The man leaning on the stair railing was a thin man, not very tall, with pale blond hair and light blue eyes that were visible in the dim light. Although he wasn't an ugly man, there was something disturbing about his face, as if he resembled a snake. In one hand, he held a slice of cake, and in the other, a cup of tea, the fragrance of which reached Arsh. Still eating his cake, the man looked down at his men on the ground.
"Useless... you see? They can't stand on their own for more than five minutes."
Tedor was ready to jump toward the man.
Juan, however, was quite calm. He turned to Arsh.
"Stay out of the fight. Find the keys and check on the kids." he said.
Juan and the others had already warned him several times while they were waiting. The plan was for him to hide in the shadows and watch them while they fought.
But the golden threads were pointing directly toward the snake-faced man in front of them.
"The key is on him," Arsh said to Juan.
Hearing that, Tedor didn't think twice and lunged toward the man leaning on the railing. The man didn't take the attack head-on and jumped back. Even though Tedor tried to attack a few more times, the man kept dodging easily. Then he gently placed the tea cup he held on a dusty, broken table.
"What is he, some kind of acrobat?" Juan muttered.
A moment later, Arsh noticed a faint smoke starting to spread from the man into the air. When the smoke reached Tedor, he began to cough.
"Tedor, retreat and cover your mouth! Arsh, you too!" Juan shouted.
"Is it poisonous?" Arsh asked while covering his mouth.
But Juan had no time to answer him. The last thing Arsh saw was the man pulling a gun from under his jacket and pointing it at them. Then, he disappeared into a thick layer of smoke.
Just in time, Juan grabbed Arsh and pulled him to the floor. A loud bang echoed as a bullet shattered the glass of a display case behind them. Juan and Arsh quickly moved away from the man, weaving through the labyrinth of discarded furniture. Tedor followed close behind.
Quickly and silently, they slipped through the scattered objects and put some distance between themselves and the man. Only then did they have a moment to assess the situation.
"Tedor, how are you?" Juan asked quietly.
Tedor was out of breath. He was holding back so he wouldn't start coughing.
"My lungs hurt… I only took one or two breaths. Other than that, I'm fine."
"Good."
They could hear the man's footsteps slowly approaching. When Arsh peered through a small gap to see where he was, he couldn't see anything but a cluster of smoke. The smoke was drifting forward bit by bit, but it wasn't spreading enough to fill the entire floor.
It moved forward like a rounded cloud. Through the thick smoke, only a faint silhouette could be seen. With each step he took, the smoke spread slowly around him. But from Arsh's estimate, the cloud didn't extend beyond four meters. It moved along with the man.
Arsh turned to Juan to see if he had noticed it too. Like him, Juan was watching the man through a small opening.
"The poison isn't spreading very fast. It's more like he's staying in the middle of it to protect himself from close-range attacks," Arsh said.
"I think you're right. He wants to take us out before we can get near him," Juan replied.
"Let's try first. Watch out for the gun."
Juan picked up a small glass vase he found among the scattered objects and threw it as far as he could. The man followed the sound of the vase shattering and fired in that direction. But his pace didn't quicken much. Still, that slight shift in his movement was enough for them to see just how fast the smoke could move with him.
After the gunshot, Arsh turned to Tedor and Juan and asked the question on his mind.
"So… why don't you have a gun?"
"Nice question. I'll explain the reason later. For now, let's think about how we're going to take this man down... Now, we need to make him move faster. If we force him to move outside the area where the poison has spread, the only thing he'll have left to use is his gun..."
The other two nodded in agreement.
"Alright then. Arsh, you run to the far side and distract him. Meanwhile, Tedor, can you get behind him and push him out of the smoke?"
"I can hold my breath and land a solid kick. He already looks pretty weak," Tedor replied.
"Alright. Once he steps out of the smoke, leave the rest to me."
"But do you really think he will fall for a plan this simple?" Arsh asked. The man likely wasn't stupid enough to fall for such an obvious trick to lure him out of the smoke.
"It's our best option. Even a slight increase in his speed changes the density of the smoke. The important thing is to keep his attention elsewhere," Juan said.
Then they quickly put the plan into action. Arsh first walked away slowly, then began to run fast once he was outside the man's shooting range, but stayed within his line of sight just enough to be seen.
Just as Juan had predicted, the man sped up a little. This time, although the poisonous cloud still surrounded him, the density of the mist began to thin, and the area it covered started to shrink.
Meanwhile, Tedor was following the smoke cluster as closely as he could without entering the man's sight. After the man picked up speed, the smoke thinned, and his silhouette finally became a little visible. The moment he caught this opening, Tedor jumped into the smoke and kicked the man.
Tedor was big and strong, while the man was half his size and appeared sickly. The kick was enough to send him flying a few meters out of the smoke, causing him to collapse to the ground in pain.
Arsh was certain that some of the man's bones were broken.
He quickly tried to get up and pull the smoke back toward himself, but it was too late. Juan had already wrapped his hands around the man's throat from the shadows. After a faint cracking sound, the man collapsed motionless to the ground. The poisonous smoke in the air vanished as if it had never existed.
Meanwhile, Tedor was still on the ground, trying to recover. He had inhaled the poisonous gas both during their first encounter with the man and again just now when he kicked him.
"Hey, Tedor, don't you have any of Reiner's medicine with you? Wait." Juan pulled a small metal flask from a tiny pouch attached to his belt, hidden beneath his rags, and handed it to Tedor. He took a few sips from the flask. After a moment, Tedor's breathing began to improve slightly.
While they were recovering without wasting time, Arsh took the keys from the pocket of the motionless man lying on the ground and ran toward the room where the children were.
When he opened the door, he couldn't see anything at first—he could only hear the faint sounds of crying, hiccups, and murmuring coming from inside. He grabbed the gas lamp hanging on the wall next to the door and held it inside.
Some of the children inside were covering their faces because of the unfamiliar light, while others were huddled together, clinging to one another. All of them had fear in their eyes.
But the scene he saw was far worse than anything he, Juan, or their team had imagined. The real problem was the number of children.
The others had anticipated that there would be many children inside, maybe around twenty, but the actual number exceeded their expectations. There were definitely more than fifty children in the room, ranging from the ages of four or five to around ten or eleven.
Juan and Tedor, who had followed close behind, felt the same jolt of shock as Arsh, momentarily holding their breath at the sight.
"Juan... what are we going to do?" Tedor asked.
At that moment, one of the children couldn't hold back any longer and began to cry, and a few more soon joined in.