“Why am I even doing this?”

She snaps her finger. A few seconds later, a thick dark smoke can be seen rising from the warehouse. The explosive sound of the alarms are alerting everyone to go out of the buildings and secure a safe place. Most of the workers are evacuating while there are few that are part of the security and maintenance team, so they are preventing the fire from spreading to other buildings. She simply watches the chaos unfold from her hiding place. She can see the flicker fire from the warehouse and it is gradually getting bigger while the smoke is getting darker.

“This might be bad for the environment.”

While everyone is busy and confused, Azalea sneaks into the plantation. She quietly slices the window. She casts a floating magic circle where she steps on while in mid-air. She looks around to make sure that there is no one else is inside the plantation. The space inside is wide. It has an exceptionally high ceiling with artificially controlled sunlight. The interior is filled with high-tech equipment made to maintain the artificial environment to raise Lemerus entus.

Hundreds of row of Lemerus entus fills the whole area. Some have flowers that are yet to bloom while others have already been harvested. In one area farther back, some flowers are piled in buckets. Some of the sprouts of this cactus-like plant have also been cut off and laid in a processing room along with the leaves. It seems that the root products laid in another table are lesser in quantity compared to the other parts. On another side, the saplings are being prepared to be planted.

“Wow… I’m feeling envious, these plants are being taken care of quite well…”

She casts several magic circles and then dozens of fireballs lit up around her. She walks down creating a floating magic circle platform for every step. She goes farther inside and notices a camera that is still actively recording. She looks directly at it and smiles before throwing the fireballs in different directions. The fireballs are burning everything that it touches. The machineries are exploding one after another. Sparks and smoke fills her surrounding while she calmly walks out of the plantation.

Outside, the remaining employees that are still close-by are staring at the burning plantation with a confused expression. It was completely fine a while ago. All of a sudden, there are flames everywhere. While they are dazed and puzzled, one man followed by his bodyguards and staff comes running closer to the plantation that is bursting with flames. He looks up the crumbling building with a face burning with rage. He is wearing a white suit with gold embroidery at the cuff and collar, though its elegance has been stained by the dark smoke. His nicely combed black hair is slightly messy at one side. He removes his shades before yelling at the staff following him. The other employees can only watch them meekly. While he is busy being angry, Azalea walks out of the burning plantation building. As soon as someone notices her, everyone’s attention turns to her.

“Who are you?!!” The angry man points at her. “Guards! Arrest that bitch for trespassing and arson!”

Azalea waves and smiles at them before casting a smoke screen and disappearing right in front of them. They are confused and at loss for words. They do not know what to think about the incident. The area is just filled with the sounds of little explosions, the crackling of the burning buildings and the screams of an uncontrollable anger of a certain man.

“Mister Shilan, please calm down.”

“HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CALM DOWN?!!” Veins are seen bulging on his temple and neck. “Do you know how much we’ve lost because of this attack? FUUUCK!!!”

A man carrying a laptop approaches him. “Some camera records have been saved, sir. The security team is now looking for the suspect and then cross match the image in the database.”

“Well, hurry up!”

A few more men joins in, using their laptops that they saved from the fire. They have to look for the image of the suspect, clear the photo, and then find a match to evidently identify them. The process is obviously taking a while but the team is doing their best with whatever they have.

Meanwhile, the fire trucks, ambulance and police cars have arrived. All they can do is minimize the damage, they cannot save any of the burned materials anymore. Fortunately, no employees were injured. However, the boss does not seem to care about that at all.

“Have you found it yet?!” He yells angrily. “Which bastard have the guts to screw me over like this?! Hurry and check the security records!”

“Mister Shilan we’ve found it… erm, her… just one person…”

∞×∞

Seventh day of Sat’xahr, 4043 AOT

Wave 3, Arbhur City Zone-0, Aesbyl Region

Azalea on the run

Days has passed since Azalea burned one of the biggest Lemerus entus plantation in Aesbyl. While on her way down to Wave 4, she also destroyed another small plantation that she happened to pass by. Because of these actions and the new bounty that has been put on her head, the mercenaries that are hunting her are becoming more aggressive in their methods.

“I messed up big time, didn’t I?”

The new bounty is put up by the older brother, Bart Shilan. He is very enraged by Azalea’s attacks on his business, and he is very impatient in taking revenge wanting to get rid of her as soon as possible. Most routes going to the southern border have tightened security and have large number of mercenaries lying in wait to catch her. These circumstances pushes her into a corner, forcing her several times to change her path to get out of the region. Instead of going straight south, she decides to turn around and swiftly make her way towards the eastern border, in hopes to lose everyone tailing her in the process. For this, she moves erratically, going around, back and forth, to confuse her pursuers.

Currently she is stuck running around in Wave 3, after going back and forth from Wave 4 and Wave 3 the past days. She managed to split up the group of mercenaries that has been chasing her so far. However, that much is still not enough to make her situation a little easier.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Azalea, with her spear following close behind, grumbles while running and jumping from roof to roof.

Gunshots echoes in the slum in the middle of a very clear day. A hoard or armed men and women are running and shouting in the middle of a busy street.

“Bitch’s up in the roof!”

“Please don’t shoot random-”

“Shut the fuck up! I’ll beat yo’ ass up myself!”

“S-sor-”

“Get the fuck out of the fucking way!”

The civilians who does not want to get caught up in the violent chase just runs and finds a corner to hide into. Unfortunately, there are still a few who gets injured in the scuffle.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Azalea turns to face her opponents. “Can you chill? How about we take this on a much larger open space?”

Someone attacks with a Ki-imbued spear from behind. She casually blocks it with a magic barrier which quickly shatters as she steps away from the spear’s trajectory. The opponent’s swing hits nothing but air which throws him off-balance. She then follows up with ice magic to immobilize the attacker.

“Such impatience.”

“Ain’t ya’h full of yourself?!” The man smirks.

While Azalea is trying to interpret what that means, the sky suddenly flickers a red-orange color. She turns to check on the cause, and her eyes widens at the sight of dozens of fireballs falling from the sky.

“Are you crazy?!! DO YOU WANT TO BURN EVERYTHING HERE?!!”

That many fireballs cannot be casted by just one mage, after all they are not her. It is a coordinated attack by multiple mages. They are using their numbers to corner her. But if they think that she cannot counter this many fireballs, then they sure got it all wrong. Azalea casts spell and bubbles starts forming from thin air. There are the same number of bubbles as there are fireballs falling down.

“The fuck??”

“Bubbles against fire?”

They start chattering and cackling.

“They’ll just pop.”

“So fucking dumb!”

Azalea then moves the bubbles to clash with the fireballs before it hits and burns anything. Just when they thought that the magic bubbles would pop and evaporate, it engulfed every fireball that comes in contact with it. Azalea closes her hand tightly and magic circles glows around the bubbles for a second, then they instantaneously shrinks containing the fireballs inside.

“W-what?”

“How?”

“You’re not in my level. What makes you think your fireballs can burst my bubbles?”

While Azalea’s attention is focused on the bubbles, the man behind her has successfully melted the ice on his feet that got him stuck there. Once he gets the chance, he stabs Azalea with the spear from behind.

“Die, bitch!”

Azalea looks at the tip of the spear’s blade that pierced her the left side of her back protrude out of her abdomen. Despite the attack, she endures the pain so she can concentrate on her magic.

“I didn’t know you wanted attention that much.” She says as the bubbles continues to shrink with the fireballs. She then casts another spell. “I don’t really have time for you. Ice Prison.”

The man who is caught off guard and cannot use his weapon that is still stuck, does not have time to evade. He did not think that she can still attack him in that situation. In a split second, they just watch the ice form around him confining him entirely inside.

“Continue! Attack!” Someone commands.

“Take advantage of every opening!”

She pulls the spear out and throws it away. Blood pours out as more small magic circles appear and disappear around the wound. She makes it seem like it does not bother her as she stands confidently above them.

“It’s okay… it will just heal…”

Several men springs up with their weapons to attack. Bullets and Ki beams rain on her. She blocks it with a magic barrier but some of them broke through and scraped her. She clicks her tongue as she analyzes the movements of the enemies around her. She casts another spell over the magic bubbles and suppressed fireballs. Something glows above before she snaps her fingers. Steam explodes all around obscuring everyone’s vision.

The mages quickly casts a wind spell to clean the white smoke in the area. Even though they have anticipated that something like a smoke screen might happen so they came prepared, still once it is cleared, the target is nowhere to be found. They can only see some burn markings on the place she used to stand on. The roof has been strangely damaged but it did not crumble. The man that was caught inside the ice is now free and shivering on the ground.

“What the hell happened?”

“Stop looking like confused monkeys! Move your asses! Search the area!”

∞×∞

When Azalea activated her magic to create the steam, she also casted a low-tier explosive spell on her place. She used the explosion to propel herself away from the area of conflict as fast as possible. She is not sure if she miscalculated due to the sense urgency in that situation, but it turns out that she has thrown herself up too high. It is fine that because of that, the mercenary group did not notice her trick but she also accidentally made the management of her fall more difficult. She needs to cushion her fall with magic so that she would not get hurt as much. She uses wind magic to slow down her fall. However that wind magic also destroys the place of her fall. She carefully manages the trajectory of her fall to make sure she does not get any innocent people and property in trouble.

While struggling mid-air, an old dilapidated house catches her eyes. It is close her point of fall. If there is any place that looks like it would not inconvenience anyone, it looks like that place is the most suitable. She propels herself slightly to fall on the roof. She hits a weak spot on the roof and breaks through it, falling right inside the old house.

“If someone is living in this place, they’d surely beat me up.” She groans as she tries to get herself up.

As soon as she stands, she falls back down on her butt. She looks around while pressing on the wound in her abdomen. Larger wounds takes more time to heal. That fall also filled her body with new scratches. Thankfully, she did not break any of her bones.

The interior of the house has lingering musty and dusty smell. The floor is filled with filth and trash. The wooden furniture inside and piles of what seems to be old newspapers and boxes have grown molds. There are broken bottles, crashed cans, and a lot of wrappers lying around. On the dusty scrapped table are different kinds of alcoholic beverages, some are yet to be opened and consumed. While observing the place, she continues on her way out. She passes by some broken chairs, plates and scattered utensils. And on the couch, she notices something ominously familiar.

“This house haven’t really been abandoned…”

She looks down at what appears to be a human skeleton lying on the couch. It has rotted away and has dried. It is impossible to know what might have caused its death. The only thing she can think of after looking at the house is that it has not been touched for years. Whoever this person is, he died without anyone knowing about it.

“Sorry, I put a hole on your roof. As an apology, I’ll bury you properly.”

Azalea dug a grave just outside the dilapidated house. She knows nothing about the skeleton she just buried, so she cannot put any name of sort on the grave. She just put some large stone over the grave as a mark. Afterwards, she only stared at it while the sun goes down. This is the least she can do for the dead.

Somehow, what she saw inside that house reminds her of how she used to live with her master. The piled up empty bottles and cans of alcohol among the various filth that are scattered on the floor, is just like how her master’s house would be every time she or the merchant is not around to clean. This scene is heavily nostalgic.

She then decides not to stay in that place for too long. She moves out as soon as the night falls. The bounty hunters are definitely looking for her and they will soon catch up if she becomes too complacent. As she thinks of the recent bouts, she concludes that another battle in the residential parts of the slums would be a disadvantage for her. After what happened earlier, it seems that she is the only one concerned about the safety of the by-standers. In worst case scenario, they might even use the innocent people as hostages or deliberately harm them to trap and capture her. It is better to move in deserted areas and then find a way cleanly get rid of her pursuers once and for all.

It has been almost a week of running, chasing, and fighting. Her armor has gained more scratches and tears on it. She is hoping that these mercenaries would get tired first with their almost unending restless battles, but these hopes remained unanswered. These groups are more organized than she expected. Perhaps, she has underestimated them. She is the only one who is growing weary of these endless confrontations.

In an open space just outside of Wave 4, Azalea deliberately takes a break knowing that the mercenaries are just right at the tip of her tail. This might as well be a good spot to finally settle their score.

She takes a deep breath. “I’m tired.” Her eyes are lifeless and are no longer smiling. She does not have any reason to continue wearing that mask and keep up with the act.

Once again she has been surrounded. These past few days, she has noticed that there has always been almost the same numbers that are chasing after her, but not always the same faces. They must have assigned look outs in paths that she most likely would take, that is how they are able to find her whereabouts so fast. They must also be rotating their resting hours. When one group gets tired, another group takes over. That is how they are able to come after her relentlessly.

“They’ve surely have used their overwhelming numbers against me… quite remarkably.”

She activates Pulse to highest sensitivity to get a proper sense of her enemies and their positions. These past weeks her senses have gone haywire because of the never-ending perception of imminent threat. It makes her alert but tire her all the more. The influx of information is mind-blowing. She is extremely sleepy but it does not allow her to fall asleep.

“This is… mind-numbingly exhausting…”