Earth’s Doom Starts with… Me?

Chapter 140: Into the maze (3)

"Wh-what do we do?" I stuttered, looking at Luke and then general Zhang. I was about to look for general Emilio, someone who could think rationally and who could lead, but he wasn't here.

"What's wrong?" Luke asked, grabbing my shoulder to gain my attention.

"The smoke is red, big bro. Should we go there? Ah, but, the hostages" I paused, trying my best to brainstorm.

"So what if the smoke is red?" He continued asking, obviously bewildered.

"Ah, right. You weren't there during our briefing," I piped up, finally realizing that he must've had no clue about this, "you see, we had a prior agreement to use smoke signals.

I explained to him while I opened my pouch that was strapped to my waist, letting him see our team's signal gun and the smoke balls that came with it.

"Each colour represents a different thing, and in short, red means that they need urgent help," I quickly explained, skipping over the other different colours because we were pressed for time, "and now they're using it. Should we go over there to help them?"

"Hmm, I dunno. Should we?" General Zhang tilted his head while smirking.

"Stop talking cryptic or I'll smack you hard." I shot a glare towards this funky general.

"Alright, we shouldn't, then." He giggled.

" Dude, are you sure?" I stared at him with a frown.

"Yeah. Don't worry, I'm veeery certain that they'd be fine." He said with a wink.

" Uh. Okay." Although I wasn't sure if that was the right choice or not, I complied regardless and shifted my focus to the problem in front of us. We couldn't afford to be distracted here. Focus, Chae. That was what teammates are for. Gotta trust in them, yep.

"Right, let's bust through this door, then. What do you suggest, little cub?" He eyed me with a creepy smirk, "or do you want me to help?"

"Help? Dude, you're the general here, it's your job," I sighed, "I'm going to have to blast through this, I guess." I said while I readied my gun. Didn't think I'd have to use this so soon, but here goes.

"Ooh, you're going to blow the door off?" General Zhang asked, ruffling my hair, "good, good. Let's see you do it."

"No, I think you misunderstood," I scratched my head in frustration while I prepared for one charged mana bullet, the powerful kind, "I think they've made this huge ass door thicker than the wall, and what's more, they don't have hinges. I don't even know how they operate, which is kind of annoying."

As I explained my thought process, I pointed at the wall beside it, "let's just blow this wall off. It's still very thick and sturdy, but with a couple of shots, I should be able to."

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"Okay, little cub, whenever you're rea"

'BANG!'

"Oh? I only needed one shot? That's surprising." I raised one eyebrow upon seeing the huge, gaping hole in front of us. With one bullet, I managed to put one kid-sized hole on the infamously thick and sturdy wall. Pretty dang sweet. I should check my stats soon.

"Your growth is suspicious sometimes, you know?" General Zhang chuckled and stepped forward.

'BOOM!'

"There, now it's big enough for us to walk through." He giggled and winked at me.

"Showing off, aren't you?" With a smirk, I followed him through our newly-made hole.

Although he said that my growth was suspicious, he was also equally suspicious. How could he break that wall with only one effortless punch? If I remember correctly, that shouldn't be possible with his stats, right? Maybe he had a bigger secret than mine, and that was okay.

"Huh, this will be my first time seeing their village up close." Luke said while he stepped in front of me, as if to shield us from anything that might come our way, since our vision was basically like an old man with cataract now, with all the dust puffing in the air.

"So even you have never stepped inside." I wonder what awaited us, then? This might be bad since we had waaaay less info than we did with the elves.

"Hey, eyes ahead."

'Fwoosh!'

'Tap!'

"Almost lost your mind there, didn't you? Literally." General Zhang snickered as he grabbed a flying axe that was heading straight to my head.

"And your legs, apparently." Luke sighed as he showed me an arrow that he already snapped into two.

"Thanks, I was busy taking them out that I didn't notice." I grinned and gestured my head towards the source of the weapons, and there, on the ground, were two minotaurs bleeding all over their face from slashed eyes and throat.

"Whoo, quite impressive, little cub." General Zhang praised me while whistling.

"Psychokinesis sure is useful." I responded while catching my new dagger that I had launched against those minotaurs.

" Did you steal that?" The white-haired general asked while pointing at my beautiful dagger with green engravings on it.

"Yup, sure did. Mine now." I giggled and ran forward, completely out of the smoke.

Upon stepping my foot on the hard, dusty ground, my eyes widened in shock when I saw the state their 'village' was in.

"Dude, how did they live in this place?" I muttered to myself as I eyed my surroundings.

Although a few minotaurs had noticed our presence and were now closing in on us, they didn't surprise or alarm me as much as their village did. It was totally, totally dysfunctional. What was up with this world and its barely functioning societies!? They needed to get their shit together, man.

How could their village just consists of Nothing? As far as my vision was able to see, there wasn't even any house. Random trees stood here and there without any patterns whatsoever, and trashes were scattered everywhere. What the heck?

"Oi, stop having that disgusted look on your face. We're literally surrounded." Luke groaned while tapping my shoulder, as if trying to snap me out of it.

"But But how? What is this place?" I said as I struggled to find the right words to say.

"It's not surprising, since the minotaurs don't really need to eat to survive." He replied with a straight face while he pointed his newly-stolen spear towards the minotaurs that were slowly approaching.

"They don't? So they're like, prawns?" I exclaimed with surprise.

"Ugh, you talk too much, kid. Save the talking for later. We have to clean them up first." Luke sighed for like the tenth time today, probably.

"Yay, killing time!" General Zhang threw his arms up in the air in joy, and then licked the blood off of his finger that got a slight cut from the axe.

"Sure sounds like it," I charged another mana bullet and aimed towards the crowd of minotaurs, "wanna race?"

"Race?" Luke raised an eyebrow.

"Ooh, the one with the most kills gets to be the winner?" General Zhang gleefully exclaimed.

"Yeap. Winner gets one favour from the loser?" I smiled.

"Hmm, kinda sounds fun. I won't be getting the last place, though, kid." Luke smirked.

"Agreed. Same here." General Zhang also grinned maliciously.

"Then Start!"

'BANG!'

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"Phew, that should be good enough, right? Ah~ That was fun~" General Zhang stretched his body as he dropped another dead minotaur on top of his pile.

" That wasn't fun." I grumbled.

"Huh? Don't blame us for your rookie mistake." Luke chuckled while he, too, piled another body on top of his already huge pile of minotaurs. Dead minotaurs.

"IThis is so painful. You guys are mean to me." I pouted and stomped my feet while walking towards them.

"Hey, it should be obvious that if you wanted to count bodies, you have to, you know, actually count it," Luke chuckled and tapped my back a few times, teasing me, "what do you think this is? Some sort of game where your kill gets counted automatically?"

"Ack! I get it, I get it, I made a mistake! Well, you guys still have an unfair advantage! You guys can kill them without pulverizing their bodies." I huffed in frustration.

Ahhh, this was tragic. I was pretty sure that I wiped out a good amount of them since I used both my gun and my fire magic simultaneously. I figured that there was no point in saving mana if we were going to flatten this kingdom to the ground anyway, right?

But thennnnn, by the time I noticed that both of them were killing the minotaurs while preserving and piling up their bodies, it was already too late. There was no way I could recount all those dismembered body parts and charred remains that I left scattered everywhere.

"Well, since you can't provide us with a kill count, you're disqualified. Woo-hoo!" General Zhang giggled proudly.

"That Ughhhhh." I rolled my eyes. I wanted to protest, but then, they were right. I should've counted. Well, we had never done something like that before back in my days. We only count confirmed kills when we had a mission to assassinate a certain group, but the count was never higher than a hundred or so, since we were a specialized squad who only targeted a specific group of people.

"Too bad, kid. Maybe next time," Luke smiled, "although I'm pissed that somehow that slippery eel managed to gather a pile that's twice as big as mine, at least I'm not in the last place." He snickered.

"You damn big brother, I thought you were comforting me." I groaned and pinched his cheek in annoyance.

"Well, you owe me a favour now, little cub~" General Zhang jumped down from his pile of body and landed beside me, whispering into my ears, "let's see now, what should I ask for, hmm?"

"Too close. Not good for kids." Luke instantly pulled me away from that eel, just like an old-schooled grandma.

"I swear, if you guys get into another argu"

"Wait."

"Huh?" I stopped mid-sentence when general Zhang suddenly raised his hand, signaling us to stop talking. His cheeky smile was replaced with a shocked expression in a split second, and his body tensed up, losing his previous relaxed posture.

"Little cub, we got a little problem." He quickly told me while he started to run, to which I reflexively followed.

"Huh? Wait, what? Why are we running?" I asked back with a little yell, because we were now running and it was getting harder to listen to each other's voice.

"There's someone."

"Whaaaat?" I yelled, not being able to fully hear what he said.

"I said there's someone with Owen and porcupine right now. And from his mana, I'm pretty sure it's your old pal." He repeated, this time a bit louder.

" Eli?" My eyes widened in surprise.