"They're still following me, perfect," said Tony.
"He's on foot, and we're on horseback. Why haven't we caught him yet?"
Tony stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and charged straight at the ten riders.
"They all have different energies. Maybe he can see the ather sword. Well, let's test it," Tony muttered, absorbing ather, which doubled his speed.
"Watch out, he's coming!"
As he ran toward them, Tony suddenly changed direction, aiming for the rider on the far right.
"Come on, you think I'm the weakest?"
Ten meters from his target, Tony accelerated abruptly and appeared right in front of him.
As Tony brought his ather sword down on his opponent, the man parried the blow. Tony opened his left eye and stared at the man's machete.
"I see. So, you coat your weapons in ather."
Tony made his ather sword vanish from his right hand, only to reappear in his left, and with one swift strike, he cut the man in two.
Three of the riders charged, hammering him with blows, but Tony dodged them all with ease.
"While I like the ather sword, I'll admit it puts me at a bit of a disadvantage," he said.
"Shut up and prepare to die!"
The ather sword disappeared. In its place appeared a sword of fire and lightning.
"Get ready to die, all of you," Tony said with a smile.
He raised his weapon toward the rider charging at him. The man closed in. Ten meters. Five meters.
At two meters, Tony struck. Despite the rider's attempt to parry, the blow sliced him in half.
"What? But he parried!"
Continuing his momentum, Tony unleashed waves of lightning so bright that some riders had to shut their eyes to avoid being blinded.
"Dodge it quick!"
"Fools, as if you could dodge the speed of light!"
Of the eight remaining riders, only two survived the shock. If Tony had only sent the lightning, they'd have been burned to the second degree, but the fire that followed incinerated them.
"Aaaaaah! AAAAH!"
"Gaaaaaah! AAAAH!"
Approaching the survivors, Tony looked at them with surprise. "You survived? That's impressive. If the lightning didn't do the job, the fire should've turned you to ash. Judging by how much blood you're coughing up, your insides must be a mess. Anyway, I won't keep you any longer."
With a single motion, he severed the heads of the last two, then sat on the ground.
"The others can wait. I'm going to take a nap."
When Simone opened her eyes, she realized she was in some kind of cage. She saw other people in cages next to hers, but Asti and Lucien were nowhere to be found.
There were no guards around. It was dark, lit only by a few torches.
Simone tried to speak to the person in the cage beside her, but no one responded. They just stared into the void.
"Hey, you, the girl who spoke!"
Relieved that someone finally answered, Simone asked, "Can you tell me where we are?"
"…I knew I recognized your voice. Hold on, it'll come back to me."
"Okay, but how do we get out of here?"
"Wait, I said."
After several minutes of silence, the man spoke again. "You're Simone, right?"
She didn't answer. How could someone in a cage know her name?
"It's me, Commander Darlius. I know you remember me."
"…You're not dead?" Simone asked, surprised he had survived.
"No, I'm not dead. But that bastard Canou Gérard didn't even open that damn door. With them drawn by my noise, I had to flee, only to end up getting caught anyway. If you're here, does that mean the others are too?"
"No, Darlius. It's just Asti and Lucien with me, I think. The others are probably still out there. But tell me, where are we?"
"How do I put this… Right now, we're in a shallow cave. We're being held by the Red Shadows. This is the place where they make prisoners fight and create the 'territory mark.'"
"What do you mean by 'territory mark'?"
"Well, first they behead you. Then they cut off your leg, put it where your throat was, and place your head on the severed leg. Then they make you 'kiss' another head that's been treated the same way. A piece of advice, Simone: you'd better escape quickly."
"Why?"
"From the way they described you, they don't seem to like you much."
"But how did you survive?"
"They forgot about me. They said I was too weak."
"But aren't you rank seven?"
"Yeah."
"Then you could escape easily!"
"No way in hell. Tell me, Simone, on your way here, did you feel an unbearable pressure, like something that shouldn't be there was present? I don't know what it is, and I don't want to find out."