An Unexpected Outcome

Lucas stormed out of the basement suddenly, with nerves bulging out of his forehead, and red had replaced the color of his face. The tears that he had shed earlier hadn't dried even yet but didn't care. There was only one thing in his mind: taking revenge on Hank Krammer. He knew the mayor hadn't killed himself back there.

Now standing in the corner of the basement near the first jail cell, Graham watched as the man ran past him. He, however, had no intention of stopping the man. His goal had been achieved; he felt that the Deity had been very pleased with his performance just now. Now, there were four people hating the mayor from the bottom of their hearts, all because of Graham's actions.

"I wonder what we should do with all these prisoners," he looked around in the dark with the help of the tiny fireball floating nearby.

Seeing that Graham was not the mayor, one of the prisoners closest to him began approaching. With a distressed look, he began begging.

"Please, let me out of here! Please! We can't be here anymore!"

Graham knew, based on the memories he got both from the mayor and his secretary, that these people were actual criminals that Hank Krammer had somehow transferred to this dungeon. He didn't plan on letting criminals walk free, but, at the same time, he didn't want to leave them there just for their organs and limbs to be harvested.

"Val, should we or should we not? If we free them, the most that they will do is wreak havoc around these rich neighborhoods. If we don't, they'll just die here..." he pondered. He was sitting with his back against the wall, looking at the faces in the dark begging at him. With each breath, his stamina recovered a little.

"Man, you have to let me out! They will kill me if you don't!" coerced the man in the cell closest to his spot.

"Sir, please let us out... We don't want to die..." begged another man from another jail cell.

Graham didn't reply. He was still busy recovering his stamina. Even should he decide to let them out, he would need his stamina to use his ability.

"Come on! Are you going to let me out or not?!" the man grew impatient.

Sigh...

In the dark dungeon, the sounds of begging kept on coming. He patiently ignored those voices and just focused on regaining his stamina.

"Val, these guys are annoying. But we haven't been acting like a good person anyway, so why not create some chaos. Besides, we don't really like super-rich people anyway, do we?"

Once he had recovered, he got up and walked towards the farthest cell at the end of the dungeon. The woman inside was looking at him with eyes full of hope. Despite being a prisoner, her condition was actually pretty good. It seemed that she had been well fed and also bathed regularly. Luckily, neither the mayor's nor the secretary's memory provided him any info about that, because he really didn't want to know.

Before unlocking the cells, Graham used Fire Divination to find out if any of these people posed any significant danger to him. Although the chances were low, he didn't want to risk his own safety because of recklessness.

His Fire Divination told him that there was no grave danger posed by the people locked up inside the cells. After all, if they were powerful enough to harm him, they should have their own means of escaping from the prison. Looking at the jail cell closest to him, Graham issued an Order.

"I order you to unlock yourself!"

Click!

The jail cell where the woman was held was opened, and without even thanking Graham, she quickly ran away from the basement. He did the same thing with the rest of the prisoners, except for the impatient man closest to the entrance.

"What are you waiting for?! Come on let me out!" shouted the man restlessly. He was the only prisoner left.

Using his Fire Manipulation, Graham brought fireball back to his side and ordered it to enter the cell. There was a mischievous smile on his face.

"What the fuck?! Man, get that thing away from me!"

Scared, the man backed off until his back hit the wall. There was nowhere else for him to go, but the fireball kept on coming closer and closer without any signs of stopping.

"Go away!! Back off!! You don't know how dangerous I am when I'm scared!!" The prisoner's face grew pale and his screaming became more high-pitched. He sounded like a woman screaming from the top of the lung because of a mouse.

Whoosh!

The man's hair caught on fire! The flame burned off a large chunk of his hair, leaving a bald spot in the middle of his head. After that, the flame moved away and returned to Graham's side.

"I order you to unlock yourself!"

After unlocking the jail cell, Graham left the now bald prisoner alone and returned to the surface, where the sunlight could still reach.

"Hello there. I've been waiting for you. Took you long enough to return here,"

Graham was frozen shocked. There was a woman standing in the doorway and a bunch of unconscious people laying in a pile nearby. Lucas was one of them, while the rest were the prisoners who had just run away earlier.

The woman let out no presence at all and Graham couldn't even feel any aura of danger coming from her. If he wasn't looking right at her, he wouldn't even know that she was there.

With some taps, she cleaned the dust off the pink denim pants that she was wearing. Her bright green coat, combined with the yellow short dress she was wearing underneath, made her look like a walking shady café's neon light. If not for the fact that she had knocked unconscious a lot of people seemingly effortlessly, Graham would have commented out loud on the horrendous fashion sense.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" asked Graham politely. He was trying to buy some time while thinking of a way to get out of that situation.

"Trying to buy yourself some time? It won't work, duh...! But I'll answer your question anyway..." she was speaking like she was in some kind of Televised drama. Combined with her dramatic body language, the whole thing was an overkill. No sane person could stay and watch her speak long enough without growing insane.

"I'm what they over here call... neighborhood watch! It's simple... really. They pay me, and I keep this area safe. Now... you have dared to walk past my monitoring mirror without even getting past the security appropriately, and for that, I have some questions myself..."

The way she dragged the endings of her sentences was very annoying. Her abnormal rise and fall of intonations were the icing on the cake that was made of cat shit.

"Now, I don't know who these people are or why they are here, but you're the one who broke my rule. You see... everyone must enter Hoogland according to the book. You can't just stroll past like that, otherwise... people would start doing it, you know?"

If there had been a competition for the most dramatic and useless body language, the woman would have won easily.

The way she kept on blabbering gave Graham some time to think about his means of escape. There was a window in the library that should lead out of the mansion. Although he had a feeling that the woman was faster than him, he couldn't worry about that. For now, he had to get out of the building in one way or another.

"I order you to stop moving!"

The woman stopped talking against her own will while Graham quickly reached out with his right hand. He focused on the bracelet that he was wearing and aimed at the woman.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Stupidity and Hatred, grant stupidity upon you!"

Tendrils that were dark orange in color appeared around her head and entered it. After that, Graham didn't waste his time and ran straight for the window. He jumped and broke the glass easily with his body and made it outside.

The bright colored woman, already free from his control, followed him at a frightening speed. However, just as she was about to jump out, she squatted instead, as if trying to avoid an obstacle above her head. It made her hit the wall below the actual window, although she didn't seem injured one bit because of that. Once she recovered, she vaulted over easily and chased after Graham at a frightening speed.

"My heart is broken by how rude you are. Come back here and answer my questions!!" she shouted dramatically while following Graham. She didn't even break a sweat while running like that, despite wearing tall, bright purple wedges with glitters all over them. It felt unsettling to be followed by a rainbow-colored lunatic like her.

Graham was aiming for the small woodland behind the mansion, which should be connected to the cliff at the edge of Hoogland. He had no other choice since going inwards to the city didn't seem very safe with her around.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Domination and Order, intensify your desire to run!"

The belt that he was wearing had a faint glow and suddenly, the woman ran even faster. He had used the last charge of the Intensify ability stored inside Purloin.

Dash!

He jumped out of the way and the woman dashed right past him, disappearing into the woodland without any intention of stopping.

Graham took a slightly different direction and entered the woodland, heading for the cliff. According to his memory, the place shouldn't be that far away. He kept on running until his body became all hot and sweaty despite the low temperature of the highland.

"Your abilities... are annoying, you know!! Just how many Deities are you in a contract with?"

To his surprise, the woman had broken free from the effect of the Intensify and was now running towards him. He didn't even know how she had been able to locate him that easily. However, his only goal right now was to get away from her, so he couldn't be bothered to think about it.

"Your right leg is mine!"

The woman made a swiping motion and suddenly, Graham couldn't feel his right leg!

He fell down to the soft, dried grass cushioned grass and looked at his leg. It was still there, but its function had totally gone, taken away by the woman!

She kept her right hand in a fist while catching up with Graham, who began crawling as quickly as he could.

He turned around and looked at her before issuing an order.

Bang!!

He shot her with a paralysis bullet!

"I order you to return my right leg!"

The paralyzed woman's right fist loosened up and a bright, yellow light escaped from it, returning to Graham's right leg. He could now feel his limb again and quickly got up with the help of the cane and started running.

"So you have a gun, eh? Are you sure it's a good idea... to show that to me?!" Her tone sounded like she was angry, but Graham couldn't take her seriously because of the way she spoke. She sounded like a housewife who had just found out that her husband was cheating with the underaged maid that she had recently hired.

As she opened her mouth, Graham turned around and pointed the end of the cane at her, shooting invisible energy at the ridiculously-dressed woman. At the same time, something was sucked out of him by the handle of the wooden cane that was covered in leaves and roots.

'That woman is now highly obsessed with handsome men!'

'You are now completely uninterested in women!'

"Crap! Not what we needed!"

Suddenly, he felt a little lighter. His gun had been stolen!

There was a strange smile on the woman's face as she quickly closed in the distance between them. In her right hand was now the black, .31 caliber revolver that had accompanied him in all of his journeys. Graham wanted to steal it back but he didn't have Luuk's Theft, and he hadn't been able to copy the woman's.

"I order you to run away from me!"

Graham's Order made the woman moved in the other direction for several meters before she broke free and started chasing him with even more vigor than before. The cane had made her even crazier.

"Stop running and become my husband! Come here, handsome!!"

His heart broke a little by the fact that he had to let go of the gun for his safety. In that situation, he couldn't have both. On top of that, for some reason, he was even more reluctant to get anywhere near the clown-colored woman.

Once she was close enough, she began another swiping motion with her right hand. The gun had been tucked away somewhere.

"Your right hand is mine!"

Graham's right hand suddenly fell motionless. He couldn't even feel it because he had lost its function. Using his left hand, he aimed at the woman with the cane and shot another invisible energy just before she caught up to him.

'That woman is now highly obsessed with leaves!'

'You are now completely uninterested in becoming conscious!'

"Crap!!"

Graham cursed in panic. The negative effect that he had got was really bad. Suddenly, a heavy wave of sleepiness swept over him, making his eyelids very heavy.

Meanwhile, the woman was busy crouching on the ground, sniffing the leaves around her. She no longer paid attention to Graham, which was supposed to be a good thing, except...

The cliff was right under him!

He had lost consciousness for a second while still on the run! Unable to stop in time, Graham ran down the cliff, falling off to the deep gorge down below.

"Crap... Crap... Crap... Crap... Crap!!!"

He tried his best to stay conscious. If he fell unconscious again for even a millisecond, he would fall to his death and become a blob of flesh deep inside the ravine.

Good thing Valentine hadn't taken over when he fell unconscious, since he was still under the effect of the cane, making him uninterested in his own safety. If he had taken over, he would just let himself fall into his death.

The wind brushed roughly against his face while his organs felt like they were pushed upwards. Blood couldn't flow properly to his brain, but for some reason, the fear and panic that he had been feeling just now were completely gone. He was now feeling euphoric for some reason and was looking forward to the impact. All the while, he had to fight hard to not fall unconscious.

In just a matter of seconds, he was almost at the bottom, and if he was late even for a millisecond, he would be very dead.

"I order the wind to blow me up!"

"I order myself to stop falling!"

"I order myself to land safely!"

He issued Orders in quick succession. The wind suddenly blew even stronger, slowing down his fall. His second Order made his body stop midair for a second, hitting the wall of wind hard because of the momentum. He broke his nose as a result.

After that, Graham began falling again, but since it was not so high up, he could land safely by letting his body move on its own. Although he still broke his left leg because of the fall, at least he wasn't dead. The wave of sleepiness hadn't gone away, however. Graham fell unconscious not long after, with great pain coming from his leg.