Upon seeing the door, Yoro's passive clairvoyance activated instinctively. "This door is locked." He said with a frown as he saw the blue pattern of mana on the door. The passive clairvoyance ability that Yoro had gotten recently granted him the ability to see mana in the surrounding albeit somewhat faintly.
Ian on his side nodded his head. "Yes. But not only that, there are also some real nasty traps placed in this door too. For a mere merchant company to have this kind of thing placed down in his basement, their purpose is only either to not let something in, or…"
'to not let something out' The rest of the words were kept in his mind, but Yoro and Violet knew what he meant and stiffened a little.
Yoro didn't forget to note in his mind that Ian's analysis on magic seemed to be not so shallow and definitely wasn't just another amateur out in the world. Another reason to keep an eye on him.
"So do you have means to open this door?" Yoro crossed his arms and asked him.
Ian pursed his lips. "I have, obviously. If something like this alone was enough to stop me, then I wouldn't have gotten this far from the first place." As if to prove his words, he approached the door and touched it with his palm, his eyes closed in concentration.
If Yoro didn't know better, then he would have thought that Ian actually intended to trigger the traps voluntarily. Under his clairvoyance, Yoro saw Ian twist the mana circuit that was running on the door. Yoro curled his toes, expecting some kind of explosion one or two moments later. After all, what he did wasn't any less than coming in contact with wire directly while the electricity was running.
However, his concern was for naught. There was no explosion or death coming, rather, Yoro slowly saw the magic on the door changing its shape and function without directly activating the trigger on the magic itself.
On Ian's left side, Yoro also registered Violet's relaxed behaviour as she just simply watched his work. Her eyes filled with trust at him and in some way or another, they were too much to not realize that they both were more than just 'friends'.
After some time had passed, Ian walked away from his work and grinned. "Heh, easy." Ian commented while puffing his chest smugly. But Yoro didn't drop his guards and gave an update to the two of them. "Be careful. There are some people behind the door. And they certainly wouldn't welcome us with open arms." then Yoro pulled his sword out.
Ian and Violet didn't doubt his word as they were also pulling their respective weapon themselves. Ian brought out something akin of magic staff while Violet brought out a sword like Yoro. Only, she had one that was bigger and larger which certainly wouldn't be enough to be held in one hand.
Yoro gripped the sword in his hand tighter, his heart beating slightly faster at the motion of killing people for the first time in both lives. "There is one on the left, and there are two on the right. The last one is resting on the floor, sleeping."
"Alright, let's go" Ian said nothing more and pointed his staff onward, a magic circle spinning on the tip while the spell matrix was glowing ominously. "Burn ablaze and incinerate my foes, [Fireball]!"
Everything happened in a fast motion from that onwards. The door exploded into pieces from that one spell alone as he and Violet charged inside. The one on the left had now become nothing but a bloody mess. But the rest three of them were alive even if one of them was gravely burned.
Normally, there would be more guards in the vicinity who would guard the place. But their leader seemed not in here at the moment and the rest of them were outside on the first floor. Which all had been distracted by Tina beforehand.
The guards were taken aback for a moment, but they quickly got into action and charged at the intruder with their weapon pulled out.
Yoro knew more than anyone that this was his first battle, so he didn't get overconfident and take the one who was injured first while Violet and Ian occupied the rest. The guard's stature of body was same with Chad for more or less, so Yoro already familiar with all things he should pay his attention to.
The guards ignored his burned left hand and used his sword with his right, swinging his sword at Yoro in an unbelievable agility for a bulky man like him. Yoro didn't stay idle either as he parried the incoming strike with his own to test the water.
They only needed one enough clash for both of them to understand each other's power. A confident smile slowly crept up to the guards lips and he started hacking his sword at the little boy in front of him.
If there was anything Yoro learned from his practice with Chad, then it was to use his ability immediately to get an advantage against the stronger enemy. In Yoro's case, it was his clairvoyance and his sword art skill.
He corrected his stance to get into a defensive motion and parried all his enemy burst of attack. Upon receiving all the barrage of attack, he noticed amidst of the battle that his enemy's balance was somewhat off, probably because of his burned leg. Yoro didn't waste it and immediately used this to mess his balance even further.
Everytime he successfully parried his enemy's strike, Yoro gave a counter attack of his own. Scratching the guard's palm, kicking his ankle, stomping on his toe. He did it all when he saw an opening with his clairvoyance. Of course, what he did was negligible to a trained mid-intermediate swordsman like the guards in front of him. But it also should be taken into account that the grave burn on his side did more help than enough to push the guard into the edge.
Their battle didn't take more than 2 minutes before the guards' adrenaline to dim down and his burn to take its effect. He winced everytime he clashed his sword with Yoro, as it stung everytime he moved.
Slowly but surely, the guard's attack became dull and sluggish. It didn't take Yoro his clairvoyance to predict where his attack would land anymore. Right now, the guard was simply pushing his luck to land a lucky strike.
Realizing this, Yoro intended to turn the table of battle. Knowing what the guard wanted, Yoro gave him an opening from his left side as he staggered from the guard attack. Under such pressure, the guard obviously took that for granted and attacked him, didn't realizing that Yoro had intentionally done that.
Yoro twisted his feet and pivoted under his strike, practically bringing him closer to the guard while both of their swords were imobile. Yoro didn't waste his chance and took a step closer to him. In a fast motion, Yoro twists his sword below along with the guard's and bumped his whole body to the scorched parts.
The guards let go of his sword and started screaming in pain. Yoro also took some steps away from him after kicking the sword some meters away. While his breath was ragged, his heart was feeling some sense of glory after winning his first battle
Just when he wanted to check the other, a sword fell in front of his eyes, cutting the guard's scream below him short. What replacing it was a crunching sound, reverberating right before his ear as his eyes unconsciously fell to the corpse below him.
Yoro's body grew stiff as his adrenaline dimmed down. Yoro wanted to scream but no sound came out. That's when he registered the pungent smell of blood in the surrounding. Looking around, all of their foes had died horribly. One burned alive, one impaled by an earth spike, and two other had their head and some body parts detached from their body.
A sudden nauseating feeling assaulted his head and made him want nothing but to vomit all the content of his stomach out. It was only by his will alone that prevented it from happening.
Yet, his body still betrayed him. Slowly, his vision became blurry as it swayed right and left in an attempt to balance himself. But it's only that. His will only managed to bear that much of a stress before it became overloaded by emotion.
That was true because soon enough, his vision became all black.