Carolina basked in her victory. It was clear, her path to become the next Gold Leader couldn’t be stopped. The only thing she had to do was consolidate her power.

First, she must kill the old guard.

“Men,” Carolina spoke playfully, internally biting the scream of pain from every part of her body, especially her mangle arm. “For first order as Gold Leader, I want you to remove the…”

Boom!

It was then a black smoke exploded out of nowhere, souring Carolina victory at the final moment.

There was a crash and a scream, but as the smoke faded, one thing was clear.

Hikari was nowhere to be found.

…

Outside the wrecked tower, Hikari fell to her knee, gnawing through her suffering. Her vision blurred, as the overexertion of her dislocated foot nearly cause her to black out. She drowsily reached into a hidden compartment in her chest and pulled out a box and gulped down half a dozen pills — mostly antioxidants and painkillers.

This wasn’t the first time Hikari had to retreat from certain death. In her younger days climbing up the rank, she was stabbed, burned, poisoned, and beaten to the blink of death. Those close-calls crafted a lesson of survival on her body.

Hikari’s vision blurred. She flipped her medicine box and flipped a switch, revealing a mean-looking needle. Swallowing the pain, Hikari plunged the needle into her arm and injected the adrenaline shot into herself.

Good, this would keep her awake.

Then Hikari ran. It was a desperate scramble for her safe-house. Her plans and futures were in tatters, but moping was the privilege of the living. Right now, her pulse was up for grabs. She knew Carolina would send her former subordinate to hunt her down. The Golden Hand wouldn’t care about her as their former leaders. Their lack of sentimentality was part of the job.

Hikari knew this very well because she was one of them once.

She dashed into the street of Eleanor, trying to hide amongst the bustling crowd, but a quick glance upward revealed the shadow of her pursuers. Birds flew in the sky, but from its slight unnatural movement, she knew those were zombies. Carolina had deployed her minion to aid the hunt, and hiked her survival difficulties.

Hikari eyed the several key-points in the port and noticed the several guards on alert. Not good. Eleanor’s law enforcement had as much tact as their charitable spirit. If fights broke out into the street, her chance of a smooth escape would hit zero. She veered into the corner, and groaned. Harriet House was the best place for her to hide due to it being strictly off-the-book, but getting there through several Golden Hand personals would be troubling.

Right on cue, one Golden Hand agent, dressed in a voluminous robe, tried to sneak behind her. He was clumsy. Hikari smoothly dodged his lunge, hit him in the diaphragm, and caving him in the throat with her fist and instantly killing him.

Hikari quickly got away and found herself in the slum. Through the horrendous smell amount of waste and trash, the girl fought on, trying to slink into the shadow as much as possible. She heard footsteps. Hikari sighed. It appeared to be another badly done sneak attack.

She performed a roundhouse, but instead of an assassin. It was a kid dressed in a rag, trying to jump her from behind. Hikari’s foot blasted him into the wall and knocked him unconscious. She paused in shock. Her current unkempt, half-singed hair danced wildly as she tried to comprehend this reality.

It was then the assassin struck, waiting for the exact moment Hikari let her guard down. Explosives were thrown into the slum’s dirty alley, and exploded in front of Hikari.

Through fire and force, the former Gold Leader, borrowing on a long depleted strength, leaped onto the shaky roof of the decaying structure. The aged, poorly maintained stone was crumbling from the explosion. Hikari would be lucky if only one house would bite the dust. However, she had no such luck. In thunderous chain-reactions, blocks of the slums stack like thin boxes of pizzas fell from the tickle of those explosions, which collapsed onto another house, causing it to fall.

In the cascading ash and destruction, Hikari jumped from roof-to-roof, feeling a piece of her died as she extracted every last dreg of power from her Aura. Making it out of the falling mess in this situation would be hard enough, but the assassin wasn’t making it easier.

Upon hearing the whistling sound, Hikari turned and barely caught the knives thrown at her face. She briefly landed on one intact roof, meeting the waiting assassin in black, and greeting him with a roundhouse kick. The kick landed in force that blasted him back to collide with his similarly dressed partner. They fell off the roof in a duo, but Hikari doubted it would keep them down for long. Hikari, knowing they were surrounding her, turn and ran. She threw a knife at the third masked assassin, who picked that moment to leap on the roof to cut her escape. The knife caught him between the eyes, instantly killing him.

But the turmoil wasn't over. The booted assassin reappeared, returning and catching up to Hikari. With a knife in hand, he attacks with a flurry of blows. He was good. Good enough that Hikari had trouble beating him in her current state. 

Hikari dodged a kick, but the sharp pain in her leg caused her to flinch, allowing the assassin to land a sucker punch, and unbalanced her with a low kick. A foot landed on the tile behind her with a thump, as the assassin's buddy rejoined the fight, slashing the off-balance Hikari with a blade in the back, and knocked her sprawling to the ground with a perfectly placed elbow strike.

Hikari rolled across the worn roof and got up again. She chewed down the pain and escaped with and Aura clad jump to the sky.

The two assassins followed, falling right into Hikari’s trap.

The former Gold Leader kicked off her shoes and sent it flying into another assassin’s face, knocking him out of the air. Hikari landed on another roof, waiting for the sole-surviving assassin to follow her, and ended the fight for survival above the rooftops of Eleanor’s slums.

But at that moment, the poison inside Hikari suddenly recurred. Her eyes blurred.

Hikari countered that the assassin landing on her position with excellent timing. In a better condition, this counter strike would be perfect. However, with the heaviness of various injuries and the poison, Hikari’s evasion was too slow. Yes, her foot cladded in Aura broke the neck of her assailant, but she didn’t evade the sword in time.

Thin shape blades slashed through both of the girl’s beautiful eyes, and this time she couldn’t bottle the pain.

The scream was unimaginable, defying any kind of description. Hikari rolled across the floor clutching her bloody face, and the extinguished organ laying in the bloody socket. After some time of squirming in pain, Hikari crouched down in despair and sobbed in the lightless world she found herself in. Blood bled from the face, and she crawled blindly, guided only by the rough feeling of the stone beneath and the sound of her own movement. She scrambled forward, using her hand to perform the duty of the now destroyed eyes.

Hikari’s hand felt emptiness. She remembered where she was and helplessly tumbled from the roof of the slum. Without her vision, it was impossible to make the head or tail of the world, much less land on her feet.

Her body collapsed on the hard road below. Her head hit the floor hard enough to penetrate her feeble Aura. She laid there, too exhausted to move, without her vision and the stickiness of her blood spreading from the countless wounds she suffered. That moment was when Hikari finally gave up on fighting. Her breathing relaxed as she waited for fate to do what she wanted.

And fate was merciless indeed.

“Hey, Josh, check this out,” said a voice.

Hikari was too done to even mount a resistance. Her body was on its last leg. A vibration from the footsteps indicated there were two men coming toward her.

“Whoa, is she dead?” Josh said. “What a shame. She would be quite a catch if she was in a better condition. What do you think, Ord?”

“Nice body,” said Ord. “We can nurse her back to health and sell her to the brothel. To be honest, those missing eyes would cause some price drop, but I bet some millionaires have fitting fetishes.” Ord further contemplated Hikari’s body. “Her chest is smaller for my taste, but it would be quite great to bounce that nice body around.”

Hikari felt her stomach curl.

“So merchandise?” Josh asked.

“Yes, buddy,” Ord said, nodding in agreement. “Merchandise. You know, she kinda looks like that hot Onren’s chick.”

“Dude, you are fantasizing too much,” Josh said. “Help me lift her. I can’t believe I am doing an extra shipping run.”

“Oh, shut up, man,” Ord replied.

Hikari wanted to laugh as the two men lifted her wrecked body for a shaky trip, which ended with her being thrown into a stinking, lonely carriage. Maybe this was her punishment. The just reward for letting this kind of tragedy go for so long was that she would have to suffer it herself.

Fate certainly had a cruel sense of humor.

…

Hikari wasn’t exactly right. She was about to be saved by the luck of a lifetime.

“Hey, what do you think about the rumor about that fatso?” Josh said, holding the harness to the carriage in his hand. “Can’t believe he had to quit the business?”

“Yeah, replacing him is going to be a pain,” Ord replied, shifting his fat bottom to find a more comfortable spot in the transport. “As for the rumor, it is total nonsense. Three hot chicks declared war on him and housed his place down in flames? Utterly ridiculous, no woman in the world can fight an army.”

“Hey,” Josh squinted. “Isn’t one of those women a blond girl in white?”

“Yeah, at least according to the rumors,” Ord said. “Why do you bring that up?”

Josh pointed to the bystander walking into the carriage path, “Because someone like that is pointing at…”

White Magic Rank 4: Smite

Two pencil-thin beams of light ray pierced their brain, instantly killing them.

…

While Xiahana La Louve honored her agreement with Hikari, it didn’t mean she sat back and twiddle her thumb. Yes, she might not be escalating the hot war, but disrupting a random day-to-day operation of your average slavers was still on the table. Being an ever so approving lover, Ciel agreed with her newfound hobby and promised to handle the repercussions as long as it didn’t wound their temporary alliance too badly.

Without its rider, the two war horses drawing the carriage quickly went into a panic, but spears of Bind quickly pinned them in place.

Xia cracked her neck, marched toward the carriage, and opened the door wide.

Xia began her joyful message of liberation, “Hello, you’re free. I’m…”

Her declaration was trailed to emptiness as she recognized the brutalized Hikari inside the carriage. At that moment, Xia’s mind connected the dots together.

“Oh no,” Xia muttered.

She was under no impression that their original plan could survive. She hung out around her lover for long enough to know Eleanor was probably doomed.