Chapter 126: Clearing the Mine


    The grunts death was all but confirmed when Parc''s body came hurtling down, crashing into the man feet first to knock him onto his back while Parc rammed his dagger straight into the grunts chest, easily puncturing a hole in the thin metal of the chestte and digging through the shirt before breaking the sternum and impaling the heart. Ending the knight-like grunt before he could even utter a sound of rm.


    Keeping himself crouched atop the body Parc peered over the ledge towards the mine, scanning the left and right of where he stood to see if anybody had noticed him. Thankfully not as it appeared the other guards were less than serious about their duty. The two to the east were ying some form of card game with several multicoloured cards on the table that Parc recalled as being the currency of this world, Lien, the different colours denoting the different amounts from small sums of 5lien all the way up to tens of thousands. Judging by the turquoise hue to the cards, it wasn''t a very expensive pot, likely holding only a few tens of lien.


    On the other side the guards were ying that childish hand pping game where both sides would hold their hands t together with the tips of the middle fingers nearly touch and one would take turns trying to p the others hands before the opponent could dodge. If the opponent got pped it was their turn to be the pper. It was a strange game, Parc thought, just who enjoyed harming themselves like that?


    Furthermore, across from him nearby the wall of the vige was the blonde haired man, sat in a chair, arms crossed, legs extended with head hanging back, mouth opened as he slept away in the time it took for Parc to get from the hill down here.


    "These idiots are just asking to get eaten by grimm," Parc whispered to himself and reached out to the edge of the ledge and hung from it for a moment before dropping down further into the mines, quickly scrambling behind a boulder right before one of the left hand guards could catch sight of him. Quickly returning to his pain game withughter and pping hands when his opponent, using his distracted state took the opportunity for a particrly hard and loud p.


    It was as if they didn''t know or care that the shamblers were attracted to the very abundant and very negative emotions this mine was exuding en masse. And that brought to him an issue, ''where the hell are the grimm?'' Since he got to the mine, he hadn''t seen one, not even the faint growling or glow of red eyes and yellow teeth in the mist, it was as if they had no interest in the delictable negative feelings here.


    Shaking the thought away Parc peaked over his boulder and swiftly nned his route to take out the guards. It was rtively straightforward unless he opted to skirt around the areas where the hostages, he now noticed had brands of a three-pronged crown somewhere on their visible bodies. Another vile act, turning these people into nothing but cattle. They deserved painful deaths.


    Rushing himself closer to the handppers, Parc sheathed his dagger and dug through his satchel, calling forth arge broadsword, a mix between nature and murder with its vibrant green hued de and jagged edges. The de of Grass it was called, and death was its forte as Parc threw himself towards the two guards, de gripped in both hands and haphazardly thrown back before shing horizontally, severing the men into two, halves as if their bodies were nothing but warm butter. Their eyes quickly fading of life with only soft utterances of ''Eh?'' escaping their deadmens lips.


    Swiping the de off, Parc flung crimson ichor across the ground and turned to face his next target, the cards ying guards who, like the ountant, were still oblivious to the fact that four of theirrades had found themselves feed for the insects.


    In the mine it seemed a few of the hostages were catching the potent whiffs of blood wafting in from the four corpses that covered the northern and western parts of the mine. The lifted their head, and saw him, stood on the ledge where the guards just were, eyes shimmering a demonic red before they disappeared leaving those who saw him baffled at what they saw. And when they could mutter to those around them about what they saw the stench of the dead only grew more powerful and began to descend from the eastern parts of the mine where now two corpsesy still clutching a pair of aces in one hand and a king and queen in the other.


    Once again Parc stood there, grass green de dripping in red with his gaze locked firmly on thest of the mines guards which he soon began to move towards in several flurry of ckened feathers until he was stood nearly touching toes with the blonde haired guard.


    With de lifted high, the man seemed to feel something was off and wasing to the waking world but sadly would never find himself there when Parc''s de swung down. Colliding with a golden shield of light, his aura, but it shattered to pieces from Parc''s sudden and powerful assault.


    In barely a few minutes Parc had cleared the mines of each and every one of the guards, not a single one was left standing by the time he locked eyes with one of the hostages, a dark-haired wolf faunus man and flickered away like a dream


    It took barely a few minutes for chatter to fill the mine and realization to fill them to their captors'' demise. The few of the more braver having mbered their way up to the bodies to see the carnage and loot off the bodies their weapons, holding them up to the others releasing guttural roars as they now found themselves with a key to their freedom in hand.


    This roar of course did not go unnoticed. Up, atop the wall a guard had been attracted by themotion a peered over to see the iing revolt and was about to turn and scream to hisrades when there, stood right behind him he came face to face with Parc and his fist that ended up sending the guard stumbling back and arching over the crumbling wall into the pile of dust crystals below.


    The ves without weaponsing to terms with their newfound hope quickly engulfed the man, those with ws, tore at his skin, those with teeth bit and ripped from him flesh until finally he was nothing but a mangled carcass and sacrifice to their saviour.


    Just as Parc leapt from the wall and into the vige to start clearing it, two forms, one of Ferry, the other Summer appeared on the outskirts of the mine just in time to see the show of the guard bodies being thrown deeper into the mine where those still below could vent their wrath.


    "Holy-" Summer eximed. Besides her Ferry had gone pale and slightly green, her night ustomed eyes seeing the several guards with organs sttered across the ground as well as the potent all epassing stench of iron filling the air assailing her nostrils.


    "You two!" from down below an aged voice called up to them, drawing their gazes down to a wolf faunus man with a sharp smile on his face. "You two are friends with that man are you not? Our hero?" he asked.


    Summer quick to respond nodded and said, "We are he he didn''t do all this, did he?" she said ncing to the body not far from where she was standing that was being wed at by a young faunus boy with tears in his eyes and jagged teeth. The other faunus ves standing away letting the boy have his moment of respite.


    "He did!" The wolf faunus man chuckled heartily, "we owe him our lives! If your looking for him Ist saw him on the walls, he''s probably already ughtering these scumbags! Ahahaha! Freedom!" the man threw his fist up eliciting a roar from the several dozen, mostly faunus ves as well as the human ones.


    "Summer this is this okay?" Ferry questioned doing her best not to gag from the stench. She was actually quite proud of her resistance to getting sick over such sights, but this was too much. She hadn''t been expecting Parc to actually go about murdering people, it was such a far cry from what Summer had told her, that no matter what murder was never an option.


    mping her fingers into fists, Summer ground her teeth together, she wanted to say ''no, it wasn''t okay,'' but the words were lodged deep in her throat refusing to budge and burst forth. They were all terrible humans without a care for life apart from their own, but did they deserve death? Like this? She was trained not to think so, that was just what a huntsman did, they were the judge, but not the executioner. But then came to her mind her own circumstances, the events leading to her entrapment on this ind, how the stranger she had thought an ally nearly killed her and, in the process, destroyed an entire bullhead leaving only Summer and Ferry as the ones alive.


    Then came to her how not a single person hade for her, not after she sat on the shores of the ind for weeks on end with the seven-year-old Ferry with SOS written in big, bold letters in the sand. Even Raven whose semnce allowed her to make portals between those she was connected to on an emotional level hade for her, even though she had said her semnce had no real limits to distance.


    She was truly abandoned and forgotten by those she once cared about. Had Taiyang even searched for her at all? He must have, he would never rest peacefully until she was found. Would he?


    "I It''s" Summer struggled with words staring at the ravenous faunus hordes with confliction, "I don''t know Ferry I don''t know anymore."