Abduction

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Corre and the other knights rushed to the town square as fast as they can, thinking something tragic had happened. But when they arrived at the town square, there were aghast by what they saw.

"A mountain of…" one knight said in disbelief, swallowing hard. They were all stunned by the strange sight that welcomed them. 

"What could this mean?" Corre asked and asked one knight to report. 

But the knight only looked at him in silence before stating what was on everyone's mind by shaking their head. They do not know. 

No one here had no idea why a mountain of dead wolves was in the middle of the town square...

Corre then left the useless knight and went to his party members. 

"Stand up. What are you doing? It's just dead wolves." Corre dispassionately said to Jane, who had stumbled onto the ground. The scream from earlier was also her. 

Jane was the youngest in the party and even if she had taken part in countless monster slaying quests, she had never learned to keep her cool. That was her biggest weakness.

Jane sheepishly looked at Corre before receiving Ellie's slender hand, which pulled her up to his feet. 

"I'm sorry. I was just shocked." She apologized before Ellie embraced her, consoling like a real sister.

---

At the same time, Doctor Angelo decided to come out of the carriage, thinking he could help. But he was immediately blocked by two big bodies covered in iron armors.  It was Knight Faller and Knight Hamon.

"Doctor needs to stay here. Until we take care of the matter, we cannot let you be in danger. We are here to protect you after all." Hamon turned around and said with a friendly smile, making the old man looked much less hopeful. 

With a worried expression on his face, Doctor Angelo then looked at the direction of the town square and let out a breathe to calm himself. It was unfortunate, but from their location, they could not see what was happening there. 

To calm the old guy down, Corre said something he learned on this trip. 

"Doctor, "he called deeply, "don't worry. All of those adventurers are all silver-ranked and despite how their leader might look, he's quite capable."

Doctor was not convinced. 

'Silver-ranked, huh?' he thought to himself, as the image of a man in a robe with glowing eyes entered his mind. But he doesn't want to think about it so he slowly started shaking his head.

When Sir Faller and Hamon saw the old man doing that, they glanced at the two boys with him. Sir Hamon smiled and said, "That applies to the both of you too." 

Kara and Chris glanced at each other and couldn't help but smile with him. In front of everyone's eyes, they were a normal teenager and a young boy travelling together.  So they were also inside the carriage with the old doctor. 

"But what could have happened? From what I heard, that voice belonged to older sis Jane." Chris asked and put his head out of the window to see. 

It was at this moment. 

"That's right. Are we not going to check what happened? It seemed serious." A voice suddenly said from below, making Chris looked in the ground. He then saw a young blonde knight sitting on the log below the window. 

Among the knights here, he was the most silent. So he drew quite the attention just by speaking. 

"Good timing. Why don't you check on them?" Knight Hamon said, gazing at him with a smug face. The expression on Hamon's face and the young blonde knight suggested the question was told as an order rather than a question.

The young blonde knight absent-mindedly looked at Knight Hamon before standing up with mixed emotions. 

"Ah, I might dig my grave and I don't even know it," he slowly muttered and left. 

Amongst all the knights, the young blonde knight had the biggest aura and presence. 

This young knight was Gary. He was still young, 20 years old, but it looked like he was still a teenager. His hair was blonde, his nose was sharp, and his eyes were like the eyes of a dead fish. 

His gear was not very special, and his iron armor set had many scratches and dents, noticeable how it had been damaged repeatedly and had been repaired around the same number of times too. 

His weapon was a sword that was 50 centimeters long. It was sheathed in an iron scabbard placed in his waist, but there was nothing ordinary during the times they seen him take it out. The sword looked nothing special, too. Certainly not from how Gary was seen treating it. 

"Is he strong?" Chris couldn't help but asked. He felt like Gary was strong, but when he looked at the lethargic form and his aloof facial expression, it looked like he was just a lazy beast. 

"Hmm." Knight Hamon smiled, and then explained, confident but also disappointed. "Gary is quite strong, probably the strongest knight among us all."

---

---

Meanwhile, Corre crouched and grabbed a dead wolf. After that, he grabbed another, thinking there was something that could help them inside, but there seemed to be nothing wrong inside except a smelly smell of dead stuffy animals. 

The other adventurers and several knights then joined Corre. Soon they recognized the way the dead wolves were slayed. 

"Fangs?"

"This is fangs, right? And it's a wolf bite?"

"Did they fight each other?" 

The dead wolves were all stabbed by a short blade, but long enough to be a sword. 

"Maybe we were too late." John said.

"Damn Faller. This is why I said we should've move on last night. Our pay is going to be less because of this," Corre said.

Corre felt he had the right to complain more. 

The blood on the dead wolves was not dry anymore. Their body had stiffened. They were dead for a lot of hours now before they discovered it, but it does not rule out the fact that they could've had intercepted this. 

"What kind of sicko would do this?" Jane asked.

Corre responded, "Hmmm. I didn't receive a report from the guild that the bandits are into these kinds of things. They're not some sick tribe in the wilderness. So this might have been the doing of that insane mage." 

John and Ellie stopped checking the mountain of dead wolves and went back to their party to discuss what to do. 

After a minute, Corre fiercely raised his voice at the knights. "Check all the houses. There might be survivors. Check every cranny!" 

The town was only little, with a population of 170, so there were only a few households to check. It would not be an exaggeration to even call it a village. Thus, checking it would be easy was what Corre thought. 

As soon as the adventurers left, the knights inspected the houses on high alert, sneaking and checking the windows and doors before they went in.

---

---

"Knight Faller better know more about this insane mage than us," said Corre as they headed back to the carriages. 

Just then, they saw the young blonde knight just walked past them with his usual regular lazy frame. 

"Did they send you to check on what happened?" Corre asked him, as he went past them as if they were just statues walking around. When he heard no response, Corre shouted, "You're walking way too slow!"

The young blonde knight was not thrilled with this, nor did he care. So after yawning, he replied to Corre, "I saw nothing happened from far away earlier, so there's no need for me to walk fast." 

"You should've ran!" Corre shouted at him. 

But he received no response anymore. Without turning his head to look at them, Gary just shrugged his shoulders and continued in the same walking space as if he was so tired and exhausted. 

The four adventurers couldn't help but just watched Gary's retreating back, thinking he was a rude and lazy person. 

Ellie commented. "They said that boy is the prodigy in the Hideon Academy last year. I guess all powerful people have a few screw looses." 

"He's just some talented rich kid who hadn't learned of how grave life really is all his life. Let him be." Jane uttered and then happily fantasized, 'Compared to him, Kara is very handsome and cute. Sigh, no one could really have it all. If only Kara is a fighter, he would be perfect.'

Sigh

Ellie noticed Jane's cheeks were blushing and said, "My poor sister. Are you thinking about Kara again? You should stop, you know."

Jane looked at her adorably and nodded, as her cheeks just got redder.

"Sigh, unrequited love. If you want to marry someone, marry an adventurer too. It would be big trouble down the line if you marry someone like Kara. What would you do if you come back one day and she has another wife?" Ellie said.

Jane almost exploded.                                                         

"Marriage? Wife? That's way too advanced. And can you please not assume every girl thinks as dark and irrational as you?" she urgently said.

"What?" 

To be honest, Ellie also couldn't believe her. Wasn't marriage a big chapter of life?

John laughed, as he can clearly hear them talking so loud, making Ellie ceased her talking for some reason. 

"Corre went ahead." John said. Corre had indeed gone ahead already. He was already talking to the leaders of the knights and the old royal doctor. 

---

"So nothing happened?" Knight Faller asked.

"Yeah. But that pile of wolves worries me. Do you know if the insane mage we are pursuing is the type to do something like that?"

"I'm afraid not. The reports said he used to do some weird experiments, but not this kind of thing." 

"It's easy to imagine him going crazier at this point." 

Knight Faller looked at the town and asked Corre again, "So no one is really at sight? Even the bandits?"

"No one yet. Not a soul."

Everyone listened to them, eavesdropping to get an idea of the situation they were collectively in.

"You can go out now, Doctor. You two too," Knight Ham said to the two boys. 

Suddenly, they heard simultaneous men screaming from the town square. 

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Hey, help me save this book by using your power stones. This book was almost dead because I didn't update for 6 months. Now, it's only Top 2500.