Bound and Broken: An Isekai Adventure Dark Fantasy (Melas Book 1) by V.A. Lewis (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

was bent and struck the floor at the wrong angle, twisting violently to the side. I felt a crack. A flash of extreme pain surging through my leg. Before the back of head finally slammed into the wall.

I collapsed to the ground in a daze. I tried to collect myself, but I could not feel anything; my senses were almost muted. I could not hear more than muffled sounds. I could barely make out the argument happening in front of me. Even the extreme pain from my broken ankle was gone.

I blinked a few times, trying to keep myself from falling unconscious. I pulled my head off leaning against the side of the wall. My vision cleared ever so slightly, and I could hear better now. The pain returned, just as I caught the tail end of the conversation between Julian and the rich man.

"—or consider it reimbursement for what she did to me," the rich man said, clutching his finger. His bleeding stopped, having taken a healing potion. However, it was nothing more than a stump— the quality of the potion not high enough to undo amputations. "Regardless, I will have her for free," he finished, voice final.

"That was not part of the deal," the owner of the Mancis Company argued. His face was red with anger, seemingly unhappy that his prized good was being taken away from him. "You said you would pay us a hundred gold coins."

I stared at the rich man. The detestable, cruel, abhorrent creature disguised as a Human being. His eyes flashed as his gaze bore into the older man. He started.

"I am altering the deal—"

Then his head exploded.

I watched in horror as the man’s body dropped lifelessly to the ground, blood and gore spilling from his empty neck. Marcus, the head guard of the Mancis Company, lowered his still-smoking pistol and drew his scimitar, pointing it at the dead man’s bodyguards and servants.

"Kill them all."

Chapter 14: Troublemaker

"Kill them all."

Marcus, the head guard of the Mancis Company, declared to the room. For a moment, everything was stunned silence. The rich man’s body dropped lifelessly to the floor, his head blown apart as if it were a watermelon being blasted by a 12 gauge shotgun.

Then, as if the dull thud from the fallen corpse were some sort of cue, everyone immediately broke into action. I watched as the room erupt into chaos; the bodyguards of the rich man drawing their weapons— mostly guns— while the guards of the Mancis Company grabbed for their swords, daggers, and cudgels.

The guards of the Mancis Company far outnumbered the bodyguards, yet only a select few of them even had a long ranged weapon, let alone a rifle or a pistol. Marcus had what seemed to be a flintlock pistol, but he had holstered it for now, opting to charge with his scimitar into a group of riflers shooting at his men.

There were shouts and screams as people fell all around me; the Bolerian officials huddled themselves in a corner of the room, trying to avoid any of the fighting— perhaps hoping that their status would get them through this mess unscathed. The battle unfolded before me, and a loud bang finally broke me out of my stupor.

I turned to the source of the noise, and saw Marcus had fired another shot of his pistol, blowing a man’s shoulders off; I felt my stomach lurch, watching the bits of gore splatter across a wall, as the man fell into a pool of blood. I tried to look down— avoid the sight of death— but I was faced with the rich man’s dead body lying a few feet in front of me, the gaping hole in his neck turned in my direction.

It had been so sudden; everything happened too quickly. My mind was still trying to register what happened to the rich man. He was deplorable— every sense inside of me told me that he deserved his death. Yet, the brutality of it all still drove me into shock: it was complete and utter chaos.

But, a thought crossed my mind, that’s what you needed, right?

I found myself glancing back up into the impromptu battlefield once again. My body tried to force me back down; my instincts told me to stay low and keep myself as small as possible to avoid getting caught up in the battle. But I pushed my arm off the floor, ignoring both the screams in my head telling me to stop, and the screams of death happening all around me.

The fighting continued in the background, and although blue bolts of energy came flying from both sides, the Mancis Company guards dropped left and right from the larger barrage of gunfire coming from the rich man’s bodyguards; not only did the former have less weaponry, theirs also fired at a much slower rate than the latter.

One of the bodyguards— a man with a rifle— backed up to a corner, as three of the slavers from the Mancis Company surrounded him with swords and a dagger. He fired a shot as they lunged at him— killing one of the slavers— then rolling out of the way of the other two’s attack. The man with the dagger quickly followed after him, deflecting a blue bolt of energy as he did, and then brought his weapon down on the rifler as he got close.

The rifler quickly knocked aside the dagger with the butt of his gun, and pushed the man to the ground. With the quick reprieve, he turned to shoot the other slaver running at him through the chest, then flicked back down at the downed man, and executed him. The rifler sighed in relief, and was rewarded with a bullet to the head from afar.

More scenes like this happened throughout the impromptu battlefield; the rich man’s bodyguards were well-trained fighters with advanced weapons, and as