Thump.
The sound of Mia's heel smashing the dragon hunter's head was surprisingly dull, similar to the sound I experienced when I smashed a watermelon once.
It was disgusting, for sure, but so were the actions of that man.
"Haaa…" Mia released a long breath, her eyes fixated on the bloody mess below her foot. She raised her leg and took a step back only to then kick with her right foot forward, shaking off all the bone pieces, blood, and brain matter from her shoe.
The air turned tense. Not a single soul behind us dared to speak up, Levi included.
And in all fairness, I was at a loss for words myself, even though I pretty much expected this development.
"I'm sorry," Mia said after taking some time to collect her thoughts. "I didn't ask if you had any questions left for him," she said, still keeping her eyes on the disgusting mess that she made.
Her face was tense. I could still sense a massive amount of bloodlust in her eyes, even though I could only see Mia's profile.
But those weren't the reasons why she kept on looking at the mess she made. From what I could tell, she simply had no courage to look me in the face right now.
'I guess this is the moment when I should step up,' I thought, taking a shallow breath so as to not alert the girl before moving forth.
I reached out with my hand… and gently rested it upon the back of Mia's left shoulder.
I didn't say anything. For a few fleeting seconds, I simply stood in place with my hand on her shoulder, trying to feel out the perfect moment to open my mouth.
But, as the seconds trickled by, a different idea appeared in my mind. And so, rather than speaking up, I got even closer, moving my hand beyond Mia's shoulder and over her collarbone before pulling her slightly back, squeezing her towards my own chest.
"I'm sorry I acted so hastily," Mia whispered, still refusing to look away from the bloody scene that she caused. "I should've asked if you had any questions for him first… No, I shouldn't have done that in the…"
"Shush, kiddo," I whispered, wiggling the two of us an inch to the left before turning the motion around and doing it to the right. "Do you think I'm angry or something?" I then asked.
But to be perfectly honest, I didn't really need an answer.
I allowed a few more seconds to pass while doing nothing but cuddling Mia from behind.
"The only question I had left for him was about his reasons to attack this place," I revealed while hiding the truth a tiny little bit. In fact, though, there were far more questions that I would be happy to ask.
Yet, at this point in my life, all that the potential answers could provide would be even more questions for me to ask down the line. And to be perfectly honest, there wasn't even a shred of hope in my heart that dragon hunter would know answers to any of them.
"The biggest problem I have with what you did, is that your foot is dirty right now," I whispered right into Mia's ear while giving her collarbone one last squeeze before relaxing my hand and moving a single step back.
"I can tell you want to explain your actions. Even though I don't need you to do it, I'm more than willing to listen to your point of view later on," I announced before taking another step to the back.
And then, rather than putting all my focus on Mia, I turned around and looked at the crowd gathered behind my back.
"But right now, we have other matters to focus on," I said, turning my eyes towards the only corpse of one of my cultivators that I could see near the auction house building.
"Levi," I turned my eyes towards my former master. "Unless there is some specific reason behind it, I'm quite surprised that you struggled to hold those people back," I said. "I want to hear more about it, but that's another topic for later. For now, though, you have my thanks for holding them back while I was away."
"It's nothing much," Levi replied with a sour expression on his face.
He knew that he fucked up. And I knew it as well. And we were both aware that this wasn't a secret for either of us.
Not after the ease with which I disposed of the entire host of those dragon hunters.
"Ahhh…" I released a slight moan as I raised my eyes and looked up to the sky. I then lowered my eyelids and took a moment to rest.
"First off, I want to know how many people died and how much stuff we lost in the fighting," I gave out my first orders. "Secondly, I need everyone to stop what you are doing if it's beyond the nearest proximity of the town and focus on patrolling the perimeter. We can't allow another loss like that."
I slowly lowered my head and looked at the group of cultivators still standing and watching me in silence.
A strange chill moved down my spine.
"Didn't you hear me?!" I shouted, allowing the anger that I held back to finally make itself known in my voice. "Count the damn corpses, now!" I shouted, sending my arm off to the side in the direction where I came from when returning to the city.
"Sir… but the fires…" one of the cultivators finally found the courage to open their damn mouths and speak up.
"I didn't see that many corpses for all of you to be needed to take care of them," I replied while giving the man an annoyed glance. "You are all fucking adults, just do what's necessary right now."
I turned around and approached Mia's back.
She was still stuck in her daze, with her eyes seemingly locked on the now headless corpse of the dragon hunters' leader. Yet, as I drew closer, I realized that she actually had her eyes closed.
"Are you okay?" I asked, stopping a single step away from Mia in order to avoid startling her.
"Yeah," Mia muttered as she jerked her head up and pried her eyes open. "I'm okay," she said before lowering her eyes and taking a look at her blood-covered right foot. "I guess I really need to go and clean myself up," she added in a strangely detached voice.
For a moment, I simply stared at her profile while calculating everything in my head. I then took a deep breath before slowly letting all the air out of my lungs.
"Do you want to have a proper talk?" I then asked in a lowered voice. "Not only about why you hated this guy so much, but also about all the details of my past and what I understand from what that bastard spoke," I added, revealing the true intent behind my suggestion.
'We need to talk.'
A short sentence that in most relationships would spell trouble. A set of words that most people dreaded as they are often used as the prologue to breaking up or some huge drama.
But in this exact case, it was the opposite.
Because what I wanted to talk about, weren't the things that we held against each other, but the things that we kept hidden.
"You…" Mia sharply raised her face and looked at me with her eyes wide open. Yet, seeing the determination written all over her face, she gulped her saliva down and simply nodded her head.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺