Verm

He plotted the destination on the map and ran at a moderate pace, wanting to conserve energy in case there was trouble there.

As he was running he noticed the buildings getting older and more broken down, with fewer people around. By the time he got to where he needed to be there was almost no one around and all the buildings seemed abandoned. A crooked sign on the floor read, "welcome to Crooky".

Its edges were blunt and brown, the entire sign was dirty and covered in burn marks, and the pole that it was standing on seemed to have seen a lot of damage. The entire bottom part was torn off. The sign must've been torn off the entrance and thrown here with no one to fix it.

He cautiously walked to the alleyway and saw the biggest, the buffest, most muscular man he had ever seen do squats as he held a pair of dumbbells.

Someone he recognized stood to his right. It was the man he had met at the hunter license area. He spoke to the man lifting dumbbells, "Verm, that's the guy! The guy who talked back to us. We're gonna beat you up real good, kid."

Page came from the other side of the street, running right at him. "Wait!! Hold on!"

Page got to Zeeth holding what seemed to be a brand new gun of sorts. It had a red and blue light bulb on the left and right sides respectively. The front was a brown sphere with a metallic point and the rest of the body was a mixture of purple and silver.

Zeeth looked back at the alleyway when Page had arrived and he had to tilt his head to look up at the man and as he did he looked at him with an annoyed face, "of course it's another big thug. Man, why does this place have so many thugs? Normal light novel series only meet these guys once at the start but I've met two."

"Well, this is a simple city on the outskirts of the kingdom so a lot of street vermin or disgraced adventurers come here to prey on the weak. After Afir left, this place became a breeding ground for these guys since they saw it as such an easy target now that its guardian was disgraced and cast away to die."

Zeeth looked at Page, surprised, "you knew about Afir?"

Page was still adjusting the gun and replied, "Yeah. My dad is a famous merchant, he knows a lot about history and has talked about significant figures like Afir. You also told me a lot about him before."

"Ah, right-"

"DON'T IGNORE ME!" This entire time Verm had simply stood there watching as veins bulge from all over his head from the look on Zeeths face and their blatant disregard for his existence. He took a step forward and threw his dumbbell at Zeeth who tilted his head to the left and his cheek narrowly avoided the weight. The wind it created brushed against his face and the chain behind it came into view. It was a thin chain that was connected to the end of the dumbbell and wrapped around Verm's arm. Verm grabbed the chain and tried to whip it at Zeeth, who dodged under the attack.

The dumbbell crashed into the wall and stuck there in the hole that was created. Zeeth could feel the force that the attack carried through the wind that it created. His slimes could take it but he might be left with a bruise or even be knocked down. He had to take care of this guy as fast as possible.

Zeeth planted his arm on the ground in front of him, swung his body around using his arm as a pivot point, and kicked at Verm's shins. Verm dropped his dumbbell, forcing Zeeth to slow down his attack so that he wouldn't kick the dumbbell and he hit the chains which greatly slowed down his kick. He quickly jumped back because Verm had pulled both of his dumbbells back to attack him.

"I've had far more experience fighting than you, bug!!" Verm pulled the chains out and started doing jump ropes with them. He went faster and faster until the chains were hardly visible anymore. "Come and attack me if you dare! This is both a powerful defense and offense! Your arms will be torn off!"

Zeeth looked at him like he was an idiot. He ran at him with a worried face to trick Verm as he was still smiling but Zeeth suddenly dashed to the side and kicked his hands, which were outside of the range of the chains. He swung his foot with the help of his slimes and completely crushed four of his fingers.

"YAAAAAAHHH!!"

He let out a loud scream of pain, shocked that his fingers were attacked and crumpled to the floor. Zeeth stood up, ready to fight whoever was next but the rest of his team seemed too scared to even fight back.

Page unlocked the gun he was holding, pointed it at Verm, adjusted a few knobs, and shot out a speeding brown ball. The moment it came in contact with Verm the ball unraveled itself rapidly and exploded into dozens of thick strings which wrapped up Verm and grabbed all of his weird goon buddies in one swoop and tied them all together.

"This is what I rushed away to get. So that we could capture them."

"What should we do now?"

Page went around chopping all of them in the neck with a force pound enough to create a whipping sound with his bare hands, forcing them to fall asleep. "Take their things and hand them to people who will take care of them. This dumbbell thing might come in handy."

As Zeeth was watching him do all that, he saw from within the shadows behind Page a girl looking at them. She looked really familiar, but he didn't know why.

Zeeth called out to her, maybe she was someone from the Vasaleus, "Hey, do I know you?"

But before he got a better look she had already run away. Page turned around to check who Zeeth was talking to but she had already disappeared.

"Who were you talking to?"

"The girl that told me to come here. She ran away though. Probably thought I would take her as well since she tried to trick me into a trap."

"Oh yeah, her. She's not an important character in this series."

"Wait, so who are you? How did you know where I was going and all that?"

"Oh, right. I'll have to tell you in a secluded area. On the map, there is an inn on the left side of the entrance of the Vasaleus. We will go there to talk."

"You know the Vasaleus!"

"Of course I do, I've been a member for over a year now. But don't be too loud, we don't want these guys waking up and hearing us. The rope should inject them with a fair amount of dripping tree bark. It's the bark of a tree that makes people drowsy. Very effective too. Alright, let's go."

Page pulled out a large wagon from a bag much like Tarud, with the muscle bulge just like Tarud which was able to hold all the people they had tied up and some more, and told Zeeth, "your table should be able to pick them up for us."

"You know about the table? Did Tarud tell you?"

"No, my dad didn't. You did. Well, you will. But you already did it to me. I'll explain later."

"How do I ask it to do things? I've always just thrown animals on it and it started to cut them up. Or defend itself from an attack."

"It's an intelligent being, so the fact that it stayed with you for this long means that it trusts you. You just have to ask it to do something and it should."

Zeeth was still really confused but he asked the table to reach out its strings and pick up the men and it worked. He didn't want to pull out the full table so he just asked it to slither out its threads from the seam of his slime armor and it looked like strings were coming out of his stomach.

They easily lifted up all the men at once and threw them onto the wagon. Bars shot up on all sides, topped with spikes and barbs to keep them from escaping.

"We'll have to carry them a long way but once we get to a proper civilization outside of this dump we should be able to get on a teleporter to send us to the police. These guys should be able to get us some money before we leave this place."

"Leave? Why would I leave?"

"Well, it's complicated. I'll tell you later. Let's start pulling these guys now."