Teerom woke up to a tight feeling around his neck and hands. He would soon find himself bound by chains to a pole on a raised platform. There were five other people, men and women, in the same situation as him, restrained on poles beside him.
He was in a huge room with a green-tinted glass dome as a ceiling. The walls were crumbling apart. In fact, the entire place was made of cracked wood. The only thing intact was the double doors twenty meters ahead of him.
25 rough-looking men stood and loitered around; they were the Crasca gangsters, keeping an eye on their prisoners. One of them noticed that Teerom had woken up and subtly left the room.
Slowly beginning to panic, Teerom pointlessly struggled and jerked his hands around in hopes of loosening the chains.
"Don't do that. We want you alive." One of the guards said menacingly, but Teerom had stopped immediately as soon as he realized the chains were turning purple and were beginning to melt his skin. Naturally, he screamed from the searing pain, waking up two of the men who were trapped with him.
They began to weep. They begged to be set free, but the guards ignored them.
"Please! I have a family!" One of the men shouted. Teerom saw that in contrast to the protesting men, the women had no reaction. They simply stared into some distant space with no shred of will left to live. Their torn clothes revealed the reason why.
"You should've thought about that before stealing from us." One of the few female gangsters, who was notably unattractive, finally replied.
Jiggan and his friends found themselves wading through crowds of panicked people in the streets of Rukae.
"What's going on?" Aleed asked.
"There's been rumors that the Moon Church will purge Rukae," Baluchta answered.
"Purge?"
"Rukae isn't a functioning member of Eri. It doesn't trade anything valuable apart from raw money." Aywa explained.
"But why will they purge the whole country?"
"Because we are scum to them," Nurse Heather answered.
"Rukae is the city of crime. And we don't believe in the Moon Church" Jiggan added.
(Rukae was the name of the country, but people also use it to refer to its nameless capital city. The rest of the country is empty apart from a few small villages. Rukae, the city, is where thousands of criminals were banished to around 1,200 years ago. At the time it was a tier II Fire Dungeon where the criminals would either starve to death, burn to death, or burn to death inside the stomach of a Fire Type Monster.
However, a few powerful mages, four of them rose to protect the criminals. They were called Liviedo, Rager, Liffad, and Crasca. All of them united the people and ruled over them in four different territories within the Fire Dungeon. Generation after generation, the gang bosses would slowly beat the dungeon. The dungeon boss was actually defeated 900 years ago and the city rose to its current status from then on.
However, the gangs that formed under the four founders made Rukae's citizens stop believing in any religion. If any religious idols were found, especially of Luneia, they would be destroyed and their creators executed.)
"What is wrong with you people?" Teerom started, astounded by the greed and ignorance of the gangsters before him, "We're humans. We're the same as you. How could you do this?"
"*He* ain't nowhere near the same as us." She motioned with her head to the man on Teerom's left, a brown man.
"What's wrong with him?" Teerom asked, not playing dumb. He received no reply but an obnoxious sigh of disappointment.
Before Teerom could continue demanding answers, the doors ahead opened and the gangster that had left upon his waking returned with a short man in a full white two-piece suit. Even his shoes and tie were white and surprisingly, his whole outfit didn't have a single stain of dust or dirt on them.
His expression was twisted with the wrinkles of old age, but it was definitely one of constant anger and grimy grumpiness. He had slicked back, grey hair, yet to be white to match with his outfit, and as he approached Teerom, he began to speak, revealing his five remaining teeth.
"That boy that you took to the Medical Center. Where is he?" He asked, trying to sound relaxed but only adding a hint of calm to his furious tone.
"I don't know. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you." Teerom sneered. The man stood still for a moment before slowly taking out a pair of diamond knuckle dusters, which made Teerom immediately regret speaking."
But before Teerom could apologize, the Crasca Gang Boss, Cerstar's fists poured down on him. He was punched violently about twenty times in an uncomfortable few seconds with the only sound being Teerom's wheeze echoing in the room after each punch.
"We need that boy's Poison Magic. Tell me where he is. Now." Cerstar strangled Teerom, ready to kill him.
"I don't know…" Teerom said, determined to never give in to his fear.
"Then die." Cerstar began his onslaught of punches again, this time he would not stop until Teerom's body ceased to move and breathe. Five punches struck Teerom in the gut, damaging his intestines; fifteen struck his arms and legs, breaking his bones slightly; and the last one in the onslaught struck his head, knocking him slightly out of his mind.
Cerstar prepared to launch another one, but a sudden commotion rose from beneath. His henchmen shouted aggressively, probably fighting someone below. Then, ensued gunshots, slashing, deafening noises, and most of all, the screams and cries of anguish mixed with the crushing of bones and flesh.
A sudden fear struck Cerstar. He had experienced this before.
"Everyone! Cover the door! Whoever comes through, shoot them! Kill them! Don't give them a single moment to react!" He shouted, hyperventilating.
"What happened, boss!? Do you know who's down there!?" The female gangster asked, her question answered by a look of freezing terror beaming through Cerstar's wrinkles.
10 years back, when Cerstar was in his mid-sixties, he had been working as the right-hand man of the previous Crasca Boss. However, in a few hours, their entire infrastructure crumbled, all of their territories were taken, and all their men were massacred. It was the work of five individuals, but the one who truly caused the annihilation of the old Crasca Gang was the most feared man in all of Rukae back in the previous generation of gangsters.
"Jagged Jiggan." The name didn't ring a bell for his henchman, "A monster."
The doors blasted open and a cloud of smoke-like debris filled the room. The stench of blood hung in the air as four shadowy figures faded into view inside the clouds. The Crasca gangsters were hesitant to fire; they were waiting to see who it was that reached caused this havoc.
"Shoot!" Cerstar ordered, but it sounded more like he was pleading, begging. He had seen the man in the middle's stature. His body like a giant. The nightmare from long past had come back to haunt him, but not in the night as a dream, it had manifested into flesh and bone and was approaching him with a bag of towels, a shirt that had been mostly burned off, revealing his lean muscles, and a look of unstoppable fury on his face.
"Jiggan!" Teerom laughed and cried at the same time.
Jiggan stared at Cerstar; Aywa, Baluchta, and Aleed had all emerged and joined him. "What the fuck have you done to my son?" Jiggan dropped the bag of towels and stepped forward, his tone commanding the room. But the Crasca henchmen attacked him nonetheless.
They couldn't even reach him; Aywa shot ten of them dead, Baluchta sliced another ten into multiple pieces, and Aleed deafened a group of five that tried to attack Jiggan simultaneously. In just ten steps that Jiggan took, he was surrounded by a bath of blood and guts.
Half of Cerstar's white suit had been stained with that blood. But soon it would be fully drenched with his own.
"Please… Please don't kill me."
"Jagged Arms…" Jiggan said coldly, activating his Protection Magic that transformed his skin and muscles bumpy and sharp. He was using Arts. His arms now looked like two maces. And those maces pummelled Cerstar's body until everything below his head had been crushed into mush.
He spat on Cerstar's head before stepping on it on his way to free Teerom.
"We'll get the others," Baluchta said, heading toward one of the women whose eyes returned a trace of emotion from the sheer shock of what she experienced. Most importantly, she was thrown from her despair and felt hope.
"Jiggan!" Teerom cried and hugged his father figure as tightly as he could.
"Come on. We have to get you healed immediately." Jiggan picked Teerom up with ease and carried him on his back through the once clean and luxurious corridors – the floors, walls, and furniture were all smashed to pieces, and most importantly, gangsters' remains were littered about all over.
They reached the front doors, two massive wooden doors that were lined with silver – Jiggan had destroyed half of the door on the right to break into the mansion. Nurse Heather met them outside with Ligta, she was on the path that led to the front gates (the mansion was located on a large hill with a metal fence running the perimeter).
"What the hell?" Aywa muttered as he took in the destruction in the distance.
"Knights have come." Nurse Heather replied.
"The purge has begun," Jiggan said, his and Teerom's eyes suddenly widening with realization. "Seima!" They both shouted and Jiggan stepped forwards, "Quick, heal him." He requested to Nurse Heather.
However, suddenly, on top of her, crushing her, descended a knight in bulky white armor on a Pegasus – a white monster horse with beautiful white wings that Knights above the Master Knight class use to get around. Ligta's leg was crushed under the Pegasus' hoof, but he managed to crawl a safe distance away.
The Master Knight's head was covered by a long crusader's helm with the Moon Church's main symbol on its forehead: three crescents, the one in the middle is the biggest one. He wielded a massive grey sword, brimming with Strength Magic.
"Guys. I'll handle him." Aywa reached up and put his hand on Jiggan's shoulder, "It's the least I can do."
Aleed looked at Baluchta and nodded, "No. Jiggan and Teerom will go get Seima. We will stay here with you. That's a Master Knight." He said, with Baluchta, standing beside Aywa.
"Don't you dare die," Jiggan said coolly and departed with Teerom, putting his faith in his friends as he tried to sprint past the Master Knight.
"You shall not run anywhere, heretic." The knight said, revealing his aged voice, and swung his great sword at Jiggan. However, a rope suddenly wrapped around it and pulled, bringing it to the ground behind Jiggan's foot. The blade displaced the earth, creating a tiny crater where it landed.
Aywa had shot the rope out of his gun. Rope Mode he called it; one of many modes that his pistols had.
"Let the fight begin." He spun his pistols by the triggers.