Taking the Mafia to the Magic World

About a day after Casey manipulated Lauren's memories, using part of what Vicente had experienced, the group would finish recovering from their seclusion in the cave where they had hidden.",

Even Torne and Onyx meditated for a while after Vicente had spent some time recovering.

When everyone had finished, they went ahead with their plans to travel south, not waiting for Lauren to wake up before returning to their escape from the dangerous northern region.

With two more days on the run since they destroyed Nixlas' Shadows, the group would be in a totally different place from the Valley of Lightning when Lauren awoke from her coma.

...

Vicente and his group were flying at high speed, with his friends using the features of their armor to fly at the same speed as him and Onyx.

Lauren was duly strapped to Onyx's back, still asleep amidst the movement of the group that were planning to leave the northern region in the next month's journey.

They were now much stronger than when they had come to this area of the continent to hunt Vicente's pentagrams. The journey back south would certainly be quicker than the journey north.

Even so, the group was in more or less the same mood, solemn, worried, and on alert, wanting to leave the area as quickly as they could.

Amid this feeling, Lauren was in a cold sweat from her nightmares, her eyes rolling back as she repeatedly saw Vicente's memories, feeling strange things about herself.

The sensation she felt when visiting the Fuller residence grew even stronger, making her doubt her origin more and more.

Nixlas' Shadows had two types of members. Native members and non-native members. In short, the natives were the sect's minority, people who were born into the sect and from a young age were raised to become its relevant members. The non-natives were those brought in from outside the sect—the majority—those who would become the pawns in the leaders' game.

Once in a while, a non-native like Lauren grew a lot within the sect, but that was a rarity. As such, most of the non-natives firmly believed that everyone in the sect was actually a native who had had their memories erased in order to stimulate the extreme feelings necessary for their powers to mature.

They didn't know, however, that the native members in fact didn't go through such a process and were the ones who, when they reached prominent positions, brainwashed only their non-native members.

Until that moment, Lauren thought she was a native of the sect and still doubted her kinship with Vicente. But when she saw his memories, and felt many affinities with the things Casey had shown her, she couldn't help but feel strange.

While feeling a mixture of emotions amidst her constant nightmares, she took a deep breath and then opened her eyes, finally waking up after over three days unconscious.

As she woke up, she felt her surroundings and noticed she was still in Vicente's hands, being carried by a beast, while the rest of the group was flying south.

She couldn't see, but she looked in Vicente's direction, this time getting a better idea of what he looked like because of the memories she had got.

'These aren't my memories. Why am I so affected?' Lauren asked herself as she turned her face towards Vicente, her two hands pressed together. 'Why do I feel this way about him?

Her feelings for Vicente were still of hatred for the defeats he had made her suffer. But now she also felt a small squeeze in her heart at the thought of him, feeling sorry for the poor boy who had lost his mother, father and older sister, before becoming, at 11, responsible for himself and a five-year-old child.

Even if she wasn't the Lauren Vicente remembered, she couldn't help but feel strange about her enemy's story. She didn't remember any tragedies, having only killed people on her journey. But never in those years had she felt a sense of loss like the one Vice felt between his 10th and 11th birthdays.

Even though she didn't accept Vicente's memories, she understood a different side to her kidnapper.

As well as looking at him differently now compared to three days ago, she couldn't ignore the bad feeling in her heart concerning the woman who was Vicente's mother.

'Worms! Why did those two have to fight so close to such weak people?

Without meaning to, she saw the enemies who had caused Kate's death as horrible people who deserved to die for what they had done on that fateful day.

She wasn't the type to feel sorry, even for innocent people. But when she thought of Dax and Malik, she abhorred those two men responsible for Kate's death, Nina's deafness and the blindness of the young girl Vicente thought was her.

The depressing image of Andrew in his last days also made her feel strange. Seeing a strong, cheerful man become totally miserable and eventually die of grief was something exceptional.

Amid her confused thoughts, she would spend the next two hours trying to adjust to the memories she had received without uttering a single word.

But then, as the group was approaching their first stop since leaving the previous cave, she asked Vicente. "What happened to those two?"

"Who?" Vicente looked at her, while the others continued to pay attention to the forest below them.

"The ones called Malik and Dax."

Layla and Casey identified the two names, momentarily glancing at Vicente.

He answered his sister. "They're both dead. I killed them a few years ago. Their families are dead too. I made each of them feel what it was like to see their loved ones destroyed without them being able to do anything to change the situation."

"Good! They deserved it!" she commented with a subtle smile on her face.

Rory heard that and asked. "Are you remembering your life, Lauren?"

Everyone was interested, aware of how important this would be for Vicente.

"I'm not the Lauren you knew." Lauren opened her mouth as she returned to her usual coolness. "I just think those two deserved to suffer slowly for what they did. Those were the kind of people I wouldn't use my special ability to kill. I would torture them slowly, before killing them with my own hands!"