"One of those fuckers threw himself into a wheel, everything's fucked up and apparently, he didn't consider taking a shit before doing that!" spoke Layo in a classy manner as she was trying to removed the unnecessary parts with her strands.
"Not all of them are brainwashed with vampiric eyes or whatever it is that she uses, just a bunch of lunatics" remarked Molbas.
Laura was kneeling on the ground with a branch, doing her usual divinations using whatever was at hand.
She looked at the movements of the branch, seemingly pulling meaning out of this twitching piece of wood.
"I think another enemy is coming or is it just an unspecified danger?" she rubbed her chin, her ability was fairly potent even if it was quite versatile but using such materials made the divinations arduous to decipher.
"Are you talking about this guy?" casually spoke Molarine as she pointed at a figure walking straight toward them.
It was humanoid in shape but had enormous shoulders, as it got closer, it revealed itself to be someone wearing a very unwieldy-looking armor, going by the size of everything besides the oversized shoulders, the person seemed to sized like a human would.
The armor was painted on in a simple manner with red paint, the helmet didn't appear to have any opening and only random stuff glued to it to make it appear as a face.
The figure swayed his shoulders from left to right as he walked toward the group at a regular walking speed, but he wasn't swaying because the armor's shoulders were too heavy but just because he walked in this exaggerated manner.
The closer he got, the stronger the vibrations caused by his steps was felt through the ground.
He only stopped about two meters before walking into Molarine.
"Greetings, you must be the fools" he said, sounding as if he was speaking through a cheese grater.
He looked around at the surrounding corpses of the ones that arrived here before him.
"Even if you manage to get that carriage to move again, you will not be going any further, the road is, in fact, not wide enough for all of us" he stated matter of factly.
Molbas walked up next to Molarine and they both stared at the man in a ridiculous armor.
He was in no defensive stance or any stance for that matter, he simply stood there, as if he was lost.
A fist collided with his helmet, making him recoil ever so slightly, held up by his heavy armor, it didn't sound like the armor was doing much good in protecting from the impacts as flurries of both punches and sword strikes hit him.
After it was done, he fell on his back, causing a loud sound to erupt in the now quiet place.
"Seventy for Molarine and sixty seven for Molbas" he simply stated as got back up only using his legs and feet, his arms somehow crossed despite the armor being as stiff as a corpse.
"You really are fools! You fell for it!" he exclaimed, sounding very content with himself.
The armor was unarmed and so was the man inside of the armor.
"You'll never be able to hurt me anymore! You lost you chance! Hihihihihahahah!" he laughed in a childlike manner, this man certainly didn't appear to a professional of any kind.
"I had never been able to make use of my aspect in any ways that matters before! Dea opened my eyes and I shall not let you get any closer to the one who is my light!" he exclaimed as he lunged forward, at least he tried, it only ended up with him further than he had been initially.
The kick had caused him to slide on the soil, leaving two marks as if snakes had swam in the ground.
He was still completely unharmed and laughing boisterously.
"You don't get it do you?! I have an aspect, something rare and precious, much more precious than any other kind of unique ability or skills! An aspect is something you are born with and that has always been the case since the dawn of everything!" he started explaining out of the blue, it seemed like he couldn't help but talk about it.
Clearly, this man didn't have anyone else to talk to.
"My aspect allows me to become invincible! For every hit that fails to hurt me, I gain one percent of damage nullification, do you understand? This mean seventy percent of Molarine's attacks are nullified, seventy one now actually..." he spoke, it wasn't visible but it was clear that he was smiling, as if expecting someone to go 'Woah, that is a great aspect!'
"That absolutely dogshit" instead, Molarine did the opposite, the armored man made a small noise and started vibrating in place.
"You dare insult me?! You'll never be able to hurt me bitch and once you go over the one hundred percent, I'll get to choose whether it becomes damage reflection or healing for me, the more you'll attack, the less you'll damage me and eventually, you'll just start hurting yourself more and more!" he shouted out, suddenly freezing as he realised what he had just said.
"Then we won't attack you, it's not like you can attack yourself" Molbas also crossed her arms like he did.
"Heh? What? Well, this... This doesn't change much at all! You still won't be moving any further!" he stumbled on his own words but managed to catch himself.
"You talk as if I can't pick you up and bury you alive or throw you off a cliff" uttered Molarine as she took a step toward him, only for him to step back.
"Wait, you wouldn't do that right? I only wanted to pay back Dea for helping me understand the value of my ability with this armor, I don't have anything against you guys!" he put his hands before him in a protective manner.
"But you won't move no matter what right?" he heard a voice coming from behind him, his eyes focused and he noticed that Layo wasn't near the wheel anymore.
He felt something thin slipping into a gap in his armor, feeling it crawl on his skin like a mix between a centipede and snake, before he could panic because of that, he felt it wrap around his neck and start to strangle him out.
He fell to the ground and rolled as quickly as his armor allowed him to, resulting in not much movement at all.
He tried to reach for his neck but his own armor prevented him from doing so.
He slapped one of his hands against the ground, trying to communicate that he was giving up and the moment the strand around his neck loosened a bit, allowing him to breath again, the helmet popped off, seemingly by itself, revealing a young man that didn't even seem to have completed his puberty yet.
"I-I'll tell you everything I know! Please don't hurt me!" he pleaded with his hands in the air.
His demand went on deaf ears as his nose was cracked and a cut appeared on his cheek, having been injured by Molarine and Molbas, his aspect deactivated, even with the nullificating, his own body wasn't able to withstand the attacks.
"She has taken a mansion for herself, I don't know whose it is supposed to be or if it was abandoned before hand but she has apparently stayed here for a long time without any problems, you can't miss it, there are many towers around" revealed the young man with his hand covering his bloodied nose.
"Many towers?" wondered Laura.
"Sorry, I don't know what their purpose is, I thinkt they have been here from before Dea took over, I don't know anything else, I was not allowed inside, I took orders from the outside gate, I have no idea how many people are with Dea inside" he apologised, the ones sent out after the group were those that had no value to Dea, they were fodder.
________________________________________
As per usual, Dea was laying on her bed when the sound of something landing was heard, at the end of her bed, a large bird had appeared despite the lack of entries in the room.
She recognised it as Corbao, one of Theli's pets, the grabbed a piece of paper dexterously and threw it toward her.
Corbao looked similarly to a crow, except that he was much large, his talons were more akin to that of a bird of prey and on his chest, a few white feathers peaked from his obsidian black feathers.
Without a noise, he flew away and vanished, leaving the vampire by herself with the note he had brought.