Thieves

It's been a week and a half since they started selling potions. By now they had earned over eight hundred and forty grade 2 Mana stones. They were just shy of nine hundred because of the extra potions that Mark managed to make during this time period.

It was the evening before the auction and they were getting ready to close down after selling all of their potions.

Mark walked out of the stall with a steady gate toward their living quarters. Just a few meters away from their stall, in a swift motion wind cut through the rope tying Mark and Amelia together. In that same moment someone sprinted forward and grabbed Amelia.

Mark was surprised for a moment before he created a water whip and swung it toward the person's feat. As the whip traveled towards the person's feat, another blade of wind cut the whip apart.

The person was getting farther away as Mark tried to stop them, and Mark was starting to panic. He rushed toward the person, ignoring all of the blades of wind that were sent at him. He focused Mana into the air in front of him quickly forming an arrow. Without hesitation he poured as much Mana as he could into it and made it spin.

Grabbing the arrow with his hand coated in Mana, he pulled his arm back and threw it. He had already used Light Marking and marked the person's right leg, the one farthest from Amelia. The arrows aim was true, ignoring everything that was sent to disrupt it, such as the blades of wind. It pierced the person's leg who was holding Amelia, destroying half of it upon collision.

Both the person and Amelia began to fall after the man lost his balance from losing a leg. The person had ran several tens of meters from Mark, so Mark wouldn't be able to reach Amelia before she fell. It would probably only hurt Amelia a little, but Mark didn't want that.

He pushed his Will, encompassing the area around Amelia. Using just his Will alone, he forced the atmospheric Mana around Amelia to change into water, slowing her fall to a gentle landing.

Mark felt anger still upon noticing that Amelia was unconscious and that there was blood flowing from her side were the wind blade had separated the ropes. He gnashed his teeth seeing the pained look on her face even as she was unconscious.

He looked around to see what could be causing her pain even as she was unconscious.

"Don't bother looking," a feminine voice came from an alleyway twenty meters from where he was now. "We poisoned her just in case the plan didn't work, so don't try any funny business. Otherwise you can forget about healing her." The one who was speaking came out of the alleyway.

Mark looked back at Amelia. The pain on her face whittled away at his rationality. They had only known each other for a few months, but Mark felt a connection between them. No matter how he tried not to, his mind trusted her. He had fun talking to her, and his mind relaxed while he was with her. He didn't know why, but that didn't matter. To hurt her, the only person he had ever found that caused him to feel like this, was a death sentence in his mind.

[New mission]

Kill the duo who dared to hurt Amelia.

Reward: Antidote to Amelia's poison

Any chance the duo had at living, the person lying on the ground in pain and the female from the alley, disappeared. Paying no mind what the female was saying, he formed a Water Whip and wrapped it around the female's legs.

"What are you doing! Didn't you hear what I said!" Screamed the female.

Mark pulled on the whip, dragging the female by her feet. He place her next to the person lying on the ground that he had shot with an arrow. His cold eyes glared at them both, deciding on how he was going to kill them.

Ventus was a very free and happy place, but that didn't mean things like this didn't happen. Every once in a while, people were killed. Nobody did anything to stop it. They didn't see a need to, it wasn't like they personally knew those two. The main reason people avoided killing in Ventus was so that they wouldn't get kicked out into the outer part of it.

Even though it wasn't the duo's fault that Amelia lost her legs, Mark decided to let them know the pain of losing them since he didn't have the poison they used on her.

Water surrounded both of their legs. This caused both of them to look at Mark in fear. One of them begged for mercy, while the other threatened him.

"Don't, don't! It was all her idea! She wanted to steal your money and the recipe to your potion! I was only helping to get money for the auction! Please spare me, you already destroyed one of my legs!" The person on the ground, a man, cried out.

"You can't kill me! Without me you won't be able to get the antidote for her poison," the female's voice calmed down as she spoke. Her face adorned an evil smile thinking that there was no way that he would kill her. "If you hand over your money and your recipes I may just give you the antidote," said the female with an evil and conniving expression. 'Hah, as if. I'll just kill you when you try to get the antidote from me. Hahahah,' thought the female.

Their pleads and threats had no effect on Mark. He began moving both of his arms in a circular motion, causing the water around their legs to spin. They continued to scream at him, the female's face distorting into one of disbelief.

The water spun faster and faster. At some point its speed reached the point that it started to tear apart their skin. Their screaming increased, but so too did the rotating speed of the water. After their skin came the flesh underneath it, then their bones. Their screams sounded so painful that even some of the crowd felt phantom pains in their legs. Their legs were gradually grounded into a meat paste, causing the male to faint.

Mark's eyes stayed cold, unaffected by their screams. He pulled the water from their legs, which was now a murky red color. Using that same water he formed two arrows and drilled them into their heads. Even at her death, the female couldn't believe how cruel he was.

He left their dead bodies on the ground and went to the unconscious Amelia. He picked her up carefully and placed the potion bottle that appeared in his hand against her lips. The liquid inside of the bottle was slowly poured into her mouth and she gulped. The pain on her face subsided moments later.

The cold emotions that rose earlier steadily receded as he headed back to the inn that they were staying at. He place Amelia on top of her bed and went to his. He sat in a meditative state as he went over what had happened.

That was how he would normally react to things that were a threat to his survival, shut off as much of his emotions as he could and try to eradicate the threat. If he couldn't destroy the threat, then he would try to run from. All of the actions he took earlier were exactly how he would have handled the situation if he were the one being kidnapped, except it wasn't him being kidnapped.

He felt that losing Amelia would hurt him somehow, so he reacted by protecting Amelia and erasing the threat to her. There was no reason that went through his mind as why he should, he just felt it.