Leo immediately turned to the other side and saw a bunch of members coming in from that side. He could sense 15 people rushing in from there. They had all heard the sound from the earlier Flame Burst.
Since the group that was coming in from the other side was not expecting the magic attack, none of them put up any form of a shield, and all of them were directly hit by the Flame Burst. None of them survived. They were a total of 7 people who got caught up in the attack.
Leo had shadow stepped to the other side of the hallway. There were only 8 people left on that side and it would be easier to deal with them than the other 15 people at once. Also, he was on the side that was the closest to the staircase.
If any of the members needed to go down to warn the rest of the members that they were being attacked, they would have to go through him.
When he suddenly appeared in front of the group of drunk members, they all instinctively put up Aura Shields. Instead of trying to break through the shields, Leo went behind them using another Shadow Step. Their shields only covered a portion of their bodies and their backs were completely unprotected.
He threw a Flame Burst at them and Shadow Stepped back to the front. He didn’t have a lot of time, but he still had priorities. He was going to loot the pouches of the group he killed initially. The Flame Burst already did its job with the second group and killed all of them as well.
Once he got all of their pouches, the 15-member group on the other side of the hallway got close to him. They were spending some time checking what the corpses were and when they realized that they were burnt-up gang members, they got ready to fight.
However, they were facing Leo, a 2nd Star Mage. They didn’t stand a chance against him and met the same fate as everyone else on the floor. At this point, he had taken out everyone on the 1st and 2nd floors.
While he was looting the rest of the members, he also kept in mind that he was running out of time. He had made so much noise that the members downstairs had realized that something was going on above them. They stopped making as much noise and he could sense people crowding up the staircase.
They were coming for him, but he was ready. His plan was finally starting to come to fruition. All the Flame Bursts that he had used had started to collect. The lingering flames didn’t die off at all.
Some of them caught on to the curtains and some to the clothes of the members. The entire hallway was filled with flames. The flames were also starting to intensify and push out of the hallway. Eventually, they were going to engulf the entire mansion, given enough time.
He quickly ran into the room where he initially hid the corpse and dragged out the woman on the bed there. She was still intoxicated, but the sudden movement woke her up. He quickly dragged her with him to the window on the side away from the staircase. The window lead to the back of the house where the leader lived.
He looked down and saw a pool there. He quickly slapped the woman, completely waking her up.
“Can you swim?” He asked her.
She nodded lightly. She was swaying lightly. He slapped her again, harder this time.
“Wake up!” He screamed. She sobered up a little to the shout.
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were more awake.
“Get ready to swim out!” He shouted. He couldn’t let her go back to her previous state.
She nodded in agreement. She couldn’t comprehend what was going on. All she could feel was the heat from the flames. Leo chucked her out of the window, into the pool. She landed in the pool and reached the bottom quickly.
She was able to kick onto the ground and swim to the top. She started swimming to the side and got out of the pool. Once she did, she lay on the side of the pool and went back to her sleep.
Meanwhile, Leo had to deal with his new opponents. They were standing on the other end of the hallway, looking at him. They didn’t cross it because of the flames that filled up the hallway. Leo could see almost 20 people there, but he knew there were even more hiding around the corner.
He smiled and waved. He then jumped out the window and landed in the pool. He wasn’t trying to fight all those members. That would be the most foolish thing to do. His plan from the beginning was to just burn down the entire mansion and kill the leader.
He didn’t have to actually kill every single member of the Blacktooth Gang. A gang was only its leader. With the head of the pack gone, the rest were just weak 1st Circle Aura Knights who would get their ass handed to them on a platter by any random person in the Commoner’s District. Of course, he would have to dwindle their numbers just enough to make sure they wouldn’t cause problems.
If there were too many, they would be a worrying variable in the fight against the leader. If he scared them off beforehand, his fight would be a lot easier. The problem was that the leader was a Late-Stage 2nd Circle Aura Knight. This meant that he would have to be very careful in the fight, or he would lose his life.
He knew where the leader was, but he didn’t go there yet. The leader was in a part of the mansion that was behind the pool. It was separated from the other part of the mansion completely and so none of the sound that came from the part where he just created a mess actually carried on there.
The leader had no idea that his entire gang was being ravaged by a single person. Leo walked back into the main mansion. He saw a person running out toward the place where the leader was but before he could get there, Leo shot him with a magic bullet.
He re-entered the mansion to dwindle down their number even more. Now, he changed his tactics. Instead of openly firing Flame Bursts, he was camping near the door that members would have to go through to get to their leader. It was a door that lead straight out of the hall, so there were a lot of members there.
At this point, the entire first floor was filled with flames. The members didn’t even try to cross the hallway and had come down to the hall to cross it and get to him. The flames were starting to spill into the second floor and the ground floor. Leo took a deep breath. He was moving to the second last step in his plan.