Blood drenched sands

"Uhmm...Where?"

From the hot sands, a figure could be seen slowly rising.

It looked around confused as the sands that were partially covered it fell, revealing its Identity.

It was the younger caravan hand, that at the suggestion of the older one, pulled back into the caravan and somehow managed to survive the raid.

After a brief look around, his mind seems to finally finish rebooting and he remembers clearly what happened before passing out.

"Oh... I was in the middle of escorting the caravan, then a bunch of people showed up, there were gunshots and..." He mumbles to himself, piecing together the memories of that time, or at least what he had before the sand nap.

"The guards started shooting each other? And those people came in our direction riding horses. I panicked after I caught a few stray bullets, had my aura broken and then did the only thing I could do in that situation: play dead."

Yes, pretend that you're dead and hope that they just pillage whatever you had in your 'corpse' and leave you alone. Instead of whatever fate awaits someone that gets captured.

This was a technique taught him by his parents in case of emergency and though very unreliable, it has saved his family's skin once or twice.

And it isn't simply throwing yourself at the ground and standing very still. Their mastery of it allows them to completely pass out on demand, no need to use the gagging reflex or choking themselves out to do it.

Judging by the fact that he wasn't captured and there's nobody nearby, then that means that the strategy somehow worked.

"Who'd thought that I would need to rely on the same thing my parents did in order to survive. But what am I supposed to do now?"

He is currently a few meters away from the carriages where most of the bandits should be concentrated, it wouldn't be too hard to slip away and escape. But what would that accomplish?

It's not like he could walk his way out of the desert on his own, be it due to insufficient supplies or the Oum damned Grimm. He has no way of getting out of there, his semblance only helps avoid bad weather and aura is useless without any fighting skills.

So his only options were: 1-do a very risky action and try to steal a horse or another mount that could get him out of there or 2-keep playing dead and just hope that they leave something he can use behind after leaving.

And it doesn't need to be said that he's leaning much more towards the second option. Owning to the fact that he isn't confident in his stealing skills.

"I should move a bit farther away." He says to himself, planning to be a bit more distant from the hotzone he currently is in.

But as he turned around to check if anyone was around before sneaking away, something suddenly blocks his vision.

Then, he's assailed by a sharp pain in his face and his body is thrown back into the ground.

His mind becomes blurry as the concussion makes him become momentarily incapable of catching up with what just happened.

But his confusion wouldn't last long, as a voice came to quell all his doubts.

"It seems that one fish escaped the net, oh well. That's an easy mistake to fix." Came a voice from behind him, bringing along a realization.

'I'm dead.' That's all that went through his head as he accepted the situation.

So he turned his head to look towards his capturer while still on the ground. Under his nose there was a wet feeling that he could only assume to be a nosebleed from having a boot shoved in his face, his aura being too low after having been broken not long ago.

Looking at the person that had spoken just now, he noticed that he was one of the guards that opened fire on their comrades. Well, apparently they never considered themselves as such from the begining.

But before he could regain his composure, a kick came to his stomach, making him gasp for air as he was momentarily incapable of breathing.

"Boss asked us to not damage the merchandise too much, but looking at you. It doesn't seem like you have much value as labor from the start." He says while his eyes calmly appraised the young man that's clutching his stomach on the ground.

But hearing this, the young man despite his current state, starts to become hopeful that they'll lose interest in him and let him go.

Never before in his life he was so glad that he was born with a weak physique, so much so that people could see it at a glance.

"Though you could still serve as bait when it comes to it." The man then says with a straight face, not showing any emotional fluctuation after what he spoke.

And so it is, that much like every other time the young man thought that his life was turning for the better, his hopes are brutally crushed in front of him.

Of course, he already knew what the man was talking about. When Grimm is around, engaging in conflicts can be very dangerous and taking captives even more so and because of that, some unsavory practice's came to be.

And not just among bandits, even some merchants are known to do it. Someone among the group is chosen, the most expendable person on the group most of the time, and that person is beaten, humiliated and left behind to die. Those steps are necessary since the more negative emotions are felt by the person, the more effective it is as a lure.

Of course, it isn't very reliable since leaving one of your comrades to die in a horrific manner is sure to create some negative emotions on the rest of the group unless they're all psychopaths, so this method is only used as a last resort.

The boy could feel a chill go through his spine as his mind involuntarily imagined all the ways he could die, the unbearable pain of the beating, the humiliation and the torturous wait until his death as he's left in the middle of the desert with no hope of rescue.

Swallowed and digested alive by a King Taijitu, if a deathstalker is feeling generous than he'll just bisect you with its pincers but it's just as likely to sting you and leave you to die slowly from poison and the carrion would cover you in a strong acid and watch as you're melted into scum.

Disregarding the pain or anything else, his body immediately starts crawling across the hot sand. Trying everything to avoid such a fate.

But he didn't go very far before the man stepped on his arm, pinning him in place and leaving him to helplessly flail to get free.

Applying more force, the man made it clear that he wouldn't tolerate any resistance. Only letting him go once he had seen that the young man had no more intention to resist.

Then the man did something unexpected and slowly knelt in order to make eye contact with the boy.

"Look, I was there when you've signed up for this caravan and I know that you're oblivious to what's going on behind the scenes. So if it were up to me, I wouldn't care if you lived or died." The man says in a very sincere tone, showing neither pity nor scorn for the boy.

"T-Then please... Let me go *Sob*, I just want to go home..." The young man had already reached his limit, his body could barely muster the strength cry.

At this point, he was already grasping any straw he could reach, a quick and mostly painless death was becoming a more enticing idea every second.

Survival, now seemed like nothing more than a fantasy.

"But... The boss made it very clear that he wanted no one leaving alive. So unless I'm feeling that my life is too long as it is, I can't disobey him." The man says, showing fear and awe when mentioning his boss.

"..." At this point, the boy wasn't even surprised anymore, he just continued to lay powerless on the ground and think about every misdeed he made in life that could make him deserve this.

"Laying there, you might be thinking that you're the unluckiest bastard this side of Sanus, but the thing is... Your life was already forfeit the moment you took this job."

...

Opening the door of the carriage, what greated me was the hot air that contrasted with the more bearable one inside the carriage and the sand, which wasn't a surprise.

Taking a step outside, my eyes needed some time to adjust to the light. But I couldnt take things leisurely, since I was faced with a group of bandits.

*Bang*

A bullet passed a few centimeters from my head and hit the carriage behind me.

'Correction: a group of very pissed bandits.'

It seems that they didn't appreciate me making them waste so much time trying to pry the carriage open.

But I don't feel like chatting with them right now. So confirming that no one noticed the second set of footprints in the sand that appeared right after mine, I calmly observe the situation.

Most of the bandits were distracted with either pillaging the carts or guarding the prisoners. Some has guns like the one that fired the warning shot at him but most were carrying curved swords or machetes.

I discreetly do a few signs to inform Neo to deal with the gunmen while I created a distraction. The advantage of her semblance is that since it's a physical illusion, unless it's broken by contact it can work on multiple opponents as opposed to Emerald's semblance.

So a few seconds after stepping out of the carriage, I was finally approached by one of the raiders with a gun pointed straight at my head.

But looking around, I can't see the pretentious guy that was doing all those theatrics while he was inside the cart, probably moved on.

"Do you have any idea of the shit you just got yourself into." The bandit says showing a condescending smirk.

But contrary to whatever he was expecting, my face has only disappointment showing on it.

'This will be easier than I thought.'

My eyes grow sharp and my muscles tense in anticipation, normally I would consider acting harmless and trying to lower their guard. But against auraless, barely trained, poorly equipped and on top of all that distracted raiders. Such a farce is completely unnecessary.

The man in front of me seems to sense the danger he's in as he unconsciously takes one step back.

But he grits his teeth and tries to shake the feeling while continuing to speak.

"Now I'll tell you what's going to happen from now on. You're going to be really well behaved while I take everything in that fancy cart and I might consider-"

But what he didn't realize is that the person he was talking to was already only a few centimeters from him in a blink of an eye and had a fist extended to his abdomen.

"Going easy on me?" I helpfully finish his sentence for him.

Hearing a voice so close to him causes the bandit to be momentarily startled but as he opens his mouth, he realizes that he needs a lot of effort to say anything.

"*Cough* *Cough* What the-" But what follows is quite a disturbing scene as the man starts coughing blood and bleeding from his eyes, nose and ears.

His body was already flooded with aura and is sustaining heavy internal damage in the short time it has been in contact with my fist.

One of the more effective aura moves to ensure your opponent's demise that I've learned recently and the One Ren used during initiation.

The man didn't even have time to scream, as my aura had already wreaked enough havock in his body to force him to collapse. It turns out that this technique deadliness scales with the user's aura amount.

Before aura infusion had been put in second plane in favor of aura reinforcement which would become better in the long term, but since I've already mastered most of what I was taught, I had a lot of free time to look into other techniques that I hadn't touched before.

"What the hell!?" "What just happened?" "Don't move!" His companions quickly noticed what had just transpired and become alerted.

But I pay this no mind as I calmly unsheathe my sword, action that confirms my intentions in the eyes of the bandits which likewise ready their weapons as a fight now becomes inevitable.

I give a twirl the sword in my hand and point it towards my opponent.

"Never killed a person before in my life, but it's just as they say: 'There's a first time for everything.'"

Adjusting my breathing, I feel my body begin to be strengthened as the breathing technique starts to do its work.

My semblance activates making so that my already plentiful aura surges as if a flood gate has been opened. Filling my body with energy and enhancing my senses.

And this aura is directly transferred to my leg as I stomp the ground.

The resulting shockwave raises a wave of sand that acts as a veil to conceal anything within it while the resulting sonar wave make the position of all the enemies exposed despite the hindered visibility.

*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*

The bandits don't hesitate any further seeing this, before they were worried since the boss wanted this specific 'merchandise' as undamaged as possible so they can ransom it later but if it's so insistent on resisting then they must subdue it with tougher methods.

A volley of bullets were shot at the curtain of sand, the bandits now aware that this person had aura and therefore wouldn't die from this.

But as the sand fell back down, there was no one where their target was supposed to be.

This makes the bandits momentarily perplexed.

"Damn, where the hell did he go?"

"Is it an invisibility semblance?"

"Doesn't matter, keep your eyes open for any tracks in the sand and find him no matter what! I don't need to remind you of what would happen if you were to let this easy source of money get away."

"Don't worry, we're in the middle of the desert, there's nowhere for him to go."

The bandits in response fan out and start searching for the tourist. Looking at every nook and cranny.

But they fail to notice that their target is just above the cart, looking at them, waiting.

...

"Boss, we just received a message, they've lost him." A worried bandit relays to the leader the report that he just received.

"Lost him? are they that worthless? Or have I heard it wrong?" The leader says in a calm tone but his eyes portray how annoyed he is feeling after hearing that his fiture cash cow just escaped.

"He seems to have aura, some skills too, he managed to kill one of our men in a way they can't even describe. Do you think it's a huntsman we're dealing with?" The subordinate says showing some concern.

"If it was a huntsman, then our raid wouldn't have succeeded so easily. He's either awakened his aura by chance, done it illegally or is related to a huntsman.

The first supposition would be the ideal one and would mean that the plan can continue normally, the second means that the tourist has some connections and would be better to steer clear of each other until there's a clearer picture.

And the third would mean that they would have a huntsman hunting them down if they were bold enough to ask for a ransom.

"Forget the ransom, kill him and dispose of the body. Losing out on the extra cash is a pity but we can't take the risk." Considering all his options, the leader directly abandoned the plan and went for the safer option.

He is now quite glad that he sabotaged communications before the raid. Since all that he needs to do is eliminate the witness and he won't have to worry about dealing with huntsman, even if it's just a chance.

"Understood!" The subordinate then leaves in order to give the rest the new orders.

No holding back now, the sands will be drenched in blood today, the tourist's or theirs.