The Blind Girl
After Morgana dealt with the pack of kidnappers that were trailing her, she met with her party and kept making her way through the main street.
Hearing a commotion coming from a separate alley, the trickster stopped in her tracks and walked toward the noise.
On the dark narrow street, a couple of men were bullying a little girl who sat on the ground with her back against the wall.
The child didn't look up at the men who yelled at her. Instead, she stared into nothing while tears streaked down her cheeks from the men's comments.
As she got closer, Morgana began hearing their words.
"You think just because you are blind, you can bump against us? Huh, kid!?" exclaimed one of them.
"S-sorry…" muttered the little girl as she hugged her knees with fear.
The second man exclaimed with a mocking tone. "What was that!? Do you want another kick!? Weren't the other ones enough!?"
He raised his leg to stomp on the little girl. However, before he could move a muscle, the bones on his face were all shattered by a sudden flying kick from Morgana, who arrived just in time.
Sending the man flying head first into a wall, she snatched the other by the neck and held him tightly with an unmoving force.
The man flailed his extremities and tried to pull away Morgana's arm with all his strength, scratching and punching it. Nevertheless, her body didn't budge one bit at his attempts.
"Beating up a blind little girl? Seriously?" she muttered as the man's face turned blue from the lack of oxygen.
Morgana released her grip just enough to let the man speak his mind.
"Wh-what is it to you, bitch!? Do you know this child?" he said while huffing loudly.
"I let you speak, and that's what you say?" she asked, squeezing the man's neck back to his previous state. His face turned purple, and his eyes popped out of his head like a balloon.
"Get the hell out of my sight…" she muttered before snapping the criminal's neck with her grab.
The little girl kept sitting on the ground, holding her knees as she trembled in fear. Morgana, taking a better look at the starved and battered girl, realized something.
Her hair was silver colored just like hers, making her believe she could be a neonite like her. However, she had never seen a young neonite, considering all of them were adults since they were all players before.
Getting closer to her, she noticed the girl's gray eyes that stared into nothingness.
'Her eyes aren't red. She could be another race with silver hair…' she thought as she examined the girl from a few steps away so as not to startle her.
"Hey, are you okay?" asked Morgana with a soft tone.
The girl raised her head to look at the trickster, but her eyes deviated from her target.
Seeing all the wounds and bruises on the girl's body, Morgana placed her hand on her head, and as she patted her lovingly, she cast "shadow mend." Covering the girl with the strands of inky shadowy mist that slowly healed her wounds and soothed her pain.
At the same time, she seized the opportunity to cast "high appraisal" on the girl and check her details.
[ Name: – ]
[ Age: 6 ]
[ Class: – ]
[ Level: 2 ]
[ Race: Neonite ]
[Skills] [Status Ailments] [Titles]
The average "appraisal" skill could be used without touching someone else, but it wouldn't show the "skills," "status ailments," and "titles" tabs at the bottom.
The "high appraisal" version of the skill could only be used when in contact with her target, but in return, she could scroll through the other person's skill list, check for any ailment effect, and look at their list of titles.
"Status Ailments" referred to the effects that a skill could have on its target. An example was the poison from Terrador that Morgana inhaled during her battle with the boss. If someone had used high appraisal on her during that time, they would have been able to see the "poisoned" status on her tab.
Morgana stared at her virtual window with a perplexed expression, making the teenagers wonder what she was looking at, as they had never seen her so impressed by something.
'She really is a neonite…' she thought before opening the "status ailment" tab and finding what she was looking for.
[Curse of cecity: Level 110. Renders the target blind forever.]
Morgana remembered that curse came from a specific item that only very high-level shamans could create. However, since it was a level 110 curse, she would need a cleansing skill of that same level or higher to cure the girl.
Morgana scoffed with discontent, her eyes turning sharp and intense.
'I'm only 107 right now… Am I really that useless that I can't heal this little girl?' she thought in frustration before feeling the little girl's grip, tugging on her cloak.
The trickster's expression instantly changed to a solemn stare as the little girl sought solace with her savior.
"You want to come with us?" asked Morgana, softly patting the girl on the head.
The child nodded affirmingly.
Feeling her body lifted from the ground as Morgana carried her in her arms with a soft embrace, she clenched the collar of the trickster's cloak and closed her eyes before falling asleep.
"She must have been exhausted…" said Morgana as the child slept peacefully in her arms.
The teenagers, watching the whole scene unfold, felt their hearts warm a little as their big sister treated the child with the same care she had taken for them, in contrast to the double murder that she had just committed a few seconds before.
"Are we really taking her with us?" asked Conrad with a smile as he thought the girl looked like a small copy of his big sister.
"It'll probably be better for her if we take her to an orphanage… She doesn't have a name, so she might have been kidnapped as a newborn before their parents could give her one…." The trickster elaborated.
"What if her real parents are looking for her?" she continued.
"But, what if they are not? What if they are dead?" asked Angie with a hint of sadness.
Morgana sighed. "Let's think about it. For now, the orphanage is the only place we can take her…"