Losing The Quest

I stood motionless while my mind kept looking for a solution. Things were getting out of control fast.

[Warning: 45% of the people you are protecting are killed]

There was only five percent remaining before I lost the quest. Frankly speaking I lost it already. No matter what I thought of, I couldn't help but feel slightly powerless in this situation.

How did things come to such an end?

"Fine, you want to challenge me this way… Then I, Hye, will gladly accompany you to the end!" I raised my head and shouted with my loudest voice, a voice that carried a lot of anger and much hatred towards those filthy angels.

Even when I did my best to strangle their hands and make their choices limited, they still bested me here.

But I wasn't that miserable to cry on the corner over such a loss.

"Heed to my orders," as I made up my mind, I instantly turned my attention to everyone, "my team will surround this goddamn place. Anyone trying to escape here will be killed. If I'm going to lose this quest, then it's better to kill all the traitors here and make you lose bigger."

Without waiting for anyone to say anything, I started to run fast towards the groups of fighting people. "Those without any relation to those motherf*ckers sit on the ground and don't move. You move, you die."

My tone told everyone that I wasn't joking, and that wasn't the end of it. I took out another sword, the sword I got from Angelica. With two swords in hand I descended over their heads like a tsunami, with a clear killing intention in my eyes.

"Let him try," one of the traitors laughed, "we were promised a revival after executing our job. Just make sure to kill the others and he will fail this quest for sure."

I didn't give a heed to this rubbish talk and instantly started hitting those standing with my swords.

Just after a few seconds, everyone realized something was wrong. I didn't hit to kill, but to cripple.

My two swords either hit the elbows, the knees by their sharp edges. And with the other side of my swords, the blunt sides, I started hitting others in the back of their heads.

In less than a minute I managed to subdue at least half of those traitors without killing a single one of them.

"Bastard!" the one who spoke first yelled in rage, "don't stand there like idiots. If we didn't make him lose then we won't have that revival chance again. Don't fight him... Kill, kill anyone, kill everyone, even kill yourselves."

"That cold hearted bastard!" I couldn't help but feel the sense of urgeness increase tremendously inside my heart. This was the most vicious thing to do, asking them to even kill themselves? C'mon, who was in his right mind to ask people to do that? And who would follow these shitty orders?

The main issue here was the number of people going to die before I made them powerless. The first target I sat my eyes upon was that youth.

He looked like the leader of them. He had to die first, or else he would still stir others to keep killing.

However, that bastard didn't plan to fall easily like this. Against my expectations he refrained from facing me up, turned around and started to run.

"I'll kill you!" I followed him while trying to hit anyone standing. Despite that many of the other traitors away from me started to kill people sitting on the ground.

Their numbers now weren't high after my first wave of attack, but there were enough to kill enough numbers to make me fail the quest.

[Warning: 50% of the people you are protecting are killed]

[Warning: You failed the subquest. All your stats will be halved as a penalty of failing this subquest]

"Hahaha, you failed… He failed, hahaha!" that bastard started laughing as if won a crucial quest.

Despite how bitter I felt in the heart, I didn't feel that much like I was a loser. After all my main stats were all so high, enough to make me survive the main quest without problems.

Besides, who said I was going to lay low and cry bitterly in the corner like a real loser? This was just a setback, and I learnt a valuable lesson during this one.

I should never underestimate my enemies like this ever again! No matter how things looked favorable and under my control, I shouldn't let my guard down until the last second of the main quest.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

Just as they were lost in their joy, looking at me with shining eyes and waiting to see my despair, my two swords kept slamming on their bodies fast.

I could feel much strength withdrawn from me in the next few moments. However that didn't make me the weak and powerless person they thought of.

"H… How can this be possible?!!" That youth retreated a couple of steps backwards while seeing me killing my way towards him. As I lost the quest, keeping them alive wasn't an option... Keeping any traitor alive wasn't an option.

I was wrong in the first place, I shouldn't have shown them any mercy from the start!

I tried to immobilize them and control the situation first before deciding what to do with them. After all killing them would make them all revive again. But right now my anger exploded like a volcano. What if they could revive? Let them revive and I'd come to kill them again, for real this time.

So when I lost the quest I continued to attack them. Killing them was much easier for me than making them lose their mobility. After all, my strength stat was still high enough to scare anyone here, to come on top of everyone else's strength.

I had twenty points now in my strength stat, making me a monster even after losing my subquest and getting that dirty penalty.

"You…!"

"Clang!"

The youth controlled himself fast when I reached him. He tried to defend against my swords with his but he could only stop one. The second sword was about to hit his neck when I heard a familiar voice shouting from behind.

"Allen!! What the hell are you doing here away from Washington?"

It was Angelica. She took all this time to catch up with me. However her sudden remark made my mind link the dots. "So you are the leader of those bastards? It'll be a gift to kill you," I changed my mind and instead of hitting his neck I hit his elbows then his two knees, forcing him to kneel on the ground.

"Keep him in bait until I return," I said to Angelica who was running towards my direction. Her face was covered with her helmet, but I felt her astonishment and puzzlement.

I didn't give any explanation for now. After all, I still had less than ten traitors to kill. The moment I turned my blades towards them, I noticed they gathered around and formed a strong defensive circle.

"Sara… Hit them hard," I didn't halt my steps while slowly walking towards them. Just before I marched for ten meters, the violent sounds of Sara's fire skill thundered as ripples appeared in the air around the last group of traitors.

*Whoosh!*

The fire danced around them and killed four in just one second. The others got burnt and tried to put down the fire.

However before they could do that, I started to run fast and covered the remaining distance in a few seconds. My two swords flashed right and left, cleaving the heads of those bastards without much trouble.

They tried to resist, tried to use their shields, tried to exchange deadly blows with me. But in the end all their attempts failed and finally the last one fell on the ground while my two swords were plunged into his chest.

I laid over his dead body like a ferocious beast. I was, without doubt, wounded in this subquest with that stupid penalty. However it was a deadly wound luckily.

"Keep him there," I moved my hands to retrieve the swords before I got a sudden and unexpected message.

[You killed one of the enemy, John the traitor. You can claim half of what he had in his inventory]

[You acquired one basic sword]

[You acquired one basic chestplate]

[You acquired twenty monster tier one cores]

.

.

[You acquired five thousand coins]

I looked at the long line of messages that appeared while feeling bewilderment. I never thought killing traitors would bring me such results.

Without thinking much I moved my hands and touched a second corpse just inches away from me.

[You killed one of the enemies, Peter the traitor. You can claim half of what he had in his inventory]

[You acquired one basic sword]

.

.

[You acquired four thousand coins]

"This…" I instantly recalled something. When I saved Angelica and formed a contract with her, she kept leaning on the dead bodies of the traitors.

I never thought much about that before. I merely thought she was having her moment of victory and overjoying at her enemies misfortune.

But this…

"Angelica…" my voice came deep and yet it was so domineering to make the body of Angelic tremble in fear. She was eyeing what I was doing. Without the need of me saying anything else, she knew that I realized what was going on.

She collected the trophy from the dead bodies of the traitros back then without telling or showing anything with me. My eyes glared with anger and I didn't speak any more words as I jumped from the dead body of a traitor to another.

Isabella and the team already came to the side of Allen. They surrounded him and the looks on their faces told me they wanted to kill him.

"I… you didn't ask so I didn't mention it," as a child caught on doing something wrong, she came and stood beside me while lowering her head and tone.

"How much did you get?" I coldly asked while finishing collecting my trophy.

"I wasn't the one to kill them, so only got ten percent of their inventory," she didn't directly answer my question. Just hearing her explanatory and seemingly apologetic words didn't make me feel any better.

"I can collect half of their inventory as I'm the one who killed them," I said in a deep tone without lifting my head or stopping what I was doing.

"We… can go back and get your share," she tried to come up with something to make me feel better.

"Do you think their bodies will remain where we left them? Humph, childish thinking of yours," I finished collecting the trophy from the small group I just killed before standing and giving her a chilling gaze.

I recalled all the traitors I killed before coming here. There were fifty of them. When the first quest ended, the dead bodies of monsters and traitors killed vanished in thin air like magic.

It was a known setting of the system to not make the bodies rot and spread diseases like plaque. But I also knew this was a presetting for one hell of a quest, the fight against zombies and the undead.

The system needed a large number of dead bodies and this was easily provided to it by us.

"Stingy bastards!" Just before I moved towards the rest of the dead traitors, Allen screamed in rage. "I told you to empty your inventories before coming here. Fast, anyone with anything in his inventory must use them now!"

"Not under my watch!" I didn't kill all the traitors yet. Almost half of them were lying wounded on the ground. Just hearing these enraged words from Allen made me realize how lucky I was to meet such stingy humans.

They were traitors, and it made quite sense that they would be acting stingy as well. Just thinking about this made my blood boil. Wouldn't that group I killed to save Angelica have much more wealth than this? Damn! I just missed a great chance thanks to that niggardly move by Angelica.

"Slash!"

"Slash!"

"Slash!"

Luckily most of the wounded traitors weren't so far from my reach. In less than two minutes I killed them all. But how much would I get from them was the main issue here.