by Weiqi Wang
‘Hey, it’s okay; we won’t interrupt, then. Good luck, you guys!’ The other group of students also sensed something weird and tried to leave; Halgon was so anxious that he tried to think of a way to signal them to run for help when they got out. However, from the crystal ball, Max was actually observing all the details; it was too late.
‘Smart kids, you can all stay and have a nice talk now.’ all of the magimen suddenly dashed over, and the gate of MagiMax closed by itself!
‘What do you want, Max?’
Seeing the sudden change, Rodka instantly pulled out his magic wand and shielded his friends behind him. Inside he felt so frustrated and stupid; how could he be such an idiot as to ignore Halgon’s repeated signals until it was too late?
Max didn’t answer, but the magimen used their actions to respond to Rodka’s question — the other group of students was tackled by a group of magimen. The magimen were much more powerful than the kids, so there was hardly any resistance before the kids were all captured and taken away somewhere. Halgon was determined to start the fight back while the other group was struggling, but everything finished in seconds, so he couldn’t do much to help them.
‘Smart move, but not enough.’ one of the magimen looked at where Halgon was standing, a bit surprised that this boy was ready to fight, without hesitation. Even Rodka had to hesitate for a second before he sprang into action; but Halgon had already kicked down a magiman and hidden himself in the shadows by using a shadowcape spell.
‘What’s going on?’ Alicey was terrified to see the abrupt emergency. She was holding Rodka’s gown and hiding behind him, shivering.
‘Soarame, you take care of Alicey, okay?’ Rodka spoke to Soarame. ‘No offence but your Water spells won’t help much here, so leave the fight to us if it really happens. But promise me you will stay with Alicey and look after her!’
‘I will.’ Soarame nodded curtly. Although he was a bit panicked like everyone else, he tried to stay calm and judge the situation.
‘It’s okay, I don’t mean to hurt you.’ obviously, a magiman had heard Rodka. ‘I only wanted to ask some questions, and then you will be free to go.’
‘How come it’s so hard to perform magic here?’ Rodka had a look of profound disbelief on his face; he had been trying to prepare his spells when he suddenly realised that he could no longer summon magic elements. ‘Something is wrong! This place has a seal!’
‘The emblem is not working either!’ Omifo had just discovered that the Libral Emblem had stopped functioning, and he could not send out messages.
‘Of course.’ on the other side of a crystal ball, Max was snickering. He had spent lots of time and effort to set up a magic seal around the building to isolate everything from the outside world. This made it so that the magic elements outside could not be summoned, and therefore very little magic could be performed inside the building; Halgon had been lucky enough to summon just enough Darkness elements in the building to hide himself in the shadows, but he was the only one who could do any kind of spell so far. The more important reason for the magic seal was to disable the Libral Emblems, so that the kids would not have back up coming to help them. ‘Now if I were you, I would sit down and try to answer questions, so you can walk out of here in one piece.’
‘Crack!’
Before Max had finished his words, a magiman fell to the floor and broke apart. The magimen next to it rushed over, to find that the crystal chips inside the fallen figure had been broken by some kind of sharp weapon, from the back.
‘Halgon, you’ve surprised me yet again!’ Max’s voice boomed out through the building. ‘You are not only a wizard, but also a warrior at the same time?’
‘Crack!’
What answered Max was the noise of another magiman falling down and breaking into pieces. Everyone was surprised by Halgon’s move; Rodka grabbed his wand tightly, ready to fight too.
‘Stop! Or I will have to hurt your friends!’ Max’s voice sounded threatening and mad, but it was an empty threat. Another three cracks sounded simultaneously, and the three magimen surrounding the crew fell over and shattered; the threatening voice was replaced by an astonished gasp. At the same time, a shadow dashed to the crew and pushed a dagger into each one’s hand. ‘Magic won’t work here, just use these and fight your way to the gate!’
‘We’ll find you!’ the magimen all started to yell at the shadow; but the shadow appeared again out of nowhere and kicked over another magiman.
‘You heard him! Wake up and fight!’ Rodka roared to his friends and pushed his dagger into a magiman’s head. After a similar cracking noise, the magiman fell to the floor, just like the others that had been destroyed by Halgon.
‘Go, go, go!’ Kardiac was the next one to get a magiman. Although he was frightened, his body weight helped him out when he ran into a magiman and knocked it over. Soarame was well trained by Scankeen, so he also recovered from the shock quickly and dragged the screaming Alicey with him. Omifo was scared at first, but he had no choice but to follow his friends. The crew burst into action quick enough to fight the magimen and managed to catch them off guard.
‘Damn it!’ Max never expected the kids to have such fast reactions; he had lost ten magimen in a few seconds; that was just careless. With growing anger, Max controlled all the magimen and made them dash towards the crew, and a few of them ran towards the gate to guard it.
‘Get the heck away from me!’ Kardiac was screaming and trying to knock another magiman over, but this time he didn’t make it; the magiman was ready with its counter attack. Kardiac found himself grasped in the robot’s hard wooden arms and held up in the air.
‘Kardy!’ Soarame was distracted by the scene. He rushed over to help his friend, but was tackled by another magiman halfway there and dropped his dagger. The magiman on Soarame was trying to do the same thing and hold him up with its arms, but suddenly it fell over after a crack — Halgon again.
‘Soar, take Alicey and follow Rodka! I’ll take care of Kardy!’ The shadow floated over Soarame towards Kardiac. Soarame bit his lip and jumped up, fetched his dagger, and dragged the frightened Alicey towards the gate.
After a series of noises behind Soarame’s back, Halgon had Kardiac on his back and rushed towards the crew. Kardiac was still not sure what had just happened; he just saw a shadow pass in front of him, and the next second he was released from the robot arms and sitting on the shadow’s back.
‘Halg, you bull!’ Watching himself moving like wind on the shadow’s back, Kardiac couldn’t help his excitement. ‘You’ll have to teach me all these martial arts!’
‘Only if we can get out of here safely!’ Halgon didn’t even sound tired after the intense fighting so far. ‘Here’s your knife again, but be more careful this time!’
‘Damn these kids, damn that Halgon!’ In the secret room, a mad Max was roaring aloud. He knew that all the kids were wizards, so he expected them to be taken down by his magimen easily because they couldn’t perform magic. Nonetheless, Halgon’s incredible abilities made Max a bit less sure about his seemingly perfect plan.
It had to be plan B, then. Max looked at the 20 or so broken magimen and almost wanted to cry. The magimen were really expensive to assemble and hard to make function; each of them took Max a few days to build and it only had only taken a few seconds for those damn kids to destroy them.
Right now, the kids were cornered; they couldn’t manage to break through to the gate. They grouped together, weapons in hand, facing the magimen, in a stalemate. Max didn’t want to lose more magimen, so the robots stayed in a circle and didn’t approach.
‘You kids have really upset me.’ a magiman stepped forward to face the now surrounded crew. ‘As I said, I only wanted to ask some questions and set you free after that, but now you have made such a mess! You will pay for this!’
‘Ha-ha, of course we should trust you.’ Halgon mocked the disembodied voice with a bitter laugh. ‘Like when you stole my duckbear egg?’
‘You
knew about that?’ Max was shocked. ‘You knew and you played the fool?’
‘I was just wondering how you think you’ll be able to clear up the mess you’ve made for yourself here.’ Halgon didn’t answer Max, but asked a question instead. ‘You tried to kidnap us for whatever reason; you think that’s the end of it? Everybody saw us here at your shop, and you think you will be just fine after this?’
‘That’s not for you to worry about.’ Max was indeed worried about this, but he had all his back-up plans in place. His initial plan had been to hypnotise the kids after he captured them, asking them to bring him the cat-like magimal, as well as telling him more about the duckbear egg. At the same time, hypnosis could make the kids forget about what had happened to them, and replace the true experience with a made-up memory — it could make them think that they bought lots of good stuff and returned home happily, only to find that Snower had disappeared. In that case, no one would bring trouble to Max later. In fact, Max had used this hypnosis trick to settle a few previous incidents, so that no one had been able to discover his secret activities so far; he had just used that very technique to handle the other group of kids and send them away. However, Soarame’s group was the real deal — the plan was encountering some serious problems right now.
All because of this Halgon! Max’s eyes flared with rage as he stared at Halgon in the crystal ball. ‘So, it was actually your egg? I thought it was Soarame’s.’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’ Halgon was a bit sorry for letting his secret slip, but he didn’t care anymore. ‘Whosever it is… damn, it’s poison gas! Guys, hold your breath!’
‘Ha-ha, you are really impressive, boy!’ The magimen laughed. ‘I am really curious about who you are now — even Rodka doesn’t understand things the way you do! But it’s too late, have a nice sleep!’
Soon enough, the crew fell over, one by one. The magimen came and tied the kids up, then carried them downstairs via a secret staircase. The magimen stopped at a wall and waited for a few seconds for a part of the wall to flip around; a corridor was revealed behind it. The magimen walked in and entered one of the secret rooms along the corridor, then tied the kids to chairs in front of a man with a big belly. The man was fully covered in a black gown, with his face under a hood and veil, only leaving his eyes visible.
‘Finally, there you go.’
Max stared at the kids, sitting comatose in the chairs; his cheeks and his limbs (but most of all his belly) were shaking. It had been years since he was so angry — almost half of his magimen were destroyed. Just thinking about the money these interfering kids had cost him, and time and effort he would have to put in repairing them, Max was on the point of going completely nuts. And that was before he even counted the loss of profits from today’s bogus half-price sale. He still needed to perform careful hypnosis and question these kids, and he didn’t know whether he could get what he wanted from them by the end of the day. This gamble had been way too costly already; Max was beginning to regret more than a few of his reckless actions. But after so many years of hiding inside a damn building, Max was not really enjoying his life anymore, and nothing in this world seemed attractive to him, except for money — and even more money — and barely attainable magical treasures. If he could get a potential Baron magimal, plus understand the mysterious magic seal on the magimal egg, it could add so much more colour to his drab and furtive life!
‘Ahh! Where are we?’
After Max put a small potion in front of the kids’ noses and let the disgusting smell work its evil way up their unsuspecting noses, they all woke up pretty fast. Everyone was startled and afraid in the first few seconds, but soon enough they calmed down and tried to figure out what had just happened. Even Alicey seemed to have adapted herself to the situation, so she didn’t even cry, although she still seemed terrified and kept her head down and her eyes closed.
‘Alicey, are you okay?’ Soarame was worried. Alicey didn’t speak but just nodded; because her head was bowed, Soarame could barely see that she was frowning and seemed to be really concentrated on something.
‘Max?’ Finding everyone safe for now, Rodka got round to taking a long hard look at the obscurely dressed, pot-bellied man in front of him.
‘Answer my questions and you will be free to go.’ Max didn’t want to waste time at all. ‘First question is to Halgon: how do I break the seal on the duckbear egg?’
‘What seal?’ Halgon looked really confused. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Damn it!’ Max looked into Halgon’s eyes and realised that, unbelievable as it seemed, he wasn’t lying, so he had to turn to Soarame instead. ‘Second question to you: what does your magimal look like?’
‘What magimal?’ Soarame was acting the same as Halgon. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Ahhhhh!’ This was not doing anything good for Max’s rapidly rising blood pressure. ‘You really take me for a complete idiot, don’t you? ‘
‘Soarame, I think he’s talking about the wild cat you just adopted.’ Rodka cut in. ‘I just can’t believe everyone thinks it’s a magimal — how could anyone really believe that? Where did you hear about all this anyway, Max?’
‘You don’t ask me questions! I ask questions and you answer them!’ Max could feel his heartbeat pumping in irregular and probably dangerous ways — after all, the information about Soarame’s magimal was purely from Casavin, and he wasn’t actually sure now if he should have taken it seriously or not.
Thinking of this, Max lost the few shreds of patience remaining to him; he took out a few oddly-curved crystal balls, getting ready to perform his special hypnosis. This wasn’t hypnosis in the normal sense, like what he had done to the other group of kids; it was a form of crystal magic that didn’t just hypnotise people, but also cast their memory into the crystal ball, allowing others to view it. In that way, everything that Max wanted to see would be crystal clear. Max hadn’t planned to use it originally because it came at a much greater cost, but now he realised he was forced to.
‘What are you doing?’ Soarame instantly felt nervous; whatever Max was doing he was sure it would not be good for them.
‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.’ Max put one crystal ball in front of each kid. ‘When you wake up again, you will be back home already.’
‘Damn it, stop!’ Halgon was truly panicked for the first time; he recognized the crystal hypnosis instruments. He could not afford to have his memory visualized; that would be a disaster for everyone, but especially for his family!
‘That’s enough, Max.’
Just when Halgon was determined to do something, a cold voice sounded from behind Max, and the keen blade of a sword appeared across Max’s neck.
‘What the heck?’ Max almost wet his pants. A man was holding a sword behind him? How could this be possible? How did he get into his secret room, and how long had he been there?
Soarame and the others were just as stunned as Max was by this sudden change in the situation. A man in black had suddenly emerged from behind another man in black!
‘Sachastain?’ Soarame was the first to recognise the mysterious man. ‘How come you are here?’
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, guys.’ Sachastain gave the kids a big smile. ‘And you too, Max.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ It was now Max’s turn to panic. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘Don’t worry about that.’ Sachastain threw a dagger towards each kid, cutting off the ropes that bound them. ‘All you need to do is to lead us out and turn yourself in.’
‘Sachastain, it’s really great to see you!’ Halgon was in overjoy. Sachastain had actually saved his life; if he’d showed up one second later, who knew what nightmares might have occurred? Unlike his friends, who could probably walk away after being hypnotized, Halgon would be put in extreme danger because of his secret.
‘Alright, let’s get the hell out of here.’ Sachastain tapped his sword on Max’s shoulder. ‘Open the door, Max. Or
do I have to say ‘please’?’
‘Not until you tell me how you got in here.’ Max was persistent about this. ‘There’s no way that you could have snuck into my secret room, no way!’
‘Erm, Max, he’s right behind you!’ Kardiac laughed.
‘It’s called magic.’ Sachastain teased. ‘I don’t think you are in a position for bargaining, Max. So open the door before my hand slips and accidentally slits your throat.’
‘Humph, you do it if you can, you sneaky rat.’ Max turned around to look at Sachastain. ‘Remember, you killed these poor kids here!’
‘Watch out! Get down!’ Sachastain instantly sensed danger. He tried to move his sword, but found that it was stuck on Max’s shoulder for some weird reason. But he didn’t have time to figure out why; all that Sachastain could do in the next second was throw himself onto the kids, covering them as much as he could using his own body.
‘BOOMMMM!’
At the same time, an explosion ripped through the secret room and the walls were blown to pieces. Max stepped out of the ashes, uninjured. Sachastain, on the other hand, spit out a big stream of blood, he had been badly injured protecting the kids from the explosion; the kids were fine, just frightened.
‘Sachastain!’ Soarame held Sachastain up with his shoulder.
‘Crap! There was a pre-set bomb of some kind.’ Sachastain coughed in sharp pain. ‘I underestimated him. This guy has backup tricks; he must be a lifetime criminal rather than just a crooked shopkeeper.’
‘It’s too late to talk about all this right now, isn’t it?’ Max walked towards Sachastain. ‘You miserable, sneaky rat!’
‘I offer you one last chance, tell me how you got in here and I’ll spare the kids’ lives.’ Max’s voice made the kids pale.
‘You really expect me to believe you?’ Sachastain was breathing heavily. Max was not totally unaffected by the explosion — his hood and veil had been blown off, so his face was finally exposed to the light. As an experienced warrior and assassin, Sachastain knew clearly that if the kidnaper’s face was not exposed, the victims would be likely to survive; but once exposed, the whole thing would most likely become a fatal tragedy. And this is all thanks to me! Sachastain wished he could tell them how bad he felt.