CHAPTER 13
Solviered Kingdom: Part 12
….
"I guess you want the Kingdom, don't you?" Prince asked while they were surrounded by the hooded men while Violet was tied with ropes.
"Maybe you are right," said the leader. There were 26 hooded men present at that time, 20 behind the leader and 5 who captured Violet. When Thomas looked around, he realized that those weren't the only ones. There are also shadows of humans on the trees. By judging the shadows, it was clear that they were wearing hoodies the same as the one in front of him. Right now, they were
"Is there a negotiated offer?" Prince asked.
"Negotiating won't give us the thing we want," the hooded leader said. The hooded leader had a smirk on his face. Despite getting cornered by the hooded men, Prince didn't look worried or scared. He had the calmness and straight face as before. Hakuji and Thomas were angry. Same for Violet. She was angry but also exhausted. Not only was she exhausted, she was starting to black out. The blackout didn't look like it occurred because Violet was exhausted from fighting the Thurn. It looked artificial. She fell asleep by the invisible gas flowing out of one of the hooded men gathering her. That's why all of the hooded men had put masks on which covered their whole face.
"You got the courage to gang up on the Prince like that," Thomas said.
"Without courage, nobody can be a leader," the leader replied. It was sure how much courage and confidence he had. Everyone wore a mask except him. The smirk he had in front of the king was brave. Indeed the Prince is the strongest in the Solviered Kingdom.
"I like the courage you have," the Prince said when he taped the ground with his wand. With the tap, fire projectiles appeared from the ground and went toward every one of them, even the ones in the trees. The projectiles didn't damage them as they were quick enough to understand and block them with shields created with magical cells in front of them according to their divisions.
"They are all powerful enough to create a barrier. They may turn out to be stronger than my guess. It is not smart to fight them right now. I do anything and they will most likely kill Violet right there. If I fight, maybe I can finish them right now. This guy may be the leader, maybe he is not. This shouldn't be all of them, that would be a foolish move to bring all of them here but finishing me also clears their path, so why won't he bring everyone? If I kill them right here, we won't get back the things they stole and a lot of things will be left undiscovered. They might grow again. We have to finish them from the root. It is smart to flee from here," as soon as Prince finished thinking, he held forward his wand. Grabbing it with both of his hands, he started to rotate it in a circular motion. While it was spinning like a wheel, he enchanted,
"RISE!" flame started to come up from the ground and with a blast, it transformed into a colossal fire, as tall as 2 Thurns. The fire made Prince, Thomas and Hakuji not visible. All of the hooded men backed up and some of them died in the fire. The hooded leader became angry.
The Fire was close to Violet but didn't reach her. Suddenly a hand from the fire came out, grabbing Violet inside the fire. In a second, Hakuji came out grabbing Thomas from the top of the colossal fire. Following him was Prince who also came out of the top and on his hands was Violet. In the air, with Hakuji and Prince both using magical cells and getting power and boosts from air and flame, they disappeared out of that place in a second. The speed was so great that they couldn't be seen. All of them just saw a green breeze and flame.
….
"What? Oh wait, this is the hospital. Wasn't I…. Where was I last time?" Violet woke up looking confused. By the time she woke up, it was already nighttime.
"You woke up? Oh, that was quicker than expected," Mort said as she was coming closer to Violet and sitting on a chair.
"Oh, I remember now. the hooded guys," Violet thought.
"Mort, how did I get here?" Violet asked.
"Prince brought you here in the afternoon. You had blacked out. Thomas also was very injured. Hakuji and Prince are fine though," Mort said.
Violet looked to her left and saw Thomas sitting and drinking water. Hakuji was not there at the moment. Prince came out of the bathroom.
"Violet, you woke up this quick?" Prince asked. The kind smile on his face had come back. He was smiling like nothing happened.
"Yeah," Violet replied.
"Nice, I see the improvement from before. Keep it up!" Prince said.
"Thank you," Violet replied.
Soon after that, Violet asked out of curiosity, "Prince, did we find anything about those hooded guys?"
"Yea, I do kn-" as Prince was telling that, Hakuji showed up.
"Good timing I guess. Violet woke up," Hakuji said.
"Did you find the map?" asked the Prince.
"Yes, here it is," Hakuji said as he was handing over a scroll to the Prince.
"Sit down, Hakuji. Let me explain the plan," the Prince said.
With them all sitting, Prince started talking,
"The hooded guys ganging up on us were the Tromins. Remember Hakuji, last time we killed some guys from a bar? They had a similar hoodie."
"Did you manage to kill them?" Violet asked.
"No, we didn't fight them. Fleeing out of there was the smartest choice," the Prince replied.
"How are you sure, Prince," said Thomas.
"You weren't there when this happened but they ambushed us even before the fight with the Thurn. I ordered Hakuji and Violet to go without me while I fought them. After killing them all when I checked their pockets, one of them had a letter in the pocket. The letter said there would be a meeting in the main cave. The name of the cave was not mentioned and we found a similar letter before. All of them had this headband with the same pattern. All of them we fought were really strong and no other organisation should be this powerful except the Tromins here. They are Tromins, I am 90% sure. If they don't turn out to be Tromins but some other organization, we still have to defeat them, don't we? They are still a threat to the kingdom. Also, how the Tromins have been acting recently, it was giving us hints that they want the kingdom. So they were Tromins," Prince explained.
"Excuse me but what is Tromins?" Violet asked.
"Tromins are a bandit group. We have been getting cases related to them for 4 months now. They had stolen a huge amount of things from the kingdom and the people. We found the name from a guy who was a Tromin himself. He told us that on the verge of death. We didn't know how the Tromins looked before but now they made a mistake and we learned a lot about them from today's incident," Hakuji replied to Violet's question.
Hakuji noticed that Prince was looking at the map carefully.
"What is the work of this map?" Hakuji asked.
"This place on the map could contain a hint or also can be the hideout of the Thurn," with Prince's reply, Hakuji got inquisitive and asked how.
"Hakuji, you never visited this cave. Thomas should know this place well," Prince replied.
"Oh, this is the Foremn Cave. We do the Groegden Ritual here," Thomas said while looking at the map.
"Exactly. When me and Johan were still kids, we were sent to do training there. We were sent to collect some rocks from there. It wasn't easy because of the spirit's presence. We felt uneasy because of the presence but still managed to finish the task. I remember it since then and what I also remember is the tall statue. The headbands that Tromins wore had the same design as that tall statue's headband," said the Prince.
"You mean Rim Statue?" Thomas asked.
"I don't know the name," Prince replied and right after that Thomas said, "the one in the middle, combined with the south wall." In reply to that the Prince said "Yes."
Prince started explaining right after that, "Most likely that is the cave where they will meet up. We will ambush them. First, we sneak and see what they do. We should get an advantage if we use Blasts to kill them on my command. If we succeed, they'll run instead of fighting back because of their huge loss of power."
"Just us?" Violet asked.
"Of course, no. There will be 10 more including your magic tutors," Prince said.
"We need to know more about them. They are maybe doing something really bad. The cave is known for Rituals, especially Groedgen Ritual. They might be doing some illegal rituals. The power that the Hooded guy used wasn't looking right. A purple orb? How? That shouldn't exist. They might be getting powers from Ahrimans," Thomas said while looking angry and concerned.
"Is the purple orb really unnatural?" Violet asked.
"That purple orb is something very concerning. That is something earth being flat. It is impossible and shouldn't be happening. It is breaking the law of nature. Humans can only use fire, water, wind or healing. None of them are purple at all. There is a purple-colored magic but it can be only used by some chosen animals by the Almighty like the Thurn. It is RAY which is colored purple sometimes but also can be different colors," Hakuji replied.
"Prince, what do you think about those guys who were using ropes? They used ropes covered in fire to cut off the Thurn's hand so easily. From which division are they?" Violet asked.
"Ropes are a different weapon. I have heard about guys who use ropes but never saw one until today. It might sound weird but they are actually BRAWLERS. Brawlers can also use weapons sometimes," replied the Prince.
"Prince has never seen one so does that mean they are from a different region?"....
[To be continued….]