05 THE BLAST

After coughing blood for a few seconds, Alfred forcefully suppresses the coughing and was kinda in shock shouting, "What the hell is happening to me?"

Looking at him Alex also stunned at this development, he was so shocked that he forgot the situation was favorable for him and stopped attacking him. Only no.11 was not shocked by this development and took this chance with both hands and started attacking him with his daggers.

Alfred is having a hard time to defend now, what seemed so easy a few seconds ago was now seems like the most difficult thing to do. His body is not functioning properly its like he is in the body of a different person.

He is having hard time to grasp what is going on. As this happening, Alex came out of his stupor and he too started attacking him making it impossible to come out alive out of this situation.

While Alex is attacking head on with his skills, the assassin is now jumping in and out shadows using his shadow ability to fullest and striking at the moments when Alfred's concentration is less.

Slowly the wounds on Alfred are increasing and this time for real and for some reason he cant use his mana properly too. Still he tried to hold himself as long as he can but its still not enough. Slowly he was getting dominated in the fight.

Alex stopped to fight to take a breather and no.11 also stopped attacking for now.

"Haa...haaa....haaaaa"

Taking deep breaths Alfred was having hard time of all the three and he was still wondering what went wrong.

"You had been injected with Kalakuta poison the most lethal poison known to mankind. It is mixed with snow white herb found around the lakes in the inner regions of this forest. This mixture when entered into a body will started to spread all over the body and once the effects of the herb wares off, well... the poison starts to act". As he can read what's going on Alfred's mind said no.11.

Hearing this both Alex and Alfred's eyes open. Alex thought 'when did they poisoned him?'

And Alfred thought ' When did they inject something like that into my body?' Actually, since he was going on a mission, he took all supplies with him in his dimensional ring and all the supplies he got is from royal palace including food, so where did things went wrong.

Watching the confusion on Alfred's face, no.11 says, "We have some people working for Duke Olen in the palace and with the help of those people they mixed the poison I gave them in your food. We don't know exactly when it will act since we don't know when will you consume the poison, but lets just say luck is on our side today".

Hearing this Alfred's face pales and he is desperate now because he knows that the poison used very potent and it will crash his nervous system and melt all his internal organs and he is gonna die soon. And there is no cure for this poison unless you have a high grade cleric ready at your disposal and he should start healing within less than 30 seconds of injection of poison or else there wont be anyone to save.

The only reason he is still alive is due to the snow white herb, it actually wont work like switch on and off, rather it slowly loses its power, even so he still hasn't much time.

After coming to conclusion that he doesn't have much time, Alfred started to focus all of his mana into singular point.

No.11 furrowed his brows sensing something wrong with him, as the aura around Alfred changing at very high speeds and a couple of seconds later Alex too seemed to sense the changes happening.

And the both came to same conclusion and shouts in unison, "This bastard is going to self destruct himself along with us".

Saying this they both tried to run away, since they knew that outcome of the self destruction of a normal rank9 warrior can give grave injuries to even a rank10 warrior. Much less need to be said about the devastation created by self destructing of a warrior of Alfred caliber.

They both wont have a much chance of coming out alive from the blast, but will Alfred let them go? No way...

Gritting his teeth Alfred tries to fight them, to keep them very close to him and says "Why are you guys running away, arent you here to kill me? Comeon now, dont be shy and stay with me till my last breath... Hahaha" and he laughs as he started to swing his spear wildly.

"Like hell we will stay with you, you maniac" retorts no.11 angrily.

Alex cant even say something to retort, be cause he is busy evading Alfred's attacks.

Suddenly, the poison starts to work faster due to how Alfred is fighting, and the mana he is accumulating starts to get disperse slowly.

Seeing this both Alex and no.11 looks at each other and nods and starts attacking him again. Their reason to strike back is simple, if Alfred lose control over his mana, then he can't blast himself and they can still kill him after he is weakened and be safe.

Seeing that everything is going out of his hands, Alfred once again steels his resolve and starts to fight and accumulate mana simultaneously, but it is clear as day that he cant accumulate much mana required to blast the 2 people he is currently fighting with.

"FUCKKK...." Alfred yells in frustration after couple of minutes, he cant focus more mana and he is starting to lose his senses and the mana he stocked.

Gritting his teeth, he thinks about the 4 kids he raised for one last time and a small smile involuntarily forms on his face and at the same time sadness also appears on it.

Then he says in a small voice only audible to him, "sorry my children, i am leaving you all in this cruel world all alone. You only have yourselves to support each other so be kind to eachother and keep looking only forward into the future. And I hope you guys can accept others like I accepted you all, into the family, who comes into your life in future to make it beautiful".

And then he detonates himself.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

A loud sound saying that a huge blast has happened makes powerful shockwaves pushes the other two, after which comes the heat and power of the blast. At the same time no.11 and Alex both hid behind a huge rock which is of four to five people width and 12 feet high and started supplying mana to the small and strong barrier erected by no.11 behind the rock just in time to avoid the blast.

After the blast a huge white light comes out from the place where Alfred is and covers everything around that area making it difficult for anyone to see whats happening within the light.

After ten or so minutes, the light recedes and we can see two disfigured and heavily damaged figures in a crater.