Ashton was torn between fear and worry; on one hand, he needed to know what was going on, and on the other hand, he didn’t feel up for the fight.
At least not yet.
But despite his fears, he didn’t do anything stupid or outrageous; he just forced himself to arrive at the farm as soon as he could.
"What are you doing here?" Ashton said in a slightly agitated tone, startling the two men in front of him.
The two men were currently standing in front of the plant he was here for, the banana tree that had been barely managing to survive, and from his footsteps it was obvious that they had probably done a lot of things to it.
knowing he was about to confront these two men, Ashton had hidden the Supporting Stemman behind him to prevent attracting too much attention.
"Oh oh, if it isn’t the crazy loner," one of the men said with a strange smirk. Almost as if he was trying to hide his panic, sadly Ashton didn’t really pick up on the signs.
"Brother, why are you so shocked? we are actually on his farm," the other man said with a taunting smile.
"We are sorry; we are leaving now," he added before pulling his brother away.
Ashton watched as the two of them walked through his farm without a care for the plants; they stepped on anything that was in their way.
"Bastard," he cursed under his breath.
He did a cursory scan to assess the damage on the land before turning to look at the little guy, with hopeful eyes.
"Do you think you can make these mature?" he said while pointing at the underdeveloped banana stalk on the tree.
Though making mashed bananas wasn’t that much better than mashed potatoes, it was still not bad to have a difference in flavor.
The stemman looked up at the tree before saying ’Yes’ with a nod. Just like when it had healed Ashton’s injuries, it approached the tree in tiny steps and then stretched his hand forward.
Ashton, in turn, felt a drain in his Willforce. Though he had gotten quite a large increase in a short amount of time, the consecutive loss he had felt was also present, making him slightly uncomfortable.
’I better not use any more abilities for a while,’ he thought while he looked at the tiny green specs flowing out of the small hand.
As each spec landed on the tree, Ashton could see it visibly growing larger than it was previously. The bark grew one thicker, and the trunk was taller from the ground. The main point: the bananas were also growing at a physically obvious rate.
Though the quantity didn’t actually increase, the few on the tree had grown much larger. It even continued until they ripened, something Ashton was sure wouldn’t happen ordinarily.
To top it all off, the tree even sprouted a single sucker beside it.
With that, the Stemman was done with its assigned task; it just retracted its hand and turned around, instead of returning to Ashton’s side, it headed to the first part of the farm that was ruffled and slowly began taking care of it.
Since most of the things on his farm were potatoes, it slowly rearranged the creeping plants with a contented smile on its face.
"We need to get back as soon as possible," Ashton said, but it didn’t listen; it just kept doing its thing.
He wanted to say something else and press harder, but Ashton, something in him also wanted to clean it up, so he gave in and joined it. Little did he know what he was about to set off with this wait.
Not too far away
"Bro, are you sure it’s fine to just leave that bastard without teaching him a lesson?" one of the two men that had just left Ashton’s farm said.
"I think it’s fine; what lord Marlus told us to do is much worse than beating him, and since we have done that, everything else is minor," the other one responded.
"I guess that’s right. I wonder what he did to Lord Marlus for him to deserve such a thing, especially since there’s a child with him now."
When he finished speaking, he suddenly noticed his partner had stopped walking, so he had to stop too and ask.
"What?" he asked.
"Liam, what you said suddenly made me remember there was actually a kid with him. Don’t you think it’s weird?" he said with a confused face.
"Yes, Mail, it is weird, but that doesn’t really concern us."
"But it does; information like this will obviously interest Lord Marlus, and you know he hates half-baked—"
"If we want to tell him, we need to find out more."
The two of them stood in their spot for a few more seconds before their thinking faces switched up into a smile.
"Are you thinking what I am thinking, Liam?"
"Yes, I am Mail."
"Let’s return," they both said at the same time.
All while all that was going on, Ashton and the Stemman were already done with their clean up, he had even harvested the two bunches of bananas and put them in a rucksack. They were ready to return home.
’I hope this return journey is much more peaceful and quiet.’
Sadly his hope was soon squashed.
They hadn’t walked really far when Ashton caught the sight of the two men they had met not too long ago walking back towards them.
’What do they want again?’ he thought with his brows furrowed.
"Stay behind me," he said to Stemman as a form of prevention.
The two groups got closer before eventually meeting in the middle.
"We meet again, Crazy loner," the one called Liam said with a smile, but Ashton didn’t respond; he just stared at them with an unwavering glare.
"Chill, chill, we aren’t here to fight. All we want to do is know where you found this child."
"If you aren’t going to tell us, you can at least let us see the face; who knows if you have kidnapped someone else’s child? Like who wraps up a child in such thick clothing?" Mail said.
The two of them didn’t wait for Ashton’s response; one of them shoved him to the side while the other approached the Stemman, without hesitation he yanked off the clothes.
On the side, Ashton’s eyes suddenly widened in shock while a thought formed in his head.
’Ohh shit.’
Guys, we haven’t named the Legion members, if you would like to pitch a name for any of them. All you need to do is drop a comment and vote with power stones