One Last System

'Where are they?' Mia asked herself as she reached the small dugout where she left both the victims and the oppressors she had found with Arthur before.

Yet, when she finally reached this place after making sure that the dragon was nowhere to be seen and no other monsters came to feast on the scraps, she found the dugout completely empty.

'They wouldn't be able to break free from my restraints,' the girl thought as she looked around the place, hoping to see some hints.

Mia never was a hunter. She never received any form of training, nor did she listen to some sort of smart advice.

And yet, with just a single look, she managed to easily notice several things that didn't match with what she remembered.

'So many footsteps,' she thought as she looked around. And while the marks left all over the surroundings of the former camp were pretty chaotic, they all ultimately led in one direction.

'Why did they go there?' Mia asked herself when she looked after the marks left on the soft ground.

Her shock was all the greater due to how both the direction the dragon flew away and the direction the footsteps led were actually the same!

"Wouldn't a sane person aim to move as far away from that monster as possible?" Mia asked herself out loud, using her own voice as a guide for her thoughts.

'Maybe they hoped that other monsters would leave the area, scared off by that dragon?' she thought, set on unraveling the mystery.

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With no better thing to do, Mia then followed in the footsteps, making sure to scan her surroundings at all times.

Even before the monsters came to invade this world, traveling on one's lonesome was a dangerous task. And now, with all the appearances of order and rules dying to the invasion?

'It would be bad if I were to get caught,' Mia thought, her mood darkening a little.

She wasn't worried about Arthur at all. In her eyes, there was no force in the world that could best her partner if he were to get serious. Yet, the same couldn't be said about her own safety.

'I'm the weakest link in the chain of Arthur's strength,' Mia thought, perfectly aware of the gap that separated the two.

The gap which Mia doubted she could ever close.

'It would be great if I could keep the power difference between us constant,' she thought as she hurried her steps. 'But I don't think I'm capable of doing that either.'

When Mia was close to Arthur, she was simply too happy to be by his side to care about those details. Yet, the more the world around her turned into shit, the more aware she became of how much of a liability she was in any fight that forced Arthur to do his absolute best.

"I guess I can only keep striving to catch up to him," Mia muttered to herself, only to freeze in her walking stance.

'Do not make any rapid movements,' Mia lectured herself, slowly lowering herself to her knees before kneeling down and then falling to the ground.

In the distance, she could see a group of people walking ahead.

'They are in chains?' Mia thought, raising her head just high enough for her eyes to move above the grass level.

And she could see several things that were wrong with that group right away.

First, the girl that she and Arthur saved... was in chains. While she was too far away to see all the details, it appeared that the heavily injured man that Arthur attempted to save somehow made it out alive.

'He doesn't move at all,' Mia thought as she started to slowly crawl forward.

Between the group of people walking and her crawling on the ground, it was only a matter of time before the stranges would gain distance over her.

'I can't be too hasty,' Mia thought, ignoring the pain that seeing her fellow disciple in chains inflicted on her heart.

Even though Mia was aware of how she was weaker than Arthur... she was also aware of how she was stronger than most of the cultivations that lived in the area. And yet, even though she could see a junior of hers back in chains... she didn't make a move.

Because she could see one more thing that put her on guard.

'How the hell can the three of them move?' Mia asked herself when she finally recognized the three people in the group ahead.

They were exactly the same fuckers that she restrained before.

Yet, what was even more pressing, was how they somehow broke off the restraint she put on them to keep those bastards in place!

'They were far too weak to break them off themselves,' Mia thought, trying to copy Arthur and analyze the situation to the best of her ability. 'That can only mean someone else broke it off for them!'

Mia was aware of her own strength. And while there was hardly any chance for someone stronger than her to randomly appear in the restricted zone that the borderland forest was...

There was one kind of people that wouldn't mind the fame this place had at all.

'I wonder if they lied their way out and put the blame on that girl,' Mia thought, only for her expression to sour. 'Or maybe figured out what was going on and actually sided with those fuckers?'

No one from Mia's world would dare to step foot into the borderlands without a pressing reason. And there were only a handful of people that could claim superiority over Mia's strength.

And by a simple process of elimination, confirmed by the exact number of the people in the group ahead, made it pretty clear just where did those people come from.

'I really should be careful,' Mia thought, gritting her teeth in a powerless fury as she watched the chained girl disappear behind the nearby hill. And a mere moment later, the rest of the group followed, finally allowing the girl to stand up and rush ahead.

'Fighting them on my own wouldn't be wise,' she thought, clenching her teeth as she gave her best to move as quickly as she could without raising unnecessary commotion.

'But if they dare to lay a hand on that girl...' Mia thought, only for her face to twist in anguish. 'No, as much as I want to help her, I can't put myself in danger,' she made her decision. 'Not for as long as that would give those people an edge over Arthur!'

Mia quickly reached near the top of the hill behind which the group had disappeared before. Yet, rather than peaking over its top, she opted to wait for a moment while hidden behind it.

"Damn, it's fucking frustrating," Mia whispered under her nose, unwilling to let her voice alert the other party.

"What's frustrating?" a sudden voice appeared right behind the girl.

Mia turned around her axis on the spot, instantly dishing out her fist towards the source of the voice.

It was an attack that she repeated over and over. A hit that was as simple as it was refined. A smash that bore enough power to drill through several meters of solid stone.

And it was a hit that the owner of the voice... stopped just by reaching out and putting his palm in the attack's way.