Mac dozed off and fell on his butt. He could not stand anymore as he had dispelled a relative part of his energy, and the pain in his head was somehow only increasing.
That was why he stayed put for a while and didn't dare lay on the ground. Even the feeble and gentle wind from the sea was enough to sharpen the pain in his partially shattered skull.
"And to think that all of this could have been avoided if I had just stayed put," Mac said, and the pain spiked again. The regret made it home in his mind and was likely to stay for longer than the sun that had finally come.
Ah, the sun! Mac wanted to glimpse at it. It had been a long night after all, and he wanted to ensure that it was over, but even inclining his head proved too painful for him.
With a sigh, Mac stuck his hand into one of his pockets with great difficulty and managed to pull a handful of colorful little spheres. The pain increased with the movement, causing Mac to drop them on the ground with a flinch.
Mac wanted to find the pink ones, but he was having a lot of trouble identifying them, and it was not just because he couldn't look down without flinching. It was also due to the fact that his eyes were bloodshot, and everything was toned red.
Mac felt the spheres like a blinded person and bought two randoms close to his face. He compared them and silently blessed his luck that he only had blue and pink colored spheres in his pocket, and they were not that hard to differentiate up close.
Mac let the blue orb fall and swallowed the pink one in a single swallow. The act of opening his mouth and eating itself caused him great pain, but he sorrowed through it a couple more times as he picked other pink orbs.
When Mac failed in finding more pink orbs, he gave up and stood still, silently breathing in and out with his mouth. It hurt every time, but with each circle, the pain lessened until it turned ignorable, for Mac at least. He still had other things to do.
When the sun came up, He had punished every culprit left in the tribe, but he had saved no innocent. When the ringing in his one good ear had stopped, the grunts and pleas from the tribals Luterio and his group had tortured sounded like he was in hell hearing the sinners begging for forgiveness.
The pain had diminished, but the regret only increased. "Fuck, fuck! I cannot afford to stay here self-hating." Mac felt tormented by the agony of the innocents. "I need to help them. I need to... to take them to Crimson Coast! Yes, that was what Hai said before." His not-used-much-reasoning was coming back to him. "But I can't do this alone, not in this state! Hai! I need her help!"
Mac looked for Hai while still on the ground. He was unaware that she had passed out from stress, so he got a big scare when he saw her unconscious.
Mac finally got on his feet with difficulty and called for her. "Hai!!! Are you ok? What the heck happened?"
Mac's scream was enough to wake Hai from her slumber. She slowly opened her eyes, a little bewildered, but immediately jumped straight when she remembered in what situation her fellow tribals were.
Hai felt the warm light from the sun that finally came, but as she looked around, her mood and complexion only worsened. The fire was finally extinguishing, as there were little tents left to burn, but there was no silence. Some nights in the future, Hai would rise from her bed in a cold sweat remembering the horrible noises her friends and neighbors left in dismay.
"Ah! You seem fine, great!" A familiar voice distracted her for but a moment. Hai looked at Mac, and she could not explain how she felt. The man barely standing in front of her was partially to blame for all of this, but she had to admit that he was the one responsible for defeating all of the invaders. Hai felt ashamed of herself as she had stood in the background while Mac fought battle after battle which only seemed to get tougher.
It was a shame that she missed Mac maniacally bashing Ludan's head in euphoria since she would have a more suitable image of Mac for putting himself in danger like that for no reason.
"I have to be helpful," Hai thought. "If I can't fight, then at least I can save!" Walking through the burning tribe last night, she realized that Luterio and his group were almost as sadistic as Mac. They hadn't actually killed anyone but severely injured everyone that they found to cause more torture. There was still hope.
"We need to take them to the beach," Mac said at the moment that Hai reached the same conclusion. "As you can see, I am already done with the invaders, so nothing is stopping us now!"
"I do think that we need to take them now, they have already suffered enough!" Hai responded. "But how can we be sure you got all the invaders, Mac?"
Mac saw how desperate and flustrated Hai was getting, but then the solution came to him. "Luterio!" He exclaimed. "He can answer that for us."
Both turned to Luterio, who was near them on the ground. He was blankly staring at his once divine father, now dead and ignored on the dirt. He had a mental breakdown as his conception of the world was challenged and obliterated by Mac.
Mac sneered when he saw Luterio's state, and while Hai felt no contempt for her enemy's demise, she had no pity to spare either. Not to someone who burned her tribe and harmed its inhabitants.
"Well, hahaha, It seems our luck turned around," Mac said as he stumbled over due to the pain. For some reason, laughing made his head hurt the most. "He appears to have lost his will to live and maybe even to think, for that matter, but my Hidden Will will probably make him spill the beans."
Luterio was utterly defeated and harmless, but almost no one could make him talk in that condition but Mac. Hidden Will worked best on those without the mental capacities to resist it.
"Will your weird power really have an effect on him?" Hai was unconvinced since Luterio appeared to be hopeless to her.
"Hey, Luterio," Mac's words carried a concealed power. "How you doing?"
"Like my father." The response came at once from Luterio's paralyzed body. It sounded robotic and soulless, but somehow clear despite his broken jaw.
"There you have it, Hai," Mac said. "Hidden Will makes even broken toys work. Well, tell us then, Luterio. How many of you scoundrels came to burn this place?"
"Fifteen of my man and I." The answer came just as fast. He showed no intention of elaborating further.
"Sixteen then, huh?" Mac started counting on his fingers. He was taking an awfully long time for such a low number.
"All of them!" Hai exclaimed when she concluded faster than Mac. "You got all of them!" She could leap from joy but controlled herself.
Her day finally brightened a little as hope and relief clouded her mind.
"That is all fine and dandy." Mac was about to bring her back to reality. "But how are we taking your friends here on the ground to the beach? Taking them one by one, we probably wouldn't be able to save a third of them!"
Every single tribal had a treacherous injury in their abdomen. They would live for just a few more hours if not treated soon.
Hai did not let herself be consumed with anguish this time. Not now that the worst had passed. Mac had dealt with the invaders, so now it was her time to come up with a solution. There was no way she would let Mac think up another one of his plans.
Hai breathed deeply and calmed herself, and the answer finally came. A way to take a lot of the injured to the beach at once, and only she could do it.
Hai extended both of her arms and held her breath, and when she released the air, a tremendous amount of warm, highly-condensed fire slowly came from her hand.
The fire acted like a malleable platform. It thinned when it came close to a pained tribal and went under them, coming out on the other side.
As Hai purged more fire, the red platform expanded, elevating a dozen more tribals. And she was not done yet.
When Hai reached her limit and stopped, she had gathered more than thirty tribals in a flying scaffold.
"I can do it. I can do it." Hai repeated to herself with one extended hand to control the fire. She could barely stand while she regulated her whole energy and power transmuted in the conflagration.
Mac watched Hai wasting herself trying to save everyone, and he finally cooked up a decent idea by himself. That was very rare for him.
Mac turned and stumbled back to the place where he had crash-landed and found the blue orbs he had left behind.
"You really are a lifesaver, Color." He said to no one while he collected them and went back to Hai.
She did not have the energy to spare to think about what Mac was doing. She was using the last spark of strength she had to slowly move the platform towards the beach. Hai was going at such a delayed pace that she would take hours to make one trip.
Mac inched closer to Hai and popped the mysterious blue sphere into her half-opened mouth that she couldn't bother closing.
"You will not be able to go far in your state." He casually said while shoving the rest of the little globes down her throat. "Take these! They are spiritual pills, courtesy of another one of my friends. Although they are way past their point, they are still perfect for the exhausted." And right, Mac was.
"What a weird day this is!" Hai thought to herself as she swallowed almost ten pills at once. Suddenly, she felt an exuberant amount of energy flooding her insides to the point that it was painful. She felt like she would explode, but luckily, Mac's idea did not backfire this time.
"What are these... spiritual pills?" Hai said in awe. She realized how much easier it was for her to control her powers now to the point that she was confident that she could create a new platform to carry more people.
"Yeah, you probably don't know about them, living in this isolated place." Mac nodded, satisfied with the effect of the pills. "But we don't have time to chit-chat now. Take your friends here to the beach already. You will still have to make a few more trips. I would help, but I don't think I will make much difference when you can carry that much at once."
"You have done more than enough, Mac. Thank you!" Hai said already running off. The extra energy inside of her made her more excited than usual. "Stay here and rest!"
Mac didn't quite get the last part as his left ear was not working anymore. He watched Hai until she was out of sight, and then his legs gave out. He was almost as tired as Hai was before she took the spiritual pills.
"It is a shame that I can't take the blue ones." Mac lamented to himself. "Guess I am done here now, anyway."
Mac stayed sat there on the ground between the semi-brainwashed Luterio and the cultivator's corpse. Both were once great warriors with bottomless potential, yet they were utterly beaten by a fifteen-year-old who could not cultivate.
Mac spent much of his time looking at his late enemies. He was enjoying the silence for a brief moment as he clutched himself to his feats and his overconfidence.
Mac was so in his own world that he momentarily forgot about his pains and layed on the ground to rest with his broken arm behind his head.
To no one's surprise but Mac's appearance, the pain reached a new climax and made him jump in fright.
If Luterio had somehow kept his sanity, he would have probably killed himself from shame after watching what the one who had beaten him and his father was doing.