"Umm Eleora, I think you got something wrong here. The ones who will be fighting the kidnappers is us, while you will be waiting for us in a safe place."
"What? No! I also want to get my revenge on them!"
Angra is starting to get annoyed by Eleora so he snapped at her "Don't you see what your so-called magic is able to do earlier? Nothing! Why don't you just stay somewhere safe and let us do our job properly."
"But I'm the reason for all of this happening, I need to take responsibility for this!"
"The only responsibility there is that you're giving us more responsibility to fight the enemy and protect you at the same time!"
Seeing that the atmosphere is getting worse, Faust then decided to cut into their conversation
"Gra, that's enough. Eleora, I understand your feelings, but the best thing you can do right now is to stay safe, so we can all do our job with ease knowing that you, the girl that we just saved are safe and sound, okay El?" Faust said while holding Eleora's shoulder.
Eleora was a bit flustered by Faust's action, but she managed to keep up a straight face despite her ears starting to redden a little.
"But Faust, I really don't want to just sit back while other people clear up the mess that I made, I don't want to be that kind of person."
As Faust was about to find more ways to dissuade her to not go with them, Mark suddenly said
"Why not do it? It will be a good experience for you two, to fight while protecting someone, it may become a useful experience for you two in the future."
"But da... Leader, what if the enemy is strong and we failed to protect her and she got hurt? We can't do it by injuring an innocent person."
"Of course, I will see first how strong the opponent is, if they are too strong for you guys I will even step in myself."
"But…"
"No butts, and we will check on them first, it's not certain what we will do next."
"Alright then, let's go."
Faust then told the spirits to find the other spirit that he sent after the kidnappers earlier.
---
In The Border Village, there is a wooden house that is slightly larger than the other wooden houses around it. When the sun is already fully swallowed under the horizon and the moonlight is starting to shine giving a gentle calming light to all the things below it, people are already lit up their lanterns to light their houses so that they can still continue their activities despite the lack of the sunlight. But the peculiar house is still as dark as the night without any light could be seen from the inside.
"Are you sure nobody is following you?"
"We've waited until night before we went back here, and there's no sign of anyone following us."
"Alright, boss is waiting in the basement."
The two men who are walking to the basement wore clothes that are slightly tattered here and there and some parts of their skin can be seen to have a tinge of red that looks like when you are exposed to something really hot like a boiled water or searing red metal. And one of them is seen to have a more severe wound than the other.
They went down the stairs and they arrived at the basement. The basement is not particularly nice, with only a wooden foundation and dirt flooring, it looked like it was built in a hurry without much preparation.
They opened the sole iron door that existed in the basement and finally met someone who they called as the boss. They looked at the large burly man in front of them, his huge body is not only for show, he is a person who has gained his third job. And with only one hand, he can easily pick up a fully grown-up man and throw them across the room.
They bowed to the man and wanted to report that they had failed the job. But before they were about to open their mouths, the boss started speaking first.
"I already know that you failed, so please spare me the excuses and just focus on the why."
"We've successfully kidnapped the mayor's daughter and locked her up in the safe house, but when we are still waiting for the person who will pick her up, we are suddenly attacked."
One of the men who is telling the stories of what just happened paused up slightly to look at his boss' reaction, seeing that his boss have nothing to say he then continued,
"We've never seen that type of attack before, so we can't respond appropriately."
"Oh, what kind of attack is it?"
Although the two men in front of him had failed their mission, they are some of the best and experienced people in the organization. Their organization is not that big, they mainly did smuggling and rarely do robbing on either house in the villages around or caravans on the freeway, so their organization is not well known to the public, but their organization is quite known in the underworld in this corner part of the kingdom and could run smoothly because of him, the leader is already on his third job and a strong one at that, because having your third job doesn't mean that you are stronger than the person who has their second job, their understanding, control, and use of magic is still the most important thing when considering someone's strength.
On the scale of the whole kingdom, having the third job is maybe not that high, but for the scale of the criminals who operate in small villages, he is very respected, and not many people dare to make his organization their enemies.
The two men in front of him have been part of his organization from the beginning and they have been through a lot of things ever since the organization was made. If they said that they had never seen an attack, it could be something special that he needed to look into himself.
"At first, there was something that looked like a ball that crashed through the front door, the ball was shining and I could feel the presence of mana from my mana sense. Although the ball did nothing, I still used earth fusion just in case there was a follow-up attack, but there is none. The ball just stayed there for a while, but when I wanted to get closer and inspect what the ball was, it suddenly exploded, releasing dense hot steam all over the room. Without thinking we hurriedly escaped and left the place."
"I survived only because of the earth fusion, if I'm not careful before, I will surely be steamed to death by whatever that thing is."
"What happened to the mayor's daughter?"
"We come back to the house later in the evening and there is no evidence that she is still there or any news regarding her being rescued. Even now, she is still missing."
After hearing the story, he then told the two men to go back upstairs and get their skin healed by the healer the organization has that can use life magic.
He decided to just let them go since it was an accident that is outside their calculation and plan, and he himself even never heard of the attack earlier. He had heard about explosions caused by fire magic, but he never heard a steam explosion before. And it is a delayed explosion at that. When you conjure a Magic, it should be instantly triggered the moment it was cast, so a delayed explosion means that the opponent is a very skilled mage or excelled in their control and use of magic.
"Curse those mysterious bastards!" He cursed loudly.
He had received this job to kidnap the border's town mayor from an anonymous request. Although it is usually more dangerous, the pay is certainly much higher than the normal rate. Hearing that the job is to kidnap a mayor's daughter from a rural village he thought that this job will be easy cash for his organization, but now that he is dealing with someone who has a high probability of being a skilled mage is something he didn't want to do.
Of course, he made a thorough preparation before doing the job, he even made a temporary base in the village and moved their base operation only for this mission so that they can do a perfect recon of the situation in the village. They did an ample check of the village and found nothing suspicious or dangerous that can hinder their mission and made a perfect plan.
But now, all of it is ruined because of one accident at the last step of the plan. All they had to do was wait for the person who would pick up the mayor's daughter and they would receive their pay.
He had also considered if God forbid that they still failed the mission, he still has a counter plan to just blatantly kidnapped her using brute force because there is no person capable of hold out against the full attack of the organization, but now if a skilled mage is involved, he can't do such things. A person who has reached a high level in magic usually has their own backings and he didn't want his organization that he built himself from scratch destroyed cleanly by one of the powerhouses from the capital.
He then called for the three people that were standing near him. They are his bodyguards and three of the strongest people below himself in the organization. Although they are still at their second job, they are specialized in stealth and assassination and they are certainly much better than him when it comes to doing stealth missions.
"Secretly find out about who did that, and make sure to lay low because we didn't want to accidentally provoke someone we didn't want to mess with."
The three of them nodded and started to move towards the door. But when they are directly behind the door and was about to open it, they heard someone yelling outside the door,
"HERE'S JOHNNY!"
Then the hard and heavy iron door was pushed flying back straight hitting their faces.