Will froze. The kid, who looked no more than ten, was crying, both hands wrapped around the man’s arm and hand. Desperately trying to keep the blade away.

  Will looked frantically back and forth between the man and the kid. What was he supposed to do here? These people were animals. Rabid dogs foaming at the mouth. He needed to kill them right? Was that the answer here? Could he do that? Could he take someone’s life?

  Will felt his heart pounding a mile a minute, his breathing becoming quick and labored as he came to the cold truth that someone will end up dying here. That someone’s life will cease to exist. No more future, just end.

  Will could feel his mind start to fracture as a concept he’s never had to truly confront before all of a sudden gets slammed in his face.

  A concept that he’s learning is probably much more common in this world. A concept that he’s going to have to learn to wrap his mind around.

  But later. He doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time for his mind to have a crisis when a child’s life hangs in the balance in front of him.

  He can have an existential crisis later. He can figure out what’s right and what’s wrong another time. With a mental heave, he pushes the crisis to the back of his mind. Right now all that matters is this kid in front of him, and the scum holding a knife to his throat.

  He refuses to watch this innocent die.

  Something changed in Will as he watched the man threaten the child. It wasn’t anger, it was a change in conviction. All of a sudden he was willing to cross lines he was just moments ago dismissing as beneath him. He knew this might mess him up for life, but he resolved, more easily than he thought, to accept that burden. Therapy and sleepless nights was a small price to pay.

  The man was dead already. He just didn’t know it yet.

  He did his best to clear and steady his mind, just like his master taught him. A lot of fights ended because one side couldn’t keep their mind clear and their emotions in check.

  His mind slowly clearing, he carefully started channeling and focusing his lightning into his legs. He did it as slowly as possible, not knowing how perceptive the leader was. His control and understanding of his lightning had been steadily increasing, and he had discovered small tricks to make individual body parts move slightly faster if he focused his element on them. It wasn’t a massive difference, but when every ounce of speed counted, it was worth it.

  “Now I’m sure you want to be the hero.” The leader said. “But the truth hurts. If you make a move the kid dies. If you don’t surrender, the kid dies. And if you don’t behave after we have you restrained, the kid dies. And if you try something and I’m forced to get my hands dirty and put you down, the kid dies…only slowly.” His lips break into a cold facsimile of a smile. The look of a killer. The look of someone who will torture a kid and then go about his day like nothing has happened.

  Despite his control, despite his anger, a chill went down Will’s spine at the sight.

  “You getting the picture yet princess? You’re not in control here.”

  A woman suddenly breaks out from behind a nearby building. She moved quietly and quickly, and with how focused the entire group was on Will, she made it to the man in the back holding the kid with no one noticing. What she did next shocked Will almost as much as the leader’s cruel detachment.

  She leaped onto the man’s back and bit down directly into his neck. Causing the man to scream bloody murder. It caught the attention of every member of whatever this group of criminals called themselves. The leader cursed.

  Will moved.

  Faster than he could even perceive, he drew one of his knives and went for the man holding the kid.

  During the leader’s bone chilling and horrifying monologue Will was going over what he wanted to do in his mind. Trying to get the muscle movement ready so he didn’t have to think during the action, just move. Which he had to, because for now when he was moving at top speed, he still couldn’t move that well or with too much coordination. Which made this a risk.

  He almost didn’t take it. He knew there was a chance the leader might still order the kids death even after Will’s surrender, but maybe not. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take he realized. He was willing to trade his life for the child’s, but then the woman had attacked, and before he even made the choice, Will’s body moved. The decision having been made for him.

  …

  The guy moved so fast that no one was able to react. One second the leader, Victor, thought he had this fresh faced brat ready to stand down and have his throat cut. The next, that same kid, who looked little older than a child himself, held the terrified child in one hand, and a bloody long knife in the other. The severed lower arm of his lieutenant on the ground in front of him.

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  Everyone stared at this young man, the entire group still and shocked, including the new amputee.

  The screaming of his lieutenant broke the stalemate.

  “Wait!” Victor shouted before the killing started. “It isn’t just us here!” He had to stall this kid. With just the men he had with him now, they would win, but it wouldn’t be without cost.

  He didn’t care that much about his men, but replacing this many would be a problem. And on top of that who’s to say this kid didn’t target him in exclusion of all else. He knows what that look in the kid’s eye means. Threatening the child had stirred up a rage in the brat. He was out for blood.

  “This village, my men are all over it. You attack again and we’ll all come down on you! And we’ll target the kid first. You think you can keep us all at bay while protecting him?”

  Victor tried to stay cool, to assert dominance and control, but he couldn’t help a little bit of panic from setting into his tone. He saw how fast the kid moved. No one his level should be able to move that fast.

  “No. There aren’t.”

  Just then a girl walks out from behind a building. She has long curly black hair and green eyes, a playful and cruel smile across her full lips. Orange fire danced across her fingertips. She looked even more dangerous than the kid with the lightning. Not because of any obvious difference in power, but in experience. He could immediately tell not only did this girl have more experience than the boy, but she didn’t share his hesitance. Her innocence was long gone; she would kill him outright if given the chance. He didn’t think the boy would. Not if his mind was clear and the child wasn’t in immediate danger. He wouldn’t kill in cold blood.

  “There were five more in the village. They’ve been taken care of. Which just leaves this mess. Want to divide them up or do you want to take on the head honcho solo?”

  With the appearance of his friend the boy seemed to calm down some. “Surrender!”

  Victor blinked. Is the kid serious? How green is he? Victor smiled internally. That weakness could be an opportunity.

  The black haired girl turned her head sharply at the boy.

  “What? They weren’t giving that option to the people of this village!” A heat haze seemed to rise off the girl. “They didn’t give it to the women.” She said in a cold voice.

  The boy unsheathed his other knife but seemed to hesitate with his response. The child he had been holding ran to the waiting arms of his mother. “We’re not the law here. We’re not judges or executioners.” He seemed to be trying to show more confidence than he had. “And we’re better than them! Just because they didn’t give others a chance to surrender doesn’t mean we won’t do that for them.”

  The girl looked at her companion incredulously.

  “We don’t have time to argue this Will. You think these guys are just going to walk away after everything we’ve seen?”

  A look of understanding seemed to dawn on the kid.

  “Maybe we-“

  The kid vanished.

  Victor grabbed at his throat, blood starting to seep from his artery.

  He was in the Mind Realm, this kid must only of been in the Spirit. Which meant two things. One was that he would have at least a little trouble doing real damage to Victor, and the other was that he shouldn’t be this fast!

  Victor saw the blow coming, barely, but he was too slow to do anything about it. His strengths weren’t in speed but in strength. Before he had a real chance to respond to the boy besides beginning to turn towards where he went past him in his follow through of his attack, he was already attacking again.

  Victor was forced to defend with one hand, the other putting as much pressure as he could to his neck. The boy packs a punch for being in the Spirit realm. Maybe he’s in the upper reaches of it?

  Victor does his best to defend, but even if he wasn’t handicapped like this he would be hard pressed to fully defend himself. With one hand out of the fight, the wounds slowly started to accumulate.

  He could handle a few scratches, but each cut the boy made was to a critical spot. Either he was fast enough to get in a clean hit or was able to distract Victor with a well placed feint that allowed him to land a hit on another critical spot.

  The boy was amazing. Even pressed as Victor was he could appreciate that. He moved seamlessly from one attack to the next. With golden lightning coating the boy’s body, he moved with a speed Victor had never seen before from someone their level, and packed a punch well above his weight class.

  Every hit, every cut, was not only to an artery or tendon, but was coated in lightning as well. This not only caused Victor to flinch in pain, but the electricity locked up his muscles. Not in a major way, but enough to make those flinches just a little more pronounced, just slightly more inhibiting.

  The boy seemed to naturally find which attack would flow the best from the last and into the next. Combination followed combination, each one well chosen to use against Victor’s fighting style and body type. The attacks came so fast and so smoothly that he had no time to leverage his element. He couldn’t coat himself in stone, didn’t have the time to send any attacks back at the brat. The boy was pushing his advantage hard and they both knew it.

  He thought he might be rescued by his men. It was ten versus one after all. But the longer the fight went on the more dismayed Victor became. He looked around himself, wondering why it was taking them so long to finish off one little girl. After all, they couldn’t both be this powerful.

  What he saw made his heart drop into his stomach. Five of his men were already dead. Two more on the ground too injured to fight anymore, with three left being quickly overwhelmed.

  Victor made a mistake.

  With ascension to the Mind Realm came an increase to reaction time and mental processing speed. The amount of increase wasn’t a universal jump for all cultivators, but everyone had their mind enhanced. This brat was powerful, but not in every way. He was still an entire realm above the kid and had the advantages that came with it. Or so he thought.

  He had fought fast opponents before. They were annoying, but eventually, like the endurance of stone, he outlasted them and then crushed them. He knew this kid was faster then cultivators he had faced before, but a part of him, despite his wounds, was confident that he would endure.

  That time to assess his surroundings, time he thought he would have due to his realm advantage, came at a cost.

  The fight stopped. The boy stood ten feet away, staring Victor in the eyes with a cold look in his eyes.

  Victor looked down at the blade buried in his chest. All the way up to the hilt.

  “Bloody…kid..”

  Then all he saw was darkness.