Chapter 170 – Strange situation
The moment merchant pushed the canopy of the carriage aside, showing the cage with women to Lady Night Breeze, they were met with two whooping sounds followed by a flash like pure energy blasts.
One blast blew the merchant's head off in an instant, turning it into a red mist. The other hit an invisible wall in front of Lady Night Breeze throwing her back a few meters, but was redirected to the side hitting another carriage and blowing it up, sending rainfall of milk in all directions, however failed to harm the woman.
To her shock what looked at her from the darkness of the cage with slaves was a Battle Golem. An ancient type of weapon that long since had been forgotten as a horrible dream, yet it stood now in front of her and aimed its weapons right at her.
Her surprise lasted a second before she rolled on the ground to regroup and jumped back on her feet, instantly erecting a barrier of twisted space to block the blasts that fell on her like rain.
Battle Golem did not let her a single moment of respite shooting, blast after blast in quick succession, aiming right at her vitals.
The first dozen shots were parried by the deformation of space in front of her flying in random directions, turning the area around her into a battlefield, but soon they started to not just fly away but twisting in a round trajectory around her and flying back at the attacker.
As soon as the battle golem stalled for a split second from having to evade his own shots, Lady Night Breeze imitated a hook, swinging her hand in empty air. At that moment great force smashed into battle golem like an invisible sledgehammer at the speed of a meteorite, sending it flying through the metal bars of the cage into the world outside.
However, the battle golem regrouped mid-flight shooting one blast to the side to stop his flight, and landed on his feet. It instantly aimed back at the Lady Night Breeze raining another valley of energy blasts while advancing on her.
She changed her posture stretching one of her arms forward supporting the twisted space barrier, with another hand she formed a grabbing motion and battle golems' advance stopped. A second later it stopped shooting from its weapons as well as it saw its limbs starting to twist and tear.
The time stopped for Noah as he saw a blurry sphere form around the puppet as if it was caught inside an air bubble. Through the half-transparent wall of the sphere, Noah saw how space inside it began twisting, breaking the puppet apart.
With an effort of thought Noah stored the puppet back into his homework folder making it disappear in an instant and time began to accelerate back to its usual speed. But before it even returned to normal, an air bubble-like sphere of twisted space collapsed on itself with a loud clap that sent a ring-like sound wave in all directions.
Lady Night Breeze widened her eyes from surprise when she saw her target disappear from her collapsing space a bare moment before it was destroyed and turned her gaze back at the carriage with a cage in it and was shocked.
The cage was empty, safe for a single man standing in the middle of it in the butler's suit that pointed his palm at her.
Blinding white light flashes into her eyes, blocking her vision for a second but thanks to her twisted space barrier it was dimmed quite a lot and could not harm her. However, when she looked back at the cage, the man in the butler's suit was gone, leaving only an empty cage under the ripped to shreds canopy of the carriage.
He disappeared as if into thin air, but in the spot where he was a moment ago, she felt a point of twisted space like an entrance point to the sub-dimension. She lifted her hands sending her space magic to that spot, intending to rip the space apart. But before the tear in space formed, the entry point left by that man had disappeared, erasing all presence of him.
She stood staring at the empty carriage with a wide tear in space from her missed shot that was sucking air as it gradually closed without her sending any energy to support it, and felt fury rise from the depth of her soul from realizing that she lost. Lost the fight. Lost the girl.
As the crack in space finally closed, returning the world to a normal state she stood staring into empty space breathing heavily as if she was suffocating, while clenching her fists so hard they made popping sounds.
"AAAAAAAAA!" Screamed Lady Night Breeze letting out her frustration with a roar.
The space around her started to twist and bend randomly forming blurry bubbles around her. Those unlucky to be stuck in that spot were twisted and turned into mangled heaps of blood and meat. New cracks in space started to form in random places and those who were lucky to not get stuck in mixer-like bubble spaces were split into pieces, swallowed by the cracks in space, and torn apart from different forces pulling at them in random directions.
As if that was not enough, gravity stopped existing in the caravan camp, lifting everything from the ground and stopping all attempts to escape the space of death around her.
She did not care about any of it as she kept screaming at the empty carriage in front of her, until a small black ball formed in its center, making the carriage collapse into it. Then that ball disappeared with a loud clap that sent everyone flying in different directions from the force of its explosion.
The blast hit her twisted space barrier sending great force circulating through it and almost collapsing it. This finally brought her scream to a stop, pulling her out of her maddened state.
As she regained the clarity of mind, she brought her magic under control and all the phenomenons around her stopped, quickly disappearing and returning space to its normal state
When everything finally calmed down, from an entire caravan of people with a dozen merchants and several dozens of guards, barely ten people were left alive, staring around in horror.
"I will kill you! I will find you. Whoever you are, wherever you hide, I swear, I will find you, and I will kill you!" She squeezed her words full of fury through her teeth. "You son of a bitch!" She swore in a spitting manner.
Lady Night Breeze waved her hand and a wide tear in space appeared leading back to her laboratory. She walked through it and closed the tear behind her, leaving the shocked, terrified survivors of the ruined caravan.
*****
Deep in the night, under the dim light of stars, a barely perceivable movement could be seen on the roofs of the Bullmen clan's town as if darkness was moving.
The black mist slowly crept above the roofs of houses blending with the shadows. It silently moved from roof to roof traveling above the heads of Red Bull warriors patrolling the streets.
Black Mist spread around the town as if the giant roots of an invisible tree.
The night was the native habitat of the Black Mist Cat monsters. In the night they were silent, unperceivable hunters able to walk everywhere without anyone even realizing they were there. Even guard dogs accompanying patrols that could smell any intruders for a mile did not notice anything strange even though the mist passed right beside them.
As black mist clouds reached the roofs of warehouses, they started to seep inside the building through every crack and hole, through seams between roof tiles and chimneys, through slightly opened windows and sagging doors.
Soon a Black Mist Cat appeared inside every warehouse in the town sneaking through the dim rooms with a dark metal medallion in their maws.
They walked to the big boxes stored in these warehouses and quietly opened them one by one until they found every box filled with blue pills. At that moment Dryad would appear out of thin air and spread her hands above the opened boxes.
Black Mist Cats instantly turned back to mist and distanced themselves from these women.
Every time Dahlia, Zinnia, and Aster spread their hands above the boxes full of pills a cloud of dust would gush out of their palms, glittering in the dim light seeping through the windows. This dust would slowly fall into the box, invisible particles sticking to every pill.
Once they were done, Black Mist Cat monsters would close back the boxes and leave the warehouse.
After that they sneaked into houses and different buildings, searching through every room and every corner. They found all the stock of blue pills and counted every slave woman in the town as they searched the whole town.
The next morning as soon as the sun began to rise, the daily life of the Red Bull clan began.
Female slaves would be dragged out of the sleeping dens where they spend their nights and led to the giant dome-like buildings, where they were fed with Blue pills in preparation for the Red Bull males coming.
When they were ready, a mob of excited Red Bull males would come to have a daily feast of wanting women. All of them grabbed several blue pills to get the best of what they had to offer.
However, that day something went slightly differently than usual, as the servants attending the domes noticed.
Instead of usual activity, people were sluggish and sleepy. The longer the day dragged the worst they had become, finally starting to fall asleep while walking, and even kick in the nuts could not wake them up once they closed their eyes.
Seeing this, managers of fertility domes and milk factories started to be alarmed and sent their servants for help, however as time dragged on, none of the servants returned.
The situation was quite strange. The manager of one of the Domes rushed to get help himself but when he was at the door he noticed something strange.
Blood splatters were all over the place as if someone was murdered in that spot, yet he saw no body.
He looked around in fear and something moved from the shadow in the corner of his eyes. He turned to look at what it was but what he saw was black mist.
Something flashed from within the mist and the manager felt pain in his neck. He put his hand to the neck feeling something wet and looked at his hand. His hand was smeared in crimson red liquid and for a second he could not understand what this meant until he felt a suffocating feeling.
He tried to cough but only blood gurgled in his mouth. A few moments later he dropped to the ground with his eyes glazed as life left him.
Similar situations were occurring all over the town. Most of the clansmen, whether in homes or on the street started to feel sleepy and dropping down not caring where they slept.
Those few who were not sleepy felt shocked and rushed to raise alarm, but soon would be stabbed or slashed by sharp claws that suddenly attacked them out of nowhere.
Soon total silence spread throughout the whole town.