"Ines?"
Hedley looked at his partner, who had just returned, his expression puzzled:
"It's over?"
"No."
Ines shook her head and walked past Hedley toward her mount.
"The employer wants us to stay away."
"Huh? Isn't it far enough?"
Rice, who was standing nearby, couldn't help but speak up and gestured to show how far the group was from the edge of the stone forest.
Ines leaped up, her gaze fixed on the stone forest.
She said, "The commotion that's about to get big is going to be something else."
"Will it make a lot of noise?"
The mercenaries exchanged bewildered glances. How big could it be? They couldn't possibly demolish the entire stone forest, could they?
After a few seconds of thought, Hedley immediately gave the order.
"Everyone mount up, check your equipment, and be ready to move at any time!"
The order came suddenly, and some mercenaries looked puzzled.
"Leader, is this necessary?" A mercenary scratched his head.
"What the boss means is that we shouldn't go in and cause trouble, and just stay outside and keep watch, right? At this distance, how could there be any attack..."
"Quiet!"
Hedley suddenly interrupted him sharply, and the mercenary, who was about to argue, immediately fell silent, thinking he had angered the leader.
Just as the surroundings suddenly fell silent, a faint, strange noise suddenly came from somewhere.
Boom...
Everyone was taken aback, and turned their heads in unison, looking at the stone forest with surprise and uncertainty.
"Oh My God..."
The mercenary, who had just been questioning, opened his mouth wide and muttered,
"No wonder the boss said to stay away... the noise is really loud, we can hear it from this far away..."
Before he finished speaking, the deep rumble did not diminish; instead, it grew louder and clearer.
The tiny grains of sand trembled, and the mounts neighed restlessly, pawing at each other impatiently.
"An earthquake?"
One mercenary exclaimed in surprise, while another asked in confusion:
"That doesn't seem like it. I feel like the air is vibrating."
"That's strange... don't you guys feel hotter?"
"Really? Wait... have you noticed the light has dimmed?"
Hedley frowned upon hearing this, then suddenly looked up at the sky. Everyone instinctively followed his gaze—
Subsequently, they all fell silent.
Suddenly, the light in the sky changed.
The warm yellow sun had turned red at some point... no... that wasn't the sun.
"What is that...?"
Someone murmured absentmindedly.
Above the sky, a point of light burning with a blazing tail flame pierced through the clouds, revealing its ferocious form.
"Meteorite?"
A mercenary uttered a hoarse voice, but immediately contradicted himself.
"No, no! That's...!"
As the first meteor pierced through the clouds, the wound in the sky suddenly widened, and more and more "suns" emerged from the clouds.
Their light was so intense that it turned the clouds a fiery red, as if the sky were on fire!
The sight went beyond the realm of "meteorite"; it was more like...
"Catastrophe!!!"
"Everyone--!!!"
Hedley roared with all his might, temporarily drowning out the ever-approaching roar from the heavens and earth.
"Evacuate! Full speed ahead! As far away as possible!!!"
No further commands were needed; fear and the instinct for survival took over everyone's bodies.
Once the order was given, panic spread like wildfire.
People scrambled onto their mounts in a flurry and fled desperately in the direction away from the stone forest without waiting for instructions.
However, not everyone chose to flee immediately.
"[Sarkaz profanity!]"
W, who hadn't swore in a long time, spurred his mount and charged against the crowd toward the stone forest.
"W!"
Just as W's mount had taken a few steps, Hedley rode his mount sideways to intercept it.
"Go back!"
Hedley's voice carried a rare hint of anger.
W steadied himself, suddenly looked up, his eyes flashing with ferocity, and instantly pointed his weapon at Hedley.
"She's still inside!" W's voice was forced out through clenched teeth.
"Get out of my way! Or I might as well make a hole for you first!"
"[Sarkaz profanity!]"
Hedley did not back down; instead, he roared back at W, meeting his gunshot head-on.
This violent reaction, completely out of character for Hedley's usual calm demeanor, even startled the emotionally charged W for a moment.
"Why do you think she told us to stay away?! That was her attack!"
W was startled; the Berserk Boar beneath Hedley had already propelled W's mount to turn.
"Get out of here! Leave now if you don't want to get caught in the crossfire!"
W gritted his teeth and finally changed direction.
Seeing this, the others no longer hesitated and urged their mounts on, following the main force in a chaotic retreat into the distance.
Almost at the same time they began to accelerate at full speed, the roar behind them reached its peak, then turned into a series of earth-shattering explosions.
Rumble--!!!
The Daichi trembled violently, and a scorching storm whipped up sandstorms that swept in from behind. The group accelerated, but the distance between them continued to shrink.
"Stop! Hide under your mount!"
Hedley's roar seemed small in the storm, but the mercenaries trusted him enough to carry it out immediately.
Curled up beneath the mount's relatively massive body, my vision was completely cut off, and the roar of the storm filled my ears.
Time loses its meaning under the extreme sensory impact; it seems like a long time has passed, yet it also seems like only a moment.
The tremors gradually subsided, and the storm slowly weakened.
People coughed as they got up from the sand, looking blankly behind them.
Where the stone forest once stood, now only a terrifying sinkhole steaming with heat and thick smoke remains.
Everything that once existed has vanished completely, wiped out by the fury of the heavens.
"Etc..."
W murmured as he got up from the ground, his gaze fixed on the hellish scene. There was no relief of surviving a disaster on his face, only an almost empty obsession.
She grabbed her mount, trying to climb on, but found that it was already exhausted from the previous heavenly power.
"Tsk!"
Abandoning his mount, W turned and galloped towards the sinkhole.
Rice, who was closest to her, was the first to react and chased after her.
The mercenaries, realizing what was happening, showed a struggle on their faces, but ultimately gritted their teeth and followed.
She must still be here... she must still be here!
As W ran, he repeated this to himself, unsure whether he was trying to persuade others or to solidify his own faint hope.
The wind whipped her dusty short hair back, her eyes fixed on the sinkhole, as if she could snatch something back from the clutches of death if she ran fast enough.
Hedley stood up, looking at the backs of the group with a complex expression.
Ines, standing beside him, was also looking in that direction and softly uttered a sentence.
"There are no shadows in that area anymore..."
Hedley didn't respond, he just clenched his fist.
"Let's go take a look."
"... Um."
At the edge of the sinkhole, W was the first to arrive.
A wave of scorching heat rushed towards her as she stood on the edge of the crater formed by lava, ignoring the stinging sensation as she scanned the ground below.
No... no... why not!
The light from the lava illuminated her face, but it couldn't brighten the ever-deepening emptiness in her eyes.
The other mercenaries arrived one after another, staring blankly at the scene.
No one spoke; only the sobbing of the hot wind filled the air.
The mercenaries stood there, stunned. Despite being mercenaries who had seen death countless times, they now resembled a group of children abandoned by their parents.
"Thump."
One of the mercenaries seemed to have all his strength drained away; his knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground.
He stared blankly at the sinkhole, his eyes vacant.
The sound was as if it had flipped a switch.
One, two... more and more mercenaries lowered their heads or looked away.
A heavy atmosphere filled the air, making it hard to breathe.
Startled from her daze by the sound, W turned around abruptly. What she saw were faces devoid of life, silent mourning.
An unnamed fire surged within me, burning away my confusion and leaving only a furious outburst of anger at being offended.
"What's with those expressions on your faces?!"
W's voice was hoarse as he roared at the dejected mercenaries.
"Take it back! Who gave you permission to make that kind of expression?!"
"..."
No one responded to her; there was only silence.
W was enraged by the silence; his fingers twitched nervously, as if he wanted to grab a weapon but had nowhere to vent his anger.
"She's not that easy to kill! Do you hear me!"
"How could that monstrous woman be killed by a few stones?!"
"W..."
Some mercenaries couldn't bear to watch and offered quiet words of advice.
"Let's face reality."
"Are you kidding me!"
W reached into his bag and pulled out an explosive device.
It wasn't aimed at anyone; instead, it was thrown downwards.
"W! Are you crazy?!" a mercenary exclaimed.
Boom--!
The explosion was not violent, but it successfully blasted the lava apart and pushed it to both sides.
The next second, W leaped without hesitation, his figure...
It was instantly obscured by smoke and dust.
"W!"
The screams were drowned out by the series of explosions.
From the crater below, muffled thuds echoed intermittently, each explosion briefly dispersing a patch of lava.
Through the churning heat, one could vaguely see a figure stumbling and digging futilely in that desolate land.
Standing on the edge of the pit, the crowd, after the initial shock, fell into a deeper numbness.
No one spoke again, and no one observed a moment of silence, until—
A figure leaped over the crowd and also jumped down.
Rice staggered to his feet and immediately began using his weapon to shovel away the semi-solidified lava mixture.
The mercenaries watched in silence.
After an unknown amount of time, the third mercenary cursed under his breath and jumped down as well.
The fourth one...
The fifth one...
When Hedley and Ines finally finished dealing with the chaos on the periphery and arrived at the edge of the sinkhole, this was the scene they saw:
The mercenaries all landed at the bottom of the pit, using their weapons as tools to silently shovel open the hard shell of lava.
The high temperature distorted the air, making their figures appear blurry and unreal in the heatwave. Some of them had blisters on their bare arms, but they did not stop moving.
There were no shouts, no communication, only the sound of metal rubbing together and heavy breathing.
They were like a group of travelers digging the last well in a desolate desert, knowing that hope was slim, yet unable to stop.
Hedley gazed down at the figures toiling like ants in purgatory, his Adam's apple bobbing, but he ultimately said nothing.
In the end, he simply picked up the sword.
Looking at Ines beside him, Hedley whispered something and then leaped down.
"Don't follow me."
The moment Hedley landed, a soft thud sounded beside him.
"Until her fate is determined, your command is not a priority."
"..."
As time went on, the heat gradually dissipated, the lava cooled, and it became increasingly difficult to excavate from the ground.
The first person gave up.
The second one...
The third one...
The lava cooled completely, and everyone stopped what they were doing, except for one person.
"W..."
The crowd watched W explode continuously with complicated expressions.
Hedley grabbed her wrist and said in a low voice
"Stop using Originium Arts, your Oripathy..."
W shoved his hand away, staggered, and fell to his knees.
"Don't mimic her way of speaking..."
"..."
With his vision blurring, W took out another explosive device and threw it...
There was no explosion.
She had no strength left...
Hedley silently helped W up, and W did not push his hand away again.
She stood me up...
"..."
"You promised to give me your name before you left..."
W tugged at his arm, Hedley sighed, letting go before leaving.
"Give her some time..."
Everyone rose in silence, following Hedley.
As usual, with one employer gone, they need to find a new one.
"..."xN
Is it possible to find it again...?
Her vision blurred, and the burns from the intense heat continued to sting. In the end, W couldn't hold on any longer and collapsed forward.
As expected...
This Daichi still has this wicked sense of humor.
It gives you something wonderful, then takes it away when you cherish it.
I should have stayed away from you...
Fraud.
Thump--
A pair of hands caught W, whose eyes widened in astonishment, and she fainted with a satisfied smile.
What the heck...
You didn't break your promise...