Borrowed Magic

A broken nose. That was the first thing that Kies saw, and the only thing he needed to see to identify the man. Kies didn't know the man's name and this was his first time seeing his face and hearing his voice, but he knew exactly who the person was.

"It's been a while," the thief said, his fingers twitching and his body jolting erratically. There was something wrong with him and Kies could see and feel that. There was magic leaking from his body... It didn't belong to him, Kies was sure of it. He was borrowing it from someone or something. The magic didn't belong to the thief. It would be pretty funny if the magic was somehow stolen too since he was a thief after all.

"I'd return a greeting, but I don't see a point," Kies responded to the thief's greeting with an attack. Without giving so much as a warning, Kies surrounded the thief with his winds and had them attack him at every angle. It was impossible to dodge, a sure-kill move. It happened so fast that the thief didn't even see it coming. Holes were drilled into his body from all sides, blood bursting out like fireworks.

"N-n... Ah..." The thief fell face-first into his own pool of blood. That was all it took to kill him... But something still didn't feel right to Kies. It was too easy.

At that moment, the blood began to evaporate. It turned into red mist and disappeared into the sky. The thief's body also turned into smoke and rose to the air along with the red mist.

"..."

A figure appeared inside of the smoke, standing in the exact spot where the thief perished. "Miss me?" he chuckled, waving his hand to get rid of the smoke in the was.

This was going to be annoying... Actually, forget it. It was going to be a waste of time to fight him. Kies always disliked illusion magic since it was an absolute headache to deal with as shown right here.

He could "kill" the thief a hundred times and he will still be stuck here, fending off countless clones of him. Unless the thief runs out of magic, or until Kies finds his real body, he was going to have to play with him for a while, and the Kies couldn't tell how much magic the thief had for some reason.

It felt like he had none, but Kies felt the magic coming out of his body. It was like a paradox. Kies could feel magic power coming from him but couldn't detect magic actually on him, or was it the other way around?

Deeming this as a waste of time, Kies dropped the idea of trying to fight the thief and ran past him. As swift as an arrow, Kies dashed out of the room, disappearing in the blink of an eye. The thief didn't see where he went despite having had his eyes fixed on him the whole time.

Kies ran down the corridor and turned a cornered, jumping on the wall and bouncing off it to keep his momentum. As he sprung off the wall, it broke, leaving a huge gaping hole in it. He did this a couple more times, breaking every wall he jumped off of.

"Hopefully they won't charge me for this..." The castle was bound to be a wreck by the time he was out of here, and it was probably going to be expensive, very, very expensive to fix all of the damage during the aftermath.

Kies sent the winds ahead of him to scout the layout of the castle so he could move faster and could also find where the soldiers were. He detected a considerable number of people just a few corridors away. They were fighting. As Kies got closer, he heard the sounds of metal clashing and voices yelling.

But before he had the chance to join the flay, the castle crumbled into dust. Kies fell through it and landed back onto the desert sand. The castle was gone. Everything around him was gone. Nothing remained. There were no people to be seen anywhere.

"You hold that big of a grudge for a broken nose?" Kies asked.

Appearing in front of him out of thin air, the thief walked up to Kies with his arms crossed. He stopped a few meters away from him and answered, "Yes I do, but even if it never happened, I would still be stopping you right now."

Kies waved his arm in front of him and cut the thief in half with his magic. The body faded away just like before, turning into smoke and going into the sky.

"How rude." This time, the thief was behind him. Kies turned around and swung his arm again, slicing the thief right down the middle, splitting him into two symmetrical halves. Like a ghost that just keeps coming back for more, the thief appeared again behind Kies. He didn't bother to turn around and just ordered the winds to cut him down a third time.

"I don't know about you, but I can do this all day," the thief laughed. "It's only my personal advice, but you should give up and let me kill you," he suggested, growing cocky over his borrowed power.

After killing the thief's illusion those three times, Kies got a grasp of where his magic was coming from. The thief had no magic power. Kies was a hundred percent certain of it, but he was using magic. How was that? There were two options. Someone was supplying it to him, or he was supplying something else to make up for his lack of magic... His lifeforce. And Kies had a strong feeling that it was the latter.

"Did you make a deal with a demon?" Kies asked the thief, already knowing the answer, but he wanted to make sure. "No, you don't need to tell me," Kies changed his mind. It was the only possible answer.

"So you found out about my little secret." There was a pause. The thief then mumbled to himself, "That was fast... He was right..." He turned back to Kies and finished saying, "You are dangerous. I need to get rid of you fast."

"What? Are you going to trick me into hitting myself with my own magic or something?" Illusion magic had no way of direct harm. Its forte lies in tricking people into walking into traps or making them lose their minds through fear and so on. And if it weren't already a bad matchup for the thief, he also revealed the fact that he was using illusion magic. If Kies knew that everything was fake, then he didn't need to worry about anything at all.

"Winds, break this facade!" The winds roared around the illusion, but couldn't find anything to destroy. "Hm?" Kies fired a ball of wind in front of him. It tore through the thief and disappeared into the distance, not finding anything to connect with. This illusion was not like the previous one. It was a high-tier one. This makes things a bit more annoying...

"I'd be a fool to use the same thing twice, and you're a fool to think that I did," the thief said, appearing in front of him again.

"The only fool here is the one who is using his life force to cast magic." While the thief was speaking, Kies swept the entire area and learned something very interesting. The illusion magic tried its best to hide them, but Kies sensed the weak point of the spell. It was the edge of the illusion, where the castor was hiding, just beyond the sphere of the spell. Kies would've completely missed it had he not sensed the thief's heavy breathing from using his life to maintain the spell. But now that he knew, getting out was a piece of cake.

Kies walked around the illusion of the thief, acting like he didn't know anything until he found a spot where he could hit both the weak point and the thief in a single attack.

"Trying to find a way out? Don't bother. You're trapped in here until I die," the thief smugly said, unaware that Kies already knew where his real body is and how to get out.

Ignoring the thief's remark, Kies asked him a question before he would kill him. It'd be nice to know what he will be up against. "How many of there are you in the Black Fang?"

"How many? Do you think I would tell you something like that? You're not getting that information off my lips or my dead body."

A shame. The thief wasn't dumb enough that he would tell him something like that. He wasn't one of those people who gave away everything after cornering someone. "I will find out myself then."

"Ha. I don't see how you're going to do that."

"I'll show you then." Kies pointed his finger at the location in the illusion where the weak point is.

The thief's expression changed to a panicked one and his mouth shot wide open in fear. "No!" he screamed. The illusion disappeared and the thief went back to his own body. He tried to move out of the way in time but Kies' winds were far too fast for him to dodge. A single jet of wind pierced through the spell, bringing the whole world crumbling down, and hit the thief square in the chest too.

The thief took a bunch of steps backward before falling over onto his bottom, clutching his chest. They were back in the castle now. The walls haven't been damaged at all even though Kies had fired many spells inside of the illusion. It almost looked as if Kies got transported to a whole other realm or dimension.

The thief coughed out blood. The attack missed his vitals by just a few centimeters. What a lucky guy. But luck wasn't going to save him a second time. Kies pointed his finger at the thief and commanded the winds to finish him off, half expecting something to get in his way again. It was usually times like this that a miracle happens for his enemies and they somehow get away from him, almost like God was intervening to stop Kies.

The winds pieced the thief's heart and the man fell over. But before he died, he opened his mouth to say his last words. "I-I still... W-win."

"You still win?" Kies didn't understand why the thief said that. Was he doing it to try and scare him after his death? Well, he wasn't going to fall for that. While the thief did stall him for a few minutes, the fight sounded like it was still going on. But instead of metal clashing and yelling, there was growling instead.

"Tch..." Kies bit his lip and hurried his pace. If the sound was what he thought it was, then things were going to be problematic... Those last words... They may not be empty threats… They may be serious.

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