Magician's Deathwish

Sentenced to Eternal Blood

"New recruit, hm?" Maki said, leaning forward.

Ms. Maki was like a cat, she looks like the type to sleep all day, definitely a night owl I thought to myself. Yuan Fei slept like a baby while Maki tidied up the clinic. 

"You're the son of Lei, right? Womanizer, silky hair, dumb smile. That guy?" Maki asked, glaring right at my eyes. Her glare was both intimidating and comforting at the same time, I didn't even know a feeling like that existed.

I nodded slowly, I couldn't really get the right words out of my mouth, it'd be my 3rd or 4th time meeting a scout. 

"I see, then you must be quite fast then, right? Well, of course. Since you're the son of the fastest man alive, after all," She hid a chuckle under her breath as it seemed like she was finished cleaning.

I looked at her with a puzzled look on my face, I might be faster than an average person, but I'm not as fast as my dad. Then out of nowhere, she threw a pen at me and it hit me on the arm. 

"Ow! Hey, what gives?" I asked, rubbing the spot where the pen hit me. 

She looked at me with a disappointed look on her face.
"I thought you would've dodged that," 

She threw that pen at like, lightning speed, how would I react to that in time? I tried to retaliate but my words failed me, it flopped out like a soggy banana. I kept stuttering.

"I guess you're not like your father, but, you are  a magician, right?" She walked up right in front of my face, tilting her head as she asked that question.

"Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with our current conversation?"  I asked.

She narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brows as she studied my face, letting out a soft groan.

"And do you have a crush on Hecate?" She suddenly asked.

My heart rate rose, I could feel the blood rushing to my head. 
"H-how did you-" I couldn't even finish my own sentence for how flustered I was at that very moment.

She gave a small chuckle at how speechless I was.
"Nothing, just my intuition. You can leave for now, I'll watch over Yuan Fei."

I nodded, slowly leaving the clinic before she added on to her statement.

"Oh, and try disguising yourself when you go to Hecate's comedy show's. She's starting to recognize you, I'm one of her top fans too, y'know?" Maki giggled before the wind closed the door for me. 

Meanwhile. . .

FLOOR 25

Dead bodies lay strewn across the floor as two silhouettes walk over them, the stench of blood flooding the room made it like a horror scene, even the ceiling had dripping blood. The slow rhythm of the pitter-pattering blood drops would send anyone a shiver down their spine. There were multiple dead heroes bodies, Magician's, Beastmen, Knight's, etc. It was a legend that if you entered the Magician's Deathwish, you'd never come back to the surface.

"Ah, god, it reeks!" Lei complained, pinching his nose to prevent inhaling the stench.

They marched on forward, the silence sometimes broken with a "god, it smells," or an audible cringe. 

Finally, they saw Ryker's silhouette, Lei's eyes widened in joy for he would finally stop smelling this rancid smell. As soon as Ryker heard Lei's footsteps he turned, his outfit was dotted with blood like a dalmatian. 

"So, why'd you call us out here for? Aren't you usually deeper in? Like Floor 40 or so?" Lei asked, sitting down while leaning against the wall.

Ryker nodded as he held something like a hieroglyphic tablet, "I found this while I was doing a patrol, people usually never die this early on in here. It seems like the monsters are attracted to it," He pointed to a dead wolf-like corpse. It's coat was snow-white and it's teeth were blood-red. "A Frostwolf, it's usually deeper down in floor 30 to 35. It climbed up. When I picked this tablet up, it lunged at me. I'm still recovering from the wounds,"

Lei crouched down and examined the body,
"You poisoned it? Bummer, I was going to eat it," Lei said, kicking the dead corpse.

Kat audibly gagged as she went behind Ryker, as if she was hiding from Lei. 
"You're disgusting!" 

"As if you weren't bouncing on Orc dick earlier!" Lei retaliated. 

As they continued bickering, Ryker kept looking at the tablet. 

Faint footsteps were heard in the distance, slowly becoming louder as its eyes in the dark grew brighter as it got closer. Ryker shut both of them up with his hands and forced them both to hide behind a rock.

"What the fuck is that?" Ryker asked, looking at Lei and Kat for any answers. 

They both shrugged in unison, as they did so, Ryker took a peek from the boulder, to see if anything was there. Immediately, the left side of his face was riddle in cuts, his mask was torn off as he curled up in pain. Lei jumped up and took both of them, immediately teleporting away to a safer spot, but it was all in vain as the dark silhouette was already behind them. Lei's back burst with blood as he tripped, rolling with the hieroglyph. Lei groaned in pain as he held the hieroglyph. The silhouette was inching closer as Lei stumbled trying to get away, Kat was nowhere to be found and Ryker was slowly standing up while holding his wounds.

"Take the fucking hieroglyph, then!" Lei shouted while he threw the hieroglyph.

It seemed to work as the dark silhouette walked toward it, ignoring the three Scouts. Ryker was about to attack it before Lei took his arm and teleported to where Kat was hiding. Kat was transformed into a pink cat, funnily enough. He grabbed the both of them and went up to the surface. Lei lead them all to The Garden while all of them were gasping for air as they fell to the ground, all of them having cuts on their bodies. 

"What. The. Hell was that?" Ryker asked, standing up from the ground.

"Something no person can handle," Lei said while leaning against the bench's back rest.
"There's an old rumor that a wandering swordsman with an unidentifiable face or physique is in the Magician's Deathwish, who will cut anybody he sees, I guess that's him. That...thing is unbeatable," Lei said while writing a letter.

"Who are you writing a combustion letter to?" Kat sat on the bench next to Lei, slightly panting.

"Maki. She'll fix us up in no time. . .and there we go," Lei rolled the letter up and snapped, it immediately went up in flames, yet no residue remained.

Lei stood up and picked Kat and Ryker again, he was getting tired of carrying them at this point. He went to Maki's clinic in just a heartbeat, knocking heavily on her door.

"Coming," A tired voice came from behind the door. The knob turned and it revealed Maki with a bird nest for hair. Her bed head was crazy, to say the least.

Maki noticed the blood on Lei and immediately brought them in. 
"How could the FASTEST man alive be injured?" She hastily asked as she propped all three of them up to the table. 

Lei chuckled as he clenched his hand in pain. "I have my ways, Maki," he said in a groan.

Maki sighed and started to treat his injuries. "You're stupid. Just like him..."

Lei's expression softened as he stopped clenching the sheets. "What was that last part?" He teased.

Maki kept silent while she kept treating his wounds in silence. Lei, thinking he had said something wrong, kept silent too.

The awkward silence kept on until Kat interrupted it.

"The...thing that attacked us, it-it wasn't alive," Kat said, her voice short due to hyperventilating.

"How would you know that?" Ryker asked while forcing himself to sit up.

"It's...just one of my abilities as a witch. Lei told us about something, a rumour of sorts. It's about that swordsman." Kat said, the fur from her transformation slowly turning back to normal.

"It's...about the Fei family. My family. Our great-grandfather, supposedly challenged the previous king to a duel, and killed his previous scouts. As for his punishment, he got sentenced to the Magician's Deathwish. His name was 'Shiwa Fei'" Lei said while getting treated by Maki. "I believe our eldest maid knows some more background information since their family line have always been serving the Fei family, I'll go check later,"

All of them nodded in approval as they were being treated.