Felicia stopped in her tracks, taking heavy breaths.
Her chest began to heave up and down as she bit on her lower lip.
They arrived at her mother's fencing dojo!
However, the once-beautiful Dojo was now in shambles. Its walls had crumbled and the roof caved in. The wooden floor was now torn and on the verge of collapsing.
The walls surrounding the dojo were partially destroyed and dried blood could be found wherever one looked. The lush dojo yard was now destroyed, the land uneven and loose soil thrown around everywhere.
It would not require much for someone to tell that a big battle had happened in the dojo.
'But why does it look like several centuries have passed? This building seems to have aged by a few hundred years, or Felicia's mother likes it old and dusty…well, whatever.'
The faded and tattered banners displayed the fencing dojo's name and its motto. They fluttered weakly in the breeze, barely held in place by the remains of the walls.
'This place is basically a ruin. Her family is probably dead.'
Liam glanced at Felicia, whose chest was heaving. Her breath was ragged and tears welled up inside her eyes.
Even Felicia had a hard time hoping that her family would have survived a battle on such a scale. The entire dojo had been destroyed, and the yard looked like it had been bombed.
Liam ruffled Felicia's hair before he stepped through the arched entrance gate of the dojo. His Soultrait was fully activated and he began to keenly observe everything in detail.
He saw traces of the dojo's former glory. The training equipment that had once adorned the training hall, the chipped fencing suits, the chipped sabers that were soaked in blood, and some barely recognizable tools that seemed to have been used as a weapon in a desperate attempt to fight.
Liam found a few corpses of snakes, lizards, and even raccoons. However those were not normal animal corpses but all of them had undergone a full mutation, which made them glow in a faint green hue. Their blood reeked horribly and it caused the surrounding lush greenery to wither.
'The last battle was a day or two ago, and there are no corpses of Natives. Could they be alive?'
The deafening silence of the dojo had been eerie and ominous at first. However, things changed quickly as the loud creaking of the dojo's wooden flooring rang out from his right side.
Liam's hands turned into terrifying black claws in an instant and the Arcane Kunai was unsheathed. It hovered next to his head, ready to shoot forward and eliminate any kind of threat.
However, what awaited him was not a monster, but a bulky man holding a huge butcher knife. His combat stance was bad, and he seemed to be weak and drained.
"Vile Monster, leave or I will end you right here and right now!" The bulky man shouted out loudly. He tried to sound imposing and threatening, but ended up coughing up blood.
The white of his eye was covered by a faint greenish haze, which caused Liam to retract the Arcane Kunai.
Even if he were to fight that man, he wouldn't even need a quarter of his strength to knock him out. The man in front of him was already on the verge of collapsing. There was no need for him to do anything.
"Dad?" Felicia's weak and confused voice took everyone by surprise.
She hadn't dared to enter the dojo yet. Preparing herself mentally for the moment of truth, Felicia had waited outside. However, the moment she heard her father's voice, Felicia couldn't hold herself back anymore.
She rushed into the dojo yard, broke into hysterical sobs, and ran straight into his arms.
The bulky man was momentarily stunned, but upon seeing that his daughter was alive and well, he couldn't even muster the strength to keep holding the butcher knife. It felt to the ground with a clang and the bulky man embraced his daughter tightly.
For a few seconds, he forgot about his pain, the potential threat standing not too far from them, and all of his worries.
"My daughter…my poor daughter…" He said as relief flooded his heart while he caressed his daughter.
"Dad…Dad…Dad…I'm back…" Felicia blurted out while crying bitterly. Tears streamed down her cheeks like a river and she spent more than a minute before she regained her composure a little.
"What about…mom?" She asked, staring at her father with her watery eyes that were red from all the crying.
"You silly girl. We're all fine. We're perfectly fi…" Felicia's father began but started coughing up blood once again.
Felicia stared at her father in shock, imagining the worst.
"Dad?! What happened to you? What's going on?" She shrieked.
"He has been poisoned," Liam answered quietly. Felicia and her father turned to Liam, while he took a step closer.
Meanwhile, Olivia and the others stepped inside the dojo as well and took a look at the situation around them.
"Keep your voice low, otherwise, being poisoned will be the least of your worries here," He added, looking at Felicia's desperate and dispirited face.
Felicia pressed her lips together in response and nodded her head weakly.
On the other hand, her father stared at Liam, one of his hands smeared with the blood he had coughed up, while his other hand was slowly reaching for the butcher knife on the ground.
"You don't need to pick up that plaything. Killing me with a butcher knife is like trying to kill an elephant with a toothpick."
The bulky man froze in his tracks while Liam ignored the vigilance in the eyes of Felicia's father.
"I am just here because of your daughter, nothing more or less. I don't enjoy killing weaklings. Entertaining fights are more…entertaining."
Liam's voice was not cold anymore, but he spoke in a nonchalant way that made it seem as if Felicia's father was not worth killing, almost as if it would be a waste of time trying to kill him.
Felicia's father gritted his teeth and he was just about to move forward and pull his daughter behind him when he saw the expression on her face.
There was not a trace of fear in her gaze as she looked at the white devil.
In fact, there was respect, gratefulness, and a trace of…warmth in her gaze.
'What the hell happened?!'
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