We gathered everything valuable from them and headed back to the road. "Aha-ha-ha, Art, well done! If it weren't for you... Yes, having mages around is so convenient after all," Kaus rejoiced.
The sun had finally set, and a dark steppe stretched out ahead. Suddenly, a dark spot appeared in the distance.
"A wolf, perhaps?" Kaus squinted.
We drew closer. The silhouette raised its head, and two brightly glowing eyes stared right at us. "Nah, it's just a stray dog," Shren waved it off.
At that mont, Shish, sitting on Rianna's shoulder, arched his back and hissed terribly, frantically in the direction of the creature. Rianna imdiately pulled the reins, stopping her horse. "Stop."
"What's wrong?" Kaus didn't understand. "Just a mutt."
"The cat is hissing," she said sternly. "That ans there is deadly danger ahead."
"What? Maybe he's just afraid of dogs?"
Rianna looked at her comrades with a serious gaze: "No. He senses a threat. In the forest, he saved our lives."
A mory seed to flash in my head. That dark alley in Karvi... Shish had also hissed then a second before the girl started screaming. I rembered Father. Shish is no ordinary cat.
The dog still sat there, looking at us with glowing eyes, and the situation was getting creepier by the second. Its muzzle seed to elongate unnaturally. Suddenly its jaws opened wide, and an incredibly long tongue flopped out. The creature snapped its jaws shut, and its body began to transform with a disgusting crunch. Bones broke and fused differently, stretching into a human figure. The horses neighed in panic. Shish hissed even more furiously.
A man slowly approached us. Very skinny. When the moon ca out from behind the clouds and illuminated his face, I shuddered. In his right eye, right on the pupil, a black equilateral triangle was clearly visible. His gaze was incredibly sad.
"Transformation is a difficult and ungrateful thing," he said quietly, with anguish. "In most cases, it is not a gift, but a curse. Just like in mine."
"What the..." Shren began.
The stranger casually threw up his hands. An invisible shockwave swept us from our saddles. We crashed heavily to the ground, and the terrified horses galloped away into the steppe.
The man slowly stepped toward us: "So it was you who killed my cultists. I don't like it when my dolls are broken. I spend so much ti building everything up, weaving the threads... And you ruin everything. It's so difficult with you."
Shren, lying on the ground, raised his musket and pulled the trigger without thinking. A shot rang out. The bullet pierced the stranger's shoulder right through, tearing out a chunk of at. But in the very next instant, the flesh on his shoulder writhed and fused back together, not even leaving a scar.
"Actually, that hurts, you know?" the man said, and then threw his head back and burst into an insane, rolling laugh: "HA-HA-HA-HA!"
A sickening crunch was heard. Shren's neck bent backwards unnaturally, as if an invisible force had broken his spine. A shard of bone tore the skin on his throat. The lockpicker wheezed, blowing bloody bubbles and twitching in agony.
"Don't worry, you won't die quickly!" the skinny man announced joyfully. "I will make sure you die in agony. I will keep you alive until you start begging
for death!"
Kaus rushed at him with a growl, drawing his dagger. A snap of fingers—and the old man's shin snapped in half with a loud crack. Kaus collapsed face down in the mud. The man walked over, grabbed him by his gray hair, and lifted his head.
"Wow! We have a marked one here. I leave ones like you so you can spread my na. Well, did you do a good job?"
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"Y-you... you..." Kaus wheezed, growing pale from the pain. "YES! I am the Envoy of the Demon of Immortality!" he disgustedly tossed Kaus aside like a rag doll.
I turned my head to Rianna. In her eyes, always so cold, despair was splashing.
"We won't win," she whispered. "But they won't let us escape either. Well then... this is it, my death."
With a cry, she rushed at the Envoy. He looked at her with a strange expression, easily jumped over her lunge, and ended up behind her. He leaned in and whispered sothing I didn't hear: "So you are the Vessel of War... Ah, a lost one. She's probably been looking everywhere for you. As a good friend, I will help her." He snapped his fingers. Rianna instantly went limp and collapsed to the ground unconscious.
His triangular pupil focused on . I reached for my sword, but in the blink of an eye, he was right in front of . "Pillar of Fire!" I shouted, concentrating my mana.
Crunch. My right arm twisted unnaturally at the joint.
"A-A-A-A!" I fell to my knees, frantically backing away.
"Ha-ha-ha, kid! You're the last one. But, alas, we already have a marked one. So there's no point in you living."
His movent was too fast. A flash of agony tore through my mind. His index finger plunged deep right into my right eye. "A-A-A-A!" I rolled on the ground, screaming from the tearing, blinding pain. Blood flooded my face.
The Envoy straightened up, enjoying the spectacle. "HA-HA-HA-HA! I love this so much! How you suffer! Co on, beg
to kill you!"
Shren, gurgling with blood, squeezed out first: "Please... please... kill ..." The Envoy joyfully walked up to him. BOOM. The lockpicker's body simply tore into pieces, showering us in a rain of blood and flesh.
"And the rest?" The Envoy snapped his fingers again, and the dry grass around us erupted in a ring of fire.
And then, through the crackle of the flas, the clang of tal rang out. My sword left its scabbard.
"What? You can still stand?" the demon was genuinely surprised.
I stood. Using ice magic, I stopped the bleeding and dulled the hellish pain. With an icy crust, I bound my twisted arm, forcefully slamming the joint back into place. I couldn't see anything with my right eye, but with my left, I looked at the enemy.
I gripped the hilt of the naless sword given to
by my father. "Wind acceleration... Lunge!"
BOOM! A gust of air shot
forward. I was right next to him. At that mont, the Envoy wasn't looking at —his triangular pupil dilated, he was staring srized at the blade of my sword. He didn't even try to dodge.
My blade slashed across his chest. A massive sonic boom rang out, a monstrous gust of wind threw
backward, crushing the grass and extinguishing the flas.
My body had reached its limit. Pain and exhaustion took over, and my consciousness faded.
What was that just now?..
I ca to my senses from a throbbing pain. My dislocated arm ached, and my right eye felt as if it were burning. Shish walked up to
and carefully pressed his fluffy head right against my mutilated face. Surprisingly, the burning pain began to slowly recede, giving way to a tolerable, soothing coolness.
I struggled to my feet and looked around.
"Kaus... Kaus!" I called hoarsely and, stumbling, rushed to the old man's motionless body.
I turned him over and instantly recoiled in horror, barely holding back nausea. Kaus's face was horribly disfigured. All his teeth had been brutally knocked out and poured to the brim into his own, yawningly empty eye sockets.
"What the... WHAT KIND OF DEVIL IS THIS?!" I scread into the emptiness of the night steppe.
I rushed to Rianna. She lay a little further away—breathing evenly, completely intact, without a single wound or scratch, but still in a deep faint. I caught my breath and looked down at my naless sword lying in the mud. My mind refused to understand.
(Shortly before this. Mount Slick)
Alastia, Naya, and Zenkhald had been continuously watching Art through Shish's eyes this entire ti.
"Good for Art, how well he protected his guys with that water do," Naya said proudly, watching the forest ambush.
But when the mysterious dog appeared on the road and the cat hissed aggressively, the atmosphere in the room changed instantly. Alastia tensed and imdiately looked at her husband. Zenkhald sat absolutely motionless, his face expressing not a single emotion.
"Father! Help Art, he's going to die there!" Naya cried out when the Envoy began to dispatch her brother's companions with frightening ease.
With bated breath, they reached the mont when Art's eye was pierced. Alastia jumped up from her seat abruptly, her face turning pale with horror.
"I... I just won't make it there in ti! Zenkhald, intervene!"
Zenkhald slowly rose. Ti to show off—my son is dying, and I'm going to epically save him. A sword appeared out of nowhere in his hand. Exactly the sa as Art's. These were paired blades, the true na of which in this world sounded like Swords of Destiny.
Zenkhald smoothly drew his blade from the scabbard at the exact mont when the wounded Art unsheathed his in the distant steppe. Through the connection of the paired blades, Zenkhald saw everything that was reflected in the blade of his son's sword.
"Oh, grass," Zenkhald pronounced calmly, looking at the reflection of the burning steppe in his blade.
Then, with an imperceptible movent, he turned the hilt in his hand.
At that very mont, there, in the south, when Art made his desperate lunge with wind acceleration, the Envoy of the Demon of Immortality froze. He was inactive not because he was struck by the boy's speed.
In the tal of Art's blade, the demon saw Zenkhald's gaze.
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