Chapter 32: Ch72. Slight of hand - 2
Collins looked emotionless at Octavius as the latter took his arm, immediately throwing his target, Rhegal, several steps away with a pull.
"You’re really going to protect that thing?" He sighed, trying to pull his arm back from Octavius’ grip.
But he was unsuccessful. The leader of the Guardian guild was way too strong.
Octavius didn’t say a word to reply Collins’ question. Instead, he got up from his chair and planted his foot solidly in front of his unexpected opponent, and at the same time, while the great hall was in utter commotion around them, Octavius pulled Collins’ arm.
The next thing Collins knew, was his body flying towards the wall, and his right ribs hurting like nothing before.
In less than a second, he had been blocked, destabilized, and hit by a single man.
Collins was an awakened, but even with the agents of the Monitoring Division, it usually took six of them to make him put effort in the fighting.
"So this is what the S-rank Paladin feels like, huh?" He spat some blood and got up, rubbing his ribs. "Thank you Agency for the training..." He grimaced ever so slightly and charged towards Octavius, but stopped right after the first step.
"Is it me you want?" Rhegal asked, loosing his guise’s long, black hair, his eyes glowing black. "Come try and get me." He smirked.
"Hehehe. Let’s see how you feel like." And Collins charged again.
***
Kurt moved among the crowd, paying attention to the first movements of the fight and noticing right after that, if he ever got in the middle of that fight, even if just trying to seize a small piece of equipment like the MD man, he would be a dead person right off the bat.
Luckily for him, Octavius grabbed the MD agent from his hand right before punching him so hard that the man flew towards the wall.
Kurt’s dad looked at the small baton and threw it backwards, without losing his opponent from sight.
So Kurt just moved slightly to his left, and began half walking, half crawling through the wild crowd of journalists and high authority guests.
The problem was when he focused his attention to where the baton was again.
Just two or three meters away.
It wasn’t there anymore.
’Shit!’ Kurt bit his lower lip, inhaling deeply. ’Okay, Kurt. Pay attention to your surroundings, just like Kurt taught you in the [HIDDEN ROOM]!’
It wasn’t like his [Perception] suddenly went up or anything, but Kurt quieted his mind and tried sharpening his sight in that split-second.
Even if just a little bit, it had to work in the real world.
He turned his head left and right, looked ahead and turned his glance again, and suddenly...
Beep
[PERCEPTION INCREASED BY 01]
Kurt noticed the faint glint of the baton in the back pocket of a man in a burgundy suit.
He felt a small smirk sprout on his face as his legs started moving towards the man, bumping on several people but trying his best to not fall.
Or else, he’d lose sight of the man and that would be bad.
’I better not mess up with this quest, or else, God knows what would happen.’
Kurt’s senses were slightly sharper than he was used to, so when a body guard got in front of him, almost making him lose sight of the burgundy suit man, his feet slid sideways and his body went along with it, allowing Kurt to evade the bump with an unusually swift movement, and then again...
Beep
[DEXTERITY INCREASED BY 01]
’Holy shit...’ He thought, finally getting a bit closer to the burgundy suit man.
His body moved like it didn’t belong to Kurt, whom despite being taught by his father on the techniques of hand-to-hand combat and being good at a few sports that required a lot of bodily coordination, was still a bit clumsy when outside the ring or court.
And it almost got Kurt beaming with a strange happiness that he never felt before.
’Keep focusing, no one is watching.’ He reprimanded himself as the meters between him and the burgundy suit man narrowed down to a a few centimeters.
He inhaled and exhaled, the system beeped, accusing the increase of one more point in his perception, and his skin crawled ever so slightly when Kurt began to stretch his hand out.
He recoiled it and, at the same moment, a woman ran between him and the man.
And the sound of the fight got slightly closer.
’Come on, just ten seconds more.’ Kurt urged his body, and when his skin stopped crawling, he reached out again, still moving along with the man.
The centimeters narrowed down to millimeters, and when Kurt’s fingers finally wrapped around the tip of the baton, the man sped up towards the exit, guided by a bodyguard that appeared almost out of nowhere.
A wave of frustration took him and the boy almost screamed out loud in rage.
He clenched his fists so hard that he felt pain in one of his palms, but the frustration was too vast for him to care.
Kurt turned around as the exit doors closed, and was ready to face the consequences of his failure, watching as Octavius just sat back and observed.
Rhegal moved so swiftly around the MD agent that it looked like an adult playing tag with a child.
And the most surprising thing was that Rhegal didn’t have a single scratch on his clothes. They even didn’t look dirty.
The agent, however, had almost his entire uniform in tatters, as Rhegal playing with his claws, only and ever so slightly touching the agent’s body.
’So that’s what I’ll have to face when I level up enough...’ Kurt thought, turning his eyes from the fight that already seemed decided, and looked at both Rhegal’s sons.
He tightened his already clenched fists even harder as he looked at the one with the bandages on his wrist.
And as the adrenaline settled, the pain on his hand became really uncomfortable, and Kurt finally stopped to look at what was causing him such pain.
When he looked at his clenched fists, the system beeped again as his jaw dropped.
The small piece of metal was resting in his clenched fist, nested like a gem inside his hand, protected from everything and everyone.
[POCKETS PICKED: 02/100]
