"Woah." This was my first time seeing a sight like this. Sure I had encountered battles on my time as a pirate. But those had purpose. This was a brawl. A dynamic, brutal brawl.
She was powerful. Just one look at her and I knew she was one of the best directors I had ever seen. Definitely rough around the edges, but nothing a bit of training couldn't fix.
She knew how to gain distance with the manipulation of wind. The movement was crude and unpredictable. It almost felt as if she had never set foot on the Earth. But as soon as she gained that distance, her actual strength started to manifest itself.
Fire. A constant ball of fire. Fire hot enough to melt the surrounding stone. Fire hot enough to cremate the corpses around her. Fire that ran rampant as the wind fueled it. The proficiency of her flames made even me question stepping in lest I get burnt.
My sentiment was not shared by the other man though. While in the middle of her attack, whenever anyone got close to her, he rushed right in to tackle them. Powerful tackles that led the enemies to fly meters behind. The man possessed unnatural strength.
It didn't matter if it was two hundred against two, these two were strong enough to mow down everyone on the field. Well, almost everyone.
I focused my attention on the third anomaly of this battlefield.
"I have reached the end of my life." One thing that I learned after gaining my abilities was that the replacement I had received in place of clairvoyance was incredible on its own. I had my senses heightened well beyond belief. I could hear the other side's chief whisper under his breath even in this commotion. "My only wish was to be of use to the Lord." He got up.
The shielder and director were strong but being mercenaries, they were not used to fighting on the same scale as the military. This meant that even though they could deal with all of the weaker opponents, a chief would still pose an enormous threat.
"I found it unfair how the Lord sent me to this puny battlefield at the end of my service. Did he not find any use in me anymore?" The chief grabbed his weapon. "Alas, it is not my place to ask. He led me to a life this fulfilling." He got into his stance.
The ground started to rumble and I felt my hair rise underneath my helmet.
Something was coming. I was unconcerned.
"I AM XEN, A CHIEF UNDER THE LORD!" Thunder struck the sky split. "AND IN HIS HONOR, I SHALL REAP!"
Sometimes even in these puny battles fought by mercenaries, a formidable foe showed itself.
"This explains how despite them being so strong, there were so many casualties." I just needed to prove myself, yes?
"Pause."
The rain that came with the thunder floated in the air.
The battle had stopped.
The chieftain who was putting his all into his final attack, was frozen full of openings.
Without wasting my opportunity, I ran straight into the fight. It was only a fraction of a second, ten heads flew off their bodies. Then twenty. Moving in erratic motion I crossed between the enemies chopping heads as I went. The wind frozen in place was colder than ever before. When time stops, the fire disappears. For an instant, every single thing on this field was a target.
In what was half a minute in my perceived time, I killed half the battlefield.
There was blood eager to spray and paint this field red.
Here, there were three people I considered powerful— the chief, the director, and the shielder, but none of them could match up to me afterall. I might be riddled with weaknesses but Prana of Time was absolute.
I had no need to slaughter the other half.
I walked up to the final one.
"I believe your name was Xen. Because of your long service, we have a lot of intelligence on you. In your prime, you were known as the man who brought thunder to the ground. A couple of years with the introduction of the newer generation you lost your place amongst the elites. I wasn't expecting to find you here." I grabbed the sword out of his hands and time started again.
THUD!
An avalanche of blood and headless corpses fell.
I could not find a look of astonishment on Xen's face as his mask covered it but from the slouching shoulders, I could tell he had reached the stage of acceptance within the short seconds of realization.
"An Apostle, ey? What a fitting way to go."
"How can you tell?"
"You reek of divinity."
Xen was a commander five years ago. His power came from the sword granted to him by the lord. One of the seven treasures. Iudex of the storm. It was a huge black cross. One thin blade, one joint hilt the sides of which were as wide as my armour's shoulders.
I swung it around a bit. The perfect weight.
He swung his fist at me, but it was already too late. By the time his fist reached me, his body shattered into tiny cubes.
"Slow."
Without wasting time I picked up the gem embedded in his body as proof.
"What are your names may I ask." I walked over to the pair.
"Lithia and Javes." The mage pointed at herself and then the man while huffing and wiping the blood that just got sprayed on them.
"Alright you two, kill the rest of them, round up the survivors, come back to the guild. And please make it quick, we have a long journey ahead of us."
"Pause."
I was back at the guild.
"Oh, you're back." The guild master came to greet me. "Did you not find the field?"
"I know which mercenaries I want to recruit."
"Like I said first you need to-" I tossed the gem at him. His eyes shook in bewilderment.
"Linda and Jake."
*
*
*
When the two came back tomorrow, they corroborated with my story and just like that the new alliance was formed.
"And all that's left now is a lot of paperwork. In light of your achievement, the guild's main branch did agree to this. I will go ahead with my assistants you can have a little chat with Lithia and Javes until then." The guild master left us alone in his office.
"I was expecting the formalities to be a lot shorter. I really wanted to leave for Letchkia by this time already." I sat back.
"The master's probably going to write a few letters to neighbouring guilds and nations. Then set up a whole organisation and infrastructure for smoother operation. We will probably get assigned translators and guides for each part of our journey. No matter how desolate or how far into the enemy territory we go there is always at least one human who knows how to get about. It's the guild master's job to find them." Lithia put her prana stick down after cleaning it.
"To be honest I didn't even know Legendary Quests still existed. I only heard of them in fairy tales. Bygones of the era of prosperity." Javes had a weird smirk on his face. "It feels like I'm living out a dream."
"Did you dream of this when you were a kid?"
"Yes. But I lost the feeling somewhere along the line. I found new more achievable dreams instead. They make me happier than anything else."
"Then what do you dream of doing?"
"I want to retire being a mercenary and start a family with Lithia somewhere in the woods. Away from everything. We can be self-sufficient away from society."
"Oh… Isn't this quest then a huge burden to you then?"
"No. Not really." Lithia jumped into the conversation. "We had hoped to leave the job a couple of years ago. But no quest felt sufficient. Doing this is the only thing we've known and abandoning this job felt like running away. Completing this quest would push us towards the very top of the mercenary's legacy. The only way forward would be to quit. We couldn't ask for a better ending to our adventure."
"You don't seem that scared."
"Well, Miss Apostle is on our side after all."
"Not to mention the money is good. With this money, we can provide things to our future child we were never given during our childhood."
I was not a tough nut to crack. I came to like people very easily for who they were, even if I wasn't the best at expressing it. These were good kids. Older than me. Good kids still. I initially wanted to let them learn on the job, but I was immediately burdened by the off chance of not being able to protect them.
The journey could wait until all of us were ready.
"Alright, I have decided. To chop down a tree one must sharpen their ax. From this moment onwards we will train at all the stops for extensive amounts of time until we reach the Letchkia. We will get so strong that nothing getting in our way can pose a challenge."
"I see?"
"What you are undertaking right now is a pilgrimage demanded to you by an Apostle, an enactor of divinity, and in my name, your pilgrimage will be paid by the fulfilment of your dream."
"We'll get a lot of money?"
"You'll get a lot of money."