A Crimson Rising Sun

"What do you mean teacher ?" Evelyn asked, curious of what he did even if she had guessed thanks to his incantation.

"I *cough* asked the ghosts around here about what had happened. Unsurprisingly, a few were those of the carriage guards so they gave me the information we needed." Jack answered, showing a bloodied grin.

"Are you alright?" Laena said worriedly as he was coughing.

"Yeah i'm fine, don't worry about that. My mana circuits are still too fresh and neutral for the kind of energy I create. They get a bit ripped apart every time I cast a spell of this level of this level... Ah, I should recreate your Raven's Feather too Laena."

"Thanks teacher !" The elf happily nodded as she knew the power of his gift. She still wondered who was this voice she heard thought.

The two girls then followed their tutor through the forest as he made his way following the path he had been told and were forced to stop after half an hour. Turning back toward them, Jack smiled and said in a low voice :

"Stay behind me and try to look as inoffensive as possible. For this camp you will just watch from behind and get some experience. Furthermore, I think that there is more than we think here but well... We'll see."

Unsheathing the sword he had bought, he drew a weird black rune on the blade looking like a reversed cross with some dark magic coursing through his left hand. Sensing the curious gaze of his students, he explained them with a pained voice :

"This is a basic rune that grant some power to items. The quality of the rune, the caster and the item all influence the effect the item will have. I just applied a simple curse on this blade, nothing really flashy but it should get the work done. By the way, this is the second way to create a magic item like your sword Laena."

She smiled and nodded, feeling grateful toward his doting father and his precious gift. Evelyn watched the rune, trying to understand it and felt that it was something terribly vicious.

"T-teacher, what is this Curse supposed to do?" The young girl asked with a trembling voice.

"Your senses are quite sharp for a newcomer since you can fear it." Jack laughed. "It is a different Curse than the one I infused in the coin the last time, this one is more... Efficient against this many enemies. Well, you will see. Let's go !"

The group walked out of the forest and ended in a large plain, seeing some wooden structures far away in the distance.

"These are watchtower, teacher. If this is the whole bandit camp then it's way bigger than what we expected..." Laena announced, seeing quite well thanks to her elven senses.

"Indeed. There is no way that a group of this size would have made a mistake as huge as letting somebody get away and call the guards or the adventurers. Either they are newbies or.... "

"... This is a trap." Evelyn finished his sentence, frowning. They had been warned of the adventurer's killer groups during their evaluation and it had scared her quite a lot. Those bandits or intelligent being parties gave hints of their presence, baited under ranked adventurers and killed them before running away, repeating the process further away.

This was quite a lucrative business for the bandits as the adventurers had usually a good equipment on them since their dangerous job required them to protect their lives well. Furthermore, it was easier to bait adventurers than to ambush merchant caravans since their passage were random while you could wait for your preys to come in your sweet home.

"Mhh... This might get troublesome if they have mages but they shouldn't. Stay behind me children, I might have to go all out on this one." Jack gravely announced. His mana circuits were still wounded and throbbing but he was fine with it.

'Destroying my circuits like this might slow down their growth a lot but at least they get tempered and used to my mana faster. This might even be useful for me since I could produce way purer elemental mana but my body can't take it right now. Well, enough rambling, let's focus. Lifeform Enhancement.' The immortal thought, turning his eyes golden and allowing him to capt every movement as they walked toward the bandit base.

This version of the spell lasted way longer but was less effective as it was only boosting his vision and reaction time. He didn't need the rest as he knew that he had other weapons than his blade in case of trouble.

Getting closer to the towers and the log wall that had been built between them, they could see figures running around on the top of the guard posts. A few minutes later, a voice came from the camp.

"Adventurers, surrender all your equipment and we will let you go away. Resist and you will die !"

"Why should we surrender when we are this far away from you all? We could simply run away no?" Jack said in a provoking tone.

"Guys, get up and show them our superiority !" The voice ordered.

On their left and right side, four men got up and armed their longbow while grinning. Laena had already noticed them from the moment they got close but said nothing, trusting her teacher while Evelyn looked around worriedly.

"You wouldn't dare to damage their smooth face would you?" The immortal laughed, looking around while pointing his two students. They both frowned, wondering what their mentor was trying to do.

'Is he.. Enjoying this ?' Laena thought. After looking a bit more at his ravenous grin growing while the bandits were gazing at her body with lustful eyes, she understood. 'He just wanted to check if they were human trashes or not. From his smile I guess that he is satisfied with the answer and will happily dispose of them.'

Evelyn had way less self control than her elven friend and was simply looking at her teacher with hope in her eyes, wishing that he would make them stop those disgusting gazes fast.

"You are right but don't worry if you surrender nobody will hurt them." The voice said from the other side of the wall with a mocking tone.

"The offer is indeed alluring but your men already overstepped their rights with their disgusting gazes. If you kill them all before me I might accept thought." Jack cheerily replied while turning around, showing his smile to the eight bandits surrounding them. They shuddered but still kept their arrows nocked and ready to fire off toward this weird man and his attracting companions.

"I am sorry but it seems that this discussion has ended. Kill him but don't hit the girls guys !" The voice ordered with a decided tone.

The bandits immediately acted and showed a surprising well trained behavior, drawing the bowstring and firing in less than two seconds. Jack simply looked at them and threw four Ice Arrow on the right side, stabbing them in the neck before they could fire except one who still managed to shoot.

Feeling the painful rebound of the instant cast of those four spells, the immortal ran toward the left rank of his foes and dodged the arrows effortlessly thanks to his heightened senses. He hadn't expected that one could still fire from behind him and panicked a little when he felt the projectile coming but fortunately it had missed him anyway.

Closing in, he dodged another volley and smiled ferociously at the terrified black man in front of him.

"M-Monster !" He screamed before Jack lunged it and pierced his body with his cursed blade.

"If you continue to use this nickname I will start to take a liking to it you know." The immortal replied, grinning and pulling his sword out of the man's body. Then, while he was running toward his next prey, the corpse suddenly got up and walked toward the wooden wall's gate. Evelyn remembered herself of her teacher's first performance when she met him and remembered herself :

'He was a necromancer...' Seeing the scary sight of a bloodied man suddenly rising up and uneasily going toward the bandit's fort, she couldn't help but feel some rejection toward this undead.

On the watchtowers, the guards were all panicking and you could hear them scream :

"He's a magician !"

"A monster, that's a fucking monster !"

"Why did Rael's body get up again?!?"

During this time, Jack had reaped two other lives and send the zombies he made with their body toward the door. Since the rune on his sword had faded after having done his job, he decided to turn the last man in a slightly better undead and caught him alive after he tried to run away. Putting his hand on the man's torso, he muttered :

"Red Skeleton, follow me."

Then, an inhumane scream froze everyone and forced them to turn their gaze toward Jack who was getting up and a silhouette which was currently trashing around in a bubbling puddle of blood. Feeling his left hand shaking, the immortal threw his sword away since he knew that he couldn't use his left arm for now.

The spell he had used allowed him to raise a powerful undead out of a living man's body but the rebound ravaged his mana circuits especially around his left hand since he had channeled the mana through there. Still, the result was good since a skeleton with red bones rose from the puddle of blood and destroyed clothes. It then grabbed his bow and nocked a bloodied arrow, aiming for the guards frozen on the watchtowers.

This woke them up as they too took their weapons and aimed at Jack and his monstrous creations. The girls had backed off since they knew that it would turn into a battlefield but were still impressed and terrified by their teacher's performance.

While the zombies were pounding the wooden door which stopped them from entering the camp, Jack and his skeleton were murdering all the daredevils who tried to shoot at him from the towers. Surprisingly, his Red Skeleton's accuracy was excellent and the arrows coated in his blood were lethal as the vermilion coating was charged in Death mana. The immortal was simply walking next to his undead, shooting Ice Arrows a few times to bring down his preys.

Finally standing next to his zombies, he studied the mechanism of the entrance and noticed that it was basically a heavy bunch of logs nailed together that the bandits opened from inside with a rope and many men dragging it. Sighing, he concentrated as much wind mana as he could in his right hand and, after having his undeads backing of, blasted the door open with a Wind Blast.

Seeing his sleeve completely destroyed and many shard of wood embed in his arm, he grunted and ordered his undead to charge while forming a small ice sword in his wounded hand. A wall of a dozen bandits awaited them and many arrows joined the others into the zombie's bodies. A man of the wall then fell, the Red Skeleton having hit his target.

Panic spread through them as the zombies ran toward them with a man in black suit calmly walking behind those monsters.

"Stand your positions ! These are merely undeads, we can beat them !" A soldier in heavy armor barked behind the others. He seemed to be the commander as he had the same voice that Jack heard before. Seeing him made the immortal frown as he noticed something off within the man's body.

'This... Why has he black magic's mana inside of him? He doesn't seems to be a magician though... Better safe than sorry.' Jack thought and mentally ordered his skeleton to shoot the heavy armored guy in the head since he wasn't wearing a helmet. He then charged in and stabbed a surprised bandit in the stomach, kicking him viciously on his ice weapon's hilt.

Turning from his dying victim crawling on the ground, the immortal turned around just in time to see a black barrier form itself around the enemy's commander, deflecting his soldier's arrow.

'Okay, time to stop playing around and understand who the hell he is.' Jack thought, forcefully channeling spells through his left hand and backing off from the fight to get a peripheral vision.

'Hm... One of them is dead since my zombie is eating him, another one is dead with my next skeleton's arrow... This makes eight to kill and the commander to torture.'

In an instant, eight spears rose from the bandit's shadows and pierced their hearts, stopping them instantly. This also saved two of the three zombies since they were getting stabbed and cut into pieces by many foes at the same time.

Stumbling a little and feeling that his left arm had turned into a bloody mess, Jack looked at the scared armored man still in his black barrier and asked him while painfully showing his predator's grin :

"Now, you will suffer, explain me who the hell you are and where does this barrier come from. Choose. Either you speak, suffer and die or you can suffer, speak and die."

During this time the sun was fleeing under the horizon's line, looking like it didn't want to see anymore what was going to happen.