The Roaches (Part 1)
As Morgana ran down inside the Roache's base, she ruthlessly killed anyone standing in her way.
She knew that kidnappers would never allow their victims to stay anywhere other than the basement, so she frantically ran around the first floor in search of their dungeon.
Finding one unfortunate bandit, Morgana grabbed his neck and lifted him from the ground with ease. Her ruby-red eyes pierced through the man's soul as he tried to grasp her arm.
"Where are the kidnapped children?" she asked, dropping the man on the ground.
Tumbling to his knees and grabbing his neck, the man looked up at Morgana, who stared at the man with a cold expression.
"I-it's straight on this hallway and to the right…" he mumbled.
Morgana grabbed the man by the collar and lifted him up before pushing him to show her the way.
The kidnapper walked slowly, prompting Morgana to kick him in the back, making him fall on the ground face first.
"Do you want a fate worse than death?" she asked as she leaned down and stared at the man.
The kidnapper quickly stood up and began running towards the dungeon door.
"This is it…" said the man in between huffing and puffing as he stood before a locked iron door.
The man looked to the side and sneered, thinking that she would give up now that she saw it was locked.
However, Morgana kicked the man with a force that went through the man's stomach and opened the door violently, creating a loud boom that resonated all around the basement.
The bandit's corpse collapsed with a gaping hole in his torso, and Morgana swiftly ran inside the dark basement.
It was a straight hallway with dozens of prison cells on the sides. Noticing some of the victims were still alive, she reassured them she would return soon.
As she reached the final cell, she found the kids and counted them quickly.
"5,6,7… Where is the caretaker?" Morgana asked with urgency, but the only kid that spoke up was the oldest.
"The big man took her that way!" she said while pointing at another door at the end of the hallway with tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Please… She was protecting me…" said the girl before breaking down, dropping to her knees, and holding the iron bars.
Morgana's eyes sharpened as she bolted towards the iron doors.
"These doors… Don't fucking work on me!" said the trickster while running at full speed in the direction the girl pointed at.
'I'm level 107, so I should be able to do 'that'...' she thought.
"Fire Dragon Kick!" she yelled, performing a flying kick that surrounded her body in a spiral of flames, hitting the iron door and sending it flying straight inside the room with incredible force.
The leader of the Roaches, who was standing beside the entry, got hit in the head with the iron frame and was thrown along with it to the side of the dark room.
Seeing the beaten caretaker bound to a metallic chair and a small table filled with torturing tools next to her, the trickster approached the woman, who seemed to have resigned to her fate.
"You did well… You saved them…" said Morgana with a soft voice as she placed her hand on Vivi's head.
"Shadow Mend," she said, creating the shadowy mists that flowed out of her hand into Vivi's body.
However, the beating she had received wasn't enough for a single "Shadow Mend" to completely heal all of her wounds and broken bones.
She followed up with another skill, "Shadow's Grace," she muttered, making the body of the caretaker extrude a dark aura. However, contrary to its foreboding appearance, the shadowy energy was slowly healing the woman.
Her torn hair slowly grew back, her broken teeth reappeared, the bruise on her eye slowly dissipated, and her nose was rebuilt. All in a matter of seconds.
At that moment, the man lifted the heavy iron door lying on top of him and approached Morgana with blood dripping down his face.
"Who the hell do you think you are!?" he asked, his voice laced with pain.
The trickster fixed her gaze on the man, but he managed to overcome the intimidating aura she emanated and stood right in front of her, not taking his eyes off the silver-haired woman.
The man towered over her by two heads, and his body was almost as wide as a truck. Even when Morgana was 6 feet tall, she still looked tiny next to the man.
Nevertheless, this was completely irrelevant to her, as she pushed the man's chest and sent him flying back into the wall of the room.
While the bandit leader tried to stand up from the rubble that had fallen on him, Morgana turned back around and unbounded Vivi from the metallic chair.
The woman was unconscious, but her body was completely healed.
Placing her carefully on the side of the room that hadn't been destroyed, Morgana approached the big man, who kept stumbling out of the rubble, grabbed him by the neck, and shoved him into the chair like a rag doll.
'At this level, all I can do to bind him in place is…' she thought, realizing that the straps from the metallic chair wouldn't be able to hold the massive man.
Morgana approached the sitting bandit until she stood a few centimeters away from him and dragged the torturing tools closer to her.
Looking down at the bandit, who was bleeding profusely from his head, she placed her finger on the man's chin and raised his head.
"Curse: Shadow Root," she muttered, sprouting sinuous black roots from the ground, binding the man's legs and arms to the chair while also binding her feet on the spot.
The curse's side effect was that, in return for capturing the enemies around Morgana, she couldn't move from her position until she either canceled the curse or died.
"Now, what were you going to do to that woman?" said the trickster with a devilish smile as she flickered her fingers across the table with torturing tools next to her.
"Let's see. You broke her nose and teeth. Oh, and she was blind in one eye, too!" she continued, grabbing an iron pincer called "tongue tearer" and forcefully shoving it into the leader's mouth.
The force of the shove was enough to break his front teeth and snatch his tongue, making the man move his head back by pure reflex, but it proved futile as the trickster used her other hand to hold his head in place.
Slowly squeezing on the pincer's poles to prolong the man's pain, she alluded to the fact that she didn't want to keep wasting time.
Pulling the pincers out of the man's mouth with force and violence, she sprayed the wall next to her with a streak of blood as she ripped the man's tongue.
The bandit leader screamed in pain with blood oozing out of his mouth, while Morgana let go of the shadow roots, placed her hand on the man's head once again, and used "Curse Fire" to incinerate him alive with her black flames.