"Basica—"
Lariat stopped mid-sentence and brought a finger to his lips, signaling Beth to stay silent. His gray eyes scanned their surroundings with unprecedented intensity. Reaching into his breast pocket, he drew a dagger, its hilt snug in his palm. Beth tensed, her chest slamming against the air.
Open field. Safest place: the cottage. No external hiding spots aside from the house itself.
Whoever was out there gave him no more time. Something whistled through the air—straight for Lariat. With barely a moment to spare, he swung his dagger with lethal precision. Iron clashed against iron, and the projectile shattered. Rolling to the side, he evaded another volley of sharp projectiles.
"Beth! Follow me!"
The cottage was compromised. He didn't know how they'd done it, but he couldn't go back. That left one option.
Lariat didn't wait for Beth to process what was happening. Churning his internal energy, he closed the distance between them in an instant. Hoisting her onto his back, he dashed.
His figure merged with the wind, hurtling forward at speeds few at his level could match. His dagger spun in a chaotic yet orderly dance, deflecting projectile after projectile. Only one thought propelled him: *Safety.* A bunker lay two kilometers east. If he could reach it in time, they'd survive.
An explosion erupted from behind them. The scalding heat reached him in an instant. Without a moments thought, he pushed his internal energy to the limits, creating a barrier that ensured Beth wouldn't be harmed. Utilizing the propulsion from the blast, he increased his speed. Slamming the tip of his toes into the ground, he generated enough moment to twirl his body leftwards—dodging a deadly strike aimed at his heart. This time, it wasn't a projectile. Rather, a blurry figure draped in black cloth from head to toe.
Lariat fought the urge to engage in combat and increased his speed. Every single bone in his body ached as he drew energy from his crippled internal system. Not knowing the total amount of assassins made his job tougher. A two kilometer distance that should have been less than a minutes travel to him felt infinite in scope. His heart pounded. Beth simply couldn't process what was happening. Her mortal mind was incapable of processing events that occurred by the second. By the time she did, they'd either be dead or alive in the bunker.
Pulverizing fear slammed into his heart when he saw a host of figures dressed in black in the direction he needed to go. He came to a halt, spun on his heel, and dashed the other way. How foolish of him. He was surrounded. They herded him. By what he could only describe as a sea of black. He churned his internal energy, knocking Beth out. Things were going to get ugly, he didn't want her to be awake to see this.
The sea of black clothed people parted. Their leader walked out, draped in black clothing, though with a slight difference. On his waist, Lariat noticed the golden emblem belonging to the Black Emporium. His eyes hardened.
"Even in your current state, you remain a force to be reckoned with Blanc. Our superiors have a job offer for you," the man spoke in a deep voice that vibrated the earth below them.
It was as he feared. His grip on Beth tightened. He lifted his chest so that he stood taller than ever. Weakness couldn't show. Not now. The grey in his eyes sharpened with lethal intent. The grip on his dagger loosened. All tension left him as he felt his old self takeover. No longer was he a gentle father, now he was Blanc.
A strike rose along his lips as he settled in, "A thousand men. Are you certain they are enough to graze a microscopic piece of my hair? Let alone my clothes?"
"We can do things like civilized men. You take the job I'm offering with open hands. And we all go our merry ways?" The man in black raises his hands with a smile, spinning around to showcase his magnanimity to all those watching.
"I've left that life behind. But I assume you know that," Blanc spoke, "So this is how we'll do things. I let you leave alive. And I'll go back to my home. Make like this never happened."
Blanc saw the man's posture shift at his words. He felt the cold harnessed fury shifting about him like steam from a bubbling volcano. The man's body coiled to strike like a primordial cobra. Unfortunately, he wasn't threatened. He never regrets. Ever.
"I'm not surrounded."
"Are you sure?"
With serpentine grace, his suit rippling in the wind generated, Blanc struck, dagger in hand. Only the man in black perceived his movements and slapped the dagger to the side with a palm. Sliding his leg outwards, Blanc pivoted, throwing a back heeled kick. The man felt force and saw stars as he flew into the distance. Blanc reached out, grabbed his ankle and spun him around like a makeshift whip and brought hell to the surrounding figures dripped in black.
Only then did reality snap back. The crowd of assassins swarmed him from all directions like a tidal wave of raw death aimed at him. But he weaved through them like slipper fish. The leader became an unwilling weapon used to deal massive damage to them.
In that moment four came behind him while eight came from the rest of the directions, including the ground. They surrounded all three sixty degrees of him. He exhaled, fusing his internal energy into every muscle Fibre, and burst out with inconceive strength and speed. His foot became a whirlwind of forced and precious, striking lethal one-hit blows to everything that moved, all the while squeezing himself through the atomic spaces they created like air.
Wave after wave of assailant struck, but he came out on top, chick's flushed and legs paining. Blood didn't have enough time to drench him by the time he finished. More than a thousand black robed people fell to the floor, their blood spurting out in all directions as the reaper blade took their souls. Their leader, battered, bruised, and broken, gasped under his iron grip around the neck.
"How many more?"
Gasps for hair and gurgle of clotted blood was the only answer. The once confidant led clawed at his hands, seeking for life where their was none. Lariats eyes no longer held a hint of emotion. Even in their gre, they carried a deep dark apathy within them.
Within his vision, another swarm of black clothed figures emerged from the shadows. Getting to safety would be more problematic than mining rock in a volcano. Set in his former rhythm, he moved, focusing the vestige of his internal energy into one goal: annihilation. He moved like a jaguar, feet never touching ground. With a pop of his shoulder, he adjusted Beth's position so that the sharp twists and turns of his body didn't wake her.
Death entered the fray the moment two sides clashed. One man and a girl on his back against an entire sea of trained assassins. The result of which left the Gods above gasping for air in awe. Brutal efficiency. That was the only path Blanc knew. And it showed. A twitched of his left hand. Horrid screams, and the crunch of neck bones resounded. Sliding one foot over the other, ruptured spikes, and a mere gaze broke minds. The twist of a daggered hand, sent swirling strings of internal organs splattering into the ground.
It was merely the beginning. With a sharp inhale, the world became screams and crimson spurts that eventually died the blue-tinted grass purple. Blanc didn't know how many of them there were. And in that lament, he didn't care. No matter how many they brought. All of them would die, over and over again. Hopefully, hell gave him a cut of the profits. One could say in that instant he was its largest supplier of souls.
Blood drenched every part of the field, yet not a single drop touched him, let alone Beth. Without wasting a moment, he dashed towards the city. Once he left the area around his cottage, he'd make it into the forest. Only after traversing the forest would he be at the city.