Chapter 186

186 Watch your back, please! part “What are you doing here Lorenzo?”

Luke greeted his instructor with a smile, Lorenzo turned back to see his pseudo dragon agonizing in the pitfall, and then replied with a dumbfounded face.

“Apparently, I’m falling into idiotic traps, why did you place something like that in the way?”

“How were we supposed to know you were the one following us?”

“For starters, you were the ones who told me to come help you, remember?”

Because Luke was ecstatic that the people following them weren’t enemies, he completely forgot that he told Lorenzo they didn’t need his help and the one who asked for his help was Risa.

Ryu was still concealed standing on top of a branch, directly above Lorenzo, still suspecting there could be something wrong. Although he respected Lorenzo when he was his instructor, he was disappointed in him when he declined helping him with his curse, and it was accentuated when Lorenzo started the rumour of him losing a battle one on one to a goblin with the sole intention of damaging Ryu’s reputation.

A dark feeling, intense and numbing, outbursed within Ryu’s heart. It became denser and heavier the more he thought about what Lorenzo did to him, but that wasn’t everything.

Just when everyone was about to heave a sigh of relief, completely certain that they were no longer in any danger, Ryu made his entrance by falling on top of Lorenzo, pointing the tip of his bastard sword directly on his cervical vertebra.

.....

Lorenzo didn’t have enough time to react, but he managed to dodge a fatal blow by tilting his body and ended up receiving a minor wound on the shoulder.

“This dipshit!”

Thiking that Ryu lost his mind again, Luke hurried and tried to stop him from striking again after he regained his foothold, but Ryu wasn’t planning on stopping anytime soon.

“Single strike!”

Ryu’s sword glimmered in a faint light and it moved swiftly across Lorenzo’s breastplate, leaving a scratch mark behind.

“What’s wrong with him?”

No one really wanted to acknowledge it, but Ryu’s past behavior with Lea scared them. It wasn’t just that he was too cruel, but because such actions were unthinkable coming from the gentle Ryu they knew and loved.

Ryu shifted his position to strike Lorenzo from behind, taking advantage of the fact that he was placing his right hand on top of his wound and Luke tried to get to Ryu, not knowing what to do in order to stop him.

“I don’t know, he’s unhinged! we need to stop him before he hurts someone”

But Luke was the only one moving to defend Lorenzo. The rest of the group, albeit scared, still believed Ryu must have had his reasons and everything happened so fast they couldn’t process what was going on.

Everything became clear when Lorenzo started laughing like a mad man.

“So you figured it out, uh!”

He said once he calmed himself down. Ryu didn’t say a word, he only panted heavily with an angry glare.

“I guess there’s no point in hiding it anymore”

Lorenzo lifted his arm and the people who were supposedly riding the pseudo dragons, appeared from the surroundings of the clearing. They wielded maces, longswods and spears with their two hands, reminding Luke how a baseball player looked like before hitting the ball.

Fortunately, it wasn’t ten people but only four. The others seemed to be supports and stayed back with their mounts.

“What’s going on Lorenzo?”

Risa said with an uncharasteristic sharp gaze.

“Fuck, I knew you were dumb, I’ve known you for a long time, but really? Guess I’ll have to explain it to you”

“There’s no need for that”

Ryu cut him short while nodding at Sera who in turn used her fire magic to light the torches. Ryu and the members from his party closed their eyes for a brief second to avoid getting dazzled by the sudden light.

When Lorenzo opened his eyes there was no one left at the clearing.

“Hurry back to the dragons!”

The soldiers that came with him followed his command despite still being blinded by the light, one of them ran into a tree and other tripped over a root, but one of them took the worst part.

He ran directly towards Lorenzo, following his voice to avoid stumbling into something while he couldn’t see anything. But the former instructor instead of leading him, simply moved and let him fall in the pitfall on top of the dead pseudo dragon.

“What a bunch of incompetents”

He lowered his gaze and covered his eyes with a hand in shame. It was clear to him that rushing behind them was a bad Idea, all they had to do was ride at an easy pace until they got tired.

Ryu had left the place with Sera and Anne, Bob, Lea, Luke and Risa ran the other way to mislead the enemy party.

“Mister Ryu, what should we do?”

Sera anxiously asked as she traversed the woods with difficulty.

“We can’t worry about them now, all we can do is trust they will be safe. i’ll try to use magic to make some pitfalls and small obstacles in the way so their mounts have trouble running fast, but that’s all I can do”

“How did you know?”

“What do you mean how? you saw them coming from the woods too right?”

“I mean, I did, but how did you know it was going to happen?”

“While Lorenzo tried to draw our attention to him, he made a signal to his goons on his back to surround you guys. It was a standard signal for adventurers and, obviously, I recognized it”

“So you did become an adventurer like Luke wanted”

“It wasn’t just Luke, it was the most convenient course of action at the time and we benefited a lot from that. Hang on a second, you didn’t become an adventurer?”

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you guys yet, but there’s no point in doing it now. I’m just glad you didn’t go nuts like you did with Lea”

“I- I didn’t... You were awake?”

Anne shook her head, she was unconscious at the time, but being healed isn’t just an exchange of mana. Mana is used to focus the energy, it could be said it’s the most complex ability because it affects health points, mana and energy, all at the same time. It also had an unexpected effect in which the priest and the patient stablished a link for a brief period of time.

While Anne couldn’t feel any pain, she knew what Lea was experiencing. Inside Anne’s mind she saw a tiny Lea scared and cuddling to herself in front of a gigantic representation of Ryu’s face with cold murderous eyes.