Chapter 171: Dealing With Thugs

Hector POV

Hector was the third son of Lord Brandish. Unlike his other brothers and sisters, he didn’t have something that made him stand out. This made him pretty bitter at times, but he had found his true calling.

A couple of years ago a powerful group approached him with an offer. He didn’t know the exact name of the group, and he was happy not to. People like that were not very forgiving to people who stuck their noses into their businesses.

The offer was simple. They would offer him treasures and other valuable items. In return, he would do some favors for them. These favors varied immensely, some were jobs as a messenger and some were like the ones he was currently doing.

He was told to make some trouble for Wendy Belick. They didn’t specify the exact methods he was supposed to use or expected to. However, the only requirement was that Hector had to harass Wendy and the people around her.

The group didn’t give him much explanation, but from the little they said, they wanted Wendy’s father to sell his building. They wanted to make Wendy’s experience in Heston difficult and force her to leave the city.

Her father was ridiculously overprotective of her and if she were to leave, he would most likely follow her. That was their plan. They wanted to force Wendy out so that the father would sell the building when he went with her.

At least that was what Hector was able to determine.

And while he didn’t enjoy harassing young women, they paid him very well for this job. The entire case of Tier 3 pills was more than enough to override his moral boundaries.

A chance to advance a couple of my skills? I’d be crazy not to do it.

Every man has their price and for Hector, that price was in the form of a case of water affinity Skill Strengthening Pills.

With this, he could potentially push [Rain Step] to its next level. It had been stuck at Level 5 of rare for a while now. Or he could use them on his [Water Strike] skill. It had been capped at level 14 of uncommon and getting to rare would be such a huge improvement. He couldn’t imagine the power boost he would get once he got his second official rare skill.

He would become even stronger than he already was.

He and his three friends were currently harassing the young girl. Trevor and Fulton were holding the girl’s boyfriend by the arms. They weren’t hurting him, at least not that bad. A few nudges and a couple of smacks on the top of his head were all they did to the poor loser.

“Hey! How’s it going?” some random person called out to them.

He turned to look and frowned at what he saw. It was some weird young boy wearing a black cloth around his lower face. You could really only see his black eyes but you could see signs of his young features.

He could also tell that this dumb little kid was smiling from underneath his mask. Which was honestly a bit more creepy than he wanted to admit.

“Mind your own business,” Cole scoffed at the kid before turning away and ignoring him.

The boy didn’t go away, in fact, he got closer to Cole and softly touched his back to get his attention. Cole must have decided that his patience had run out and so he reached out to the young boy and shoved him right in the face.

Hector expected to see the kid go flying back into the dirt, but instead, he found himself confused when the boy didn’t move an inch.

He also knew that Cole hadn’t pulled back his strength that much either. He never did, he liked showing off his strength too much to do that. So when the kid literally didn’t move an inch, subconscious alarm bells started to ring in his head.

However, he ignored those alarms, reasoning that it was just him trying to give the kid a break.

The creepy kid still hadn’t moved and was still staring at Cole with that chilling smile that showed through his mask.

“Get lost kid,” Cole said, not sounding as confident as he usually did. The kid still didn’t say or do anything in response.

Trevor seemed to have enough of the kid’s antics. He let go of his hold of the girl’s boyfriend and walked over to the kid. He reached down and grabbed ahold of the boy’s shoulder, trying to drag him away from them.

However, the second he touched the boy, Trevor froze like a statue. It was like time had stopped. But he was still able to talk it seemed.

“What the hell,” Trevor said shakily.

What happened?

“What are you doing, man?” Cole asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t move!” Trevor exclaimed. Hector could see that Trevor was struggling hard but nothing he did was able to let him move.

Cole was the first one of them to react. Unfortunately, his first instinct when reacting was violence, and threw a wide haymaker at the kid’s head.

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However, that only served for Cole’s body to freeze as well. His body was suspended mid-punch.

The boy turned to look at Fulton and him with eerily calm eyes. Then he swiveled his gaze to the young couple. “Are you guys okay?” he asked kindly. This time the smile didn’t seem as creepy through the mask. He realized why the boy’s smile felt creepy. It was because when he smiled at Hector and his friends, his eyes were like a dead fish’s. However, when he smiled at the couple, they showed actual life.

The girl who was still shaking stammered out a reply that nobody was able to understand and glanced rapidly between the frozen forms of his friends.

The boy continued to ignore the four of them. “Would you like for me to stop these boys from harassing you?” he asked his voice steady with confidence, bordering on arrogance that needled Hector’s own pride.

The girl looked at Hector and back at the boy, nervously nodding her head.