122 The thieves of thieves

Scrappy has been walking around in this strange realm for some time now and he has seen several interesting people, like a giant dwarf that was hammering on scrap, Scrappy wanted to help him as he was clearly struggling breaking down these pieces of scrap down into smaller pieces, so he took them when the giant dwarf wasn't looking.

Then scrappy saw an elven woman taking care of a tree that had strange things hanging on it that looked like they were made out of golden scrap. So Scrappy started picking them up too while the woman was away to get some water for the tree. If scholar would have seen what he has been picking up then they would die after the vomited all of their Blood. Because the pieces of Golden Scrap that Scrappy had picked up where the golden Apples of the goddess of fertility, it is said that there existed gods that traded their godhood and immortality in for a single bite of one of those apples.

It is said that these Apples can heal every injury or disease and add a thousand years to the lifespan of a mortal. And these apples are said to taste like the thing that the consumer wanted to taste the most, and that it takes ten-thousand years for one apple to grow. As expected when something like this vanished the commotion that ensued afterwards was quite big. The demigod soldier that were living in the heavenly realm were searching everywhere, something like this hasn't happened since the second age when Parcival the Lord of the Thieves sneaked into the heaven and managed to steal a single apple.

But the same Parcival was now running around the heavenly realm as one of the four Heavenly Generals, he has been granted this title for the achievement of stealing that apple, but now a dozen apples were stolen and nobody found the culprit. But Scrappy was not perturbed by that he took out the apples too look at them more clearly, he saw that they were not made out of scrap so he wanted to throw them away but he heard a little whimper out of his bucket he pulled out one of the sylphids but like last time as soon as he stopped touching the sylphid, it froze in mid air and couldn't move anymore.

Then Scrappy remembered that he overheard a conversation of two inhabitants of this realm, they were talking about some kind of disturbance in space but then laughed and said that it doesn't matter if something entered this realm as you need the power of faith or something similar in power to be able to move in this realm. Scrappy the grabbed the sylphid again and let him bite into one of the apples, the Sylphid was suddenly full of energy and wiggled itself out of scrappy´s hand and rushed around him several times completely unaffected by the environment of this realm.

Scrappy then feeded his sylphids one by one with a piece of these apples leaving only a single apple behind after he was finished. But Scrappy suddenly heard the sound of marching soldiers and observed how a group of Heavenly Soldiers led by a seemingly high ranking officer started searching the area near him. Scrappy decided that it would be better to somewhere else but he couldn't leave just yet because he saw the shiny pieces of scrap the soldiers were wearing...

Parcival the heavenly General of the east gate and the former Lord of the thieves, led a group of a dozen soldiers to an area that had strange auras in it. Even though he wasn't the Lord of the Thieves anymore as he was a high ranking demigod, he was till very proud about his former title and skills that enabled him to become a demigod by stealing a single Golden Apple. His honor demanded that he finds the culprit and bring back the apples, he didn't want to brag but Parcival didn't let his skills rust and played a game with the goddess of fertility, every ten-thousand years he would try to steal another of the golden apples but he didn't manage to do it again the best result he had in a hundred thousand years was to touch the apple before he was noticed.

Parcival knew every trick of thievery and stealing and trained this knowledge to everyone of his soldiers so that they are safe against it. Even he found it difficult to steal anything from his subordinates, that is why he was surprised when he suddenly heard an outcry of one of his soldiers. He looked at the soldier and saw him searching the ground for something, Parcival walked over and it turned out that a dagger was missing, Parcival first wanted to scold the soldier for losing or forgetting his dagger in the barracks when another soldier cried out behind him.

He turned around and saw soldiers that was searching for his spear, Parcival was dumbfounded as he was sure that every soldier had a spear when they started searching for the thief but suddenly another soldier called and had the wooden handle of the spear that was missing in hand. Parcival took it from the soldier and inspected it, everything seems normal until he looked to the metal tip and saw that it was missing just leaving behind the wooden pole.

Parcival angrily ordered his soldiers to look around the perimeter when he suddenly saw the back of a soldier that turned around after his order. The armor the soldier was wearing had a square cut into it without the soldiers noticing it. Parcival looked at his subordinate with big eyes and could believe it, suddenly he heard a painful howl that made him turn around to see a soldier that tripped and fell on the ground. But before he could scold his subordinate for being clumsy he noticed that the metal boots of this soldiers were suddenly missing.

Parcival drew his sword and while he was drawing it, it didn't sound like usual, also the weight was off so he checked his sword, or what was left of it, the blade had been cut off above the handle an everything that was out of metal was missing. Suddenly everything went extremely fast, they could heard cutting sounds everywhere around them and one soldier after another was stripped down to his underwear without anyone seeing the culprit.

Parcival couldn't believe it, this whole situation wasn't just a slap in the face for him, it was completely destroying his face with slaps, he had always been bragging about his achievement of stealing a golden apple but now not only his achievement was overshadowed by another being that stole a dozen apples not only one and also stripping him and his platoon without them being able to retaliate against it by stealing all of their stuff from their body.

Parcival started tearing up while vomiting blood like a fountain seeing his honor and self confidence completely in shambles on the ground. Parcival and his men decided that they would tell everyone that they had been fighting the culprit and that he was to strong and the fight was so intense that everything they had was destroyed by this fight and that the culprit escaped after they showed their prowess with their fists. What Parzival and his men didn't know that the same thing that happened to them also happened to the other three generals.

Every general started bragging about an enemy that was extremely strong needing them to sacrifice everything before he escaped, and the more the story was told the stronger the fictional enemy got. Nobody wanted to admit that they hadn't even seen the culprit that stole the golden apples and all of their belongings. The whole charade went so far that the generals even started a parade when they went back to the barracks celebrating the victory over the unimaginable strong enemy showing prideful faces even though nobody was wearing anything but their underwear.

From this day forth a parade was celebrated every ten-thousand year where no soldiers was wearing anything but underwear celebrating the defeat of the strongest enemy in the history of the heavenly realm and the honorable generals that sacrificed everything they had and thousands of soldiers to defend the heavenly realm from this intruder...

Scrappy didn't know or noticed anything about this development as he was just happy and immersed in his new pieces of scrap he got by making the life of those people easier. And when Scrappy looked at the people he got the scrap from they seemed to be happy about not being burdened by this scrap as they were happily celebrating. Scrappy nodded and gave himself a pat on the shoulder and thought that it really felt good to do something good and help other people when they are burdened by their scrap. Not everybody was suited for collecting scrap and Scrappy was honored and enthusiastic to fill in this role that was burdened by so much responsibility of collecting scrap and making other people's life easier.