Chương 416: (409) 6.23. Guess Who’s Back?

Heading over to the town hall for a rather overdue council meeting, Vin was so busy thinking about the potential logistics of trying to teach someone how to do something he really didn't enjoy doing that it actually took him a second to pick up on the distant shouts and commotion coming from the direction of the park that had been constructed within Terra's walls.

It wasn't until a few people ran past him carrying unconscious people with crossbow bolts sticking out of them that Vin froze, their pained groans ripping him out of his own thoughts.

"Vin!" One of the men carrying the wounded shouted, and Vin started as he realized he actually knew the man. James, the bulky head of supplies for Terra and the man in charge of moving inventory from one place to another jerked his head back toward the park, only pausing for a moment as he carried two wounded people on each of his shoulders.

"It's bad, you better get over there! The Bands are fighting!"

"What?!" Vin asked, but James was already running again, shouting for people to get out of the way as he made a beeline right for the hospital. Vin didn't have the faintest idea what might cause the Bands to revolt and start attacking the Earthers, but that didn't matter right now. There was no faking the wounded men and women James and the rest of his supply crew were carrying back to the hospital, which meant all that mattered now was putting a stop to whatever was going on before things got even worse.

James' shouting had caused the street to grow thick with congestion as people tried to figure out what was going on, and Vin gritted his teeth as he realized he wouldn't be able to make it on foot fast enough to help. No wonder the fighting is still going on, Abby and her guards don't exactly have some sort of siren to alert people they're trying to get by. Hesitating for only a moment, Vin leapt up into the air, using repeated casts of Create Cloud with barely any mana as he began cloud stepping toward the park.

The confused murmurs of the crowd below turned to shocked gasps and people shouting as they now pointed up at him, and Vin did his best to ignore them as he focused on making his way to the source of the fighting. Plenty of the combat classes had witnessed him running through the air like this during the battle for wave five, but most of the crafter and support classes had been safely tucked away for their own protection during all the fighting.

And that's another one for the Roamer's rumor mill, Vin thought, frowning as he sprinted through the air. He'd been tempted to use Redirect Gravity to simply leap up and fly there in an instant, but he wanted to be able to assess from a distance what was going on rather than crash straight into the source of the fighting. He'd nearly started a riot in the town square weeks back from his anger at Jim and his newspaper, so he knew full well that his presence might just make things worse if he wasn't careful.

Without having to worry about the crowd, Vin managed to run partway across Terra and get a decent look at what was going on in almost no time at all. He was startled to first spot what looked like a ring of nearly a hundred Bands doing their best to keep the surrounding crowd out of the center of the park, before he spotted precisely what they were trying to keep everyone away from. Curash was finally back. And Waltz was giving him the welcome treatment.

The beastkin Scout was running around the park like a blur of fur, firing bolt after bolt from his twin crossbows at Curash as Waltz tried his damdest to turn the man into a pincushion. Naturally, rather than stand there and be killed, Curash was leaping and darting about as well, not quite as fast as the twice-prestiged Scout, but far more delicately. His movements were fluid and carefully positioned as he evaded and even occasionally blocked Waltz' bolts with his own longbow.

Curash hadn't seemed to have fired a single arrow all this time, and Vin winced as he realized it was actually Waltz whose bolts were shooting into the gathered crowd. Only then did he realize the Bands surrounding the two warriors were trying to keep everyone back for their own safety, and it was primarily the Bands themselves who were occasionally taking crossbow bolts to the back and going down. Where the hell is Golrim when you need him?!

Vin thought, running faster as his mind raced as to the appropriate course of action. Curash was a twice-prestiged Hunter of Men, and more importantly, the former leader of the Red Dawn. He'd led the band of bloodthirsty marauders for months, all of whom had preyed on the Bands and slaughtered innocent lives whenever they could.

Of course, in the end, it had been revealed that Curash was actually soul-bound to Golrim, and the entire creation of the Red Dawn had been a ploy to gather up the worst of the worst criminals from the prison the Bands had all come from. Curash had actually gone to extreme lengths to keep the Red Dawn distracted as he whittled down their own number from behind the scenes, dancing on a deadly tightrope as he tried to keep them from figuring out his true purpose.

Trod, the monstrous orc now assisting Alka and her Slayers, had been the only one to know the truth. After working with them to set up an ambush and slaughter the last few dozen members of the Red Dawn, Curash had set off to hunt down the final few escapees who had turned and ran rather than fight to the death. Despite having had all of this explained to him, it seemed Waltz still didn't quite forgive Curash for everything he'd done.

Curash mentioned they were friends during their time in prison, Vin recalled, reaching the edge of the park and pausing as he went over his strategy. Waltz must have taken the betrayal particularly hard. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Vin!" someone shouted, and Vin blinked as he looked down and spotted a second, much smaller clearing within the crowd. Phil had a scowl on his face but excitement in his eyes, the leader of the combat classes having been stopped in his tracks from reaching and breaking up the ongoing battle. A nine-foot-tall wall of green flesh stood in his way, the ever-loyal Trod brandishing an equally monstrous club as he prevented Phil from interfering in Curash's fight.

"Sorry. Boss said no helping!" Trod said, looking distraught as he faced off against Phil. The orc already had a number of deep cuts spread out across his body, but he didn't seem bothered in the slightest. Vin knew the orc would be able to heal himself up from pretty much any injury just by eating his own body mass in meat, so he wasn't too worried about what happened there.

"Stop those idiots!" Phil shouted up at Vin. Order given, Phil narrowed his eyes and adjusted his stance before he exploded forward and began exchanging powerful, calculated blows against Trod in an attempt to take the orc down. Seeing another two Bands go down as they were struck in the back by crossbow bolts, followed by two innocent bystanders who received the same treatment, Vin growled as he leapt off his cloud, landing in the center of the open space beside Curash.

The Hunter of Men flowed from dodging another one of Waltz' bolts, directly into a deadly sweep of his bow straight into Vin's temple, before pausing as the hard wood was stopped dead with a flash of electric blue.

"Oh, hey there Vin," Curash grinned, nodding as Vin stood there with a frown on his face, his golem hand keeping the man's bow locked into place.

"Now really isn't the best time to catch up."

"That's enough!" Vin shouted, silently casting Stone Wall and blocking two more bolts that screamed in from the side, each one aimed at Curash's chest. Waltz either didn't hear him or simply didn't care, however, as the beastkin blurred around to the other side with his incredible speed, firing two more bolts almost faster than Vin could make out. This time it was Curash who saved himself, releasing his bow as he narrowly dodged one of the bolts before the other one slammed into him.

Yet before Vin could even shout, he blinked as he realized Curash hadn't been hit in the chest like he'd thought. The man had caught the Scout's bolt in his hand.

"You're hurting a lot of innocent people, Waltz!" Curash called out. He twirled the bolt between his fingers as he tracked the Scout's movements, his keen eyes not seeming to have any issues keeping up with the blur that was the beastkin.

"I seem to recall that was precisely why you got mad at me in the first place, despite me having good reasons for allowing such things to happen!"

"Shut up!" Waltz cried, two more bolts shooting in from behind them. Vin managed to block these two with another Stone Wall, but he recoiled as four more bolts came at them from four separate directions. Without thinking, Vin dual cast two spells at the same time, summoning a sphere of water around himself and Curash with Aqua Sphere, while simultaneously making the edge thick and hard with Firm Water.

The four crossbow bolts each punched into the sphere of water, but lost all their momentum almost instantly, lazily drifting about in place rather than punch into them. Rolling his eyes, Curash turned and began signing at him, surprising Vin yet again as he revealed that he spoke a form of sign language from his own world." Look, while I appreciate you trying to help, I know Waltz a lot better than you do. You need to let him run himself out of energy. It's the only way this is going to stop."

"He's hurting innocent people. And from the looks of things, primarily your people," Vin countered, tossing Curash's bow to the side so he could sign back." Let's just wait in here for a bit. Once Phil finishes up with Trod and Abby and the guard actually make it through the crowd, they can deal with Waltz. If I keep these spells up, we don't need to worry about crossbow bolts going wide and hitting people."

As if to prove his point, two, then four, then six more bolts joined the original four, cluttering up the sphere of water as Waltz continued to try and fail to hit them with his attacks.

Either the man had a Capstone or a passive to help with reloading, because Vin was pretty certain nobody should be able to continuously reload twin crossbows like that while running around as fast as he was." I don't think you've thought this strategy through,"Curash signed, raising an eyebrow as he glanced at the now dozen-plus bolts floating in the water." Do you even know what Capstones Waltz has? If I were you, I'd drop the water before you kill us both."" What?

What Capstone—" As if Waltz had been waiting for that moment, each of the drifting bolts jerked around so that their points were aimed at Curash's chest once more, before rocketing forward on their own through the water as though they'd been fired from a crossbow a second time.

With two spells already active within his core and not expecting the surprise attack, there was nothing Vin could do beyond look on in horror as fourteen individual bolts screamed through the water at Curash from all directions, piercing his flesh one after another until they were all firmly lodged within his body. Curash didn't even attempt to evade the attack, and the man's eyes fluttered closed as he drifted within Vin's Aqua Sphere, the water rapidly turning red with his blood.