In the meantime, the five men were running through the forest, following the students' trails. They also quickly passed through the area where Erik and the others fought and were impressed by the fact that people so young, who didn't even attend military school, were already this strong.
"Pretty impressive for a bunch of kids..." Death said.
"Hell yeah, man! This makes me want to cut them even more!" Slice replied.
"I know how you feel, old sport, but unfortunately, the boss here doesn't want us to have fun," Laser said.
"Will you shut the fuck up?!" Zachary then said so in outrage. It was clear that the 'boss' they were referring to was him. Zachary was already annoyed that they had to kill a swarm of thaids for several minutes instead of simply taking the child, and now this clown was mocking him.
All of this is in the middle of a fucking forest, surrounded by soldiers, Red Palace's teachers, and man-eating monsters. His and Greg's previous failures complicated matters even more, and if he failed this task, he could even lose his standing inside the Crystal Cross Gang if he failed the mission.
This was a harsh punishment, but the Crystal Cross Gang only used it for specific missions and only to scare low-level members into taking quests they were sure to fail, which would expose the Crystal Cross Gang and its ties.
Zachary was feeling the immense pressure of being in charge, and he was wondering if he had what it took to handle the situation. He was agitated, as he knew he had to let the kid run away a little since the thaids would have rushed to him the moment the five men stopped fighting; however, the previous explosion deeply worried the man.
It was clear that Erik Romano, the awakener, wasn't a simple kid who could be taken lightly. Once or twice, Zachary purposefully left thaids to get past him, only to see what the kid would do, and he didn't disappoint.
He led his team precisely, and although he was no more than sixteen, his bravery and intuition far surpassed anything Zachary had ever seen before in a person his age, giving the proper orders at the right moment. He showed excellent knowledge about thaids and their weaknesses and prepared his team members against their brain crystal powers so they could adequately defend themselves and come out victorious.
He wasn't the strongest team member, as that role was taken by the tall guy they called Anderson; however, he wasn't a bad fighter either, and his strategy kept the team alive.
After a short while of walking, they finally arrived at the site of the explosion. The land was charred and scorched; trees within a hundred-meter radius were on the ground, burning; the trees that were still standing were on fire, which propagated to the nearby trees, and many plants had huge holes left by flying rocks and debris thrown into the air by the blast The team cautiously proceeded and surveyed the area.
"Is this the work of a brain crystal power or a bomb?" Laser asked.
"How can you be a high-rank assassin?" Zachary said to him. He was almost going to insult the man for his stupidity but refrained from doing so since Laser was stronger than him and could kill him without much effort.
"It's simple; I'm good at killing people..." He replied.
"Yeah, I figured it out..." Zachary said.
"Ah, ok... So, do you think this was the work of a bomb?" the man asked again.
This time, Zachary replied. "No, they are not soldiers. They couldn't receive bombs from the military. This is the work of a brain crystal power."
"Ahhh... it makes sense," Laser said.
Zachary facepalmed, but then, looking at the ground, he found out that the traces the students had left had disappeared. However, the man didn't need to use the tracks since he had the device the Crystal Cross Gang informant gave them before starting the mission. The device had the exact location of their target, and with a few presses of a button, they would be able to locate the direction they needed to head to.
After checking the device, he informed his team members that they were heading west. "Let's go then..." Death said.
They walked around the explosion and went in the young students' direction; after a while, they even started to see the tracks they had left behind and that the blast didn't destroy.
"Hey, I was wondering..." Death said. Making Zachary pay immediate attention to him. After the prowess he showed against the Crombo, he didn't dare offend him. In a confrontation, if he could manage Slice or Laser, he had no chance against Death. Knowing this, Zachary could only bow his head in acknowledgment of Death's power.
"Why are we kidnapping this kid?" Death asked.
Zachary's heart sank. He wasn't supposed to talk about this to anyone, per his boss's order; however, he couldn't avoid replying to the assassin, lest he got angry and outright killed him on the spot.
"You know, I'm not supposed to talk about this..." Zachary said.
"Oh, come on, man! We are all fellow gang members, and I won't say anything to anyone. I swear on my honor..."
Zachary guessed what a cutthroat's honor would be. Not that he wasn't in a better situation; after all, he was a thief. However, he couldn't say what he thought of him. Finally, Zachary reluctantly agreed to reveal what he knew.
"Some time ago, we were sent to search for something at the kid's house. A very important person has reason to believe he has some precious information, but he didn't say exactly what the kid had, probably because even he didn't know what it was. However, he told us to search for information, USB keys, and memory storage devices," Zachary said while running.
"We went to his house but found nothing, so we stole his computer but found nothing even there. We could only see the young man's browser history. Aside from some war-related stuff, the kid was clean. There was nothing out of the ordinary. We even asked people to search for hidden codes and weird languages, but again, we found nothing." Death nodded.
"So, the boss sent us here to get the kid to learn where he hid whatever he got, or at least tell us what it talked about."
"Ah... I get it..." Death said. "I wonder what the kid is hiding. It must be something big for the boss of the crystal cross gang himself to issue this quest," Death added.
"Yes, but even more surprising is how important the person who made the request is. Even we high-ranking members don't know who they are, but judging by what the boss said, it must be someone extremely important..."
At that moment, the five men arrived in front of a weird landscape. The forest around them decayed and rotted away. Large trees started bubbling and sizzling, and an oppressive atmosphere was all around them, together with a fire burning everything around, despite the one near the blast not having reached this part of the forest. A dense and weird fog obstructed the view ahead, leaving their sight unclear.
"What the hell happened here?" Death exclaimed. The group stopped to take a look at the area.
"I think this is the work of another brain crystal power..." Death said.
"Indeed," Zachary added. He did some research about Erik's friend, and judging by the fog; this must have been Amber Joyce's work.
"This must be the work of a girl of the Joyce family; her name is Amber, and she can make a corrosive fog exactly like thi-"
Slice placed his end inside the floaty substance, and his hand started sizzling immediately. Zachary was astonished by the assassin's foolishness.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
"AAAAAAAAAAH!"
The man took his hand back, but Zachary yelled. "Are you fucking stupid?!" He had to say it this time.
"I wanted to see if we could get through it..." Slice said.
"What haven't you understood about this being the work of Amber fucking Joyce?" Zachary said. Even Greg face-palmed.
"Do you think we can go through here?" Death asked with a serious look.
"We can possibly try our luck by spreading our mana on our bodies, but as far as I know, the girl had pretty high amounts of mana. I don't know if this will be feasible," Zachary said.
"Yes, but she is not a high ranker; I doubt she could sustain this power for long. I think we can try our luck going through the fog," Death said.
The problem was that going around the fog would for sure make them waste time, and if Erik arrived at the main gate before they could get him, that would be a huge problem.
Going through the fog was fast but very dangerous. The man thought about it for a bit and decided to go through it. If he failed the mission, he didn't know what would happen to him and losing everything he had achieved after many years of sacrifice didn't sit well with him. So he agreed.
"All right, we will do as you say. Let's go through the fog."
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