The Laughing Swordsman

Willow continued to look at those that fled and her mother with the man. It looked like those that ran were getting away, but her mother seemed to be suppressing them with the man.

...Both options seemed genuinely feasible.

And so, Willow hesitated.

But she hesitated for too long.

One of the white-haired men landed a punch on her mother's shoulder, cracking it and causing her to lose function of the corresponding arm.

From there, the two of them were rapidly oppressed.

The reason the two were able to hold on until now was that they dodged the majority of attacks. However, every single hit they took would nearly cripple them due to the difference in strength.

Willow lost hope in fighting back, thus fled then and there.

She picked up speed, running faster and faster.

...Then slowed down until she was just standing there.

In front of her, nearly fifty white-haired men appeared from the direction they were fleeing. All of the people who tried to run away were helplessly caught.

Somebody expected the black-haired people to run.

And wished to take full advantage of that for a clean sweep.

In the end, Willow was punched in the gut, forced to her knees, and had her hands bound with rope. Like everyone else, she was carried as though she were a piece of luggage.

Willow realized that if all the black-haired people gathered together to resist the ten, they would have been overwhelmed.

No, even if just Willow helped, there was a chance.

...But the only thing she could do was hesitate.

...

Willow opened her eyes and charged after Hex with determination, despite not knowing how to salvage the situation.

Willow's past experiences didn't mean she never ran away. In fact, she did just that countless times.

However, Willow realized that not everything can be fixed by running away. If there were people trying to fight, and they were people that mattered, then she couldn't find it in herself to run away.

Especially not while Apollo was still here.

Thankfully, Hex wasn't going in any particular direction, meaning although he was fast, it wasn't hard for Willow to catch up.

Hex directly slashed up five black beings with one swing, giggling as he did so. While Hex continued on, the flesh from those black beings rolled together and merged to form a larger black being.

The black being joined a few others in chasing Hex down.

But suddenly, they were all torn to ribbons.

Willow sighed.

"...There are far too many."

She looked at the direction Hex previously passed through. There were countless black beings that became reformed black beings.

It gave Willow the urge to go back and slash through all of them. However, she controlled herself.

Willow realized that the best way to control the situation wasn't to try and fix everything. With Hex like this, the situation would continue to escalate. If she tried to kill all of the reformed black beings here, Hex's massacre would not be tended to.

In the end, Willow would have to get to Hex after the distance increased anyway, and in that time, things would get far worse.

The reformed black beings that Willow killed merged together to form a five meter tall version, a secondary reformed being.

The secondary reformed beings presented a genuine threat. Willow had to use one of her strongest attacks to deal with them, while she just had to use a swing for those that were weaker.

Suddenly, Willow furrowed her brows as she flew behind Hex.

...Was she just making the situation worse?

Willow was turning the reformed black beings into secondary reformed beings. Essentially turning negligible threats into genuine ones.

She clicked her tongue and slashed through another group of reformed black beings.

...In the end, they would have to be killed anyway.

As the black flesh hit the ground and attempted to merge, Willow slashed once more in frustration.

...Then, the black flesh split further and stopped moving.

Willow felt as though she was enlightened. There was nothing stopping her from attacking them before they reformed, so why wait for them to do so?

Willow ignored the next few reformed black beings so that she could target the squirming flesh behind Hex.

She slashed, splitting them further. They stopped moving as well.

Like that, Willow followed behind Hex, cleaning up after him. She occasionally took a glance behind her to see the change.

As it turns out, even as the flesh split into tiny pieces, they still became reformed black beings. However, the flesh was heavily reduced from Willow's attacks. As such, the rate of reformed black beings increasing dropped dramatically.

A small smile formed on Willow's face.

The situation didn't look so bad anymore.

In the meantime, Apollo was laughing madly while Layla was clinging onto his back, cheering loudly.

"HAHAHA."

"Waaaaah!~"

Apollo tore through the air as fast as he could, trying to shake off Layla. As for Layla, she was just enjoying the moment, enjoying the feeling of flying through the air.

Several winged black beings closed in on the two. However, Apollo couldn't care less. All of his focus was put on accelerating even faster. As for Layla, she simply slapped any black being that got close to them.

Those black beings were smashed into paste, killed even more thoroughly than how Willow had. It was as though Layla was playing whack-a-mole.

She had both hands in the air, smacking the 'moles' as she used her legs to cling tightly to Apollo. The recoil force of her slaps made Apollo shift to the side and cause a few cracks to form in his bones.

However, he focused on moving forward.

Apollo realized that this wasn't going to work, so he shifted his focus towards the buildings in the city.

And directly smashed through a wall.

Stone and dust scattered, but Layla securely remained.

Apollo was in for a wild ride.

And at the same time, Talon was dealing with his own set of problems.