Chapter 11: Hexed
1622 Words
Seeing how a child, who appears to be no older than five, gets dragged into the portal, Vincent exclaimed, “What was that!?”
“Clan Master!” The House and sector leaders, witnessing it as well, ran to him. “What happened?”
“Was that a child?” His oldest daughter, Ximena, inquired loudly.
“Did you send someone by mistake?”
“No!” Vincent countered. “I only send those with the markings.”
“Then how did a bystander gets dragged?”
“We’ll deal with that later!” Vlad, the Alchemy Tower’s second-in-command who serve as Lugiel’s proxy exclaimed. “We need to get him out. Open the portal!”
They needed to save that child right away!
Everyone raised their tablet keys to remove the seal again.
“What? Why is it not working!?” However, there was no reaction either from the tablet keys or the sealing slab.
“Try again!” Vincent ordered fiercely.
They did but still nothing.
“Wait!” Again, Vlad calls their attentions. He seemed to have realized something. “Gather up. Gather those tablets here.”
They all complied and Vlad pulled out a potion from his storage ring and sprinkles its content to the tablets.
*PSSSSSSSSSSS!!!
Accompanied by loud hisses, dark miasmas seeped out from the tablets.
“Damn it!” Vlad cursed. “Someone hexed the tablets!”
They were immediately masked with shock.
“How is that possible?” Morress demanded. “The tablets were inside our storage devices the whole time these past five years!”
“Agreed,” a certain someone seconded. “It’s also impossible to sneak into all of us!”
“Not unless they used a ritual,” Vlad explained. “Headmaster had taught me about this before. It’s complicated to perform but if one use a ritual and meet all the conditions, the effect will manifest regardless of the distance or physical barriers of the target. But anyway, not the main concern now,” he also said. “As long as the hex is in effect, we won’t be able to open the portal and I’m afraid, sealing it might not be the only thing the hex did.”
All of them caught what he is implying and their faces paled. If his assumption is correct, the caught up child will be the least of their concern.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
*Wong!
After crossing the portal, Wanda’s sight experienced the familiar darkness and when he regained his senses, they were already standing in the middle of a barren land.
He felt dizzy and his face contorted. He covered his mouth as a puke threatens. He then opened a water bottle and splashes the cold water over his head, relieving the discomfort. Wanda blames his restored sight for this. If he’s still blind, the crossing would not have bothered him.
Unaffected by the side effect of the travel, Magnum loudly complained, “Oh come on, really!?”
They were caught by powerful hex which forcefully sent them here, into the Worm Field alongside the Seeds.
Wanda is also filled with concern but for a different reason. ‘To think that they will go this far,” he thought, clenching his teeth.
This is obviously the assassination plot to his life or rather, to Lugiel’s. Through his information network, he was already informed beforehand that such attempt is in progress and the mastermind behind it none other than the Medical System who is furious over his ‘creation’ of the alternative Nine-Cycles, causing the destruction of one of their most lucrative trade. However, he didn’t expect that their method would be to this extent.
Wanda looked up to the reddish sky. A violent and ominous air dominates the surrounding as several small rifts opened. Emerging from them are naked black humanoid monsters with oval, egg-like, faceless heads.
These are Unkgoods of the low-level and their luring into this pocket dimension is probably the third and final phase of the hex. The first was to drag him here and the second was rigging the portal so no one can follow to rescue.
Wanda’s face crumpled into a black look. Wanting to kill him, he understands. He destroyed a vital part of their business and they want blood for it. But to also drag the future pillars and protectors of the Grimlands to the scheme is extremely outrageous! Even the fascist One Empire that aims to dominate the Galactic Tree will never attack the Grimlands in this manner especially to this extent.
However, Wanda immediately shook those thoughts out of his head. Getting angry is not the priority right now, saving those kids are. They might hold their grounds against these low-level Unkgoods with their current skills but they also lack actual life and death experiences and numerical advantage. This batch alone above him conservatively numbered at a hundred and more might be emerging in other areas.
“You can complain all you want later,” he said to Magnum. “Right now, we need to hurry. Those kids are in trouble!”
This assassination plot might have been executed perfectly but given his actual strength, even as Lugiel, that the Medical System is completely oblivious about, this setting is more of a danger to those kids than himself even with his current state and hence, he must make haste to get a hold of them as soon as possible.
[TRACKER TEAL] + [BUSTER BLUE] + [CRUSHER CYAN]
Wielding the Reviver, he roused three capsules of blue hues…
[IGNITE! EXECUTION ARROW!]
…and aim at the Unkgoods above him.
*Bang!
The fired shot was in the form of a sapphire-like but standard-looking arrow and the instant it was released, a gust of wind started to run amok with the arrow as the center. *Boom! Boom! Boom!* Accompanied by successive booming explosions, the arrow jumped from the speed of Mach 1 to several thousands and chase all the Unkgoods in plain view, shattering them to oblivion the moment of penetration and continuously does so even after gaining considerable distance away from it.
Oblivious to the true state of things, many Seeds were in the middle of a fight when the threat of the Unkgoods dawned onto them. Injuries and even death were already about to pile when the initial three group of Seeds were located.
[TRANSPARENT WHITE]
*Bang!
[PIERCING ARCTIC] [EXCEED CHARGE!]
*Pew! Pew! Pew!
Cloaked under the veil of invisibility, he took care of the chasing and emerging Unkgoods and afterwards, he covertly leads them to the location of the other groups. Fortunately, a good number of the succeeding groups are led by Seeds with outstanding perceptions. They had identified the threat as it was descending and erected life saving measures right away.
Expectedly, these certain Seeds were his cousins and thanks to their combined efforts, all the Seeds were gathered in no time.
“What is going on?” A Seed wearing a bright, red armour asked another Seed who wore the same set of gears of his.
“I don’t know,” the latter replied. “None of these are supposed to be happening.”
The former is Ging, his Aunt Ximena’s youngest while the latter is his older brother, Merek, who is their de facto leader.
“The exit tablets are not working!” Complained next by some of the Seeds.
“You guys are trapped here.” Magnum spoke. Removing their invisibility veil, they revealed themselves to them. “Someone hexed this place.”
“Who are you!?” They exclaimed, instinctively entering their combat modes in response to the emergence of an unknown individual.
“Whoa, easy,” Magnum said. Shifted again to his human form, he raised his hands before presenting the signet of House Talene. “I’m not an enemy.”
When they saw the emblem, they remained vigilant but relaxed a bit.
“I’m a mercenary sent by House Talene.”
“A mercenary?”
Magnum nodded. “I was employed to secretly oversee the Battle of Seeds and to intervene in case of a major accident. Like this one right now.”
At Merek’s cue, they finally lowered their weapons. On the other hand, he also probed, “I never heard of someone like you before.”
“Well, this is actually the first time,” he said. “Your cousin Lugiel had stepped a lot of ‘huge’ toes outside the Grimlands to improve the Alchemy Tower. Retaliations were just a matter of time. So, he employed sellswords like myself to keep watch and thwart.”
Ging frowned, “That snob did?”
“Hey!” Magnum snapped at Ging. “Give him more credit. My service is not cheap you know.”
“Alright, alright, I understand now,” Merek said. “So what do you mean this place is hexed?”
Magnum explained everything. Aware now of the situation, they demanded next, “So how do you plan to get us out of here?”
“I don’t,” he told them. “Technically, hexes are unbreakable. On the other hand, they are also strictly timed and the more powerful and complicated one hex is, the shorter the duration of their effect. Unfortunately, this one is potent enough to last for three more days. That’s why my mission now is to help you all survive until then.”
- Writer
