Chapter 191: Trouble at the border
"No, no and no matter how much you try to convince me, NO!" Stomping her feet against the ground, Teria expressed how happy she was with the one request I finally made to her. Even though it was literally the second time when I asked for to do something after relying on her knowledge and help to learn how to phase, the furious expression on her face, her tightened firsts and eyes filled with wrath clearly proved that she wasn"t as inclined to fulfill this request of mine as I had hoped she would.
"Come on, it"s just for a short moment! Can"t you shove your f.u.c.king pride in your shapely a.s.s for just a few hours?!" Moment by moment, I could feel my patience running out. While I was used to dealing with both stubborn and stupid people from all the encounters I suffered on earth, this girl somehow managed to top all of them up. And by a huge margin at that.
"I already told you. Wings are the pride of my tribe. Hiding them away for whatever reason is akin to betraying the faith that tribe put in me ever since I was born!" Shouting up, Teria clearly no longer cared about the fact that we were supposed to be hiding. While attempting to tread stealthily was already a challenge with such a huge group as ours, the fact that Teria was unable to keep her voice silent was the last shovel of dirt required to fully bury the coffin of my wish to remain undetected.
Right now, it was only a matter of time before we would be found out.
"Then get the f.u.c.k out and stop stalling us. You can fly away, you can kill everyone at the gate for all I care. But I don"t think you are capable of doing so nor allowed to do it in the first place." Squinting my eyes, I spat on the ground before taking a few steps to the side in an attempt to pa.s.s by the girl.
"Not so fast! You promised you will give me the core and now you want me to let you off the hook? Do you think I"m stupid enough to let you just run away with it?" Instantly following my steps and moving to the side precisely the same distance as I did, Teria proved that outside of her pretty face, alluring body and respectable personal power, her stubbornness was actually her greatest strength.
"I promised and I"m going to fulfill that promise. I"m not going to risk everyone"s lives just because you are too d.a.m.n obstinate to just hide your d.a.m.ned wings for a moment!" Right now, we were actually going in circles. If reaching the border between the northern republic and the central kingdom was just boring and wasteful in terms of my time freeze, crossing said border was quickly proving to be the greatest challenge so far, dealing with the maere included.
"Guys, can you please speak a few tones lower? I might be a support mage but even my means are f.u.c.king limited!" Turning my head to the side, I could see Hubriel who was already reaching the same level of anger as the two of us did. With his head shining with a whitish light, he was clearly concentrating on some kind of spell. Sadly, given how I had absolutely no clue about the magic of this world, I could only try randomly guessing what this spell was doing.
"No, you shut up!" Instantly lashing at the man, Teria got so angry that her hand inevitably moved on top of the handle of her sword. But that was too much for me to handle.
"Teria, make your choice right now. Either you hide your wings and allow our group to calmly pa.s.s the border, either you fly over the border while doing everything in your d.a.m.ned power to not appear as if you are with us, or I will just deprive you of your consciousness and leave you be for a few hours here. Then it won"t be my responsibility if you won"t be able to catch up to us or even find us in the first place." At this point, I couldn"t care less. Since I appeared in this world for the first time, someone or something managed to bring me so close to snapping.
Heck! Now that I thought about it, even Jeff"s betrayal that pushed me into exploring this world in the first place didn"t make me so angry or disappointed as this girl was making me right now!
"I wish to see you…" This time, I didn"t bother to let the girl speak her piece. Seeing how she was clearly unwilling to comply with my order, I finally released all the stops on my witch senses. In a flash, it seemed as if the entire world around me turned much more lush and vivid than it was just a moment ago. All the colors brightened, all the plants around turned out to be quite lively… and all the emotions of the entire group instantly swarmed my mind.
"Just like I thought." Squinting my eyes, this time not in rage but in simple wrath, I moved my hand to the side in a one, fluid motion. But it was only a distraction. As soon as Teria"s eyes followed after the movement of my palm, I leaped at her emotional state before depriving her of every emotion I could find there.
"What are you…" with all the rage, hatred, shyness, conviction, determination, embras.e.m.e.nt and all the others emotions instantly vanishing from the winged girl"s soul, she stumbled. Given how this was the first time for me to play around with her emotions, she could not make sense of what happened to her. While it was only a momentary shock, it was more than enough as a window for me.
Rushing forward at the same time as I cleared her soul, I used my already extended hand to simply slap the girl right in the face. It wasn"t a hit aimed to knock the girl unconscious or even deal some serious damage. It was the simplest b.i.t.c.hslap that a man could produce against a motionless target. And just as expected, it instantly resulted in a shock and pride of the girl rushing forward within her cleared-out soul.
Yet this time, rather than hampering its growth, I actually used all the energy I could spare to hasten it. For a moment, I wasn"t sure whether my actions were smart. For a moment, I doubted whether this simple and one-time trick that Ayda once taught me in the past would work. Yet, as her emptied-out soul was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of her pride being smashed by the very b.i.t.c.hslap I served to her check, Teria failed to control its growth and keep it in the frame of what she was able to withstand.
"f.u.c.k…" With her emotions taking over her mind, the whites of Teria"s eyes showed up as she fell to the ground. By the time one of the people of the group whose name I never bothered to remember caught her to prevent her from sustaining any accidental injury, she was already unconscious.
"Well, I didn"t expect it to work so well…" Speaking to myself, I looked at my hand. While I never felt the joy of hitting others or causing others to feel any sort of pain or distraught, there was no denying one thing. When the crispy slap was executed, a wave of exhilaration traveled down my spine!
"You guys are done now?" Alerted by the voice, I turned my head to the side to look at Hubriel. And there was a lot to look at. While for me the entire encounter was worth just a few moments, in this short period of time the secondary mage already managed to get not only his head but also his entire chest all sweaty, to the point that one of the girls from our group voluntary stepped forward to clean his forehead from the fat beads of sweat trickling down his cheeks.
"Why are you so tired?" Surprised by the scene, I couldn"t help but ask. "Wait, what is that spell of yours in the first place?"
Even if this question revealed that I didn"t know something that others would consider to be fundamental knowledge, I couldn"t care less at this point. Right now, all my mental ability to care about something was exhausted by the drama caused by this stubborn and currently unconscious girl.
"Isn"t it obvious? I was keeping the d.a.m.ned patrol from hearing you two arguing!" Noticing that the conflict finally died down, he finally moved his hands down, allowing the shine that covered them to dim before disappearing completely. "So, can we go and cross the border now? To be honest, I never expected something like this to be a problem…" Shaking his head, Hubriel accepted a fresh piece of cloth to wipe his forehead from the sweat before looking back towards the north and muttering under his nose. "That is unless those f.u.c.kers from the government already managed to bring the news to the border."
Hearing his worry, I didn"t bother to look towards the north. Everything that mattered now laid to the south of our position. As to whether we managed to be faster than the news from the northern capital or not, there was one simple way to find out.
"Okay guys, we wasted enough time here." Standing up, I stretched my limbs before fixing the straps that held my backpack in place. "Let"s go to the other side of this d.a.m.ned border!"