it cost the lives of way too many of our own. Not to mention, we didn’t really gain anything from it, did we? With the exception of a few more bodies to bury…”

“That might be true, but try to look on the bright side. At least you’re not in the Northern or Southern Continent,” Lyandel tried to cheer up his friend. “I hear all sorts of nasty stuff happens around those areas.”

“If that is supposed to brighten up the mood, it didn’t work,” the dwarf said with a grumble. “Of course even this crap hole would seem like a paradise when compared to those places.”

“Hey, just trying to put things in perspective,” the elf said with a shrug as he began to walk away. “Anyways, I’m gonna go back to my post. But if you’re serious about going to the Eastern Continent, let me tag along. I wouldn’t mind a change in scenery.”

As Lyandel disappeared behind a corner, Berdo went on to resume his watch. Suddenly, there was a scream that came from where the elf had gone to, but the dwarf didn’t bother to go check. His friend was most likely just doing one of his usual pranks anyways.

“Goddamn jackass should grow up already,” Berdo said to himself as he shook his head.

Little did he know that Lyandel was actually laying on the ground with a hole through his gut the size of a fist. The elf had unfortunately come upon a certain pair of intruders that had been sneaking around the area.

“Shit! This went south right from the start!” Ryle cursed as she and Erin were running through the darkness of night. “Why the hell did that guy have to come back at that moment!?”

“I’m more curious as to why no alarm seems to have been raised yet. That dwarf definitely heard that guy’s scream,” Erin said before looking at the key card they got from the elf. “Still, at least we now have this.”

The two women made their way to the main gate that would allow them to enter the area. The guards, having not expected another attack so soon, were completely caught off guard and were thus easily taken care of. Erin and Ryle then used the key card they had to open the gate and get inside.

Using the cover of darkness to their advantage, the two infiltrators were able to move around the walled off area with ease. This became a big advantage for them, as they soon started to hear the sound of the alarm blaring. In seconds, the whole place was in complete chaos with guards running around, like a panicked herd of animals.

“Well, there goes our element of surprise,” Ryle muttered. “What do we do now? There are people swarming all around the place.”

“Actually, I think we can use this to our advantage,” Erin suggested, surprising her partner. “They might know that we are here, but nit our exact location. If we play our cards right, we might be able to draw most of them away from the mayor’s home.”

“How are we gonna do that?” the blonde woman asked.

“I’m thinking of it right now… What we need is to create some big diversion to draw their attention. Maybe even several,” the redhead said thoughtfully, before noticing something. There was a car meant for the guards with a couple of gas canisters next to it. “And I think I just got an idea.”

While the two infiltrators were busy plotting their scheme, the town’s mayor had finally decided to come outside and see what the commotion was about. Said man was a rather rotund dwarf dressed in a very expensive bathrobe at the moment. A large cigar was hanging from his mouth, as he ran outside, his face red from anger and exhaustion, not being used to running even a bit.

“The hell is going on here!? You’re running around like a bunch or headless chickens!” the mayor yelled angrily at one of the guards. “Don’t you idiots understand that my very expensive customers pay me to pay you in order to get peace and quiet around here!?”

“Our apologies, sir! But we have intruders here!” the guard answered as he had stopped by the mayor to explain the situation. “We are currently trying to find them, but-”

“No goddamn buts here! I don’t pay you idiots to run around playing grab ass with each other! Do

you have any idea how badly my important friends were scared by what happened earlier today!?” the mayor kept ranting. “If this keeps up, you’ll all be without a job in no time! Unless you want to end up in the slums, you better find those bastards and kill them! Understand!?”

Before the guard could say anything in response, one of the mayor’s special friends ran up to them. He was a distinguished commander in the military who had decided to take an early retirement after earning more than enough to support himself through his salaries and from pillaging their enemies. Said man was now barely dressed up, as he was approaching the mayor.

“General Malfer! I’m so sorry about the noise, but I assure you that my men are-” the mayor began to make excuses to his friend, when said man cut him off.

“I don’t want to hear your bullshit right now, you fat pig!” Malfer said angrily. “Do you have any idea how badly you have messed up!?”

“W-Well, I know things look bad, but-”

“LOOK BAD!? If only that was the case!” the general continued to rant. “While your people have been uselessly running around, someone set my house on fire! What are you going to do about it!?”

“I-I-I am terribly sorry! I will make sure that the situation is handled right away!” the mayor said before turning his attention back to the guard he had been berating earlier. “YOU! Get some people together and go put out the fire at General Malfer’s house! Then I want you to go and-”

Before he could finish giving his orders, another one of the mayor’s customers ran up to him. This time it was a female elf that was a famous singer back in the Eastern Continent. After becoming a very rich person, she had taken up quite a few hobbies that most people would frown upon. When this was discovered, she had been forced to run to the Western Continent to escape being targeted by angry mobs of people.

“M-Miss Zaldanas! What a pleasure to see-”

“Don’t even bother with that crap! You promised me that I could live here in luxury and safety from any kind of danger!” the elf yelled, cutting off the mayor. “As if the gunfight earlier wasn’t bad enough, now I’m a victim of an arsonist! You call getting roasted in your own home safety or something!?”

Just as the mayor was about to order some of his guards to go and put out the fire at Zaldanas’s house, more people started to arrive at the scene. All of them were wealthy customers of the mayor and all had the same complaint about their house being on fire. The complaints were so constant that portly dwarf was quickly overwhelmed by them and he soon found himself unable to even give fake condolences to all his “friends.”

Hoping to escape the angry mob of people, the mayor ran back into his own house, praying in his mind that the whole mess would be taken care of before he needed to come back out. As he ran past guards that were in his home, he quickly told them to go outside and help fix whatever was going on there. He was so panicked in giving orders that he didn’t even realize that he was leaving himself unprotected.

Having finally gotten to his room, the dwarf quickly locked the door behind him and put a chair against it, fearing that someone was going to come chasing after him. At that time, he had been thinking about the angry mob that he had just faced, completely forgetting about the intruders, who were already in his room waiting for him.

“You run pretty fast for a fat dwarf, you know?” Ryle called out to the mayor, who turned around to see the blonde woman sitting on his desk with Erin standing next to her. “I gotta say that I didn’t think it would be this easy to get this guy on his own.”

“It was quite easy, actually,” the redhead said. “I could already tell by how luxuriously he was living compared to the normal townsfolk that he appreciated money more than anything. Once you threaten that, you get these people to do pretty much anything you want.”

“W-W-Who the hell are you two!?” the mayor demanded as he tried to back away from the two intruders. “What the hell do you want from me!? Haven’t you already caused enough damage!?”

“We will decide when we’ve done enough. Not you,” Erin said as she took a couple of steps closer to the terrified dwarf. “As for what we want, we want someone. General Lune. Where is he?”

“Not here anymore! Didn’t you notice that none of his people were around when you came in!?” the dwarf yelled. “He and his people took off soon after you left here from your first mess! Go look for him somewhere else, okay!?”

“We want details,” the redhead demanded. “Where exactly did he go? Where can we find him?”

“How the hell would I know!? If I knew where he was going, I’d bechasing after him myself, since the bastard never paid me for all the-”

The mayor’s rant was cut off by Ryle suddenly grabbing him by his throat and slamming his back against a wall. The dwarf nearly wet himself upon seeing the look in the blonde woman’s eyes.

“Let’s get something straight. We don’t give a damn about any deals or grudges that the of you have between each other. You could be disgruntled ex-lovers for all we care. What we want to know is where that bastard Lune is, so we can pay him back for what he did to my brother,” Ryle said with a menacing growl. “Now, tell us. Where. Is. LUNE!?”

“M-Moonstone City!” the mayor answered fearfully. “That’s one of the biggest cities in the continent and it has a large military base there! If there’s any place for you to start looking, that’s your best bet!”

“Alright, we got what we needed. Let’s get going,” Erin said as she began to walk towards the window she and Ryle had used to get inside.

“Hang on! Are we just going to let this bastard go!?” Ryle asked while pointing at the mayor. “While he wasn’t directly responsible, he did assist Lune! The way I see it, he’s just as guilty of his death!”

“True, but he did assist us,” the redhead said with a small smirk. “I think we should return that favor to him by at least dropping him off as we go.”

Outside the mayor’s home, several guards were running around, trying to get the situation under control, when suddenly their employer fell out of a window and smashed into the pavement below. For a moment, all the guards could do was stare at the mayor’s dead body, before they noticed his residence also start burning. The guards soon understood that they no longer had an employer and any riches the dwarf had were most likely going up in flames at the moment.

With the death of the mayor, chaos soon took over, as the guards began to do one of two things. Some fearing what the intruders might do to them began to run away from the area, while others wanted to gain something for themselves began to run into the buildings of the residents, taking anything that was valuable. Some looters even began to attack the mayor’s guests, taking anything that was worth money on them.

On top of the wall surrounding the area, Erin and Ryle were watching the chaos unfold below them. The duo knew that no matter what, there was nothing that could be done to stop the destruction. It was only a matter of time before the regular townspeople found out about the mayor’s death and the crumbling of his guard. This would cause more people to rise up in search of either revenge on the ones that used to stand above them or to get their hands on some of the remaining wealth that could be taken.

“I fear that we might have gone too far here,” Erin said with a frown. “After what happened here, I don’t think this town will ever be able to recover.”

“If you’re feeling bad over what we did, you shouldn’t. This town is getting what it deserves,” Ryle said. “While the regular people weren’t exactly bad, a lot of them were just cowards that hid when things got bad, not even bothering to lift a finger to help those that tried to bring change. The guards working for the mayor and his rich friends were nothing but leeches that used this town to make themselves wealthier, while leaving others to suffer. All I can say is that karma is a bitch and she has finally arrived.”

“...So, are we going after Lune next? Do you know the way to Moonstone City?” the redhead asked as she and the blonde turned around and began to make their way out of the town.

“Yeah. I’ve been there a couple of times on bounty hunting,” Ryle answered. “It’s a nasty place, but one can earn some good money there.”

“By the way, I’m… sorry for what happened to your brother,” Erin said apologetically. “I understand if you blame me for what happened to him and that you don’t want to travel together any-”

The redhead’s apology was cut off by fist that bumped her on top of her head.

“OW! What was that for!?” Erin asked angrily while holding her sore head.

“That’s my line! What the hell gave you the idea that I was blaming you for Zeke’s death at all!? The only one at fault for that is Lune and I’m gonna make sure he pays for what happened to my brother!” Ryle replied angrily. “Besides, I don’t have anything left in this place anymore. Might as well travel with someone I know I can trust.”

“...Thank you. Not just for not blaming me, but for being willing to go with me,” the redhead said with a smile. “It would be nice to finally travel with some company for once.”

“That’s what best friends are for!” the blonde woman said with a grin as she put an arm around Erin’s shoulders. “Now, let’s go find that bastard Lune and make him pay!”

The two ladies headed to the edge of town, where they then began to make way towards their new destination, Moonstone City.