Calamity Upon This World

Cloudhead Bandits

A fearsome group that, 30 years ago, was quite infamous in the underworld due to the sheer number of villages they had ravaged.

They were practically unstoppable during their heydays, but like all things, their era also came to an end.

The only reason they hadn't gotten caught yet was due to them going into hiding in a relatively secluded village.

And the strength of their leader, Aron Holger, a man who, during his prime, was a feared man due to his strength and brutality.

Aron was blessed with a Tier II aspect that directly aided in combat and had managed to amass more than 20,000 BF; that wasn't a feat many people could boast.

But sadly, even despite his strength, he was just one man, and there's a limit to how much one person can do, due to which they were almost caught by an officer sent by the Marquis family of Balak.

Thankfully for them, this officer was corrupt, and they were able to buy him off using the money they had amassed over the years to keep his lips shut.

After that incident, practically no one really came to bother them, and if anyone did, they were quickly disposed of, allowing them to live their lives in peace and relative luxury with booze and women.

For poor to middle-class men like them, what more could they ask for?

But sadly, life wasn't sunshine and rainbows, and now, after more than three decades of luxury and paying an exhorbant price of hundreds of gold coins to the corrupt officer, they were now about to run out of money.

Or that was what was supposed to happen until two men came up to them and hired them to kidnap a 12-year-old.

For the infamous Cloudhead gang, something like this was as easy as taking candy from a kid.

And after they had kidnapped her, they learned that she was quite cute and even had a Tier II aspect, so they decided to sell her on the black market.

She was supposed to be shipped in about two days.

However, apparently, without their knowledge, the father of the girl had commissioned a mission, and the guild had commissioned an adventurer faster than expected.

Half a hour ago, the man named Mox, who was responsible for hiring them, came running to them in panic along with his wife.

While he was worried, their boss reassured him not to worry.

Currently, their boss, Aron, was inside his room with Mox and his wife, chatting and reassuring them not to worry.

"I don't get the big deal about worrying over a single, no-named adventurer," said a dark-skinned man with a bottle of liquor in his hand.

"I agree, but I guess it makes sense that the man doesn't know about the might of our boss," another man commented.

"That's true, but if you ask me, we don't even need the boss for a no-named adventurer," said a light-skinned man.

"I could probably take on 10 adventurers at the same time," said the gigantic black-skinned man as he ripped off his t-shirt, flexing his huge toned muscles.

"I agree"

"Yeah, for sure."

"Jok, the man."

"If Jok can take on 10, then I can probably take on 5."

"Yeah, for sure."

BOOOOOOOOMM!!!!

While the bandits were cheering, drinking booze, and just having an overall good time like usual, they were interrupted by a deafening flame explosion, killing a lot of their men and lighting the whole warehouse on fire.

***

'Phew, good thing I had Billy to guide me here'

William was currently standing in front of an abandoned warehouse a few kilometres away from Zunesha village. It was really well hidden, with an absurd number of trap artifacts capable of hiding the presence of this location.

William was really grateful for having someone like Billy, who had a rough idea of the location, guide him.

Otherwise, it probably would've taken him days to find this place by himself simply due to how overboard the owner of this place had gone with setting artifacts.

It was quite obvious that the owner of this place was a paranoid person, which was probably the reason no one had been able to find this place for so long.

But unfortunately for the owner, he was dealing with the child of Mana himself, and now that he had located the hideout, it was easy for him to disable the traps thanks to his [Master of Mana], as they were quite rudimentary and basic by his standards.

Sure, they would've worked just fine on non-awakened and regular-awakened  people without a high affinity for mana, but that wasn't the case today.

"Wow." Billy wasn't sure what exactly was going on, but he had a feeling that the masked man just did something amazing as he witnessed multiple expensive-looking artifacts become visible and fall.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it, but sadly, I don't think you should see the things that are about to follow," William commented as he erected a small barrier of shadow around Billy and blocked his sense of smell, sight, and hearing.

William was sure things were about to get gory once he entered, and he didn't wish to traumatise the boy even more than he already was.

Just to be safe, he sent two shadow hounds inside his shadow in case someone tried to take him hostage.

But before he blindly charged in, he used [mana sense] to sense how many people were inside, and in total, he sensed 302 unawakened, 50 awakened, 1 exceptionally strong awakened, and one pretty weak mana signature who he assumed to belong to the girl he was supposed to rescue.

"This should be doable," William reassured himself as he changed the mode of the finger on his ring to level 3, which was his usual preferred mode when starting a fight.

As William stretched his hand, he activated the (fire blast) spell, and a giant ball of fire started forming in his palms.

(Heh, this should be fun.) Agni commented inside his head, seeing the ball of fire.

'You bet it will' William agreed with him inside his head, and then it began.