Chapter 90: Sometimes, heroics need planning
“What the hell…,” Draigo mumbled in shock as he saw what was unfolding before him. Seeing is believing as they say, but he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
In the span of a few moments, a pair of young bucks with more guts than sense had rushed down an alleyway in order to rescue some woman they didn’t even know, the scrawnier looking one of the two had suddenly summoned type of monster, and then have said monster rescue the woman and leap into the air.
Draigo briefly wondered where the hell the two had gone, only to get his answer by having said monster and woman land near him in a rather dramatic manner.
“Whoa!”
Draigo had to leap back a bit in order to avoid getting squashed by descending duo.
‘Is…is that thing glaring at me?,’ he wondered as he stared at the crouching monster. He felt the all too familiar gaze of a judgemental stare upon his person, but he didn’t see the monster’s eyes staring at him. How odd.
“I’m just gonna-”
“Ah! Are you okay, miss?”
“Hey, wa-bah!”
Draigo was all set to leave at this point, but then three young women proceeded to rush pass him and knock him over. They didn’t seem to notice, as they were too focused on making sure the woman was okay.
“Gods damnit, hasn’t anyone taught them to respect their elders?,” Draigo grumbled. He was just about to get up and go when he heard this exchange.
“I’m fine, I’m f-wait, Alicia? Alicia Goldshire, is that you?”
“Hmm? Yes, I-wait…Harriet? What are you doing in Emerald Eye?”
‘Wait…did she just say the name, Goldshire?’
Draigo lifted his head slightly and turned towards the group of women, a plan began to form in his mind.
‘Huh…if she is a Goldshire, then maybe…’
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There were exactly two reasons why Zhen Liu had Nepherage rescue the woman as opposed to just have her murking those thugs straight up: subtlety and hostage removal.
Zhen Liu wasn’t entirely sure about the legality of murking someone in broad daylight, even if it was for a good cause, and he didn’t want to call down the law in his head. He may have had cheat powers and kaijin, but he was still a little fish in a very big pond, and he wasn’t sure if Inky, Dinky and Clyde here were some bigger fish’s subordinates.
Murdering a dude’s lackeys tend to lead to “eye for an eye” situations that could rapidly spiral out of control and lead to a lot of easily preventable deaths, while an ass whooping just became a hard knock lesson for the ass whooped…assuming their leader wasn’t petty. Then again, the smarter thing to do in that case was to not get involved!
‘Granted I don’t think I’m allowed to do that, which is why I might as well plan around it.’
As for the second reason…
“What are you two meatheads doing?!,” the former knife wielder screamed out while cradling a clearly broken jaw, “fucking get those piss drinkers!”
“R-right!”
The two muscular thugs began to rush towards Zhen Hai and Zhen Liu, probably banking on overpowering them through brute force.
“Finally! I was getting bored with just sightseeing!”
Too bad for them, Zhen Hai was getting bloodthirsty.
Zhen Hai proceeded to charge into the two thugs head on, prompting them to swing out a pair of fists in a haphazardly coordinated effort to try and knock Zhen Hai directly in the head. Too bad for them then that Zhen Hai easily avoided the hit and added further humiliation by spanking their bottoms as he dodged.
“That the best you got? You two are as blind as bats!”
“Gah! You fucking rat!”
‘Well that felt borderline intentional,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself.
Zhen Liu had yet to enter the fray himself because he wanted to see how his cousin would conduct himself when fighting other people and not aether beasts.
As Zhen Liu watched his cousin gleefully fight like a madman with no regards to his surroundings, he felt vindicated that he made the right call in having Nepherage preemptively rescue the girl.
‘Yeah…he is a hundred and ten percent the type of guy to get into a groove, only to get stopped because the hostage got their life threatened,’ Zhen Liu observed as Zhen Hai roundhouse kicked one of the thugs in the head, rendering them unconscious. ‘That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.’
A common cliche of trying to rescue a hostage from a villain, is that the villain will use the hostage as leverage in the middle of a fight like a cheating bastard. This in turn allows the minions to go in and beat the rescue person like a punching bag. However, if said hostage is no longer present, then…
“Stand still you little shit!”
“Okay, take your best shot,” Zhen Hai taunted while standing defiantly. This prompted one of the thugs to try and punch him, only to break his fist.
*Crack!*
“Fuck! It’s like punching a brick wall!”
The aforementioned villains were basically punching bags themselves.
“That’s all you got? Lemme show you how to throw a real punch!”
Zhen Hai began to circulate aether into his fist, causing them to glow blue as more and more built up inside it. Once he was fully charged, he punched forward and sent the other thug flying, the faint sound of crashing wave filling the alleyway.
“Haha! That’ll teach ya!,” Zhen Hai laughed. With his victory secured, he was all set to return to the group with Zhen Liu, ready to laugh at how weak these guys were, but froze in his tracks when he turned around towards Zhen Liu.
“Zhen Liu look out!”
“If I’m going down, I’ll take you with me [Needle Rush]!”
Evidently, Zhen Hai had forgotten to make sure that the knife wielding mugger was properly incapacitated and didn’t account for the possibility that he was an Aether Acolyte as well.
The mugger’s body suddenly began to glow as hundreds of floating needles manifested around him. As he thrusted his knife towards Zhen Liu, the needles were sent flying in the same direction, threatening to turn him into a pin cushion.
“Well, might as well see how much this thing can,”, Zhen Liu mumbled to himself as he drew his metal bone club.
[Aether out!]
