“What are you talking about?” Gaya grunted. She was unable to believe Noah. In her lifetime, she had never taken an innocent life. When she heard that she was responsible for killing several innocent people, she couldn’t even breathe normally.
“Here,” Noah flicked his wrist as a parchment appeared in his hand,
He threw the parchment to Gaya. Her hands shivered. Mustering all the courage in every fiber of her body, she opened the parchment. The parchment had the crest of Nagaland, a cobra coiling around the golden dagger.
Under the crest was a long list of names. She didn’t need an introduction to those names, they were the names of people in the prison she burned down to the ground.
Their names were in red but when her eyes came to the end of the list, there were several names written in green ink. These names, she didn’t recognize,
“That was the list created by your own elites, the team your mother formed”
The crest on the top was proof enough for Gaya that this parchment was created by the elites. The crest might seem simple but it was actually a rune, hence it was damn hard to forge it elsewhere. Only the elites had the knowledge to create the logo.
The Elites was a group of highly trained Nagas that only answered to the queen. They were the symbol of courage, mercy, justice, faith, power, and hope. Gaya’s mother formed this elite group to protect the kingdom from threats inside and outside the kingdom.
When she formed the group, she wanted Gaya to lead them in the future. But her untimely demise and Gaya’s father’s second marriage let Gaya’s stepmother control the elites. Since the elites were bound by honor, they answered to Gaya’s stepmother as she was the queen of Nagaland.
A tear formed in each eye before falling onto the parchment. It was a tear of self-blame and shock.
“People think me as a self-righteous prick but they fail to understand that I’m like this because I don’t want to be the reason for an innocent to suffer,” Noah said in a serious tone,
“Sometimes killing one evil becomes a reason for a hundred more evil to emerge. And killing one innocent is like letting hundred evil triumph”
Michael and Noah had completely different perspectives on this. As far as Michael was concerned, if killing a hundred evil costs one innocent life, he would kill a hundred evil. But if it was Noah, he would save that one innocent life at the cost of letting a hundred evil go.
“Why are you telling her these?” Ayag couldn’t bear to see Gaya sad.
“Don’t even think about ratting her out. Ghost will kill you” Sarba snapped as he bore his teeth at Noah.
However Noah just smiled,
“If I wanted to rat you out, I would have done it a long time ago. Ghost saved my sister and mother, I’m grateful to him. This is me returning the favor. No one will hear from me that you are Gaya. But if you want to hide your identity forever, you need to find a better mask. Or you will end up hurting him when the elites show on your doorstep someday”
Gaya felt a chill running through her spine but when she saw Ghost’s smiling face in her mind, her fear and sadness disappeared. She trusted he would overcome anything. Unlike some girls who would only bring trouble to the guy, she wanted to stop all the troubles before they could reach Ghost.
“I bet you’re not here to tell me this” Gaya finally took her gaze away from the parchment to look at Noah,
“Your father is dying”
Gaya’s heart skipped a beat yet another time when he dropped another bomb on him.
“Only thing that can save him is the heart of the five-headed serpent. And I guess you’re here for that same five-headed serpent I’m looking for. If we look for the serpent in our own ways, we might end up getting killed but if we combine our forces, we can get what we both want”
“What happened to him?”
Instead of responding to Noah’s offer to work together, Gaya asked about her father.
“Someone poisoned him”
Gaya couldn’t help clenching her fist when a sudden burst of anger exploded within her. She hated her father yet when she heard someone poisoned him, her blood boiled.
“I know you can’t complete your naga transformation without the heart-“
“You can take it” Gaya interjected Noah,
“This shall be my last filial act as his daughter. One day I will rub the fact I let him live on his face” Gaya put the parchment in her space ring instead of giving it to him back.
“Why are you here alone anyway? Where’re your Guardian buddies?”
Gaya leaned on the wall asking Noah. Although she asked casually, she wanted to learn more about Noah because she had a weird feeling about him. As far as she was concerned, he would die fighting the five-headed serpent with his Core Formation level 4 cultivation. In her mind, he would make a great distraction by being the five-headed serpent’s snack.
“Where are we going next?” Ayag asked. Ayag still didnt trust Noah but she was not stupid to let go of help in this place.
“There is a city right in the center of the Fire Realm, Hell City,” Noah said.
“Oh, so there is actually a city in this god-forsaken place?” Ayag was surprised, she hadn’t expected this at all.
“Hell City is a unique existence. Ancient devils will not enter the city no matter what, that’s why it has become a gathering place for all humans and other races. Supposedly, this Hell City is the safest place in Fire Realm, and as long as you stay within the city, you won’t have to worry about being attacked by beasts, and your safety will be guaranteed. The tunnel leading to the outside world only opens once a year, therefore, Hell City has become the most important place to protect. But now, it has become the most dangerous area in Fire Realm, no different than the deepest area of Fire Realm”
“How did that happen?” Ayag asked while Gaya remained silent, letting Noah do the explaining to Ayag. She wanted to remain silent facing the various emotions surging in her heart.
“Very simple; where there are humans, there is trouble. In Fire Realm,
You can find trouble anywhere. Between ancient beasts, between humans and other races, between humans and humans. Blood is spilled everywhere, there are no rules here, only raw slaughter. In order to survive in the Fire Realm, you need powerful strength. Right now, there are all kinds of bad and good people mixed in Hell City, some are vicious criminals who were exiled here by one of the Great Nine Clans, or some genius disciples from some big sect who’s looking to forge themselves in the fire of real battle experience. When so many powerful people are mixed together in a single place, conflicts are inevitable” Noah explained.
Cain carefully listened to every single one of his words. He could understand the situation here. There were no rules in Fire Realm, and the most important thing here was strength and ability. Without it, one would be nothing but prey to the strong. Although Hell City could help a person escape from the attacks of demons and devils, it couldn’t help them escape from conflicts between humans.
“There might be something that instigated the trouble in the first place,” Ayag said.
“It’s the damn Thusians”
The word ‘Thusians’ stopped Gaya’s train of thoughts. The pain, the anger, the fury, and everything Ghost was feeling flashed across her mind. He gave a small taste of his emotions a long time ago yet she could still feel everything like they happened to her.
“Thusians?”
“They’ve been waging war on small factions and realms like this to bolster their power. Until recently they’ve been only targeting small factions but now, they are waging war on many kingdoms in the Ozer Continent. It’s only a matter of time before they start a war in Elon”
Gaya began to worry about Ghost. She doubted he would do something suicidal yet she wanted to be there with him. Now she wanted more than anything to get stronger. If she was weaker than him, she would just be a hindrance after getting stronger, it would become a different story though.
“I thought it’s your guild’s job to stop wars” Gaya snickered,
“Guardians? Im righteous not stupid. They lost their purpose a long time ago. Now they are just corrupted politicians who wouldn’t raise a finger without getting something in return”
For a moment Gaya wasn’t sure what she just heard. She never expected Noah to loathe the guardians because he’s one of them. Seeing the stunned look on Gaya’s face, Noah smiled.
“I didn’t join guardians to earn millions of gold or get beauties. I have those. I joined Guardians because I want to reform them from the ground up. I owe it to someone”
Just when Gaya was about to ask him something, Noah interjected,
“You wanna ask why I’m telling you these right? I’m telling you this because in the future I would like to work with Ghost to help the people. I know he’s building his own empire and I want us to work together for the greater good”
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