Friendship and Unity

For the dozen or so seconds it took Dean to get up from the floor, Tales wore a stiff expression.

What the hell?

As if time had frozen, his eyes slowly rolled around to look at Kuaishang beside him.

Kuaishang stared blankly back at Tales.

Across the Tavern, Fuse narrowed his eyes slightly and scrutinized the man crawling out of the sack. "That's..."

"Dean!" A startled cry answered Fuse's question and shattered the last of Tales's hope.

Many people turned their heads and saw a shocked-looking Tampa.

The owner of the "My Home" Tavern pointed at Dean, then at the awkwardly smiling Tales and Kuaishang, his tone rising and falling uncertainly.

"How did you end up there..."

Dean did not answer.

He staggered over to a chair, clung to it, and leaned against the bar, panting continuously with little coughs between breaths.

"Fuck." Dean cursed again.

Quite a few of the Mercenaries clearly knew Dean. Immediately, a subdued uproar and commotion broke out in the Tavern.

The leaders of the three groups quickly exchanged glances, confirming that the strange incident had not been caused by either of the other sides.

Amid the brief chaos, Tales and Kuaishang tacitly bent down and lowered their heads, edging closer to each other.

The two stared wide-eyed at one another, their feelings tangled and their emotions bitterly mixed.

Tales parted his lips slightly, nodded toward Dean, and whispered, "Hey, I thought you killed him?"

Kuaishang stiffly moved his jaw like a puppet and answered in a forced whisper, "It was my first time. Maybe I wasn't very familiar with it yet..."

Tales was left speechless with anger. "You call that 'not being familiar with it'?"

The commotion around them continued.

Kuaishang weakly tried to argue. "Nikolai told me that three seconds of strangling was