Sorry for the delay. The which will come in a few more hours will be even longer. Stay tuned!

The young lady garbed in orange, princess Cassidy was trying her best to keep her mind under control as sleepiness tried to take over.

She circulated her magic to the fullest as she followed the middle aged man. The second strongest man of the convoy, now the strongest, was more or less their last pillar for survival. And considering that the ambushers had someone capable of taking out a level 8 without nothing but an arrow- their hope were akin to a flickering candle.

The whistling sound resumed as arrows came diving at them through the gaps of the trees. Despite the heaviness everyone felt from the music, they barely dodged the arrows.

The middle aged guardian did not even bat an eye as he parried the arrows approaching him to the ground.

“They either have another archer- someone who’s level 9 or close to being one, or the marksman is just playing with us.” He had the leisure to glance at one of the down arrows. It was the same tape that drove through his superior’s heart.

He turned to the princess, who was just behind him, his sword clanged with the incoming projectiles. “Where shall we go? Forward? Or return back?”

The princess scanned around. It was dark and they were surrounded by nothing but trees. Worse- a serene music which seemed to come out from a wind instrument waved through the atmosphere. And strangely, it began to sound creepier and creepier.

She took a deep breath and turned ahead. “We need to get out of this woods as fast as possible, and we have already crossed two thirds of the forest. Moreover, Edenshield is the closest bastion to us.” She clenched her fists while her eyebrows knitted with determination. “We go forward!”

The man’s only reply was a nod.

The man began to walk westwards; the rest followed. Princess and her maids were just behind her while the armoured personnel surrounded her, leaving no gaps.

The princess forcefully kept her eyes peeled open. She turned back to her maids. They were savagely scratching their forearms, drawing out blood; the pain held them back from falling asleep. She bit her lips and turned ahead.

They walked for ten minutes straight but arrows were all they faced.

The bulk of the bolts came at the middle aged guardian. He frowned. “Strange. The music seems to sound different.”

The princess scowled as well. “It sounds somewhat the same, but the feeling it’s giving is much different.” She looked around. Things seemed a bit blurry. She rubbed her eyes, only to get a shock afterwards.

“What?!” Her cry grabbed everyone’s attention. “Why is there so few of the guards?”

The middle aged guardian turned back with a scowl, while everyone tried to get rid of the blur.

She was right. Almost half of the previous guards went missing, leaving just a dozen or so behind.

“How is this possible!” One of the soldiers shouted. “Reid was just with me a second ago!”

The guards started a commotion.

“Silence!” The guardian bellowed. “Now I know what’s different. The sound is giving us hallucinations now! I thought it’s power was not enough to affect me.” He gritted his teeth as he yanked another incoming arrow with a harder grip on his sword. “But it even affected my senses. Those cunning bastards!”

The princess’s legs began to shake slightly as she turned back, circulating her magical energy to the fullest.

Her conjectures were affirmed. There were a few bodies lying in the distance. One was relatively close. There was a gaping hole on the armour which was made of magical steel.

She signalled the guard closest to the body with her orange eyes. The guard nodded before ambling to his deceased comrade. After some cautious steps, he finally reached his destination. After one look at the hole on the corpse, he staggered backwards.

“What is it?!” The guardian asked with his stern voice.

The guard rushed to the party, squeezing in through the outer circle.

“His… his… heart is missing.” The soldier answered with trembling legs as he pointed at the cadaver.

The guards subconsciously took a step into the encirclement as they looked around with caution. The surroundings seemed to have gotten darker while the music sounded eerier.

Some collective gulps could be heard which the guardian totally ignored. “The attacker even had the time to ‘collect’ the hearts.” He took in a deep breath. “At least we know one of the culprits- the infamous assassin, Heart Thief from Edenshield.”

The princess looked ahead, her gaze piercing through the trees. “We should move fast. I am having a terrible foreboding.”

The middle aged man nodded. “Troop! Peel your eyes open. An assassin is useless when they are in vision. Double time!”

The middle aged man charged forward. The arrows shattered into pieces. The princess grabbed the arms of the maids and tugged them forward, maintaining close distance with the guardian. The armoured personnel followed, circling the princess as they scanned the perimeter.

The music abruptly stopped. Now, the dead silence seemed even creepier. But they moved on, pounding their feet to the ground to cancel the silence.

“Grrr!”

Suddenly, a huge creature came out of nowhere and grabbed ahold of an unlucky guard with its jaws.

“Aaaaaaah!” Amidst the poor fella’s desperate screams, the beast swallowed him whole.

“Aaaaah!” The princess screeched as she moved to her left with the maids, away from the monster.

But from the left, came another menacing roar. A half naked giant wearing a horrifying beast mask gripped a poor soldier’s neck- so hard that the guard’s head popped off from the body before he could even scream, spraying blood everywhere.

The middle aged guardian turned around, ready to intercept. But the velocity and the rate of fire of the incoming arrows suddenly increased. “Fuck! He was just playing with us.” He used all of his focus and energy on stopping the arrows. The uneasy feeling inside him kept rising.

Still, he was skilled enough to gauge the strength of the newcomers. He had no time to waste. “Three of you, hold back the beast. Four on the left, he is another wanted criminal from Edenshield, the Underground Giant, an earth augmenter. Deal with him.”

Everyone took a deep breath and nodded before charging to their respective opponents. They knew this was the last order they would ever receive. The seven of held nothing back and used their life force as they encountered the assailants. Two of them were the coachmen.

The guardian, the princess, the maids and four remaining guards ran out of the grasps of the monster, and the reptilian looking creature.

The princess gasped in fear as she put all of her strength into her feet. The creaking noises and the horrid screams from behind only clasped her heart harder and harder. As for the maids, half of their souls had already left as they panted hard for breath.

Suddenly-

“Sphhhlt!”

“Aaaaah!”

She turned back. Two of her guards had bloodied swords protruding from their chests.

A man whose head was wrapped with black clothes charged at her.