When the words echoed the air, all faces twisted in tension.
'Who? How could he!?'
The boss of the kidnap operation jolted up and tried to make sense of the situation.
They were invisible, almost inaudible and very careful!
A possible hypothesis entered his line of thought and he instantly glared darkly at Roukey to his right. It was the sole explanation for this development.
'...A Skill?'
The hidden Awakened must have been out of the skill's reach and they were left in the dark as a consequence. All these thoughts raced in record speed through the boss's head and it took him only a fraction of a second to make a decision.
"Go! Get the kid and the Ape!" he called out in a low voice.
The amalgam of peccant evils took next to no time to start running towards the Shelter. Roukey, who had used Earth's Touch to scan the proximity before, made his next move immediately, and in fast succesion of him slamming his hands onto the ground, earthen projectiles dug into the wooden facade of the Shelter carelessly, ripping apart a chasm wide enough for a couple people to pass through.
The windmist surrounding the infiltrators had dissipated under the turbulant movements of the group and the Skill Roukey had used just now, blew it away completely.
A group of 6 masked man, obscured by black draperies, came into the hazy vision of dim moonlight.
Only their eyes peeked out from behind the dark clothing. They were sharp, treacherous... Clearly determined and ready to deal with any obstacle valiant enough to obstruct their path.
...And exactly such an obstacle barred the gap they created in the wooden facade.
A sole man stepped out, his fierce eyebrows knitted to the extreme with barman's apron hanging over his muscular stature.
Drops of blood trickled down his temple and his shoulder, which were dirtied with a muddy, earthen slear.
He had not been able to dodge Roukey's projectiles. Of course he hadn't. They were fired from behind the obstructing wooden walls of his bar.
The remnant parts had enough force to hurt him, even after being dampened and broken apart by the barrier of the tavern.
And perhaps that was for the best.
Right behind the reliable figure, a dozen kids alongside Jessie were fleeing to the kitchen. They had the intention to leave through the backdoor, situated in a corner of the adjacent room.
One of the masked men called out and quickened his pace.
"Quick! Don't let them leave!"
Joey twitched and his scary, widened eyes inspected the infiltrators as a deep voice left his lips.
It was directed at the invaders he never broke eye-contact with. His expression was so dark and gruesome, that it almost radiated tangible killing intent.
"First you destroy my bar, then you want to harm my kids?"
The air grew hot and stuffy.
A short moment of silence penetrated his location before he coldly added in abhorrent enunciation.
"You rea-... hmpfh, Forget it, just die."
As he finished these words, the surface of his figure exploded into hungry, blazing flames. The area around his body was devoured by the gluttonous fire, which continued expanding to lick at the wooden interior and the edges of the chasm, as he stepped out of it.
His figure was a blatant contrast to the dark night, flickering fiercely in the dark and illuminating the facade of his tavern in a bright red.
The time-beaten signboard with the red and blue bottle of booze crossing the symbolic 'Shelter' coruscated along the flames.
Supported by Calculated Fury, a cold, rational glint formed deep inside his eyes and he procured a brown bottle from behind his back, which he threw up in the air just to... smash into smithereens.
The countless glass fragments blasted around and the alcoholic contents of the bottle reacted to the fervent embers, engulfing him in hot flames and also instantaneously chaining into an unavoidable reaction.
A breath of fire lunged at the masked men, their eyes narrowing in surprise.
But of course they wouldn't just let themselves be burnt without resistance. When the fire threatened to devour them, the frontrunner waved his hand in placid speed, as if wanting to shun away a fly. This oddly unmotivated swing conjured, contradicting the visual motion, a terrible wind, which evaporated the fire with pure force.
The boss had made his move.
Unimpressed, he glanced at the escaping kids and lightly said:
"Roukey, you deal with this."
Without waiting for a positive reply, the boss leisurely created another strange wind, lifting him and the other four people from the ground, intending to land them on the hipped roof of the tavern.
"Yes, Boss!" he replied energetically, a tinge of joy tracing his voice.
...Blank, cold eyes followed the levitating men before turning fierce.
"Do you think I will just let you just do what you want!" Joey screamed out in a loud voice.
Turning his focus inwardly, he circulated his blazing Mana rapidly before raising a palm to face the escaping lot.
Taking only a moment to charge his fury into hot scorn, he blasted out a geysir of flames into their direction.
Its fiery tongue expanded in volume as it reached them, but somehow the flying group didn't seem worried at all.
"Hahh, lowly Awakeneds are thinking too highly of themselves nowadays..."
The boss calmly uttered, before swatting Joey's best shot away with a burst of wind, produced with the same lethargic move he showed before.
Joey had trouble standing in place with the sheer force of the gale winds pressing down on him. Cuts were appearing on his skin, and the winds were slicing through his hide with relative ease before being combusted into replete explosions by his immolating flame mantle.
Roukey observed this scene with a gloating smile, before lampooning.
"What do you think you're able to do against the boss? He is not on your level."
"And neither am I," he added with a cruel chuckle, his eyes glowing in malicious colors.
The group of infiltrators had already landed on the hipped roof of the tavern, and the barman Joey now faced Roukey. And to the Earth Element Awakened's surpise...
He seemed to have lost all interest in the group.
Something's wrong! Roukey concluded this fact when he was met with a completely indifferent expression of the broad, rough-bearded man.
With his short scruffy brown beard catching on fire and altering itself into a flaming mane, it was Joey's turn to lampoon.
A creepy smile formed on his face, stressed by the shadows thrown by the flickering flames Joey's darkly draped countenance guffawed menacingly.
"Hahaha... I may not be in his league, but... But that surely doesn't apply for everybody, does it?"
The Earth-Elemental gasped in realization before throwing his gaze on the roof, where the silhouettes of the boss and the underlings have long melted into the deep night.
"B-No..." he wanted to call out before letting out a pained groan.
Joey had shot forward and swung his blistering hammer of a right hand to the masked man's body.
A crust of mud and dirt sizzled away from Roukey's forearm when he tried to defend the ambushing attack. But to his dismay his parrying arm broke away by the sheer force of Joey's punch, strengthened by the lacking time to prepare a sufficient defense.
"Y-You... Shouldn't you have broken through only recently? W-Whats with this power!"
Joey growled in a dark timbre, his voice coiling with hatred before exploding into a deafening shout.
"You should at least be able to take this if you plan to hurt what is under my protection, SHOULDN'T YOU?"
Roukey grimaced and took a wide stride back, his defending hand slowly recovering back to his hull.
Preparing his next attack, his right leg suddenly screamed in agonizing pain, buckling under an extreme force to the side.
'What?!'
Joey's leg sweeped through his pivotal leg like a lumberman cutting down a massive tree. Roukey was by no means a man of small stature. No, he was rather massive, quite comparable to Joey's height and body weight.
And still, his left leg lifted from the ground like a kids toy, messing up his center of balance and rotating him into a uncoordinated spin, with the dusty ground being the final destination.
A sneaky and calculated leg kick!... This unexpected move left Roukey in a daze.
It took him almost half a second to realize the situation. Slowly falling to his ground, he stretched his arm out to the ground in hopes of reaching it. He desperately needed to touch it, it seemed.
But of course, Joey wouldn't let him off before that...
* * *
On the hipped roof, the boss and the group surveyed the streets beneath. Their gaze stopped quite quickly. The gathering of a dozen people will not be easily missed on the otherwise barren road.
They had already exited via the back door and were now running as fast as their speed allowed, straight in the direction of the maze-like slums.
Loud clashing sounds echoed behind them, but their focus lay entirely on a golden-furred ape and a small girl among the group.
Behind the obscuring mask, a frightening smile crept on the boss' face, and his eyes narrowed in delight making him look like a devil who has found his next prey.
Taking his next step in the air, he rushed forward, air bound like a dragonfly, shooting to the ground in a diagonal line, with his subordinated following suit.
But just as he was about to land, he had the strange urge to severe his gaze from the prey and take a look to his left side.
...Somehow, the wind felt stirred in that area.
It was a vague feeling, like the rustle of a leaf.
He only respected it, because of all the battle experience he had amassed in his life. This sense was a kind of 6th sense you could say, solely related to his affinity for the Wind Element.
He didn't think too much and made a decision. It would do no harm anyway.
He turned his head left to see what was causing the slight anomaly.
And when he did, his eyes suddenly contracted to the size of a pin-needle in record speed. Ringings and alarm bells tolled around his mind in desperate cries, forming into a shiver inducing peal.
"MOVE!!!"
Is what every fibre of his being screamed at him in a deafening plead.
Swooshh...
The boss mustered all the agility possible in his current position and twisted his hips and shoulders in a very strange, and unhealthy way to propel himself to his right side, while summoning winds to him accelerate the process and others to create a wailing wind barrier.
Swoooooooosh!!!
The subordinates slowly caught on. A menacing whistle rippled through the air and neared the group from beyond unknown shadows.
BOOM!
A tyrannical explosion sounded in the area. Something had shot out of an obscured alley and pierced the wind wall.
The chilling fact about the explosion was, that it was not the result of the clash of a weapon against the wind barrier, no. It was something far, far more dreadful.
The Wind Barrier burst apart, solely by contact. A terrifying thing had arrived in the Outskirts.
Gooey red mass spattered the dilapidated housewall behind the group of masked men into a horrifying painting, and beneath it were two headless corpses, rammed into the alchove between the wall and the ground.
A mountainous monster came to halt in front of the group, which at that moment was far too shocked to utter a single word. Freezing blood stuck in their veins, seeing the gory sight of what were their former colleagues.
Not a soul would be able to tell their identity now. Their faces were smashed into unidentifiable flesh mud, not even their mothers could tell.
Death!
It seems like the night suddenly turned colder for the invaders.
Locking eyes with the terrible being in front of them, the one that was responsible for this development, they captured two hateful brown eyes ripped open to the utmost, scrutinizing them like a nocturnal feral beast.
"So, you must be the one responsible for the kidnapping of my daughter," the man said, not intending to repress his disgust and anger inside his pervasive voice.
One masked figure, in fact, the only one whose legs weren't flapping about uncontrollably by now, scowled and scoffed in sated incredulity:
"Alessandro, how the fuck are you here?"