Our group was silent as we packed everything up and started traveling away from the group of people heading towards us. I kept a close eye on them using my soul-sight, and Felix constantly fed that information to Old Mo. The group of travelers kept getting closer to us as we stuffed everything into our bags and got moving.

I hoped that they were just another group of travelers, or perhaps another group of refugees fleeing the oncoming army. It was entirely reasonable for another group of people to flee the city, after all. And Old Mo’s plan of traveling through difficult terrain to dodge the coalition army wasn’t too hard to think of. There was every chance that the approaching group was also fleeing the army, just like us.

Right?

Old Mo seemed a bit nervous, but he started leading us north almost immediately after we packed up our food. It was out of our way, since Verne was located at the northernmost part of the continent and we weren’t planning on heading overseas. Since we were changing our direction a bit, we hoped to avoid a direction confrontation with the other group. I was still hoping it was another group of refugees or something, but I didn’t want to alert a group of military scouts if they were from the coalition army. If we killed a group of scouts, there was a chance a much bigger group of soldiers would come after us, causing us to get entangled in a group too big to handle.

Sadly, we didn’t seem to be lucky. The group of people behind us kept following us, which made our group increasingly nervous as the minutes wore on and we kept running away.

Furthermore, while my mother was actively trying not to be quite the burden she had been up to this point, she wasn’t a very physically strong person. Since I had already exposed my ‘ability potion use’ to Old Mo, and I fully expected the rest of the group to learn about my abilities in the future, I was a lot more active about healing the rest of the group. I didn’t need to discreetly wait for someone to drink a bit of water or something to cast renewal on them - instead, Old Mo occasionally told people to sprinkle ‘just a bit’ of water on their forehead to help keep them cool, as a ‘survival tip.’ Anise’s parents gave Old Mo a few odd looks after he said that, but they did as he suggested. I suspected that by tonight, Anise’s parents were going to want more concrete answers - and I was willing to talk to them about my healing abilities once we had a bit more time to explain.

Of course, my essence usage was hard to maintain, so after an hour of walking, I had to whisper to Old Mo and tell him I was running out of energy. Despite the healing I had used to maintain our group’s stamina, we hadn’t shaken off the people pursuing us. Clearly, they were far more physically fit than we were - or had abilities of their own to enhance their physiques. Neither possibility boded well for us. 

After an hour of trying to escape, and getting constant updates from ‘Felix’ about their location, Old Mo sighed.

“All right, stop. Do you know how to use your guns?” asked Old Mo, turning towards everyone with a gun.

I looked at the gun, and shrugged. “I think so? Point the hole at people you want to hurt, and then pull the trigger, right?”

“I mean… that’s not wrong, but guns have a lot more kick than you might expect,” said Old Mo. “For now, don’t shoot it - you might accidentally break your nose instead of hurt the enemy. Just point it at them and hope it doesn’t come to a confrontation, I think.” Old Mo turned towards Anise and Felix’s father, and frowned. “You,” he said, pointing at Anise’s father. “Give the gun to your wife. She has a metal hand, so she’ll be better equipped to handle the recoil. Can you shoot?” he asked Anise’s mother. She shook her head. “Well, if it comes down to it, pull the trigger and hope it works out.” Then, he gave Anise’s mother and Sallia’s father several gel-coated bullets and quickly taught them how to reload the guns.

“So are we planning on confronting the group following us?” I asked, as Anise’s mother managed to stuff the bullets into her gun.

Old Mo sighed. “I don’t think we have a choice. They keep following us, and we can’t move faster than them, even with your magic to keep our stamina up. We need to see what they want, and waving some guns in their face might make them a little less inclined towards violence.” He seemed to realize something else, and turned towards Sallia. “Do you…” Old Mo trailed off, as if unsure whether or not to breach the topic of Sallia’s metal manipulation ability.

Sallia nodded. “If it comes to it, I can help a lot. If you can stall them by talking for a while, I can deactivate their guns before the shooting starts. Of course, they could also try to shoot us without talking,” said Sallia after a few moments. “So I’m not sure whether trying to talk is the best idea.” Sallia’s parents gave her a rather strange look after Sallia mentioned she could deactivate their guns, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who was going to be explaining my abilities tonight.

Old Mo nodded thoughtfully. “I plan to see what they want, but I’m going to do so behind cover.” He turned towards me as well. “What about you? Can you heal if it comes down to it?”

“Definitely,” I said. “I’ve kept some essence in reserve in case we need it.”

Old Mo nodded, and tightened his grip on his own gun. “Then let’s see what the group following us wants.”

Our group found a little rock outcropping where everyone with a gun could take cover, just in case the situation devolved into a gunfight. Just two minutes after we ducked behind cover, I saw the nearby souls get close enough that I could see them with my regular eyes. The first thing I expected to see was a group of hungry travelers, or a group of enemy soldiers wearing coalition colors, or something along those lines.

Instead, the first thing I saw as the other group drew closer to us were the tall, poofy hats our country’s military was known for.

The group of twenty-six that had been following us were soldiers from the nation of Verne. Our home country. 

I frowned.

Were they that insistent on chasing down a group of civilians fleeing from the city? We had left the city when we weren’t supposed to, but I was surprised that anyone had noticed our departure and cared enough to track us down. Especially after losing an important fort, I would have expected the military to be low on manpower and supplies. A military sending 26 soldiers after a group of refugees and children definitely didn’t sound like a military running low on manpower. Had they somehow connected us to the time we had broken Felix out, all those years ago? I started feeling very nervous at that thought, and nearly started launching extinguishes at the nearest soldiers.

However, the moment the leader of the soldiers opened his mouth, I realized the soldiers weren’t here for us.

“Dremor Mol,” said the leader, a tall man with pale skin and gleaming eyes. He gave Old Mo a vicious grin as he sized him up. “Or perhaps I should call you Old Mo now?” Then, he turned to look at me as well. “And a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.” His smile seemed almost predatory as he looked at us, and I carefully opened my spatial eyesight. I was prepared to start teleporting bullets around the moment it was needed.

At the same time, I noticed that some of the internal parts of the guns the Verne soldiers were holding were starting to fuse, bend, or break. I resisted the urge to grin. Sallia and Felix were hard at work removing the enemy’s weapons.

“Who are you? Why are you following us?” asked Old Mo, flicking the safety for his gun off.

The soldiers raised their guns and pointed them at Old Mo… and strangely enough, several more of them pointed their guns at me, even though I should have looked exactly like a normal, unassuming six year old.

“Not so fast, Dremor. Why don’t you relax a little, or the little girl will be missing a limb or two,” said the old soldier, his grin growing even more predatory. “I have a few superiors who want to have a ‘talk’ with you.”

“Why are you pointing guns at Miria?” asked Old Mo. “She has nothing to do with this.” He sounded shocked and vulnerable - or at least, that was what he was trying to project. I was almost fooled, but I had spent enough time with Old Mo to know he was acting. He was buying Sallia more time.

“Miria, is it?” asked the soldier who led the group. His eyes swept over me, giving me a look that made me want to launch an extinguish at him immediately. “So she is the right one.

“You know, I’m very disappointed that you left before we could have a proper… chat. I was planning to visit you in a few days, but you fled the city before I could visit you. Now I’ve had to chase you down in the wilderness instead of having a nice, civilized conversation over a cup of tea.” He clicked his tongue, and I blinked in confusion. “Well, consider little Miria’s safety to be your incentive to have a proper conversation. My spies have said that you’re quite close to her, and I would hate to see another innocent girl get killed because of you.”

“I’m here,” said Old Mo. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I know you’re retired, after the… last incident of your career. but I also know you’ve still got a connection network that most former assassin’s don’t have access to. The country requires your assistance once again. I want you to leverage your contacts and information network for us,” he said, before idly flicking the gun in his hands. “Otherwise, I’m going to kill both of you. We can’t have dangerous former assassins running around when the country is in danger, after all.”

Before the man could continue his speech, Sallia cut him off.

“Their guns are disabled,” she said.

Old Mo didn’t hesitate. He immediately raised the gun towards the man who had been speaking, and shot him directly between the eyes. The man barely had time to blink before a bullet buried itself in his skull.

The other soldiers immediately tried to open fire on us - only to find that none of their guns worked anymore.

“Ability users!” one of the soldiers yelled, right as the closest guns ripped themselves free of their user’s hands, turned into a small swarm of metal fragments, and then tore into the group.

I launched a few extinguishes at soldiers who looked like they were trying to charge us and fight with their fists, and Old Mo precisely shot several soldiers that were digging around for secondary weapons Sallia might have missed.

Within about ten seconds, nearly half of the soldiers attacking us had been mowed down. The enemy had given us too much time to set up, and didn’t have any ability users opposing us.

“Old Mo is an ability user now!” yelled one of the other soldiers, seeing Sallia’s obvious look of concentration. “We need to take him down before-”

An extinguish dropped him.

Old Mo’s old, wrinkled face twisted into a smile.

“Surprised?” he asked, right as another round of metal fragments killed another four soldiers.

With over half of their group dead, and Old Mo the ‘ability user’ attacking them, the soldiers who had tracked us down began to flee. However, the soldiers just didn’t have anywhere to run to - too much of our surroundings were flat plains, or only vaguely hilly terrain, and they were way to close to us to get out of range easily.

Within a minute, the remaining soldiers were dead.

I looked at the fallen soldiers, and quickly checked over my System notifications. I hadn’t gotten any new kill or assist milestones, unfortunately - it seemed like Sallia and Felix had probably gotten most of the soldiers with their metal manipulation abilities.

Old Mo looked at Sallia, who was the only metal ability user he knew of, and then nodded at her.

“That was pretty good. I’ve never seen someone so young use their ability so proficiently. Heck, even a few of the professional ability users I’ve seen can’t use their ability so effectively.” He turned towards Felix. “And well done on the scouting, Felix.”

Then, Old Mo looked at the dead soldiers and frowned. “If someone like this was able to track us down, he might have alerted the rest of the Verne army before pursuing us. Scratch that - he almost certainly let others know he was tracking us down. If he doesn’t return, they’ll know something is up, and they might send more people after us. I hate to say it, but…” Old Mo glanced at Sallia. “Right now, Sallia is an ideal person to train as an assassin if they want someone dead. She’s young enough that nobody will be on guard against her, and her ability is terrifyingly lethal.”

I could see Sallia’s parents tense up at that statement, as well as when they looked at Old Mo. The enemy commander had mentioned Old Mo had worked as an assassin, if I had heard him correctly. I had known Old Mo’s past was a bit complicated, but I had never expected it to be that complicated.

I shook my head, looking at the awestruck parents who had just seen us use ‘rare and expensive’ abilities, as well as Old Mo, who I really wanted to talk with about his past in more detail later. Then, I turned my attention back to the dead soldiers.

For now, we needed to put more distance between us and the heart of Verne’s industrial revolution. Instead of just the coalition army, we also needed to flee from Verne’s army now. We could figure out the rest later.

acaswell

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