Aywa blew on the barrel and loaded the gun with bullets. "Barrage Mode," He said and the gun switched the Air Runestone, that propelled the rope, with a Fire Runestone to blast the bullets forward in an incredibly fast chain.
They didn't harm the knight at all, squashing into his Tier VI Protection Armor and sticking on.
"I am a Master Knight. Your petty magic won't work on me." The Master Knight charged up a Strength Magic spell and raced toward them on his horse.
"I know your armor's tough." Aywa grinned and yelled, "Explode!" The bullets that were stuck on the armor exploded, filling the interior of the armor with smoke. The Master Knight's Pegasus' course strayed sharply to the right, but Baluchta was already above him, performing a mighty swing of her sword down his helmet.
Jiggan raced through the massacred streets of Rukae. A group of lesser knights was in hot pursuit just a few meters behind him, but they soon ran out of mana and couldn't keep up the spells that boosted their legs to run faster.
Jiggan not only had the advantage of being tall and therefore being able to step farther but having incredible natural strength in his muscles. He quickly outran them and paced toward another group of lesser knights who couldn't keep up either.
"Hold on, Teerom!" He shifted Teerom's arms that were wrapped around his neck down so that he could hold them.
In the direction he was running, the direction of their house, flames rose greatly.
Screaming Seima's name, he tried desperately to run faster.
Baluchta's eyes widened with surprise as a searing pain spread from her belly to the rest of her body. Her attack had been stopped and she hung midair halfway down the Master Knight's great sword.
Spitting blood, she stared into his helmet, confused as to how the sword had traveled that fast to cut her blade in half and then power through her stomach.
"Baluchta!" Aywa shouted and jumped forwards, shooting with both pistols at the Master Knight as he slid down to the right.
"Wait, Aywa!" Aleed watched as the knight lugged his sword with Baluchta on it down to use her as a shield for Aywa's lightning-fast bullets. He then lurched forward to stab him with the half of the sword coming out of Baluchta's back.
Aywa's life flashed before his eyes as the giant blade covered in the red essence of Strength Magic hurled toward him.
Aleed jumped forwards and planted his feet, letting the sword cut into his side and add him to the meat skewer with Baluchta, who was already dead.
"Run…" Aleed struggled, "He's not a Master Knight… He's- a High Knight."
Aywa's eyes widened with sheer horror as life left Aleed. Tears filled them shortly after, but acting quickly, he grabbed Ligta, whose leg was broken, and dragged him away at full speed.
"FUUUCK!" He shouted, crying and protesting to the full moon above, "WHY!?" But Luneme didn't answer.
Jiggan and Teerom arrived at their house, fallen to the ground and in flames. Tears filled their eyes, but Teerom didn't give up hope. He forced himself off Jiggan's back and stumbled around, shouting for his sister.
"Teerom…" Jiggan's eyes had widened with dismay, "She's…" He watched his son search frantically, ignoring the charred body upon the burning bed.
"Seima!" Teerom cried, praying for her to reply.
Soon, he stopped and looked at the bed where his sister still lay. Her body was black and crumbling. He said nothing and neither did Jiggan; they both simply stared, not a single thought running through their minds.
The clacking of hooves snapped Jiggan out of his trance and he picked Teerom up, running again from the approaching group of knights in the distance.
"Shoot!" The leader of the group shouted and a mage in the back created a large magic circle in front of them from which hundreds of arrows shot at Jiggan, twenty of them lodging into his back. But he continued to run. Towards the borders of Rukae.
Teerom went limp in his arms, giving up and simply staring out into nothing.
Jiggan sniffled and gritted his teeth as they neared the tall wall that surrounded the whole city. It still had a faint mark on it – the mark of the Jagged Mafiaga on it. He set Teerom down on the grass and cast his Jagged Spell on his arms, pummelling the wall with his spiky fists until it crumbled.
Swiftly, as the knights closed the distance, he lifted Teerom again and ran out of Rukae into the surrounding fields of grass. However, an army of mage knights stood in front of them. They were all circling the city, ensuring that no pagan got out alive. Immediately, they each cast a Firebolt spell at Jiggan, who threw Teerom fifty meters away and tanked the avalanche of flames.
"Jiggan…" Teerom finally spoke, his eyes focused on the huge cloud of smoke in front of him. The knights that chased them were approaching him, their swords were drawn and ready to purge him.
"Don't you dare…" Jiggan's voice called from the smoke; the leading knight had lifted his sword above his head in preparation to behead Teerom, "DON'T YOU DARE HURT MY SON!" Jiggan bellowed and jumped out of the smoke.
His body was in horrifying condition. All of his skin had been deeply burned to the third degree. He looked like some deranged zombie as he got in the way of the sword and stopped it with his jagged hands.
"Protection Magic… Jagged Body…" He mumbled, mustering all of his mana to perform his strongest spell. His entire body contorted and became spiked with Protection Magic, but it was not going to last long.
The knights all hopped off their horses and cast their Strength Spells, being supported by Protection Magic that their mage put on them.
"Please! Don't do this!" Teerom begged, "Please don't kill my dad!"
"Heh, look at that." Jiggan looked back at Teerom, smiling affectionately and coolly through his burned face, "You finally called me your dad."
Teerom broke down into tears as the fight began. There were five knights, and Jiggan powered his fists into all of them, dodging every swing they threw at him. It was a dirty, almost awkward fight. But even dirtier than Jiggan's backstreet strategies was the leading knight's next move.
He went for Teerom as Jiggan beat his accomplices to a pulp. Reacting quickly, Jiggan turned and leaped forwards to protect his son, ignoring the fact that he'd run out of mana.
The knight would've beheaded the boy had it not been for Jiggan getting in the way and catching the sword halfway in his huge forearm. The knight laughed and cast a stronger Strength Spell to cut through the rest of it. He swung his sword up to attempt to strike at Teerom again; Jiggan got in the way, hugging Teerom close to his chest as he took the stab in his lower back.
The knight giggled with ecstasy. He stabbed him again and again, trying to kill the giant man before him.
"Teerom…" Jiggan looked into his son's eyes, "I love you."
Time stopped. They just watched each other's eyes and Jiggan slipped something into Teerom's pocket.
However, his gaze lost its soul, and Teerom watched as his body went limp and fell to the ground, revealing the proud knight that had killed him.
"Jiggan… Dad…" Teerom's heart sunk. He had gone through far too much. His mind was too muddled for him to run from the approaching knight. Quivering, he simply stared at Jiggan's corpse.
"Someone…" He looked up at the knight, about to be executed, "Someone… Help me…"
At those words, every creature in the country felt a chill down their spine.
His right hand began to quiver aggressively and the skin of his palm ripped open, revealing a bright blue eye that reflected nothing less than eternity.
He would've screamed from the pain, but his mind was numb. Instead, he watched six black circles form around his hand.
Silence.
The sky grew cloudy without anyone's noticing and a huge deep black circle, rimmed with red, appeared above Teerom. Five bolts of black darkness descended upon the world from that portal like thunder.
The knights felt an incredible rumble within their souls followed by sheer horror at the ungodly creatures before them.
Demons.
They were massive and slightly human-looking, but their skin was a deep shade of blue and they had huge horns growing out of their backs. Each of them grinned, summing up to six smiles – one of them had two mouths - cold vapor fell from their mouths.
Every knight there froze. Teerom watched with horror mixed with slight glee as the knight who had killed his father figure was picked up by one of the demons and devoured. His bones could be heard crunching terribly under his gargled scream. The demon spat out the crushed bones; it was picky about bones.
All of them glanced at Teerom, grinning at him as a thank you for summoning them, before three of them, with monstrous speed, feasted upon the knights surrounding Rukae. The other two marched toward the city to satisfy their endless hunger.
Teerom sat still on his knees with Jiggan's corpse beside him as horrifying screams filled the air, nearly all of which belonged to knights.
He cried.
As Aywa reached the flaming gates of the Crasca mansion, the High Knight shot forwards after discarding the two corpses on his sword and swung it down at Aywa. He luckily managed to dodge and only lose his left forearm.
However, the pain was far too intense and made him fall onto his face, his head spinning. He tried to get up but kept being reduced to the ground by the agony. Tearfully, he roared and drove his body forwards, swinging his pistol into one of the gaps between the knight's hip armor plates.
"Fuck you!" He insulted and shot five times, managing to injure the knight's hip. With even more effort, he bought up his other pistol but his other arm was chopped off by the now furious knight.
"Be purged of your impurities, pagan." With incredible Strength Magic, he punched Aywa into a wall, possibly breaking his entire ribcage.
'I'm not a pagan…' Aywa wailed as he realized the indifferent cruelty of this world, "I believe in Luneia," He mumbled weakly amid the debris and flames, "I believe in the promise," He said in a cooling tone, "Yet why am I punished?"
"A criminal cannot be part of Luneia's love." The High Knight burst forwards to finish Aywa off.
Or so he thought.
He barely crossed a meter before he fell to his knees. Looking to his left, he saw a young boy with an insurmountably desperate look on his face, summoning forth all of his mana to spread a faint purple gas in the air.
"Not bad, kid." Aywa chuckled, but he had breathed the poisonous air in too.
"What is this gas?" The High Knight took out a Healing Runestone, but Aywa quickly reached for his pistol beside him, picked it up with his mouth, and pulled the trigger with his tongue. His precision didn't falter at all.
"Run, Ligta. He's probably got ten more." He said, hoping that Ligta would spread his dying words across the world. Hoping it wasn't all in vain. Wishing he'd be rewarded with an afterlife.
"No!" Ligta replied, stumbling towards Aywa. "Him… I want to be like him." He shouted, heroically lifting Aywa who was twice his size and three times his weight. He yelled bestially as he managed to haul onto his back and began to shakily walk on one foot away from the knight, who had taken out a Healing Runestone and used it on himself.
"What a curious Magic Type." The knight felt Ligta should've been a knight, but his ideals couldn't allow the child of a criminal to live. He approached Ligta menacingly and powerfully, instilling a deep sense of dread in the boy.
'Teerom!' An image of the boy who saved him appeared in his mind.
"My name is Ligta Monev! Remember it, villain! For evil is nothing before me!" Ligta charged the knight, releasing as much poison gas as he could.
"Futile!" The High Knight lifted his sword but out of nowhere came a deep blue demon that slapped him into the building on the left and proceeded to jump on him to pin him before grabbing his arm with its index and thumb and ripping it off with great effort. It seemed to find it amusing how much stronger this knight was than the others, shown by a great grin on its face.
But its hunger was far too overwhelming and it consumed the knight instead of playing with him like it wanted to.
Ligta fell back on his butt, petrified. The demon turned to him and smiled before marching towards him while salivating profusely. Good people's souls, after all, were delicious to demons.
The portal closed.
The demon vanished and so did Ligta. Aywa moaned from sorrow; Ligta had been eaten.
The eye on Teerom's hand closed and the circles became charred skin that fell to the grass below.
With nothing going through his mind, Teerom stood up and began to walk. Past the sea of the knights' blood and towards the distance.
His mind had broken.
He couldn't even cope.
He simply walked.
All he could do was walk.