53 Skirmish of the Followers
Before Fraser could reply to the speech, the handsome youth spoke again:
"As a member of the noble northern ice wolf family, I am obligated to protect my partners from harassment such as yours. In order to stop your future acts, apologize to my two partners for your offensive behavior."
Since Fraser didn't reply to that, a silent mood formed between Fraser and the handsome young noble male from the northern ice wolf family.
This silence got broken by one of the followers of the young noble standing up for the two young women.
"Didn't you hear what our young lord said to you? He told you to duck and crawl away or else..."
The last part of the sentence didn't get finished as the follower started to play with his hands, sometimes forming a fist and sometimes cracking the bones in order to produce a noise.
When the silence threatened to start once again because Fraser didn't reply to that threat, a few followers looked at each other in a confused look.
'Either his big brother is such a big shot in the other inner circle that standing up seems foolish or they never had to do anything because they are all dumb as rocks.'
Fraser pondered on whether to go out and ignore the conflict or to wait and see whether or not the backing of the young man would be able to go up against him.
From his experience in his noble society, he knew that not knowing where you were in the hacking order was a positive and a negative knowledge at the same time.
The positive side was the ability to be able to form connections which whomever you wanted, after all, no one knew you and having wild card would always be something that people loved to have. Besides the high society loved to have someone who wasn't influenced by anyone of their society yet. So to speak, someone from the outside who is easily recruited and is not influenced by any rumors or connections to the other people in the society.
The negative side was that even though it was rare to offend someone from a rather high standing, as it is impossible to know the current standing of everyone, once offended it could ruin your life for a long time period.
After all, the nobles had connections, money, and power. As a young noble the factor talent in knight training, business or administration could be viewed as their selling point. Naturally, the connections to their families were related to their talent and their ability to use the power of the family as well.
Though instead of connections, talent and money, the magus society had strength and backing.
Even if talent always played an important role, the strength one had right now was way more important than the strength one might possess in the future.
In other words, the Magus society allowed one single individual to go against the others, while in the noble/knight society it was only possible to go against a big group of people and the need to cooperate with others still remained.
When one of the followers of the young man decided to "lead" the others in trying to beat up Fraser, Fraser decided that with this action it would be too late to walk out without any harm in his social standing.
Instead, he immediately commanded his eight servants to step out and charge towards the group which had more than double the members.
Seeing how the eight followers of the questioned offender of maidens charged towards them, almost every group member of the northern ice wolf family started to prepare themselves.
Having experienced a couple of skirmishes and beatings where they clearly had the number advantage caused the group to get cocky and confident in themselves.
So the chance of defeating a similar group or a group with more strength seemed high with the confidence and moral.
But when one of the followers of Fraser arrived at one of the people from the young male it was over.
With a single motion, the concealed follower grabbed one the arms and gave it a twirl.
A grotesque sound of bones splitting into fragments came from the arm followed by a single painful scream of the follower, who was just another young man foolishly following a leader who seemed to have power.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The painful scream seemed to freeze every motion of the other followers as they all stared at the mangled pieces of flesh and bones that tangled down from the shoulder of the young follower.
However, the freezing effect didn't affect the servants of Fraser, within the blink of an eye they arrived at the group and started a symphony of bones.
When the surrounding apprentices realized what happened, some run away in the quickest manner possible, some froze like the followers and some tried to play it cool and backed away in a slow manner.
A small percentage, perhaps three or four apprentices just walked out of the scene as if there was nothing special about the tangled arms and the bloody scene.
Five breaths into the fight and the first few followers, located at the end of the group, started to run away.
Ten breaths into the fight and One to Eight met no resistance anymore but still continued to chase and hunt down the followers.
A chorus of screams filled with pain, agony, and tears filled the location where the fight took place.
When Fraser made the command of attacking, he thought that disabling the arms and legs would suffice if the opponent was weak and easy to dispose of. If the opponent was strong then the servants were allowed to attack the torso and the head.
Since his servants shredded through the group within less than a dozen of breaths, Fraser could see that every member of the group had crippled limbs.
Arms that were shredded, ripped or beaten into mush lied around.
Blood was everyone and every apprentice that lied on the group had faces that were filled with snot, tears, and saliva, some even blacked out because of the pain.
The one conscious all whimpered, babbled, cried or screamed.
When limbs of the last follower turned into meat paste and his eight servants returned to him, Fraser looked at the young nobleman of the northern ice wolf family.
He was the only uninjured one in his group. As Fraser wanted to spare him and eventually interrogate him.
A small puddle of liquid formed between his legs and it continued to grow as liquid dripped down.
However, the young man of the northern ice wolf family continued to stand.
Gritting his teeth the young man started to shout in an almost maddened voice:
"YOU MONSTER! YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT, MY BROTHER WILL AVENGE US."
With a single thought, one of Fraser servants stepped towards the young nobleman, only to cause the young nobleman to fall onto the ground.
With each step the servant took, the more the young nobleman of the northern ice wolf family crawled away in a desperate manner.
A trail of liquid trailed the crawling way of the young man.
While the young man tried to crawl away Fraser had different thoughts.
'Am I a monster?'
Glancing around him it felt surreal.
Screaming bodies, bloody mush meat bone paste and nobody else except Fraser, his servants, and the young nobleman.
The rest of the watching apprentices probably escaped as far as they could, even the two women who supposedly were the partner of the young nobleman of the northern ice wolf family were gone.