"Hey... What a surprise to see you here, my friend!" Bryan said with that fake smile on his face. Scott lowered his head, instead, trying to hide his serious expression.
Scott wasn't as good at pretending as his brother. When it was needed, he could do it skilfully enough not to get caught, but it was always something troublesome to him.
"You don't need to pretend anything anymore. I know very well who you two are. It was very difficult to find out, but we, paladins, aren't fools. We were aware that two spies were making bold moves and deceiving some of our comrades."
Scott gave a step forward, casting an annoyed look toward the paladin.
"We prefer to be called scouts. Spying isn't really our thing, though there are some controversies regarding this matter."
The paladin snorted, shrugging his shoulders.
"It doesn't matter. You two will be dead soon," the man said with a grim expression.
'That's strange... this paladin doesn't have his Soul Mirror summoned. It isn't in form of a weapon or armor at all. He is wearing normal clothes and looks like a normal human to me. However, the way he looks at us and acts shows that he is a paladin. Or, at least, that's the most probable thing,' Scott thought, frowning hard.
'How dare a paladin that didn't even prepare himself to battle defy us like this?'
"What? In daylight?" Bryan said with a smile on his face. "Just a step behind, paladin. A step behind is enough for us to be seen by the cameras, if not by several people."
"So what, scouts? The cameras can see my face. I don't care. After all, I am just a normal human right now."
Bryan and Scott felt a chill running down their spine as the cold eyes of that paladin stared at them as if piercing their flesh and reaching their soul.
"It's not harmful to paladin society if a normal human goes to jail. But it will directly affect us if Baltazar, one of the military commandants of clan Ignus Cornus, comes to know about what we are planning to do," as he said it, he walked forward, snapping his fingers soundly.
The man put a hood on his face to cover it, also as a mask. It was a white mask with no details at all, only the openings to his eyes. Somehow, that lack of detail and color made it seem... scary.
Bryan and Scott were deciding whether they run away or not. If they went overboard there, it would cause problems for others. Just as much as paladin society couldn't show itself to the humans, demon society as well needed to be extremely careful. After all, they were also prejudiced among humans, mostly. They were seen as evil beings.
'We need to deliver that message to Baltazar as fast as possible,' Scott thought. 'We cannot die here. If we can't pull through, I don't know what will happen to our clan and the rest of the demon clans out there. We are lucky that we got to tell it to Mark, but this alone isn't good enough.'
Scott needed to get into action before something happened. Even if it cost his life.
"Bryan..." he glanced at his brother. "For the glory of our race?"
Bryan nodded.
"For the glory of our race, brother!" he shouted, stomping the ground and dashing towards that paladin.
Even though it left a bitter taste in his mouth, Scott turned to the opposite side and ran out of the alley. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists not to look back. No matter the result, he needed to keep going forward. The territory of clan Ignus Cornus wasn't so far away, he could do that!
Meanwhile, Bryan swiftly closed the distance between him and the paladin, charging his fist and feinting a punch to his head.
'Got you!' he thought as he saw that his opponent raised his hands to stop the punch that never came.
Bryan's aim wasn't to attack him directly. From far away, he could tell that the paladin was physically stronger than him. Also, due to his abnormal reflexes, it was unlikely that the scout would be able to connect a punch.
Instead, what he wanted was to make the paladin raise his guard, so the lower part of his body would be wide open!
As Bryan pulled his punch back, he leaned his body even more, to the point where it looked like he was about to fall forward. While in that position, he locked both arms around his opponent's waist and used all his strength to lift him from the ground while stepping forward, then threw his body to the ground.
'Those classes of wrestling made the difference in the end!' Bryan thought as he tried to raise from the ground.
'Now I just need to-' before he could do anything else, though, he felt that his arm was paralyzed in the same place. He couldn't get up at all.
He turned his head at breakneck speed, only to see the paladin applying an armlock on him.
'W-When did he...!?' he was obliged to stop thinking again as the paladin twisted his arm to the side, dislocating his shoulder.
Bryan had the urge to scream in pain, but he was afraid that Scott would hear him and come back to help, so he gritted his teeth not to let anything escape his mouth.
The paladin, though, wouldn't be merciless to him. He was willing to make him suffer until he couldn't help but scream.
He kicked the scout hard on his right knee, breaking it like it was a thin wooden stick. He pulled his leg and aimed for Bryan's left calf, hitting it so hard that the man fell to the ground.
The scout grunted in pain, his eyes tearing up.
"When you don't know one's capabilities, you shouldn't bother to start a ground fight. It surely is effective against laymen, but not when we are talking about a trained soldier," the paladin coldly stated as he got up from the ground slowly.
"It's not a personal thing, Scout A. However, you and your brother know too much."
With such a brief interaction, he raised his leg and stomped downward with a colossal amount of strength.
A wet sound mixed with the sound of bones snapping and breaking followed, echoing across the alley.
If it was a bit louder, Scott would be able to hear it. All that action lasted less than a minute, so he could not take too much distance.
Scott turned left, then right, running at full speed and nearly getting run over as he crossed the streets. He bumped into several people on his way, trying to open space for him to continue running without getting interrupted.
The scout felt like he was in true danger. Everything around him was going in slow motion. The path towards the territory of clan Ignus Cornus didn't seem so long at first, but when he started running, it seemed like he had a marathon ahead.
'This guy... he will truly kill me if he gets me. I don't know what happened to Bryan but, if he wasn't careful enough, I am afraid that he is already dead or severely hurt. I could perceive from the coldness of the paladin's eyes that he didn't care about going to a human prison if it meant to prevent us from getting this information to Baltazar.
'At the same time as it just shows that we are right about that whole scheme we told to Mark, I am also worried whether I will be able to warn my clan about it or not!'
Scott's eyes widened as he saw the last turning to the right that he would need to take to get out of paladin territory and get to the poorest part of the city. It was the street that led to the avenue which marked the borders of both territories.
A smile rose on his lips.
"I've got this...", he whispered, but his vision got covered by a shadow, then something hit him in his face, making the demon scout fall backward and hit his head on the ground.
Everyone that was around stopped to do anything they were doing, looking flabbergasted at that scene.
Two people were standing in front of the fallen man. The latter's nose was bleeding profusely and his breathing was harsh. His nebulous eyes showed just how much dizzy he was due to the hit he took from the bat of one of those two people.
"So... this is the man that they told us to kill?" one of them looked at his partner with nonchalant eyes, there was a hit of disdain on them.
Upon hearing that claim the crowd got even more shocked.
A woman taking care of a nearby restaurant took a step forward, but someone showed up behind her, pressing a knife against her back.
"I wouldn't do it if I was you, old lady. You wouldn't like to get targeted by us."
The woman gulped, not daring to look backward. Her eyes teared up.
Everyone around looked helplessly at that man on the ground as they saw one of the punks raise his bat and then swing it downwards mercilessly.