A/N: Both Althea and Garan had entered the semi-finals for 2024 Character Voting Contest!! It should be ongoing until tomorrow, Dec 22 2024. If you have excess points, do send it our way~
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"We only separated for an hour!" Enok yelled as he gasped for breath, obviously dashing in this direction as soon as he could. "What in the orcshit kind of trouble did you get into?!"
Raz and Shim were also there, and they surrounded the two of them.
Their arrival gave time for Sahara to go to Helios, though he didn’t have the energy to move. "...thank you," he just said with his voice cracking.
"Glad that you found the girl," Enok said, though with a bit of sarcasm. "You also found quite the formidable enemies."
"I went to some people I know, and—"
"This is who you mean by you know people?! Damnit!"
The arrival of three new people took Estra and the others aback for a bit. They frowned. "Mercenaries?" Estra asked. "You must be from other territories," she said. No local mercenary team would dare interfere with her. "I recommend that you don’t get in our way."
Enok and the others obviously didn’t want to be in the way. Sadly—
"Sorry, but we got a mission to accomplish."
This was technically still within their scope of work. After all, the deal was to get him back to his village.
At the same time, because this was beyond their control, their mercenary team might not get punished even if they failed.
At worst, they’d have just wasted their time but, since they already got paid half of the fee (with the rest transferred to their treasury after the mission was completed), then it wouldn’t be too much of a loss.
The system, or at least in relation to particular system buildings, could take the nuances like these in consideration and not give unfair outcomes to mercenaries.
However, regardless of whether or not they’d be penalized, they had their pride as Mercenaries so they ended up helping Helios out anyway.
"Well, take it as you’ve failed," Estra said and, with her signal, the guards—as well as her friends’ guards—rushed forward to attack.
They immediately surrounded the mercenaries trying to defend Helios and Sahara and, because the mercenaries weren’t weak, there was no need for them to hold back too much.
BANG!
SMACK!
Of course, in order to not cause trouble for their mercenary team, all Enko and the others did was to defend and push back, never to actively hurt people.
This easily put them into positions of defense, pushed back until they received more and more injuries on their bodies.
Sahara sat by Helios amidst all of this, trying to find a way to get him out of the range but the fighting was too intense to do so. Helios struggled to move, but with gritted teeth, he managed to hold her hand.
"Leave… I’ll be fine…" he said. Or at least that was what he wanted to say. Fortunately, Sahara could understand him despite his croaking voice. She shook her head.
"I’ll be with you," she said, but she was also holding her stomach. "We’ll be with you…"
No one understood the implications of this and just assumed Sahara meant the other mercenaries when she said ’we’. Regardless, it was a warm moment amidst the intensifying fight surrounding them.
Enok’s eyes twitched when he saw the two sources-of-pain having a moment, but he was punched in the gut and he forgot all about it.
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