Lost: Story time, people!

Deep: Where the hell have you been? We've been bored out of our minds here!

Elsword: Yeah! You better have a decent explanation!

Lost: ... yeah. It's good to see you too.

Raven: What do you have planned for us today?

Lost: Fighting. Lots and lots of fighting.

Woody: Hey, guys... sorry to interrupt, but... where is the bandit?

Bandit: *not in the corner anymore*

Lost: I wiped out his memories and gave him a new life.

Rena: Oh that's nice. Everybody deserves a second chance. What kind of life?

Lost: A woman who dies within the first minutes of the invasion.

Henry: You give awful second chances.

Luna: Can we start please? I want to know how the story goes on!

Lost: Right, right. Beginning story in 3... 2... 1...

Location: Elder

Ara's POV

Total chaos. That's the only way I can describe what I saw when we arrived at Elder. The whole city was covered in purple flames, and screams could be heard all over the place.

I covered her mouth with my hand, and I could feel my eyes widening greatly. "Oh God..."

"What happened here?" Rena looked around, completely horrified. "What happened?"

"Julian was definitely here," Woody stared at the purple flames soaring up into the sky. "And judging by this mess, he's not alone."

"Damn it!" Deep punched a wall right next to him, what cause a bit of rubble to fall on his head. "I knew this would happen! Barely 10 days have passed and the bastard already has his army back!"

"Calm down, Deep," Davis placed a hand on Deep's shoulder. "Getting angry now isn't going to solve anything."

"Well... Deep does fight better when he's angry..." Dennis intervened, only getting a glare from Deep as a reply. "I mean... we should probably think of what to do now."

"We'll obviously be unable to defeat Julian if we face him by ourselves," John started explaining. "Last time, we were over 50 people and only 13 survived, us included."

"We can't just leave!" Elsword shouted. "There are people here who need our help, and I don't plan on leaving them!"

"Well, you can't just fight Julian either..." Woody meditated for a few seconds, then looked at everyone. "But I think we can help evacuate the city before everyone gets killed."

"According to what you said, the probabilities of finding survivors is already quite low," Eve said. "If we want to find any, we'll have to move quickly."

"I think we should split in groups," I proposed. "One group helps with the evacuation, while the other one holds back... whatever those things are."

"Dibs on the evacuation group."

"Henry... we are not going to decide the groups like that," Freeze, who had been silent until now, finally spoke. "I think we should hold back Julian and his army, while Elsword, Rena, Eve and Ara help with the evacuation."

"That makes sense," John added. "We know how Julian and his goons fight, so it would maximize the damage we can deal to his army."

"And we know this city really well," Eve concluded. "So we can navigate through it with ease."

"Alright, it's settled then!" Rena turned towards my friends and smiled slightly. "Let's go, we have a lot to do!" I saw Elsword muttering something, and she patted his head. "And no complaining."

Freeze's POV

After the girls and Elsword left to look out for survivors, we headed to the place that seemed to have the most enemy activity.

"You're awfully quiet today, Firen." Woody pointed out. And it was true. Ever since the incident with Henry, he had barely talked.

"Oh... yeah... sorry about that..." Firen still looked quite nervous, even though that misunderstanding had happened at least 6 hours before.

"Firen, try to relax a bit," Dennis patted his shoulder. "It's no good to get stressed over that. I'm sure Henry didn't mean to shoot an arrow at you. You can always apologize to him later."

"Uh... Dennis..." Davis started muttering.

"Besides, it's not like he hates you or anything. In fact, I think you are one of the people he gets along with easier."

"Dennis..."

"Plus, he's not crazy enough to kill you. He knows we'd be on his ass quicker than you can say-"

"Dennis... I'm right here," Henry was walking right next to Dennis, and he didn't look pleased at all. "I've been walking right next to you for the past 10 minutes."

"Oh! I... uh..." Dennis quickly looked around, then rushed in a random direction. "Hey! No one checked out that building!"

Deep facepalmed and let out a deep sigh. Meanwhile, Davis started talking to Woody, and then they looked at us. "Hey guys, want to join our little bet?"

Dennis' POV

After leaving the others before Henry tried to shoot me, I actually felt curious about the random building I had entered. So I decided to check it out. It was a small and comfy house, of maybe 4 or 5 rooms. And I say maybe because I only entered 2. The first one had nothing interesting. But when I arrived to the second one, I was greeted by a blade that stopped only a few centimeters away from my face.

"Can I help you?" The owner of the blade, a young red-haired man smirked as he tipped my chin with a huge axe.

"No, thanks. I'm good." I glanced at the boy for a few seconds. He had blue eyes, and wore a red t-shirt beneath a black coat, a pair of dark, worn-out jeans, and two leather boots. Quite stylish, if you ask me. "Hey, would you pull that away? Having blades so close to my throat kind of makes me nervous."

The boy studied my face for a while, and then he pulled away his weapon. "Sure. You don't seem to be dangerous," He then extended his hand towards me. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay. It's always good to be cautious..." I looked around as I shook the guy's hand. Besides him, there was a young, white-haired girl with a lollipop. She looked at me curiously with her big, green eyes, like she was trying to mentally solve a puzzle without moving a single piece. I returned my gaze to the boy that was now sitting next to the girl. "Oh! I'm Dennis, by the way."

"Dewon. And this girl is Echo," Dewon looked at the girl, then back at me. "I was actually at her shop when all this happened."

"But what exactly happened?"

"I can't tell you all the details," Dewon assumed a thinking pose "but I can tell you that we heard a huge explosion outside, and when we left the shop, everything was in flames. Echo told me we shouldn't stay in her shop because of all the flammable liquids she has stored, so I brought her here."

"Flammable liquids?" I turned towards Echo. "Do you sell fuel or something like that?"

"I'm an alchemist," Echo kept sucking on her lollipop. "I work with dangerous substances all the time."

"Oh... that's cool." I actually lied a bit there, since I had no idea what an alchemist was. But that was not really important at the time.

Dewon looked out the window, staring into the purple flames that rose from within the burning buildings with a worried expression. "I've never seen something like this before."

"Hey, don't worry," I knelt down in front of Dewon and Echo. "My friends are over there right now, and will try to stop them for as long as possible. Meanwhile, you two should probably leave the city."

"And run away from a fight? You clearly don't know me."

"Not really, but I know what we are dealing with. Besides, we can't just leave Echo alone. Trust me. Me and my friends, we know what we are facing."

Deep's POV

'What... the hell... is that thing?'

Lost: Done!

Deep: Seriously? That's it!? JUST A THOUGHT!? THAT'S MY WHOLE POV!?

Lost: Don't worry about it. You'll have the first POV in the next chapter. I promise.

Deep: It better be true.

Alma: I like how the story is going so far.

Elsword: It needs way more action.

Lost: Alright. But keep in mind that more action means more risk of death. *evil smile*

Henry: Yeah... I think I'm not going to appear in the next chapter...

Lost: Of course you are.

Henry: You can't make me.

Lost: Of course I can.

Dennis: Oh, come on, Henry! It'll be fun!

Henry: I doubt it.

Elsword: Wanna switch?

Lost: No switching.

Elsword: Oh, come on!

Rena: Well, that's it for this chapter! Please rate and review! We'll all appreciate it!

Eve: Feedback is greatly encouraged. It helps improve not only this story, but also future works by the author.

John: You heard them. Help the author. He'll truly appreciate it.

Lost: I sure will. Well, see you all next time!