Old Man

"I should be asking you the same thing. What are you doing here Bell?"

I took my mask back off and answered, "I'm here to investigate and expose the baron for his wrongdoings."

"What a coincidence. I'm here to do the same thing," she responded while wondering if I was a hallucination, a figment of her imagination.

I smacked away her hand which was trying to wipe my existence away like an oasis that disappears when you try to pick up a handful of water.

"Maya," I called her name with a stern look on my face, "did you stalk me like before and followed me here?"

"What!" she screamed quietly. "Never! I was here since yesterday. If anything, I should ask you the same question. Did you follow me here?"

Maya looked offended as if I had just suggested something that was impossible to be true even though the likelihood of her doing something similar to what I was suggesting was extremely high.

"What reason would I have to do that?" I asked her. "I don't even know you enough to care about your whereabouts and also, I'm not a stalker like you."

"I'm not a stalker!" she said as her eyebrows frowned. "I'm an investigator."

For some reason, she sounded less confident refuting my claims of her being a stalker compared to before.

"Alright, enough joking around. I... I wasn't expecting you to be here but since we're both here for the same thing, let's work together," I offered.

Immediately, Maya shook her head.

"Why?" I asked calmly, not really surprised at her response.

She was the sort of person to prefer working alone after all. It took the main character saving her for her to finally get out of her shell and begin opening up to others around her.

"Because you're just going to take credit for my hard work. Don't worry Bell, just go away and I can do it all by myself," she said, sticking her chest out, proud of her abilities.

"If you could do it all on your own then how come you're here in the bedroom with nothing in your hand so far?" I inquired with so much genuineness that you wouldn't be able to notice that I was mocking her lack of progress.

"That's because there's nothing in this room to be found," she refuted, confident in what she just claimed to be the case. "It's just useless documents, clothes, socks, books, et cetera."

"Are you sure about that?" I asked her.

She rolled her eyes at me as if my question was a stupid one to ask.

"Yes. I've been searching for the past ten minutes now. There's nothing in this room. It's a waste of time. The baron just sleeps here. His secrets must be elsewhere."

"You're right on the last part but you're wrong about nothing being here. There is something important in this room. That's why I'm here in the first place," I corrected her.

Her eyes widened and her pupils lit up. She must've felt like she hit a wall and my words had just cracked a hole in said wall.

"What are you here for? Let me help you find it," she offered her assistance.

"Didn't you just claim that I was going to take credit for your work? Why are you trying to work together now?"

"Hahaha. Come on Bell," she said while flapping her hand. "Let bygones be bygones. That was the past. Don't tell me you're stuck on the past?"

"That wasn't even a minute ago," I scoffed in disbelief. "Whatever. I'm looking for a key in this room. It opens the locked room on the second floor at the end of the hallway. That's where all the evidence needed to destroy the baron can be found."

"How do you know that?" she asked, in absolute shock at how much more information I had compared to her even though I didn't have her useful news-acquiring ability of invisibility.

"I'm an Agnus," was the answer I gave her.

It was simple, it was a cop-out response, but there wasn't anything she was able to say to refute it.

The two of us began looking and although I knew where the key was, I pretended to continue looking.

If I wanted to, I could've just grabbed the key right away and not bothered explaining myself because Maya was already oathed to not expose any of my secrets anyway.

But I continued playing up the role of being a genuine investigator because I was trying to get her on my side for what was soon to come.

"He didn't hide the key in one of the books. Found it yet?" she asked as she closed the last book on the shelf.

I closed the drawer and shook my head.

"Maybe it's under his bed," I said as I lay down on the floor and began sliding myself underneath it.

"I've already searched there, there's nothing—"

"Found it."

"I had a feeling it was there but I didn't want to dirty myself in all that dust. Good job," she said, giving me a thumbs up.

There was a hint of shame on her face. Now that we were in a room where her mana could be used, she no longer looked afraid of me — to an extent.

I could tell that she was still a little cautious around me, almost as if I was a villain that could pounce at her at any moment.

Immediately, sirens began blaring outside the room and the two of us looked at each other.

"He must've had a sensor on the key and if you take it out the wrong way, it alerts the mansion," she said.

She wasn't completely correct but there was no use correcting her.

I quickly grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her closer to me.

"What!?" she said, nervously gulping, her eyes moving back and forth between me and the door that was about to blast open at any moment.

Prying her hand open, I placed the key on her palm and told her, "Go. I'll keep them distracted. Make sure you don't get caught. Get the evidence we need to expose this son of a bitch."

"But aren't you—"

"Go," I repeated myself as I released her wrist and placed the mask back on my face.

I couldn't see her as I was turned towards the door but as her mana and presence faded away from the room until I couldn't even sense a glimmer of it, I knew that she had turned invisible.

Footsteps got louder, approaching the room.

It sounded like there were at least ten pairs of feet and each time, more and more pairs were being added to the crowd.

The footsteps stopped outside the room.

Clutching tightly on my newly gifted sword, I stood away from the door, expecting it to blow open and fly into the room.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and when I reopened them, all my focus shifted toward the incoming battle.

"BANG!"

The door flew out of its socket like a cannonball being shot out of a cannon.

Time seemed to slow down as I made my first move before the crowd of enemies could react.

The katana in my hand was light and perfectly balanced but as I swung it, slicing it through meat and bones, it felt heavier.

Blood spewed up into the air and began pouring down on me as if I was in the rainforest.

A steady rhythm of droplets touching my skin was interrupted with another wave of blood being added to the mix as I swung the katana once more.

I was in the middle of the crowd, using the confusion and the lack of room in the hallway to my advantage.

They were hurting each other while trying to hurt me.

Using the axe that one of them dropped, I picked it up and threw it, striking one of them square in the forehead, cracking it open down the middle like a coconut.

Steadying my breath, relaxing my heart to an eerie silence, I began counting down to zero.

'Thirty... twenty-five... twenty... fifteen... ten... five, four, three, two, one.'

One remained and unlike the rest, he had been waiting by the stairs, his eyes fixated on me the whole time while he held his sword closely to his chest.

He was a large man and was old, far older than the others but that wasn't something to make fun of.

He was in a profession where people tend to die young. If anything, the wrinkles, the calluses on his palm, his eyes that looked like they had been through plenty of war — they were signs of strength.

"You're good," he said in a voice that sounded like distant thunder.

"Thank you," I said as I aimed my blade at him, giving him a nod to acknowledge that I was ready.

His large form lurched forward, his left leg clearly not as good as his right.

Every time he took a step, it felt like the ground was quivering beneath the weight of his foot even though the reality was that nothing was moving and he was walking normally.

'It's like an illusion... or is his presence just that great?'

My heartbeat which had been silenced began a slow drumroll that began to speed up the closer he got.

It reached the crescendo when the old man began running.

I didn't just stay still, preparing myself to block him; I also lunged forward, the blood-soaked ground beneath my feet giving way to my momentum.

I was kicking blood into the air with each step.

"Clang!"

Our two blades clashed. His sword was dull and had broken parts but was coated in so much blood that I couldn't dare call it rusty or fragile.

My katana gleamed as I brought it down in a powerful arc.

Its edge met with the hardened hide of the old man's handle which he used his own momentum to push my blade away then followed the flow of his sword with his body, kicking me right in the chest.

The force of his kick sent ripples throughout my entire body.

I was sent flying into the air but planted my feet on the wall and pushed off on it, landing just a few meters away from him.

"That's a good weapon you have. I'll be taking it as a souvenir once I'm done with you," he said, claiming to have already won before the battle really began.

"We shall see about that, old man."

Immediately, I slashed my weapon.

"Clang!"

"Clang! Clang!"

Each clash of steel sent shockwaves through the air, the sound reverberating in the hallway like a harsh echo.

I danced between the drops of blood that continued to fly into the air as he pushed me deeper and deeper into the bodies of dead guards I had created.

I stepped on and over them as if I was simply walking on uneven terrain.

Over time, I began to get used to the unusual rhythm and pattern that the old man moved with due to the uneven balance in his legs.

More comfortable, I began to push myself deeper into the pocket where our weapons connected, my movements slowly becoming more of a blur, each strike more precise than the last.

The old man's sword lashed out, sending a barrage of strikes that sought to overwhelm me with sheer speed but I dodged, ducked, and weaved, using the instructs Quentin had helped me hone to avoid them all.

Noticing that he was being affected by how much mana he was exerting with each of his strikes, I was prepared for him to pull something out of his pockets.

As our blades clashed, he used as much of his strength as possible to push me back and he also took a few steps back.

He gathered mana in his spare hand and created a rock the size of a head.

He threw it towards me and as I dodged my head downwards, I looked up with my eyes and saw that he had followed the rock and was already swinging his blade at my skull.

'Nice try.'

He probably didn't notice because he was focused on using his magic to gain an upper hand but I had sheathed my katana.

I did this because I was trying to gather as much power into my drawing motion to create this powerful arc.

With a mighty swing upwards, a powerful crescent of energy was released, cleaving through the drops of blood trickling from the bloodied ceiling.

It struck his blade right where one of the missing chunks was.

A few cracks in his sword began to form but the battle was far from over.

"How dare you hurt my sword," he said as he retaliated with a frenzy of strikes, using his weapon like a hammer trying to smash my body flat rather than cutting me into pieces.

He was in a frenzy but that didn't mean he was reckless. He still left very little room for weakness in his stance as he hammered his blade downwards.

I rolled, tumbled, deflect, and was biding my time.

With each dodge and parry, I felt his rhythm become a part of me.

At this point, I was drenched in blood because I was rolling in it.

My blood-soaked strands of hair were clinging to my mask as I pressed forward.