What Lurks Under VII

The vortex lasted for a good minute before Kies dispelled it. The things that got sucked in all fell back down onto the ground and almost hit the people under, but they were lucky and all of them managed to get away in time before everything came down.

Immediately after the vortex went away, an arrow zip by Kies' face, slicing his cheek. He turned his head towards where the arrow came from and saw people rushing out of a house with makeshift crossbows and were getting ready to shoot him.

"Everyone get out here already!" One of the thieves signaled for the rest to come out of the house. More people ran out with crossbows and joined the ones already there and began shooting at him. Thankfully, the accuracy on the crossbows wasn't very good and the arrows all missed Kies, giving him time to put up a barrier in front of him to block the arrows.

After he was sure that the barrier would hold, Kies glanced behind him and saw that there were more people coming towards him with swords and other melee weapons. It was a pincer attack. Kies tried to extend his barrier to cover his back but he couldn't do it when it was getting pelted by so many arrows. His entire backside was completely defenseless and the thieves knew this.

They did not hesitate to attack Kies and all ran up to him and swung their weapons at him. Left with no choice, Kies dispelled the wind barrier and jumped to the side. Arrows zipped past his body with several just barely scraping by him, and a few hitting the thieves behind him as he dodged. "Argh! My arm!" The thieves that got hit by their own allies' fire cried out in pain and dropped to the floor.

Kies took this opportunity while everything was still chaotic to attack the group of thieves with crossbows. There were too many of them for him to take down one by one with wind blades or Wind Jets so he decided to do something different. Kies unzipped his pouch and wrapped his hand around the moonstone. It was a good thing that he filled it up with magic before leaving for this mission. He felt a surge of magic flood into his body and rezipped the pouch. "Let me forsake these lands and take to the winds. Leave all those who stand before me breathless." His body flickered and became one with the winds.

Kies rushed at the crossbowers who saw him approaching and redirected their attention back to him. They fired arrows at him but all of them flew harmlessly through him and hit the ground behind him.

"What!?"

The thieves didn't know what was going on and continued attacking him, clueless of why none of the arrows were hitting.

"You idiots, stop firing and start running!" The female thief from earlier looked at Kies and sort of figured out what was going on and told the rest to drop their weapons and move.

"He's a mage, what the h*ll could he do against us when he's this close?" The other thieves didn't seem to listen to her and stood their ground. They ignored her warning and took out their swords and dagger instead and got ready to intercept Kies.

The first thief stabbed his sword through Kies' body when he was in range, only to see that it did nothing. Kies pressed his hand against the thief's stomach and shot him away with a blast of wind. The thief collided with a wooden house and crashed through the walls.

"D*mn it! Get him!"

The other thieves, still not having learned their lesson from what happened to their buddy, all ran at Kies. Once again, their attacks proved to be futile as all their weapons went through his body. Kies blasted them all away one by one, making sure to tone down his attacks so that they wouldn't kill the thieves.

By the time his spell finally wore off, he had already dispatched more than half the thieves and the rest were either fleeing or hiding. The only one that was still standing unwavering was the female thief.

"It looks like your magic is gone now," she said with an unamused expression as she spun her dagger around in her hand. While Kies was distracted by her dagger, she quickly raised her other arm, bent her finger, and a small arrow flew out from underneath her sleeves and hit Kies in the chest.

Even though that surprised him, Kies didn't flinch and pulled the arrow out from his chest and threw it on the ground. There was no blood and he felt the hole quickly fill back up in less than a second. The only damage that he sustained was on his cloak and shirt which now had a tiny hole in them.

"Monster." The thief shot three more arrows at Kies while she shifted to the side. Kies blocked and knocked them all away with a single gust of wind and slashed his arms at the thief. She tumbled to the side to dodge his wind blades and returned fire. The fight continued like this for another few seconds until the thief ran out of arrows.

*Click!* Nothing came out from underneath her sleeve and she angrily threw her arm back down to her side. She then brought the dagger close to her face and charged at Kies. Kies fired more wind blades at the thief but she parried them all with her dagger.

Once she got into range, she began to wildly slash at Kies with her weapon. Unable to keep up with her pace, Kies could only defend with his arms and ended up getting hit by many of the attacks. Even though his injuries healed as quickly as he received them, the thief was extremely skilled at fighting and he stood no chance against her at close range.

Kies tried to blast her away with the winds but each time she bent her body to an angle to dodge the attack and continued thrashing Kies. Not only was she great at fighting, but she was very agile too. This wasn't good. He needed some other way to break free from her attacks.

Kies aimed his hand down at the ground in front of him and shot a strong blast of wind out of his palm and retreated from her.

*Cough Cough* The thief stumbled back while waving her hand in front of her face to get rid of the dust. She recovered fairly quickly and charged at Kies again while the dust was still clearing. But in this short amount of time, Kies was able to cast Wind's Refuge again and became immune to her attacks. Using the spell a second time took a huge toll on his magic reserves but he still had enough magic to fight for another few minutes if necessary.

Now that the fight was in his favor, Kies took the lead and pushed the thief back. All it took the thief was one look at Kies' body to realize that her attacks would have no use against him and she resorted to dodging his attacks while moving back. But Kies knew that she couldn't keep up with him for much longer. She was breathing heavily and her entire body was drenched in sweat.

Her movements started to slow and Kies found an opening. He immediately tried to blast her away with a gust of wind but she jumped into the air, did a backflip, and landed on her fours. She quickly pushed herself off the ground and gripped her dagger tightly. "H-how are you still standing!?" she huffed.

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