Ronald was slowly walking towards Altair, who at this time, had one hand cuffed and connected to a rope that pulled him downward.
While putting much effort into standing up, Altair continuously tried to teleport away. However, the seemingly random electric shocks he kept receiving from the cuff kept disrupting his focus, preventing him from clearly visualizing a destination.
Seeing Altair's body flicker, Ronald started talking. "The information about you seems accurate, you are different even among the Slingers." His tone was measured and even sounded conversational, as if the whole situation did not matter.
Altair on the other hand was too distracted to be concerned with whatever Ronald was saying right now, most of his attention was directed toward finding a way out of this situation… out of this place… his own house.
His own house.
"Let's get this over with." Ronald said as he was now almost 3 meters away.
The little composure which Altair had managed to muster in order to think of a way out went away like a lie. He became frantic again and struggled without thinking
*nyeurgh~*
In his struggle he used all his strength and pulled from the ground enough of the rope that he was able to regain a somewhat standing position.
*huff~*
Since he could not form images in his mind, his attention turned to the wall of pictures. With a picture in front of his eyes, he would not need to visualize his destination.
He finally vanished from his spot. He had successfully teleported. But the next instant-
*crash~*
Altair's body crashed into the wall of pictures, destroying it. The pictures that were previously on the wall were now scattered around and below him, on the floor.
Behind him, the air seemed to have twisted into itself, both at his previous spot and right behind his current position. It was some kind of transparent distortion that appeared to refract light like heat waves.
Ronald was surprised at the successful teleportation. He observed the distortion for a moment and said. "You really are a special case. No matter." Nevertheless, he was prepared.
Even after the successful teleportation, the cuff still held onto Altair's wrist, and the metallic braided rope dragged his hand backwards towards the distortion.
The rope's parts seemed to disappear in air as they extended into the distorted space.
Altair turned around quickly and pulled on the binding with both hands trying to yank it out.
With his continuous failures, maybe he subconsciously tried to buy time as he asked Ronald in a tone full of indignation.
"Why are you doing this?" He was so scared, his voice sounded like he was about to cry.
Ronald replied calmly but his voice sounded deep. "Why? I warned you Mr. Rohan, that your actions, were not without consequence. I ordered you to stop doing what you do. But people like you take yourselves to be gods in a world you know nothing about.
You are all the same. Having gained a little bit of power, you always decide to give in to your instincts.
You want to behave like an animal, all impulse, no thought, then I will treat you as the wild animal you act like."
As he said all this, Ronald's voice had a hint of disdain in it.
Next, Ronald did something and the electricity around his baton increased, now even making a high voltage sound.
*bzzt* *bzzt~*
Along with the high static sound, there was a burnt smell.
Ronald's baton had now extended into a whip and it scorched the floor and burnt the carpet as Ronald advanced towards Altair. He looked terrifying to the current Altair.
Altair scrambled around, moving debris aside as he picked one picture after another and tried to teleport to the locations they showed.
He kept struggling to keep his body from being dragged by the rope linking the cuff to the ground while forcing himself to ignore most of the random electric shocks.
Each time he tried to teleport, he got a weird feeling but when he looked back away from the picture, he was still right there, in his living room, with Ronald still there staring at him, as if waiting for him to tire of his pointless struggles.
The agitation of wanting to escape from Ronald, coupled with the cuff's electric shocks really made it difficult. He barely looked at each picture for a second before discarding it.
Next, Altair saw that much like on Ronald's whip, his previous spot suddenly had electricity "erupting" from the ground in a terrifying display.
It sizzled and with the sound of static, the electricity tore through and destroyed the carpet like paper facing water.
Altair realized that, that could have been him burning like that.
Not knowing how, his mind cleared for just a moment when he saw this, and he vanished again.
*crash~*
But just like before he did not go far and simply crashed into the TV that was a about a meter away from the burning carpet.
Altair was already in a running position so his body did not stop at crashing but he ran a few steps before falling due to imbalance from his body being leaned forward.
Altair barely had the time to register that his body was not held back by the rope that he let out a cry of pain.
"*Aaargh*"
His arm… his arm that had its wrist cuffed was now missing. He saw it burning to the same electricity that burned the carpet earlier.
He held onto the empty stump as he started scooting backwards, away from the electrified spot while shuffling his feet on the ground.
Seeing his arm being burnt like that, coupled with the smell, Altair almost hurled.
Ronald was very surprised at the turn of events, not only at the fact that Altair could teleport a second time but also at the fact that he just lost his arm.
"Stay where you are Mr. Rohan." Ronald said with a stop hand gesture.
He also said. /"No, don't intervene yet."/
Ronald was no longer as calm as before. He was even a little flustered.
Despite Altair holding onto the stump, he was still losing blood very fast.
There was a sudden pop-up in his sight.
[HEALTH : 2067/2500 ]
[Status Effect : Bleeding]
[-50 HEALTH per second ]
This made Altair regain a little bit of his senses, and while enduring the pain, he stood up and ran out of the room.
Ronald just stood where he was and two men suddenly appeared besides him.
"This is a mess, it'll be hard explaining this." David said and asked.
Then James, with a serious expression on his face said. "We will think of that later. For now, we should go after him."
Ronald then spoke up. "You two go, I will start cleaning up. We might have to destroy the house entirely."
David looked around and said. "Wait till we get him before deciding on that."
James who was already moving in the direction Altair left then said. "We should hurry or we'll lose his tracks."
"In the meantime, I'll return to the hideout, in case he goes to one of the monitored locations. Keep in contact."
"No time, I'll take you there." Following these words, David placed his hand on Ronald's shoulder and vanished with him.
.
The two of them reappeared in the dark undisclosed location with multiple screens.
As soon as they appeared David disappeared again, leaving behind Ronald alone in the room with the screens.
.
_SOMEWHERE ALONG THE SCANIAE COAST, SVEARIKA_
Altair appeared out of the air as if hurled out. He was breathing heavily, as if it was his first time in a while.
This was a place that over the past month he had visited the most often so it was the first place he thought to escape to as soon as he left the room.
It was still dark out and people had not started coming out yet so the place was empty.
Altair was very disoriented when he appeared due to the agony over his lost arm, as well as the confusion from the earlier situation.
It took a few seconds for his mind to clear and he remembered he had the System.
He placed all his hopes in his next command.
'(Use Full Status Recovery)'
Like a lie, all his injuries disappeared. The only proof of the whole situation being the missing part of his shirt and the blood over his clothes.
He was very relieved. Relieved of the fact that the Full Status Recovery did not only work for fatigue but injuries as well.
Luckily for him, he had been keeping those whenever he could; rather than squandering them because of a little discomfort from the Daily Quest.
Using the System's Inventory, he quickly changed his clothes, storing the bloodied and torn ones in the System's Inventory.
There was a lot of blood on the ground but he could not really be bothered by that right now.
'Who was that person? Who is the "we" he talked about? How much do they know about me?'
Altair was currently full of questions, but he could not keep staying where he was.
He teleported into a crumbling building. The one that he had once retrieved supplies from.
'How long have they known about me? Why could he disrupt my teleportation?'