19 Only Seven?

Once the door opened, a tall man with facial hair walked into the room. Following closely behind him was another man as tall as the first, however his face was cleanly shaved. Instead, he had a long thin scar running across half of his face.

Ayoro's penetrating eyes scanned the room carefully as his eyes moved from one child to the other. A scowl deepened on his already serious looking face. He turned to face his scar-faced companion who did not seem to be bothered by the displeased look on Ayoro's face.

"Did you not say there were eighteen children in the town who had not manifested?" Ayoro asked in a dangerously low tone. He was quickly losing his patience and Gonza knew it.

"I did." Gonza replied, too calm for comfort. It was like he did not care at all that the man before him was about to exploded from anger. Gonza was used to Ayoro's short temper. It really did not faze him.

"Why are there only seven then? Did you close the door before everyone came in?"

"Maybe you should be more worried about that weakling. His spells are taking too long to take effect and you know how exhausting it can be when I open the Black Door for a long time. So I had to close it." Gonza's tone was casual and did not seem like he was offended by Ayoro's accusatory tone.

Ayoro remained silent for a while. Gonza could be unreliable sometimes and ultimately only cared about himself. However, when it was necessary, Gonza performed his duty to perfection. Then Ayoro's mind cast back to the weakling his companion was talking about.

"Rovirrak has the power stone. Beguiling a bunch of children should not be difficult. " Ayoro spat out with disdain. The only reason he had recruited someone as weak as that stupid boy was because Rovirrak had a very useful soul armos with the potential of being powerful with the right resources and motivation. Ayoro had promised Rovirrak unimaginable power if he followed him. He knew how insecure the boy was in his essence and soul armos.

Rovirrak was a red user, and even though his soul armos was impressive, it was still very weak because of his weak essence. Due to this, back in the city where he grew up, he became the target practice of his bullies who were stronger than him. Rovirrak vowed never be weak again. One day when had been severely beaten up by a group of hoodlums in his area and left a bloodied mess, Ayoro who had been watching the whole thing and seen how Rovirrak's soul armos worked, decided he had to have such fire power for himself.

Awing the boy with his yellow essence, Ayoro was able to convince Rovirrak that he could give him unimaginable power if he followed him. With such power, nobody would ever dare stand against him ever again. Of course, Rovirrak listened to the strange man in a heartbeat. His thirst for revenge had completely clouded his judgment. All this happened about two years ago.

For a long time, Ayoro stayed away from attacking Coast Town and instead concentrated on kidnapping children from weaker villages. In his mind, Rovirrak was his secret weapon. After more than a year of of training the boy to control Devil's Flute and create complex tunes capable of subduing even someone with an orange essence, Ayoro knew that with the help of the green power stone in Alhari Temple, subduing the two yellows in the town would be a lot easier. Thankfully, unlike many temples, Alhari Temple had no security.

It seemed the entire universe was supporting Ayoro's plan since everything was going smoothly. He strongly believed that the children from this town would be the final boost of power he would need to advance to the green essence. Unlike the other villages, which had reds and a few oranges, Coast Town was different. Thus, Ayoro believed that many of the children here too were likely to manifest orange essence. If he was lucky, some of them might even manifest yellow essence. This would make him very powerful and as he had always dreamed, he could finally join that powerful organization.

But now here they were with only seven out of the eighteen children. Was this some kind of a joke? His lifelong ambition to join the Society of the Black Mamba would not be squashed due to some stupid mistake.

"Go back to the town and look for the rest of the children. Perhaps some of them wandered off, after all, the boy is controlling a whole town far stronger than him. Once you regain enough soul energy, go back to the temple and bring them all back."

"What about them?" Gonza asked nodding his head towards the group of entranced children.

"They will be waking up in a few minutes and I will be here to welcome them to their new home." A wicked smile spread across Ayoro's face. He could feel the green essence within his grasp. All he had to do was reach for it. And that was exactly what he planned on doing. Black Mamba did not entertain weaklings. Anyone who wished to join them would have to be at least of the green essence or an evolved yellow user. He did not know the first thing about evolving his soul armos, thus, raising it to green through such horrendous means was the only way he could make it into the dangerous league of assassins.

Gonza nodded at the words of the maniac standing next to him as though what he had said was the most natural thing in the world. Then with the little soul energy left within him, he lifted his palm in front of him and a black door appeared out of nowhere. Gonza clenched his jaws in pain from having used too much essence. He would need at least another hour to recover his soul energy.

Once Gonza opened the door and exited, the door vanished into thin air. Gonza had a weapon type soul armos that could literally open a door into anywhere within the Second Dimension as long as he had been there before. This ability had helped Ayoro get into anywhere in the world to get whatever he wanted without getting caught.

This power had also helped Gonza defeat many of his enemies not necessarily because he was a better fighter, but because he was hard to catch by those enemies, and then when they least expected, he struck them before they could even react. Gonza had proven to be a very formidable ally to Ayoro and the latter knew it.

Once Gonza was gone, Ayoro directed his gaze towards the children. Seven children. Where were the remaining eleven? He felt his old anger coming back again. He continually tightened and loosened his fist in an attempt to soothe his anger. He had to get his act together while he was waiting for the children to wake up. Well, at least seven of them where

Soon, the children began to stir from their endless dreamland. Their groggy eyes began to regain their previous liveliness. Slowly, they looked around them, thoroughly confused by where they were. .

"Finally. I was starting to get impatient." Ayoro said roughly once he saw they had fully regained their consciousness. He had hoped all the children would be here so he could do the introduction but, since that was not the case, he would go right ahead. Once Gonza retrieved the rest, he would brief them too.