“Everyone out! You’re in grave danger!”

Almost two hundred heads fell to silence as they turned and stared at him with confused looks.

Est was a fool.

Why would they listen to a random man yelling?

The people returned to their conversations as they waited for their food and doom.

Est ground his teeth. He was going to use something he had always hated to draw attention to.

“My name is Estelon Cruces Chan, grandson of Cal and Nila Cruces, son of—” he stopped himself, “listen to me. You’re about to be served food laced with Blissful Purpose!”

That got the Earth-born humans’ attention.

It started slowly, but became a stampede as they rushed for the exits.

Those from other worlds, human or otherwise were slower, but they too ran out, urged on by their friends or instinctive fear.

Est may have had something to do with the latter.

Though the effort cost him judging by the trickle of blood flowing out of his nostrils to collect in his helmet.

He had to retract the faceplate to wipe his lip and mouth with a gloved hand.

While the last of the people exited several hard-eyed men and women emerged from the kitchen area. They were dressed in regular clothing, but each held a weapon.

There was no preamble.

No threats.

No words.

The group rushed Est.

Some went right at him, while the rest maneuvered around the tables and benches to circle around him.

Est gave a grudging thanks for the obsessive level of combat training from his childhood to his early adulthood, even if he had lapsed over the last few years thanks to falling out with his mother.

He quickly fell right back into the fight.

Muscle memory and all that.

The first attacker to reach him was a burly woman with a shortsword that seemed to shine along its edges. From experience Est knew that meant some kind of enchantment or investment. Most likely a simple one that enhanced the cutting ability or durability of the blade.

He blocked the wild downward slash with his practically indestructible walking stick.

Straight from the Threnosh world courtesy of his grandfather.

The woman was surprised by Est’s strength as he stopped her slash cold and sent a jarring vibration up her arm. She didn’t have time to ponder how a relatively slim-looking man could surpass her Enhanced Strength with ease.

Est stepped in with a right cross into her gut.

She doubled over, which put her chin level with Est’s follow up knee.

Teeth and blood went flying as the woman toppled over out cold.

Another terrorist was on Est in the next instant.

The man roared and swung a wicked-looking axe at Est’s head.

He ducked under and scrambled back.

A mistake.

He immediately realized that he should’ve stepped in closer to get inside the arc of over-sized axe’s long handle.

From the way the man whirled the enormous weapon around, Est knew that he was dealing with another warrior-type with some level of enhanced strength.

Even still, Est had the strength of three similarly sized men.

That was close enough right?

While he backpedaled away from the man’s wild swings the other terrorists continued to circle around to Est’s sides and back.

He couldn’t keep eyes on all of them, seeing as how his two were dealing with a ridiculous axe.

They were about to get in his blind spots.

Or they would’ve if he didn’t have another set of eyes watching everything from above.

A terrorist lunged at Est’s back with a pair of knives thrust forward.

Est sidestepped and grabbed the back of the terrorist’s thick jacket.

He pushed the man forward, into the sweeping arc of the enormous axe head.

The sounds of sliced flesh and splattering blood sent an involuntary shudder through Est’s body.

His only consolation was that he was on the other side of the unfortunate terrorist, so he didn’t see the damage.

Est hated the violence, but they had brought it on themselves.

Two terrorists closed on both sides.

He didn’t turn his head or give any indication that he saw them.

No choice now.

They were coming in for the kill.

Weapons backed by Skills he could see through his astral projection’s eyes.

He pulled on the handle of his walking stick.

Out came a thin, double-edged blade, dull gray. Delicate in appearance, but sharper and stronger than any unenchanted steel sword.

Est moved both hands and arms simultaneously, while ducking down into a low lunge.

The blade swept out to his right. Taking one terrorist in the throat.

The blunted end of the walking stick, now scabbard, speared the other one in the mouth.

The woman gagged and flailed at Est with her blade.

He parried and slashed her throat open with a flick.

He needed practice.

He had been aiming for her eye.

The axe man roared again and rushed Est with weapon held high.

Stupid.

Est lunged forward with the explosive quickness of three times the strength of a normal man.

He covered the distance in a blink of the man’s eyes.

The man choked out a glob of red and looked down with a confused look on his face as his hands loosened their hold on the enormous axe, letting it crash to the floor with a deafening clang.

Est’s thin blade was buried in the man’s chest.

Thrust right through the heart.

The other terrorists came at Est in a mass.

They couldn’t understand why he slipped and parried their strikes as if he had eyes on all sides of his head.

“Two In One Cut!”

Est felt the impact on his back dulled by his armor. Warning lights flashed across his faceplate. He spun with his blade and didn’t give the terrorist another opportunity.

“Scatter!”

The terrorists instantly listened to the command.

Est reacted a fraction slower.

Costly.

“Lighting Cloud!” the man that had just emerged from the kitchen pointed a finger at Est.

Arcs of blue-white energy crackled around the man’s hands.

Est glimpsed the barest hints of the mana being gathered before the spell was cast.

A cloud formed over Est’s head, close to the ceiling.

A loud crack followed by the brief smell of ozone before his helmet automatically filtered it out of the air was the only warning before tiny bolts of lightning arced out of the cloud and struck all over Est’s body.

The armor was insulated as a matter of course, but this wasn’t simple electricity. The magical aspect to them meant that they still did damage.

Armor scorched and Est felt the heat begin to build inside the thin, flexible outer layer.

He dived to one side in between two tables.

The cloud followed as the mage kept his finger pointed at Est.

Est rolled underneath the table to his left.

The cloud followed and continued to rain down small bolts.

The metal underside of the table began to glow red, then white-hot in a matter of seconds.

On the upside the cloud kept the rest of the terrorists away.

Now all he had to figure out was how to avoid getting cooked inside his armor.

He cursed his lack of a ranged weapon.

The mage or wizard, whatever the terrorist’s Class was, stood out in the open without any regard of cover.

Est sent his astral projection up out of the building looking for something, anything, he could try.

A flying taxi was moving closer from a distance.

“Finally,” Est muttered. He gauged the terrorist’s position relative to the high ceiling. “Stupid,” he cursed. Why rely on estimation by eyesight, when the instruments in his helmet could do it accurately? “Runt, you coming in?” he spoke into the built-in communicator.

“Partner, you sound much perturbed,” Runt’s voice spoke in Est’s ear.

Too loud as always, forcing a wince.

“Do you think you can get through the roof?”

“Thin metal is strong, but not as strong as Torruk muscle and bone.”

“Great, I’m sending the exact coordinates to your PID,” Est did so, “there’s a magic guy I need you to take care of.”

“Affirmative. Information received.”

Est listened as Runt had to convince the dubious flying taxi pilot to hover over the target location.

“Is he doing what I think he’s about to do?” Est’s eyes widened.

The metal table over him was beginning to melt sending hot droplets down to sizzle on his armor.

“Am jumping down now,” Runt’s voice was positively gleeful.

Yes.

The small, relatively speaking, Torruk was doing exactly what Est had imagined.

There was a loud crash.

The mage terrorist didn’t even have time to look up as Runt’s heavy form plunged right through the thin metallic ceiling.

Runt landed with a resounding thud as his booted feet cratered the floor.

He brought his enormous poleaxe down on the terrorist. Right to left. Shoulder to waist. Nearly bisecting the unfortunate man.

The lighting cloud over Est’s hiding spot winked out instantly, while Runt shook the man’s remains off the axe blade of his weapon.

Est gagged because he was unable to avoid staring at the bloody, guts-filled remains staining the once reasonably clean floor.

“It has been some time since I last smelled fresh blood,” Runt grinned tuskily.

The terrorists eyed the big and broad Torruk with undisguised fear.

Runt was only small compared to the rest of his species. He was still 6-foot tall and close to 500 pounds of hard muscle and thick, dense bone.

The thick armor and large weapon dripping blood promised an impenetrable death.

Runt roared, almost comically with his high-pitched voice, but the way the floor shook with each thunderous step disabused any notions the terrorists might have had about laughing.

The Torruk swung his poleaxe in a wide arc.

The unfortunate terrorist was caught flat-footed and barely got his sword up in time to block.

He might as well have used his bare arm.

Runt’s poleaxe crushed the sword out of the way before burying half its axe head into the man’s chest.

The Torruk withdrew the poleaxe with a wet squelching sound and thrust the iron-capped butt end of the shaft back into the face of a second terrorist.

The end punched through the front of the woman’s face, past teeth and bone into her brain.

That broke the remaining terrorists. They sprinted for the exits.

“Don’t bother with them. There’s only one left in the kitchen, but be careful. She’s being way too calm,” Est said as he watched the woman in question with his astral projection. He recognized her from the arena.

She looked up, searching.

Her hand shot into her pocket.

“Oh crap!” Est saw a familiar looking gem in her hand. He pulled his astral projection back into himself just before the woman crushed the gem. “Damn it! That was too close.” He shook his head. There was a slightly uncomfortable tingle, but he had avoided the same damage from a few days ago.

Runt shrugged. “I shall pummel this evil woman into submission.”

“Wait! We need a plan. I think she’s strong, really strong.”

Runt scoffed.

“She crushed a gem in her hand.”

“Not all gems are hard and strong. Some soft, some brittle, some chewy.”

“We still have to watch out for the Blissful Purpose copy. You don’t have a fully sealed suit like me. Why don’t we try to reason first?”

Runt shrugged his boulder-like shoulders and looked down at the carnage at his feet. The thick pauldrons jingled against the chain sleeves. “Is probably too late for that.”

“Hey! You in there,” Est raised his voice. “Why don’t you give this up? You’re all alone now and there’s no one here for you to infect.”

Silence.

Est hated not knowing what was going on behind the kitchen doors. He couldn’t risk using his astral projection in case the woman had more gems.

A muffled curse heralded the opening of the door.

The woman stepped out with a glower.

She had a hardened look. Her toned arms were bare, crisscrossed with scars. There were more on her face. She might’ve been pretty once, but the scars and the broken nose detracted from that. Though not as much as the sheer rage on display.

Her black hair was cut short, roughly.

Narrow eyes bored lasers into Est, completely dismissing the imposing Torruk closest to her.

Est shook his head. Not the time to be checking out a dangerous terrorist.

“I know who you are,” she spoke in clipped tones, “the useless one. It’s why your father left you and took your sister when he returned to the Realm. She’s been a great boon. Deserving of all the honors she has earned in service to the Great Cause. Not like you. Wasting away in this place of filth.”

“Is that supposed to hurt my feelings?” Est’s raised a brow. “I simply don’t care about any of that… but you’ve been very helpful in confirming that this plot has the Jade Realm’s fingers all over it. Is it war you’re after?”

“It does seem like there is a desire for such,” Runt said.

“I do this of my own accord,” the woman sneered. “The Realm isn’t involved in any way—”

“That we can prove,” Est sighed. “Well… whatever. You’re coming with us. The interrogations will pluck the truth out of your mind. I’m sure you’ve got training and magic or Skills, but not much can shield the mind against us.”

“And that is why you must be destroyed.” The woman grit her teeth and began to change.