Molten Ball

He turned around and swung a heavy fist covered with sharp greystone at someone, puncturing his face and poured blood into his mouth. Loren came up to help the man, unable to bear watching Zeeth pummel his men, and fired a few arrows at him. He pulled the man back, yanked a green arrow from the wall, and placed it against his wound. The blood almost instantly stopped and the wound was visibly healing.

seeing the wound, others were terrified at what his hand, still covered in spikes, could do to them.

Tatio waved an arrow, croaking, "Shoot him!"

A few shot at him but he easily blocked them with a wall of greystone from his hands and released a jet of increasingly hot water mixed with sharp gems, disheartening anyone from acting again.

"Fine, if you cowards won't get him, I will! You will all get a serious lesson later!" Tatio drew a bronze arrow and created a bow out of mana. The bowstring held onto the bronze arrow, pulled back by itself, and released. Zeeth put up another wall of greystone mixed in gems, but the arrow blew it apart. He jumped to the side, but it divided itself into three, going in different directions and one of them nicked him in the thigh. the arrow seemed to be stuck in his leg, but a slime had simply caught it and held it there. 'the divided arrow lost a ton of speed, making it easy for my slime to catch.'

Seeing the damage he sustained, the men were once again revitalized and tried shooting at him, hoping the wound on his leg would stop him. He dodged most of those arrows but one had hit him in a finger, sticking entirely through his thumb where Mag hadn't been able to cover since it was trying to heat up another ball of rocks.

In his anger, he threw a gem at Tatio filled to the brim with as much heat as he could muster from Mag and ended up throwing a molten gem which exploded and landed heaps of hot gems on a bunch of people. He threw another ball, this time with greystone, and made a much hotter ball that landed everywhere like a thick wad of steaming gum. They all tried to get away from him as Tatio fired a rather normal-looking arrow.

He watched it fly by as he tried to make another barrier around himself and another ball of molten greystone but the feathers of the arrow collected together and fired out three long ropes that grabbed onto his ankle, wrist, and knee. He struggled with it but the arrow had stuck itself to his robes and the ropes wrapped around his entire body. He bulged up a few of his slimes and pumped water out of them, washing the ropes off his wrist and ankle. The one on his knee fell to his shin and stayed there, the other two attached to a giant metal bow on the wall and firmly held on.

Melting or cutting them had no effect.

Tatio's face calmed down and he pulled out a crude arrow, the stone, stick, and feathers put together with some string and glue. "I finally get to try these out. Made from the stick and stones of the judgment stick, I wonder what they do." his mana bow grabbed the arrow, pulling it back, and fired it at Zeeth. The arrow was coming at him, but the sharp stone tip suddenly twisted and turned around, sticking itself into the floor in front of Tatio. He picked it up and shot it again, muttering to himself. The arrow once again curved right in front of Zeeth and hit the wall beside him.

Suddenly, a loud shout came from outside the door, "STOP!"

Page and Leardio ran out from the doorway, Leardio stepping in front of Tatio and Loren and Page coming over to Zeeth to untie the strings that had grown around his shin like a vine. He cast rocks to pull them apart, they curled back and attached to the crude, self-moving arrow behind Zeeth. 23 ran in with them, standing next to Leardio and Alba came running behind them, yelling, "what are you doing, Tatio?! What is this place?"

"What?! How did you get in here!?"

Page asked Zeeth, "what happened to you?"

Zeeth grabbed his arm, checking to see if it was him, "I thought you died."

"What? Why?"

"Tatio said this place grants artifact as long as enough people die here, and he wanted to test out if it still worked…" Zeeth explained to them what Tatio had told him and ended with, "I thought he killed you and turned you into an arrow."

Alba had heard him and said, "Tatio, what is this? Is this all true?"

"He's crazy, he tried to kill us first, he not making any sense! He must be affected by the same thing 23 had!" he pointed at Zeeth with a horrified face and tried to fake a stumble.

Zeeth was about to shout back when Page said, "then why are there so many of you guys here? Why did I see you shooting an arrow at him while he was tied up?"

"Self defense!"

"Then why is my skill telling me that you're lying?"

"H-huh?"

"I can tell when someone is lying, and that was a fat, blatant lie."

"Y-you're lying!"

"No, he's not." Alba held up a hand and the arrow with the rope feathers flew to her and jumped on Tatio to tie him up. She tapped his forehead, said "Show View" and everyone watched as a small oval appeared that showed what he saw. "His skill works. The sun is blue." From his forehead, her mouth turned a deep shade of red as she said the lie. "You're the liar. I've lived with you for years, I know when you're lying this badly."

Tatio struggled against the ropes but hope had died from his eyes.

"Hey, what happened to you guys? 23 is with you."

"Right, I think he encountered C.M. too. He says someone with a recorder and a notepad approached him and attached a bug to his back. It entered his brain and told him one thing, destroy the town. He heard that C.M. expected him to die trying, taking his secret down with him but he didn't die. He must've been the 23rd test subject, hence his name."

"C.M. called me test subject 24, he must've was targeted right before me."

"Yeah, he was targeted at the first house, the same place we were at just a few weeks before. He remembers everything he did, he just had no control. He told me C.M. had another person called test subject 3 track us and he was the one to tell C.M. our location."

23 came up and said, "my name is Grorbonlir. I come from a tribe of dwarves looking for a more suitable living environment. Our current underground area was infested with burrowing snakes."

Page thought about it and said, "er, I'm gonna call you Gror, if you don't mind. Grorbonlir is a bit long to pronounce."

Alba lifted up Tatio and had his other men tied up. She pinned them against the massive arrow and told them, "we will now start your trial. For attempted murder of two people who had tried to help us, you will all be killed."

"NO, ALBA, YOU CAN'T!"

"Heh, and whys that? You tried to. Besides, this is to test whether or not the arrow still works, right? You wanted this, I'm granting your wish."

"Not like this, please, Alba, you can kill these guys but let me go!"

She looked at him despicably, "if you tell me all the people under your control."

"It's only these guys, it's only the people here!"

Alba looked at Page whose forehead showed his lips with a hot red ring. "You're lying, Tatio. Who else."

"F-fine. Leia is in this too. She didn't come today because of something, but that's it."

"Leia? You dragged your daughter into this? How long has she known?"

"Just since two days ago."

"Give me one good reason not to kill you."

"I can change! I can help rebuild the village!"

"You said the arrow can bless us with an artifact to do that. Tell me, how does this work. Tell me everything you know."

"The arrow grants artifacts, it's all I know!"

From pages forehead his lips blared red again, Alba expertly pulled out the arrow stuck in Zeeths thumb and swung it at his throat. "Fine, fine! The arrow grants artifacts according to what the caster hopes for, the artifact is usually related to what really wants deep down."

"How long have you known about this."

"Since I was 30." seeing her shocked expression he hurriedly yelled, "It was only 200 years ago, I haven't known that long!"

"What other secrets do you have?"

looking at Page, he replied, "Beneath the village is a long system of tunnels and caves that I planned on using to escape if anything ever happened."

"And you didn't tell anyone?"

Tatio sheepishly said, "No, I didn't want people crowding it. But I would've told you if anything went wrong so you could spread the word and get everyone to safety, I just wanted to be first."