( Outside the arena, Cervantez and Luke )
Luke and Cervantez were in relatively good moods after their fights ended, however, they could not enjoy their wins until they reached the guild back safely.
From the second that they stepped outside the arena boundary, there were various agents trailing them, as the two constantly felt as if there were a dozen eyes on them.
There were a few individuals who did not even bother hiding themselves and followed them around brazenly, as regardless of what street the two turned into or how fast they walked, they kept following the duo at a constant distance.
"This is going to be more troublesome than we imagined-" Cervantez sighed and told Luke, as he noticed that the men chasing behind them had taken out short knives and were now concealing them with their hands.
This was a clear attempt to hurt them. As soon as they could, the attackers were ready to stab Cervantez and Luke, who were now feeling concerned for their own safety.
"What to do now?" Luke asked Cervantez, who checked their surroundings and realized that although they were on a busy street, there were at least 15 men who were keeping an eye on them.
"Well, we definitely can't take the route ahead to our guild, they probably already know our path by having trailed us in the morning and could have set up an ambush.
We can't fight them here either, as attacking them first will mean that one of these onlookers will report us to the local authorities and we will be jailed as criminals.
Being jailed would undoubtedly be the worst outcome as with a criminal record we would immediately be disqualified from the grand tournament….." Cervantez said, as he explained to Luke how they could neither proceed on their current path, nor pick a fight with their opponents.
"I have a skill that allows me to call out to Brown Pudding if she's within a one mile radius of me.
But for it to activate we need to change directions and move towards the Knight Academy, because Brown Pudding is currently at the academy stables.
If we can call out to her, then she can fly us away from prying eyes and to the guild headquarters." Luke said, as Cervantez contemplated his offer for a while.
While not the ideal strategy, desperation had set in for the duo as it became apparent that a certain group had deliberately hired street thugs, with the intention of using them to intimidate and harm promising competitors.
Currently it was impossible to shake them off if they kept walking down the path to the guild, while starting a fight first wasn't an option either, which was why despite Luke's plan not being an optimal one, Cervantez decided to go with it.
"Alright, let's keep walking normally for now, then at the first left, we turn directions and sprint.
Let's give these bastards a good jog if they want to try and keep up with us" Cervantez said after covering his lips with his palms as Luke looked into his eyes and nodded.
The duo walked normally for a few steps, before the street broke off into a crossroads and then suddenly changed directions to turn left, and immediately dashed.
[ Body Reinforcement ]
Luke activated the skill body reinforcement, boosting his physical stats by 20% as he tried to run at his top speed.
Since he was a balanced knight class player, Luke had mostly distributed his stats evenly, meaning that while his overall stats were good, his agility stat in itself was not very high.
Hence, even with his 20% speed boost, Luke could barely keep up with Cervantez, who despite not using any abilities was slightly faster than Luke.
The moment they sprinted, their followers realized that their initial plan of setting up an ambush down the road was foiled as they improvised and chased behind the escaping duo with naked blades in hand.
*Gaaaaa-*
One of the pursuers screamed as he ran with a blade in his hand, looking like an absolute maniac as the common NPC's screamed and stuck to one side of the road, moving out of his way.
Some onlookers chased the duo from the nearby building walls, as they ran on-top of ledges and parkoured their way through the chase, while the local thugs chased on foot.
For 15 minutes, they played this game of cat and mouse as Luke and Cervantez were able to shake off 50% of their pursuers who were either too slow or did not have the stamina to carry on.
However, after 15 minutes as they came very close to the Knight Academy, the duo finally stopped running, as Luke made his call for Brown Pudding to come pick them up.
"How *pant* long *pant* will it take for your Griffin to come here?" Cervantez asked, panting, as Luke looked at his surroundings, before roughly calculating the distance from the academy.
"2 minutes at the maximum" he said, as Cervantez grinned and took out his sword.
The enemies chasing them were also visibly winded as they clutched their knees and tried to catch their breaths, however, despite their rough shape, they seemed resolved to continue this fight.
"You made a big mistake by making an enemy out of the uprising. Boss ChaosBringer is not an opponent you should have picked on-" said one of the street thugs that attacked Cervantez, as Cervantez easily disarmed him and broke his nose by hitting it with his elbow.
"ChaosBringer? Since when does he control the underworld?" Cervantez asked, as he felt confused about what was going on.
He knew about the uprising, it was a small time underground faction in his past life that was involved in a lot of criminal activities, however, he had no idea as to when their influence spread over to controlling the NPC underworld of Stronghaven.
As of now, Cervantez had no idea on how rapidly the uprising was expanding, nor did he know how ChaosBringer had put a hit order on every single contestant not named 'TheBoss'.