10 _Chapter 10_

In an obscure clearing located deep in the Juniza forest of Nilevar; a long-lasting, world-changing bond is being formed in a rather... unconventional way.

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"If you went through the trouble of saving our lives, then you should at least accompany us to Amaryllis City as a bodyguard!!" A shrill voice commanded.

Ren cringed. The shrill voice had come from Emily; the beautiful yet vulgar girl who insults forced Ren's ears to bleed even though her words weren't directed at him, but at the bandit leader, Rimac.

Once again, Ren praised Rimac's hard mental outer shell that protected him from psychological attacks. Although it crumbled easily when it went up against Ren's Fear Instillment aura, it was still impressive enough to keep him calm under Emily's quick-witted tongue. Ren knew that if she had directed those words at him in his current emotionless state he would have killed her without a thought.

It was only an hour after he saved the kids from the bandits and yet Ren was already regretting it. He entertained the thought of killing them but he digressed. Instead Ren silently cursed himself for not taking an opportune chance of exiting the scene...

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"Hey! Who are you?" The older girl asked. She had an oval-shaped face with her ears hidden behind long straight locks of dark brown her. Her similarly brown eyes were crossed into suspicious slits under her furrowed eyebrows. At first glance, Ren could tell she was an extremely fiesty person, despite her current situation.

"You don't need to know. I was about to leave anyway." Ren said coldly and started walking away from them.

"Where are you going?!" The girl asked surprised.

"I'm leaving."

"You can't just go!"

"... And why is that?"

"You saved us! Shouldn't you help us out? The bandits could just return when you leave!"

Ren turned to face the girl and snapped his fingers.

"Don't worry, they wouldn't be coming back." He murmured.

At that time, the bandit's bodies started to suffer from extreme blood loss. They started bleeding from their ears, noses and eyes as their internal organs imploded from the inside. That was the power of Ren's Bloodbending spell; Bloodline.

After some time, the children managed to untangle from the mass of ropes that tied them to the tree. In the meantime, Ren used some Earth magic to bring up a big rock from the ground and sat down on it.

Speaking of the children, Ren had another small dilemma. He felt that calling these people children wouldn't really work, as only one person in the entire group was young enough for him to consider a child.

It wasn't like he considered himself an adult or something. Heck, he might have been gone for a thousand years but to him it only seemed like a few hours, maybe a day. For now, Ren satisfied himself with their names.

Ren waited until the last coil of rope dropped from the leg of one of the children. "What are your names before we continue?"

"Ahh- yes, we forgot to introduce ourselves." The boy who had the head injury spoke up. He'd been a little quiet up until now.

"My name's Ryan, her name..." He gestured to the girl that had screamed at the bandits' leader earlier on.

"... is Emily, the other boy's name is Juan, and the little girl here is Lyira."

He ruffled Lyira's hair as he introduced her and she giggled, the image of the little girl that cried so profusely only a few minutes ago was completely gone. The power of being a child, really.

Emily, who was still sending a death glare at Ren spoke up in an annoyed tone.

"So who exactly are you?" She pried.

"You should really have a little more respect for someone who saved your life." Ren shook his head in mock surprise. "My name's Ren. I'll tell you more, but you guys need to change, your clothes are trashed."

Ren gestured at the lonely carriage filled with unused goods. "Go and raid the carriage. Take whatever you feel you need, I don't care." Ren ordered.

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.

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About an hour later, all four children were changed. Emily came out first, wearing what was clearly an adventurer's outfit.

A plain white blouse along with beige pants held together by a versatile leather belt. The pants folded back at the ankles and she  and some boots. Above this she wore leather armour. Leather gauntlets, brown gloves and full leather chestplate. Ren hadn't noticed it earlier, but she was well endowed in the chest area. Coupled with her natural good-looking features, he could see how a bandit could be tempted to want to have his way with her. Not Ren though, and bandits were still scum in his eyes.

There was a short, sword attached to Emily's leather belt, and somehow she managed to wash her face and hair, but couldn't find a way to dry it, so now there was water dripping down her back.

Emily came out holding Lyira's hand. But unlike Emily, Lyira wore a kid's clothing. A floral blue dress and flats. It complimented her blonde hair and blue eyes well.

They came to stand a little ways away from Ren and waited for the boys with Emily occasionally snuck threatening glances at Ren. It seemed she had a few trust issues.

About ten minutes later, the boys came forward, fully geared from head to toe. Their belts had knives and long daggers attached. Ren even saw a sheathed longsword that hung from Ryan's hip, and wondered if they knew how to use half of the weapons they were carrying. A bag that jiggled was attached to Ryan's belt. Probably full of this world's currency . The boys wore similar coloured clothing to Emily, but they hid their armour under dark blue cloaks.

Ren jumped up from his self made rock chair. The sun was setting now, casting a peaceful orange glow wherever the light managed to sneak past the huge tree branches.

It was a surprising scene; Ryan and the others patiently waiting for Ren to continue the introduction he cut short earlier on. As for Ren, he was debating on what information to give to the group. There was no way he was going to tell them the truth, partly because they would think he was insane, and because Ren didn't plan on staying with them. He'd saved their lives and helped them out so now his job was done and his moral compass had switched off for the time being. Now there was only the task off giving them a convincing story as to how he got rid of the bandits.

"As I was saying earlier, my name is Ren. Unfortunately that's all I can tell you at the moment. It looks like I've lost my memories; I can't remember where I'm from or anything about my previous life. I can only remember my name."

After uttering such lies, Ren looked at the faces of Ryan, Emily, Juan and Lyira was relieved to see the look of surprise and sympathy from them. Well, mostly Ryan and Juan. Emily was still giving him a suspicious look so she definitely didn't believe him at all, and Lyira was sleeping in Emily's arms, her head on Emily's shoulders. Perhaps the whole ordeal took a little too much out of her.

"So yeah, that's my story, I don't have anything else to tell you because I don't remember anything."

Ren picked up the dragon's tooth from the rock and started to make his way out of the clearing towards the forest, silently praying that nothing interfered with his perfect plan. He was so close to the trees now. 10 metres, 9 metres, 8, 7, 6...

"Hey wait!" Emily shouted. Ren swore at whoever was manipulating his luck right now.

"Yes?" he asked with as polite a look on his face as he could muster.

"You're really strong though aren't you? I saw how easily you killed the guy with curly black hair. I didn't even see you move. And you chased away the bandits so easily!"

"So what are you trying to say..." Ren asked, still praying that she didn't say what he was thinking.

"If you went through the trouble of saving our lives, then you should at least accompany us to Amaryllis City as a bodyguard!!" She yelled.

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'Damn it all.' Ren muttered under his breath. She found the only flaw in his plan. By pretending to be an amnesiac, he could avoid any questions about his personal life and backstory, but no one would let a 14 year old boy live in a forest by himself especially after the bandit scene from earlier. It was too dangerous.

Ren quickly debated the pros and cons of accepting Emily's offer. On one hand, he really didn't want to go. He hated being around unknown people. Actually he hated being around people, End of story. It was annoying to be surrounded by people you didn't know, and in his current state Ren was fairly sure that Emily would push him to a point that he might end up killing her. Then there was also the problem of dealing with probing questions under the guise of

'helping him recover his memories.' Ren knew that Emily would attempt to pry into his real life since she knew he was lying, and Ren wasn't in the mood to deal with her.

On the other hand, Ren was quite interested in where they were going. He knew of Amaryllis City from the information given to him by his biological mother. Including the fact that there was an Academy there, owned by a very influential man called Levi Vuifain. Ren wasn't sure if it was the same person, but at this point he was willing to try anything to meet someone he knew from his past. And it would be great if it was an old friend.

"What is Amaryllis City?" Ren asked innocently. He was still acting under the facade that he was an innocent boy that happened to know how to fight.

"Amaryllis City is located at the centre of Pangaea." Ryan chimed in. "Although it should probably be a country with how big it is. Originally the 6 continents where split directly to the centre of Pangaea, but the Royal Families of each race came together and created Amaryllis by taking a large piece of land from all the continents and calling it the neutral land; Amaryllis."

Ren listened closely to what Ryan said. From the way he talked, it sounded like Ryan had a lot of general knowledge. If this information was given to Ren at any other time, it would have been excellent. But right now, when Ren was debating on whether to follow them to Amaryllis City or not, Ryan's knowledgeability had just tipped the scales against Ren's favour.

Ren smiled an innocent smile despite the fact that he wasn't entirely cheerful at all.

"Okay! I don't mind traveling with you! But could you tell me more about the continents and Races during the trip."

"Yeah sure, I don't mind!" Ryan agreed heartily. "We'll have plenty of time because Amaryllis City is a 4 day trip if we take the carriage."

"We can't use the carriage, dumbass." Emily insulted. "The horses ran off because of Ren."

"Oh- yeah, crap." Ryan said. "You're right."

'Don't blame it on me!' Ren chided, in his mind of course. 'Next time I come across someone who's about to die, I'll just look the other way.'

"I can just call them back, you know?" Ren said

"Yeah, -and how do you suppose we do that?" Emily quipped.

"Like this!" Ren put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, gently forcing Wind magic into his lungs and voice box resulting in a screeching whistle.

Ren stopped the whistle after some time and there was a dead silence. Mostly because Ryan and Emily were looking at him in amazement and Ren stared back at them in false confusion.

A few minutes later, a thumping sound resounded in all of their ears as the 6 horses who ran away earlier returned to the clearing. The small wounds on the backs had mostly clotted but some of the horses still had large open wounds were the blood was still dripping from.

Ren immediately went to the horses and cast a Light magic healing spell on them.

"W-what did you do?!" Emily asked once Ren attached the horses to the carriage.

"What do you mean?" Ren replied.

"The spell, how did you do it?!"

" Oh- yeah that... I don't know how." Ren answered with an apologetic smile. In reality Ren was feeling a little smug and satisfied. Smug because he knew that he was well stronger than most when it came to magic, and satisfied because he could easily avoid any questions about his magic abilities with the simple phrase 'I don't know how.' It was one of the benefits of being an 'amnesiac'. Ren could just tell anyone that he didn't know how he learned to do magic because he lost all his memories. Therefore he could show off his magic abilities without any worries.

'Wow, that's a bit petty of you.' Ren's consciousness whispered, but he ignored it. He planned on enjoying his newfound strength for the time being while he could still hide under the guise that he was an amnesiac.

"So you don't know how you do all that magic?!" Emily asked surprised.

"No, I don't. I'm very sorry!"

"No it's fine." Ryan cut in, hitting Emily on the back of the head. "Don't mind Emily." He started, ignoring Emily's pained and angry expression. "She gets too excited when it comes to all things magic. Thanks for healing the horses and getting them fixed up. We can start making our way to Amaryllis right now!"

"Alright, Let's go!"

Ryan, Ren, Emily and Juan made their way towards the carriage and hopped on. Emily was still carrying Lyira, who slept through the discussions, and Emily's yelling. They entered the carriage through the back and sat on the wooden benches along with Juan. Ren and Ryan sat on the front with the horses, Ryan holding the reins and Ren sitting beside him.

"Yup!!" Ryan yelled and the horses began their trot. Making their way down the path leading towards Amaryllis City.

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