Seeming to forget the state of her older brother for a second, Gabby released Benny and floated shakily to Cynrik, catching his shoulder to stabilize herself, and started softly whimpering Brance’s name.
Her tear-filled eyes darted from Cynrik back to Brance in fright while unable to formulate a single coherent sentence.
Clicking his tongue due to annoyance caused by the incredulous stares of Gabby, Cynrik lightly smacked his little brother’s cheek a couple of times, attempting to rouse the fainted Brance to no avail.
“Oi, you little shit, my MP isn’t infinite; wake the hell up and stop wasting my precious Mana.” Removing his imaginary limiter, which stopped him from ever hurting Brance, Cynrik leaned back, extending his arm to its full length, and tried to smack his little brother with the full force of his physical strength.
Luckily, feeling the malicious intent, Cynrik was emitting caused Brance to jolt away and narrowly avoid the incoming open palm. However, in his haste, Brance faceplanted…directly into Gabby’s washboard flat chest.
Gabby ignored the awkward situation and lovingly embraced Brances head with a cherry-red face, leaving Cynrik, who was sporting his best Jim from the Office expression, to cough loudly, startling the couple.
“Y’all are really flirting amid a life and death situation. Hell, Gabby, look at poor Benny, he’s…LITERALLY FLOATING AWAY FUCK!” Midway through his taunt, Cynrik noticed the unconscious Benny floating off into the never-ending expanse of the Shadow Realm and quickly kicked off the Shadow pillar he was stationed at to retrieve the boy.
By the time he returned to where he had left Brance and Gabby, the two had separated and put some distance between themselves. Brance was even sitting on his knees, back ramrod straight, and his palms on his thighs.
“Hey, nerd, you gunna wake up, or do I have to shake you till you puke? HEHE, we are technically in zero gravity, so I could just put you into a never-ending spin cycle.” Cynrik’s sinister words caused Benny, who was once again held like a cat by its scruff, to shiver and pop open his eyes.
“Sorry, Cyn.” Benny weakly apologized; he had, in fact, been awake since their arrival in the Shadow Realm but had chosen to act unconscious since he immensely enjoyed being pampered by his little sister.
“Tsk, fucking Siscon, whatever, we will talk about that shit later; for now, we’ve got bigger problems.” Letting Benny off with a casual flick in the forehead, Cynrik gazed through the veil of the Shadow Realm and into the real world.
Looking up, Cynrik could pinpoint their location with relative ease; their group had traveled away from the huts and closer to the farmland, putting a decent amount of distance between themselves and the, from what Cynrik could still see, whimpering buffoon of a Legacy Charge, who was rolling around on the ground outside his hit screaming at the sky for help from his Deity.
From his vantage point, he was able to see how the steam cloud they had previously created was slowly breaking apart and made a quick estimate to determine how much time was left until it completely dispersed.
“Listen up,” Cynrik snapped his fingers loudly, drawing the attention of all three of his party members, “time is running short; by my estimate, we only have around five to ten minutes until the steam disappears. So we are going into XP farming mode early.”
Gabby and Benny both stiffened at the thought of fighting so many high-leveled beings; only Brance seemed unaffected by the information.
“I will be dropping you guys off at the flank of the militia training in the field, Benny; I task defending Gabby to you, Gabby, I want you laying down suppressive fire with your arrows, I don’t expect you to necessarily one-shot kill the Kobolds, but I want you to at least slow them down so that Brance can work his way through the crowd.” Cynrik made eye contact with his little brother, who nodded in response. It didn’t need to be said that Cynrik expected Brance to take the gloves off and go hard.
Noticing Cynrik hadn’t included himself in the plan and only dished out roles to everyone else, Gabby tilted her head to the side like a puppy.
“Um, Big Bro Cyn, what about you? Are you not going to be with us?”
Brance placed his hand on her head and ruffled her hair, “Big Brother is going to go do the job no one else can.”
“Un, I have to play my part as the group’s villain, don’t worry about me, just focus on your task. I want you and Benny to be actively watching your XP; once you two hit the Prestige cap, don’t delay telling Brance. At that point, I will drop everything and meet up with you guys before dragging everyone back here to complete your Tier-1 Evolutions.” Using the standard tactic of throwing too much information at the kids to distract them, Cynrik seamlessly diverted from the topic of his own task.
[Tobs, how long will their standard Evo last?] Cynrik wasn’t too concerned. In the past, when he fought Myer, the man instantly Evolved in the middle of their fight, so Cynrik just assumed that was the natural way things went.
-Since neither Gabriella Sanford nor Benjamin Sanford carries bloodlines, their Evolutions will only take a maximum of ten seconds.-
“If everything goes according to plan, it should only take you two a few seconds to reach Tier-1 once you start the process. You both brought your EVO Shards like I told you, right?”
Gabby and Benny nodded and retrieved the small rocks from their inventories and showed them to Cynrik before swiftly storing them away.
“Good,(whew),” exhaling in relief, Cynrik directed his attention back up to the sky. “Weapons out; it’s time to go execute order 66.”
Gabby and Benny quickly and unsteadily stood up on the shadow pillar, ignoring the second part of Cynrik’s statement, but Brance scoffed loudly and shot his brother a startled expression.
[That’s just fucking wrong, and you know it, Cyn. Tsk.]
[Tobs, Play Battle of Heroes.]
-Now playing “Battle of Heroes” by John Williams.-
[KOHHHH…KHUHH… to the temple, my Brother, KOHHHH…KHUHH…there are younglings to slaughter.] Mimicking the respirator breathing sounds of a certain Sith Lord, Cynrik scooped up all three of his party members and lept towards the barrier between realms.
[WHAT THE FUCK IS WRON…(snicker)… OK, I cant, hahaha, seriously, what the fuck hahaha. You’re going to hell for that one, but it was still funny as shit.] Brance tried his best to stifle his laughter, only to fail miserably. As wrong and morbid as Cynrik’s joke was, he couldn’t stop laughing at it.
Cynrik smirked as he aligned his body horizontally to the barrier between reality and the Shadow Realm.
“Up you guys go, remember, aim true, fight hard, trust in your teammates, but most importantly, KICK SOME ASS!” Then, punctuating his rally speech by throwing all three of them through the barrier, Cynrik chuckled to himself one last time before going completely expressionless.
All jokes aside, even he was slightly unsettled by what he was about to do. Unlike the others, Cynrik was fully aware of the situation. These creatures he was about to slaughter like cattle were not only sentient but real. Unlike what he had convinced Gabby and Benny, the Kobolds weren’t simply constructs of the Egress Core. They were poor puppets of some sick and twisted Deity who played a fucking game with their lives.
Cynrik was sure that, to some extent, Brance was aware, as he didn’t think his brother was a brainless fool. But at the end of the day, it was better if Brance was kept in the dark. Cynrik knew he was the only one who could compartmentalize the meanless slaughter of helpless beings. There was no way he would allow Gabby, Benny, or even Brance to deal with the potentially traumatic effects of having to mercilessly kill children, even if those children were a head taller than them and lizard people.
Drawing in a slow and deep breath, Cynrik closed his eyes and absorbed himself in the music being played by Tobs. Although he was relatively good at shutting off what few emotions he could feel, it didn’t make him immune to mental trauma.
The sounds of the horn line hitting their solo in the song caused Cynrik’s eyes to shoot open and make a swimming motion with his arms, catapulting his body through the zero-g void of the Shadow Realm.
It only took him a few seconds to arrive below the village center; once in position below the barrier between realms, Cynrik pulled up his hood and drifted down, finding a foothold on a pillar, and drew both his Kodachis in one fluid motion.
“You are no longer Anakin, but instead Lord Vader.” Muttering to himself softly, in an attempt to get into villainous character, Cynrik hesitated no longer. Crouching down while channeling Dark Mana into his feet, Cynrik slowed his breathing and narrowed his eyes, his face contorting in a sinister expression, and kicked off the pillar, rocketing himself up and through the barrier into a group of unsuspecting Kobolds.
[Tobs, Dual of Fates epic.]
-Now playing “Duel of Fates, Epic Powerful Mix, TSFH Style” by Samuel Kim-
Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, a small Kobold was startled by the arrival of a being the same height as him wielding two black swords clad in black flames; he, along with his family and neighbors, were in the process of kowtowing to show respect to the Dragon God when the being began his assault. The last thing the poor Kobold saw was the adults around him lose their heads before bursting into the same color flames as the being’s swords and the emotionless expression on the being’s face.
Feeling the bite of cold flames searing the skin of his neck, the young Kobold’s final thought was, “Ootum ranisoom clissk matayer Dragos Govs?” (Why have you forsaken us Dragon God.)
-This series is exclusively published on WebNovel if you are reading it anywhere else…You Wrong Fam. PS Check out the Discord, https://discord.gg/dcxKNJEMwg