“Uh…” Ava nudged my arm. “Who is this?”
I sighed. I couldn’t deal with this. The students weren’t anywhere close this time, which meant that I could go all out on him.
“Just a random guy who can’t take a message.”
The Fishman got closer and took a good look at Ava. “Is she your girlfriend?”
I shook my head. “No, she isn’t.” I noticed her face becoming red for a short moment as she had difficulty looking in my direction. She was probably shy.
“I see. Then, how about becoming my girlfriend? You got one hell of a body.”
Her eyes went immediately in his direction. It seemed that comment had managed to rile up the extremely peaceful Ava. I had never seen that glint in her eyes, and it was a nice change, to be honest.
“What did you just say?”
“I just said that you have a nice body.”
Finley looked around himself for validation as he started laughing.
I whispered to Ava, “Do you want me to deal with them?”
She shook her head as she slowly stood up from the bench. “I’ll deal with it, a bunch of ugly thugs. They don’t even know how to fight.”
I couldn’t help but reveal a smile when I heard her angry voice. She was about to fight them, and it was the very time that I was going to see her fight. Honestly, I was a little interested in the skills she possessed, apart from her great alchemy skills.
Finley laughed when he saw Ava stand up. He looked at me. “You’re going to let your girlfriend defend you. What a loser.”
I just scoffed. “I told already I’m not—”
“And what if I am his girlfriend, what are you going to do about it?”
Woah. Where did that come from? I blinked a few times, and I noticed the frown on her face. She was mad, extremely mad.
“You don’t know anything about him, and you don’t know anything about me. So, I’ll say it just this once.” She pointed toward one side of the road. “Leave.”
I had never thought that I would be able to see such a strong attitude out of Ava, but it was a nice surprise. She sort of looked like me when I would get mad. Still, the one thing that surprised me was the fact that she didn’t deny that we were dating.
…was she trying to tell me something? Or maybe I’m just overthinking this whole thing. Yeah, it’s probably the latter. Still, I wouldn’t refuse her given the opportunity.
“What if I stay right here?” Finley said as his hands got closer to Ava’s body.
“You!” She just shouted as I sensed mana being gathered in her right hand. She was preparing an attack on him, and it wasn’t a light one.
A ball of light formed in her hand, and she pushed it against the Fishman, who just flew backward until the end of the world. He flew into a bunch of wooden boxes at the other end of the street. And damn, that must have hurt a lot.
The wooden boxes broke on impact as he removed the debris from his body, pushing them away to stand up once again. He stretched his arm as high as he could and walked forward as if nothing had happened.
“Was that it?”
I blinked a few times, unsure how he hadn’t gotten injured from that attack. It seemed that Finley might be a bit stronger than I had previously thought.
“Do you know who you just attacked?” One of his friends muttered.
Ava just shrugged. “I don’t, and I couldn’t care less.”
His friends started eying both him and Ava. The look in their eyes made it clear that they were worried for her. “You two should apologize before he gets mad…”
Now, he wasn’t strong enough to defeat me. So, there was no way in hell that I would be apologizing. Ava also didn’t seem to think about apologizing since he had mocked her. Still, while they were on the subject, I might as well gather intel on him.
“Who is he anyway?”
“He’s one of the highest-ranked members of the Ocean Outlaws. He’s said to have killed anyone who disrespected him.”
They started shaking as they uttered every word.
Still, I didn’t even care as I gave him a good look. He did seem to be a good fighter, but was he that good? No. Not even close. However, the organization they had mentioned seemed interesting. It was clearly an illegal one. However, I had never heard of it. They might be able to help me learn more about what happened here recently.
If there’s anyone who should have information about the demon’s appearance, it’s them.
“The Ocean Outlaws, is that some sort of gang in Atlantis?”
“Y-You don’t know them…” Their voices trembled.
“I don’t. Should I?”
“You should. We are the most influential group in all of Atlantis. So, you better remember that name and apologize to me right away if you don’t want to become our enemies.”
I looked at him as I kicked a rock with my foot. “Nah…I think I’m good. What about you, Ava?”
“I’m good.”
“Yeah, we’re both good. So, you can try to kill us if you want.”
I taunted him and he directly arrived in our direction, and I quickly made work of him as I dodged his punches before tying him up with a rope that I had in my spacial bag. I had some questions to ask him, and having him tied up would make things a lot easier overall.
“Sorry, I need to ask him some things.” I smiled at Ava as I knew that she wanted to defeat him. Still, we were only a week in this place, so I couldn’t waste too much time gathering information.
“It’s okay,” she quietly uttered as she fidgeted. “I don’t mind…”
After seeing how easily we defeated him, his two friends ran as fast as they could. They didn’t want to deal with us as they simply couldn’t.
Quickly after that, we found our way into a silent alley and put it on the ground.
“I need to meet your boss.”
