Tio and Rick were honestly very overwhelmed by this situation. The person in front of them was a 10 years old boy who seemed very normal until a moment ago, but now he appeared to have become a ferocious demon planning to murder a very dangerous criminal in his own territory.
Even if Nem was apparently in possession of supernatural powers, he was still younger than them by a few years, and this task seemed too much for pretty much everybody they ever met. Tio and Rick once met a Blessed of the Glorious Sun, but even he was just passing by Lunhart to arrest one lone crazy killer on the run. They both barely saw him fight from afar, and they weren't too sure if he would succeed in killing Big Kor in this situation.
The both of them really were normal orphans, albeit particularly resilient and resourceful. They didn't have any knowledge of the different Tiers of power over than the fact that there were the good people of the Churches and the bad people from everywhere else. In fact, they even heard bad stories about some of the believers of the different Churches, and would never expect them to do anything for them, who didn't have anything valuable or special in any way.
One could expect that a world with superpowers would have some superheroes, but it wasn't true at all. No Cursed would do anything they didn't want to do or that wouldn't benefit them and their organizations. As for the Blessed, they were all under the order of their superiors, who naturally wouldn't let them do random acts of kindness that nobody would hear about. Every time the Blessed acted "out of kindness and mercy", they were actually targeting specific places or people to give the maximum amount of publicity and exposure to their Church.
Moreover, the spiritual beliefs of the Churches were all different, and not all of them were compatible with charity work, in fact, it was the opposite.
On Blue, normal people always needed to help themselves, except when other Blessed or Cursed were involved. In that case, they would only need to help themselves sometimes, when the Churches were busy.
Nem was starting to get more and more aware of this fact, and secretly thought that the "kind believers" would sometimes spice things up by creating some problems that they could easily fix themselves to get some rewards and prestige. Of course, he didn't really have any reason to believe that, over than that it made sense to him.
'If people react so strongly when exposed to benevolent Blessed or Cursed, it's no wonder the Red Empire and the Holy Kingdom ended up taking most of the continent for themselves.'
Seeing that they didn't answer, he explained :
"Don't worry, you just need to get some attention onto me and then run away. You know how to run away right ?" Nem looked at them and suddenly added before they could answer : "Oh, right ! They say Big Kor is called this way because he is extremely fat, is that right ?"
Nem just remembered that he didn't know how his target looked like for sure. He had only heard about him by listening in on some random conversations in the streets.
"That's true, there is nobody else like him in this part of Lunhart. I saw him once, I really didn't know somebody could get that big before..." Rick told him absentmindedly before his face hardened somewhat. "Alright, I'm in. I know how to run away from those idiots." A confident expression appeared on his face, with still a little bit of nervousness. "They'll only see my back before I'm gone." He then turned to his friend. "Tio is even better than me, he has been running from all kinds of bastards for a lot longer than I have."
Nem sized them up a little longer. What followed involved a certain degree of danger if they suddenly decided to act against him, so Nem naturally wasn't going to be blindly trusting. He would only tell them of his plan when it was useful, and also at moments when they didn't have time to think deeply.
"Perfect, please come with me to this alley... Yes, this one." They walked a bit, then Nem started looking straight at the man occupying it. It was a drunkard with a clay bottle in his hands and a wobbly walk.
Subconsciously, the two teenagers imitated Nem as well, leaving the poor man to be glared at by three seriously odd children. The man would probably get angry if it was just one random person, but seeing three small kids act like that around this part of town was making his foggy mind seriously confused and somewhat frightened.
Panicking a bit, the drunk man hurried to leave, almost tripping on the sidewalk before disappearing in a corner. It left Nem satisfied, although a bit awkward and the other two simply puzzled. Clearing his throat, Nem removed the bandage on his arm and slowly spread out his wound, making a bit of blood come out.
"The plan is simple, I act like I'm unconscious and beaten up, get in there as a particularly harmless prisoner and then kill Big Kor from the inside." While talking, Nem used his hands to smear blood on his face and dirty his new clothes. "You're here to make it more believable, and also to take their attention off of me, the real threat." The smell of blood quickly mixed with the other, stronger and worse smells of the alley.
"I don't understand, you want us to run... After acting like we beat you up half to death ?" Tio seemed to put his explanation together mid-sentence.
"Absolutely, and I need you to make it look true as well. Make them see you run away."
'That way, they are somewhat in danger too. The two of them can't pull some bad trick on me if they are running for their lives. And if they really try to do it anyway, then it means they were working for Big Kor from the beginning, in that case I just need to run by myself.'
Nem's plan was very simple. Since he was getting "knocked out" so close to their headquarters they would surely bring such a good-looking and vulnerable orphan directly in there without bothering too much with restraints and things like that. In this timing, they probably wouldn't bother much with this kind of thing either, given that they would bring more like him in there in a short while.
"Alright, you're ready ? Make sure to act natural." Nem didn't wait for their answer as he suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs : "Help ! Aaah ! Stop, not the face !" He then turned towards Rick. "Alright, now punch me in the face, not too strong though, if you please."
"W-What ?" The teenager was looking at him like he was a lunatic, but in Nem's eyes, he looked more like a particularly slow-minded little brother.
'Crap, it looks like he won't do it.' Nem could already hear some people running towards here.'I'll guess I'll try this...'
"Rick, your dad beat you up when you were younger, correct ? Your mom was beaten as well, but she never did anything about it except abandoning you when your family what out of money, am I right ? What was it, gambling, hookers ? Your mom might as well have been one of them right? She really was a complete and utter waste of a..." At this point, Nem received a strong punch from Tio, sending him to the ground.
His face was seething with anger after listening to Nem talking of his best friend's past and insulting his mother. Seeing the miserable expression on Rick's face had made him lose his temper and he had impulsively followed Nem's demand, minus the last part, though.
Nem was a bit surprised by the direction the punch came from, but he still accurately noticed that some people had witnessed it and were now coming into the alley. He closed his eyes and mumbled between his teeth :
"What are you waiting for, run !"
Rick was the first to recover, looking behind him before talking Tio by the arm and dragging him away. Nem did his best to appear unconscious and hurt while thinking :
'Damn it, I even asked Rick to punch me because I thought Tio was too scary. Who would have thought he would actually react like this ?' Nem was truly depressed about this, and his jaw hurt.
'Well, at least I seem to have guessed right about Rick's life. I suppose my deductive skills really are improving.' Even in this situation, he was relatively satisfied, and of course, not at all sorry.
This time, he had attempted to infuriate Rick on impulse, and most of his deductions were mostly unformulated impressions. The fact that Rick had said his friend was an orphan for longer than him despite the fact that he was slightly older, Rick's sturdy build and his friendship with the social, nice and experienced Tio made him believe he was beaten as a child. The rest was just some random things his mind told him would probably fit.
Running away from him, not far, Rick spat out :
"How the hell did he even know that, did you tell him ?" There wasn't any resentment in his voice when he asked his friend that question, perhaps because he didn't believe it was a possibility at all.
"I never told him anything !" Tio was a bit out of breath already because of the surprise given by the flow of events. "I've got no idea how he would know." Tio checked behind him, seeing most of the people following them stop running. "This is really just too weird, maybe he just guessed."
"Well, anyway, I still hope he'll succeed or, you know, not die at least."
"Yeah."