Chapter 130

Chapter 130: Leave no witness, I beg you! part

It’s useless, his companion is already dead and soon he’s going to join him. I shoot the arrow and it passes right through his skull before he’s even able notice my presence.

>Skill acquired piercing shot

>Enemies 3/12

Another one drops dead without being able to alert his companions. The new display is really helpful, it allows me to know whenever I gain a new skill and it also helps me to keep track of my objectives.

I could wait in here until one or more come over, fighting like this really gave me an advantage over those guys, but I can’t afford to lose my time when they could be experiencing the same thing Thea did, if not something even worse.

I walk near the clearing and I’m able to hear two of them talking.

“What are you saying you idiot? of course we got lucky! we’re going to make a shit ton of money after this”

.....

“Yeah, maybe, but we only get to have fun with one of them. It’s a shame considering how good looking the others are”

Does this mean Sera, Mia and Fena are fine? If they expect to get any gold from them, they should be fine, or at least alive.

“Dude, you’re so stupid. If you want to do the succubus you’re free to try your luck, but everyone knows those things will drain you until you die”

“Yeah, but you get to die with a smile on your face”

Both men laughed.

“I’m telling you, If I don’t go next I’ll just do the succubus”

“Whatever, it’s my turn next and I’m not going to let you go before me. You’ll mess her up too much and I don’t feel like shagging a corpse”

“Come on man, we can go at the same time, she’s got plenty of holes anyway”

Hearing them speak like that disgusts me, I can’t believe these people can talk like that without even a trace of human emotion. Or maybe that’s what it means to be human, we are all flawed. Everywhere I go I see nothing but selfishness, cruelty, greedyness and evil. Even in Celarent, which seemed to be much friendlier than Ironwoods, it turned out they simply hide their dark side.

There they are!

Three girls are naked at the center of the clearing sticking together, no, they’re tied up together.

If I want to have a chance to rescue them I need them to underestimate me.

What should I do?

Right! they think I’m weak! I’ll just play dumb and bait them.

I step out into the light with a clueless expression.

“Hey Kinta! why did you leave me behind!? wait, who are those guys!?”

The two men that were discussing just before pointed their bows at me and were about to shoot, but Ryota stopped them.

“Don’t bother wasting your arrows, he’s the weak ass guy I told you about”

“Should we kill him?”

“No, they want him alive, why else would I let that trash live for so long?”

Kinta said in a conceited manner.

Did someone place a bounty on me or something? it seems I’ll have to keep Kinta alive, at least until I get my answers. I try to run doing my best impression of a scared rookie. Thanks to my recently developed power I could easily outrun them, but I let them catch me anyway.

“No! please let me go, I didn’t see anything!”

I say struggling without using much force, trying to get them to stay as close to me as possible.

“Ah Ryu, you still don’t figure it out? just how stupid can you be?”

Kinta punches me in the stomach leaving me out of breath, but causing me little to no damage. The stone skin skill is true to its name.

“If you want gold I can....”

Another punch to my stomach.

“Damn You’re a lot harder than you look!”

He said rubbing his knuckles and continued

“I don’t want you to give me your money, I want to take it myself, I’ll take everything from you and that includes your girlfriends. Especially the pink haired bitch, why didn’t you tell us she was a succubus? you lucky bastard! you were having all the fun yourself. I want to kill you so bad”

“Kinta you idiot! he got past the watchmen!”

Ryota shouts in the distance trying to warn his son. Now that Kinta turned to reassure his father that everything is fine, it’s time to make my movement.

The two guys holding me seem weaker than the ones I defeated before, I think the first two were thieves, the chunky one was a warrior and this two are definitely archers. Archers are fast, but not that strong and they won’t stand a chance against me being this close.

After helping Anne practice with her skills I’m familiar with an archer’s basic skill set, I use my strength boost to grab each of my captors. Their clothes make a leathery sound as I clench their wrists with my hands, I even heard a bone snapping like a twig. Guess strength boost is really something.

Without any time to lose I push them to the ground. They were so confused by my sudden change in strength they couldn’t even react. I don’t let them go because if I did they could simply run away or attack me from each side, instead I take a small jump and land with my knee right on both their chests using their arms to sling me, increasing the damage they took. Their rib cages cracked, but they’re still alive. I take two spare knives from the straps on my side and stab them in the heart leaving the weapons stuck in there.

>Skill acquired: dual wielding

> Enemies 5/12

Kinta realized his mistake just a second too late, he was running away from me but he was still too close. I pounced on him and pinned him to the ground. He tried to wiggle his way out but I was using my body weight to make it more difficult for him to move.

“HOW!? You’re a fucking F rank!”

He only shut up and stopped moving after I placed my obsidian knife on his neck. The edge is so sharp just a slight movement made him cut himself and blood trickled from his neck. Fortunately it was only a shallow cut, I can’t use him as hostage or ask him any questions if he dies so I was being especially careful.

“Shit! he killed them! What should we do boss?”

One of the three thugs next to Ryota said in despair, but he was ignored.

“Hey Kinta, wasn’t he supposed to be an F ranker!? You said you already confirmed he was as weak as they said”

Ryota asked in a cold voice.

“I don’t know, dad! help me please!”

Kinta pleaded.

“Let the girls go!”

“Why should we? if you kill him you’re dead, if you don’t, I’ll simply kill one of the girls, if you don’t surrender by then I’ll kill the next one. I just need the blonde after all”

Ryota shrugged.

I knew that, there was no chance they would let the girls go, but this allowed me to buy some time to use sense presence to locate everyone.

“SHIT! FUCKING BASTARDS”

I shout to the top of my lungs in fake anger as I run back to the forest leaving them dumbfounded.

“Well, that was unexpected!”

Ryota sneered.

“He’s turning tail! should we follow him?”

“Nah, don’t bother, he’ll have to come back if he wants to save his precious girlfriends”

That’s all I was able to hear before going back into the dense forest. What they don’t know, and probably won’t notice until it’s too late, is the reason why I shouted.

Inside the forest, right on the other side of the clearing, there’s a large number of goblins. If they attack, maybe I’ll be able to take it as an opportunity to save the girls.

After my shout I was able to sense their movements and everything indicated they were now aware of our presence. Every passing minute more and more goblins gathered near the clearing surrounding it little by little.

Now there’s only seven enemies, There’s Ryota and Kinta, one guy that looks like a warrior and two that look like thieves. But there are two enemies missing.

Unless... maybe Shortie and Thea are counted as enemies too. It didn’t cross my mind because I saw Thea being abused, but even if the thugs turned against them it doesn’t make them any less my enemies.

A loud horn Interrupts my thoughts.

“It’s the goblins! Run for your life!”

The weakest looking thief runs to the forest right on the direction the amarok and Mochi are waiting. Then a loud scream was heard coming from that direction.

>Enemies 6/12

Guess that leaves only a warrior, a thief and Ryota to be worried about.

The goblins are coming and I can’t leave the girls behind so I step back into the clearing.

“Sera! cut the ropes!”

“Are you daydreaming now? how is she supposed to cut the rope without a weapon, uh!?”

Ryota mocked me, but he was stunned in place when he saw fire coming out of Sera’s hand.

“She’s a mage! Don’t let them escape we’re gonna be filthy rich!”

.....

The other thief shouted, but it was too late. Mia and Sera ran towards me as fast as they could. it took Fena a few seconds to realize she was free from her bindings though. Only when she heard them announce Sera was a mage did she notice the rope had been cut.

I ran towards the center to cut the thugs path, keeping them from harming the girls in any way.They were wary of me now and didn’t attempt to attack directly.

We finally reunited at the center of the clearing, Mia was in really bad shape, she had bruises all over her body and her face was swollen, her eyes were reddened from crying and then I noticed her horns had appeared on her head along with a thin pointy tail that was born on her back near the coccys.

“Mia, are you ok!?”

“Masteeeer! bwaaahhhhh”

“Don’t worry mister Ryu, she’s fine. They wanted to force her, but when they got closer her horns appeared and they freaked out. They just beat her to keep her from using charm”

“Sera, Mia, get behind me... I’m going to fucking kill them”