"Uwaaaaaah—!!!"
"Hiiiiiiiiiiiii...!"
"H-He's some kind of monster...!"
After breaking through the defensive line of the concealed soldiers, Vahn wasted no time carving a path of destruction through them and the forest itself. The blade of his spear sliced through flesh, armor, and wood just as easily as it did air, and to the horror of the soldiers, even those who had their bodies bifurcated at the waist or their heads sent spinning from their bodies continued to cry out.
In an attempt to bring an end to Vahn's rampage, a tall and burly soldier with marginally more adorned armor stepped forward and attempted to ram him with a heavy tower shield. The attack managed to land, but only against Vahn's open left hand, forcing him back a full seven centimeters.
"What kind of strength is this...?" muttered the soldier, his vision abruptly spinning as his head was severed from his body, leaving behind a golden glow where it had been attached. Vahn wanted answers from the men, so while he could have laid waste to the group, he emulated the power of the Ope Ope no Mi to sever their limbs and slice them to pieces without killing them.
chnkchnktnk
After spinning his spear to deflect a trio of armor-piercing bolts aimed at his right flank, Vahn spun on his heel, dug the tip of his spear into the dirt, and sent a large chunk of it flying using Earthbending. The resultant wave of loose soil buried four soldiers, but so long as it wasn't compacted, their helmets should allow them to breathe.
fshaaaa
Feeling the wave of heat and pressure emanating from behind him, Vahn spun around and sliced a two-meter-wide fireball clean in two, causing it to crash and explode along his flanks. The resultant explosion enveloped several wounded soldiers, causing Vahn's expression to darken further as their screams of anguish were cut off by the air in their lungs being drawn out and their lives being extinguished.
"Just die already...!" emanated a voice from Vahn's lower back, followed by a hooded figure materializing from near invisibility to stab at his lower back with an edgeless, pick-like dagger. The dagger found purchase, but it only managed to slip two centimeters into his body before he vanished in a contracting clap of golden light and reappeared behind his would-be assassin.
"Wha—"
Before the assassin could make sense of what he had just witnessed, his body was severed from crown to crotch. There was no pain, but as he fell in two different directions, his vision splitting into disjointed viewpoints, a scream of pure terror rose from his throat.
Though he got goosebumps from the man's scream, Vahn turned his icy gaze to his next target, a robed, lightly armored man with a strange mask bearing a crest depicting a pair of winged lions pawing at a golden crown-tipped coat of arms. The man was the culprit behind the explosive fireball that claimed the lives of at least four soldiers, so with a flick of his wrist and a flourish of his left arm, Vahn sent a thin silvery blade slicing through the man's right shoulder in the blink of an eye.
"Aaagaaah! L-Light Healing...!" cried the man, clutching his shoulder and attempting to heal his wound as his dark blue robes became stained with dark crimson. Before he could, Vahn appeared behind him in a movement that resembled teleportation, his spear slicing through the man's calves in a smooth motion before he doubled back and sliced off his head.
As the Mage's scream echoed in his ears, Vahn, despite feeling as though he was about to pass out, began scanning for his next target. Roughly half of the soldiers had fled using the burning forest as cover, but if he wanted to, he was certain he could catch them.
"Priorities..." Vahn muttered to himself, extending his left hand toward the flames and drawing them toward him as if his palm was the epicenter of a black hole. Then, with faint sounds of steel clashing and strenuous grunts emanating from the direction of the convoy, he dashed out of the forest to find the members of Royal Purple and White Wyrm engaging the remnants of the diversionary bandits. The White Wyrm party was down to two of its original five members, but as Platinum-Ranked Adventurers, Royal Purple was holding its ground well.
Seeing Tamara struggling to deflect the cleaver-like blade of the bandit's leader, Vahn spun his golden spear in his right hand, raised it in a throwing motion, and allowed his feet to slide across the ground. Then, twisting his waist as if his head and upper body were a whip, he hurled his spear with all the might he could bring to bear. The initial launch produced a cracking sound akin to a thunderclap, and as it spanned the distance between him and the bandit leader in less than a tenth of a second, it parted the grass and soil beneath it.
Witnessing her opponent practically disappear before her, Tamara's eyes widened in slow motion before she was abruptly sent reeling by the wind pressure trailing Vahn's spear. She performed a sideways roll and quickly bounded back to her feet, but her ears were ringing, and she felt as if she had taken a blow to the head.
With their leader reduced to a mix of red mist and fleshy bits of tattered armor, the remaining bandits screamed in terror and began scattering as if their lives depended on it. Fortunately for them, Vahn was physically and mentally exhausted, his brain pulsating with his heartbeat and a thin trail of blood flowing from his left nostril. His left arm was a mix of black and purple from when he hastily discharged a Ki blast, but it was regaining its color by the second.
Freeing the survivors from the stupor they had fallen into, Vahn, speaking in a commanding voice that left no room for argument, glanced at Juliette and said, "Gather the injured as quickly as possible. If they still have even a single breath in their lungs, I will not allow them to die..."
"Can you use Healing Magic? If so, please help my brother! He took a bad hit to the stomach and is in critical condition...!" shouted the leader of the White Wyrm Party, a man who appeared to be in his late twenties to early thirties with a head of spiky blonde hair. His markedly younger brother, as he had attested, had taken a broadsword clean through his gut, and while Dorothy had been able to close the wound, his abdomen had swollen and turned a dark shade of purple from internal bleeding.
Wasting no time, Vahn pressed his right hand to the youth's abdomen and sent a golden ripple through his body that caused it to glow. The exertion caused him to bleed from both nostrils, but after investing the stat points he had acquired from leveling up into his HP and MP, it became much less of a burden...
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With the chaos of the short-lived battle settling into a heavy, oppressive atmosphere, Vahn found himself standing silently before a total of sixteen burial mounds. Eleven of these were enemies, but since he had accepted the responsibility for protecting the convoy, he felt the weight of every life that had been extinguished as blood on his own hands.
"Hey...you did great, kid. If you hadn't been here to turn the tides, every single one of us would have died..." said Tamara, her tone gentle, almost motherly as she approached Vahn from behind and reassuringly clasped his shoulder. She was still shaken by the power he had displayed, but as the savior of her life and the lives of her party members, she couldn't turn a blind eye to him suffering in silence.
Though he was tempted to retort that he wasn't a kid, Vahn accepted Tamara's words of consolation as they were intended.
"Who were these people? Soldiers and agents of the Baharuth Empire...?" asked Vahn, his voice calm but authoritative, making it clear to Tamara he expected her to answer without frills.
Shaking her head, Tamara revealed, "That's what I first thought, but when we questioned some of the people you sliced up, they confessed to being a special operations batallion from the Slane Theocracy. Evidently, they're part of a conspiracy to lure out the Head Royal Guard, Gazef Stronoff, and assassinate him before the upcoming war."
"Are the Baharuth Empire and the Slane Theocracy allies...?" asked Vahn, glancing back to meet Tamara's gaze. The calm but intense gleam in his eyes caused her pupils to contract, but after quickly composing herself, she shook her head and refuted, "That's impossible. The Slane Theocracy is a nation of religious nutjobs who believe in human supremacy and their right to rule the world. I've heard that the Emperor of the Baharuth Empire is a mad, bloodthirsty tyrant, but they don't actively discriminate between human and demi-human races."
"I see...thank you for the information..." muttered Vahn, returning his gaze to the burial mounds in quiet contemplation. He owed no loyalty to the Re-Estize Kingdom, and just because the Empire and Theocracy resorted to underhanded tactics, that didn't mean they were evil. Targeting supply lines was one of the basic tenets of war, and while that invariably resulted in the deaths of non-combatants and many innocents, those who took up residence near the border of two or more rival nations knew the risks and willingly bore them for tax exemptions and other perks...
'This isn't my battle to fight...' Vahn reminded himself, closing his eyes and leaning his head back slightly. His reason for visiting OL-2138 was to grow stronger, but more than that, it was to experience how people lived and to live among them. He wasn't there to fix things, and while he wouldn't turn a blind eye to catastrophes and crises happening before him, it wasn't his place to back any specific nation over another. There was surely a reason he appeared in the Re-Estize Kingdom, but it had less to do with him than the actual protagonists of the world.
Forming his resolve, Vahn caused Tamara to startle slightly as he looked back at her and stated, "We should get these supplies to the fortress and inform them of what we've learned. After that, I'll be leaving to explore on my own..."
Believing that she had seen through Vahn's intentions, Tamara exhaled from her nose and asked, "You're planning to search for similar groups, and worried that we'll be a liability if you continue traveling with us, right? To think I would have someone worrying about me after I made it all the way to Platinum Rank..."
"I'm honestly not sure what I'll do once we part ways..." revealed Vahn, staring ahead before raising his gaze to the sky and adding, "I just know that fighting a war on behalf of another nation isn't the reason I came to this land. I will help those I'm able to help, but I refuse to get caught up in a conflict I have no stake in..."
"Mmn...makes sense..." conceded Tamara, crossing her arms and nodding. As a resident of the Re-Estize Kingdom, she would much prefer to have Vahn on their side. But as he was ultimately from another country, she couldn't blame him for not wanting to get further involved in their conflict. Instead, she chose to feel grateful to him for saving their lives, even if he had to take others' in the process. For that, she and the members of Royal Purple owed him a debt that could never be repaid in full...
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