A lesson to those two brats

All I could feel about at that moment was the frustration caused by seeing the shard of the bottle hit the ground and the liquid being wasted. How much damage was she capable of withstanding before dying?

"Seems we got them where we need them, bro," Mae said. Then jumps out of her branch.

"Seems like it, sis," answered Jett, following his sister and dropping to the ground.

"You cowards!" I yelled at them, preparing my short sword.

"I call it strategic" Jett answered.

Then he jumped toward me, swinging one of his daggers. I raised my sword to try to parry the attack. However, he managed to avoid my blade and hit me with his weapon.

[-4]

[HP: 46/120]

Once I can, I will get some of that gear that increases my HP and defense. Even if I get a huge bonus to my attempts at parrying attacks, I still need to manage to get the blades to connect and that seems to be pure DEX and AIM, not a roll.

Jett continued attacking me, and I tried to avoid every hit and parry, yet I could not manage to keep up with his relentless attacks. Every time I tried to respond, my body would look to protect against his attack. All of his attacks were low damaging, how is he supposed to fight with higher-level enemies? Just causing such a minuscule amount of points of damage would be easy to neglect.

He was having fun with this. He enjoyed taking his time killing his enemies and playing with his victims like toys.

I found myself hitting my back against a tree trunk.

[HP: 15/120]

My arms were heavy. At that point, it was easy to feel the effect of the damage on your body. I remember someone on the castle explained that at some point you needed to actually take a rest and recover naturally before you could actually act and feel back to full strength.

"All of that just to end here," Jett said while placing his dagger on my neck, pressing the edge "To think that, maybe, if you killed that big wolf you could have made yourself impossible to beat for us"

"I suppose you are right. That thing… must have been a great source of XP and resources" I agreed. Who knows what level I would have been at that point if we got that last hit on it? I managed to get one just by killing its pack, even my weapon raised a level.

"Welp, time to finish this" He had a big grin while looking at me in the eyes "Any last words, pal?"

"Yeah, I think I found your weakness" I answered, returning his grin to him.

"Huh? Isn't it a bit late for that?" He said. I seem to have picked his curiosity "You know what, shoot, tell me which one it is"

"Your captain has a fragile ego. But you and your sister?" An explosion occurred at that moment a couple of meters from us. Jett's eyes went wide with surprise "You two are some cocky brats that are way too overconfident in your skills"

He turned his face around to where the explosion came from. A cloud of dirt was raised and slowly dissipated. I knew what I was going to see, and was going to be a surprise for him by his fault.

Dara was standing, holding Mae by the hair while she had a couple of burn marks on her face and an expression that gave away the amount of pain she was feeling at that moment. She was still higher level than all of us, they were too stupid to notice.

"You two are annoying brats," Dara said while throwing her to the ground.

Mae fell like nothing to the ground. She had no more energy to stand up and all she could do was grunt as her body hit the dirt.

"Mae!" Jett yelled and loosened his grip on his dagger.

That was my chance. I raised my sword while he was not looking at me.

"[Fang]!" I hit him with my only skill.

He turned towards me when he heard me calling out my skill, but he did not manage to dodge. When my sword went down, I managed to hit him.

[-165]

The moment he gets hit with the skill he drops to the ground on his back.

I quickly ran towards him and planted my foot on his chest and aimed at his face with my sword.

"Don't move, you damn bastard!" I yelled at him, plating my foot with force to make sure he did not try to stand up.

"I am so done with these two" Dara mentioned. She stretches her arm and points the palm towards Mae "Maybe we should make sure they don't bother anyone else"

"N-no! Don't!" Yelled Jett.

"Then speak. What is Balor planning to do now?" Dara mentioned.

For a moment, Jett looked scared, he was thinking about what to say. He shook his head.

"If I say something, he will kill me!"

"And you think we won't?" I answered, pressing my foot to remind him what was happening, causing him to wince "Answer!"

He doubted for a second.

"Okay! He is preparing to attack the Demon Queen! He knows she is weakened and is going to finish the job! We were out here gathering intel and possible resource locations!" he finally answered "Please, let us go!"

He is not that good when under pressure.

"You give us any teleportation stone or whatever you have, and every healing potion" Then I added.

"W-we need those" he answered.

"Then we stop losing time and take them by force"

In the end, they did not have any stone that could be used for teleportation, but they had a couple of potions that we happily took Dara explained they were a higher level than what she brought with herself. Mae was once more conscious, and we decided to tie them to a tree. Dara left a couple of healing potions for them a a distance for when they managed to untie themselves.

We immediately drank a potion each.

[HP: 120/120]

[Tired]

I was seeing the message that I was tired, and I did feel like it. Probably because I was thrown at a low HP warning during that last fight. The only reason I imagine I did not feel like that during the raid on the village was because the goddess that helped me healed my body completely.

"Let's go," Dara said while giving them a contemptuous glare before turning around.

"We will remember this, you old hag!" yelled Mae, trying to untie herself already.

Dara answered by shooting a fireball towards the tree they were tied, hitting it right on top of Mae, grazing her hair by just a few centimeters

"Eeeep!" Mae yelped scared.

Probably that will teach her to stay silent and not talk smack like that.

We departed and started our way back to the castle. We needed to return fast and this whole situation was nothing more than a distraction. Maple was still in danger and we needed to make the antidote.

"Are you going to continue saying you have nothing special?" Dara asked at some halfway point. We stopped listening to the siblings a while back.

"What do you mean?" I asked, looking ahead.

"You are good using that sword" she looked at my weapon "You got some training before being sent here, didn't you?"

"I have never taken a sword in my life" I did not train in any martial arts or any sort of training for combat "I am just swinging my sword around, hoping it hits"

"Yet you managed to face a captain several levels than you, fought a monster like a hunter, and got to defeat a couple of trained scouts" she mentioned and stopped "You are special if you have not trained how to use a weapon"

"Isn't it just the system doing this?" I asked, curious.

Dara shook her head.

"You still need training" she mentioned "You still need to reach a certain point to just be level 1"

Then what was happening here?

We arrived at the castle and quickly went to the infirmary. Nayleth was watching over Maple and giving her a liquid, probably one to make her go through the pain with more ease.

He ran towards us with Reynard on his side when they saw us.

"Here" Dara gave her the flowers and other plants "Do a potion for little Maple and some healing potions once you are done"

Nayleth looked at our state and noticed we were hurt and tired. He looked worried.

"Long story" I answered "We will tell you later, Maple is more important," I said and then went to see her.

He just nodded and went with the resources. I just hoped it was not too late.

I sat beside her bed and watched as she moved on the bed. Dara sat close to me. The poor little girl was still in pain, even with the medicine that Nayleth had been giving her.

After an hour, Nayleth returned with a bottle of a silvery liquid.

"That was fast," I said.

"Is a process we learned not long ago. It is not resource efficient, if we took more time we could make more bottles, but we don't have it" Dara explained.

Nayleth got close and opened Mapple's mouth with care and slowly gave her the medicine. She reacted to the flavor but did not move, she was too weak to avoid it.

"Now we need to wait" Dara continued "She needs to recover and see how it evolves, but she should be good now…"

Dara fell asleep in her seat. Nayleth looked worried and quickly went to check on her.

I sighed, trying to convince myself that was all over. But I knew Balor was planning to attack the castle soon.