The Bandit Lord (2/2)

Not knowing where Kaalhyme's Will went off to and feeling his spells fail to break Lornal's barrier, Haalfrin grows a little frustrated. Still, he calms down and spends a second analyzing the glowing barrier around him.

'With this airtight barrier here,' Haalfrin thinks, 'it'll serve to trap the smoke in with me, which would both blind me, immobilize me, and even choke me out once I run out of air. So… Maybe the bandits want to capture me?'

Realizing the truth, Haalfrin curls his cheeks up in a smile.

If this had happen just a little bit ago, he'd be banging his head in frustration, moaning about how he went through all this trouble to make things more dangerous for himself, yet he's still not in any danger.

However, Haalfrin had long ago accepted Das's blessing as just another fact about his life. Besides, he'd felt a lot of his enthusiasm to die wane recently, ever since his trip to the Death Realm.

'Still, I'd better win,' he briefly thinks. 'I'd hate to get captured and sold off somewhere.'

And so, Haalfrin quickly tries to think of a solution. 'I'd need half an hour or more to break out, but I don't have that sort of time.'

Growling in annoyance, Haalfrin immediately uses both hands to part the smoke and condense it into a corner. Of course, with the air being locked here, pushing the smoke to the side is actually hard because of the air pressure and the universe's distaste for vacuums.

Even still, Haalfrin uses the rest of his concentration to use his other hand to move the breathable air closer to his mouth, so that the air would be dense enough for him to breathe while not having to choke on the smoke.

Haalfrin's connection with his weapon Wills isn't a spell at all, so it requires no mana and no concentration; all he has to do is WANT the possessed weapons to act, and they'll obey.

… And when Haalfrin thinks of the spear he threw, and how he WANTS it to kill whoever cast this barrier… Kaalhyme's spear in the distance flickers back to life…

Of course, the bandits had seen Haalfrin throw the spear earlier, as well as the small flaming crater it left on the ground behind some of the men; they thought it was just a powerful weapon; they didn't expect it to "come back to life."

After the bandits closest to the spear are run through the hearts, the 1st gate mage beside Lornal whips at it with his hands again, causing the wind to blow on it the spear sideways in an attempt to knock it off course as it shoots straight for him.

Of course, what they don't know is that Kaalhyme's Will is inside the spear, so it's able to move on its own for the most part and adjust its trajectory to avoid missing.

Before, when Haalfrin battled Kanus's bodyguard in the forest, Kaalhyme's Will couldn't stand a single blow or land a hit on the mage; despite being the Will of a stronger and more impressive mage, it was only placed in a stupid tree branch, and its powers were crippled as a result.

This time, Kaalhyme's Will rests in the most suitable house Haalfrin could find – a spear. This time, Kaalhyme's spear is able to utilize the full power the man himself had in life.

"As if" possessed, the spear shoots forward, dodges the gust of wind, and deliberately pierces the mage through the heart. "Fran!" one of the bandits shouts from behind him in a panic.

Lord Lornal sees this and frowns grimly. He takes a deep breath, then activates another spell he had prepared before with his other hand.

Haalfrin looks up and sees runes and sigils appear on the ground beneath his feet. "Alchemy, huh?"

At that moment, the bandit lord begins changing the composition of the air inside the small barrier – breaking apart the O2 (Oxygen) molecules and combining them with the Carbon in the air to make CO2 – obviously unbreathable air.

Haalfrin had learned enough Alchemy from his teacher to know what is going on… However, he hasn't gotten his Fel Name yet, so his ability to use Alchemy is like a child's compared to Lornal's. With even his small pocket of breathable air taken from him, Haalfrin is really left to suffocate.

And so, despite Haalfrin FEELING the sensation of breathing, he starts to feel dizzy anyway, and his heart starts racing fast as his body senses its deprivation of oxygen and attempts to keep the brain supplied with blood.

As Haalfrin feels himself losing consciousness and choking out, he subconsciously feels a sense of danger for the first time in this battle.

Responding to his instincts, his Yiir Name surges out, despite not being called for specifically by Haalfrin.

As soon as the black aura bursts out and engulfs the entire battlefield, almost all of the bandits gets an ominous feeling, then a sense of terror grips them.

Maybe it's because almost all of these bandits are war veterans, but only 1 or 2 of them turn and flee. The rest stand their ground and continue fighting. They certainly have this illusion in their heart where they think they're about to die, but this only motivates them to fight harder.

…Of course, if their boss had run away, then they'd have lost their resolve to fight.

You'd think that with Haalfrin's huge addition of Aura he siphoned from the Death Realm that he'd immediately overtake the bandits and send them running, despite their courage.

However, the archmage's apprentice is unable to control the shape of his Aura. No matter how much Aura he gets, it won't get any thicker and more potent. Instead, it'll spread out further.

… And on such a small battlefield, having a larger area of effect is pointless. Who cares about scaring off some animals half a mile off into the forest?

As Haalfrin gets closer and closer to falling unconscious, his Aura pours out thicker and thicker.

Lornal chuckles to hide his sense of foreboding, and he thinks, "That aura seems to be a spell that attacks the spirit. Hmm. I heard that spirit magic is really prevalent beyond the world gate, and that the archmage used to serve the Brancotte empire there. Perhaps he picked up a few Spirit techniques from there and taught his apprentice. Hmm…"

Lornal feels this spell a bit longer before he looks to one of his mages in a panic. "What's going on? I think it's a spiritual attack. Use your spiritual sight and find a way to stop him from doing what he's doing."

Spirit mages are reasonably rare, but Lornal happens to have one.

The moment the spirit mage casts a spell to give himself spiritual sight, he goes completely blind by the black aura blanketing the battlefield, and he screams in terror, despite holding out so well before.

Spiritual entities can only see and communicate through touching each other – spirit to spirit… so by using spirit sight, the unfortunate bandit had laid his own spirit bare and touched the Death Aura directly.

Feeling the Aura and directly touching it with your own spirit is the same difference between seeing a tiger and putting your head in its mouth. In one instance, you might get scared, but in the other, you're directly offering up your life.

And so, the spirit mage spits blood and falls over dead at Lornal's feet before he can even issue a warning.

Seeing this, the bandits' courage is shaken, and they get a little closer to running away. Right now, they all think their prey's Aura is only a simple Fear spell.

However, the black aura seems to have a strange effect that the others couldn't predict.

Once Kaalhyme's spear rips through the chest of another 1st gate mage, the dead man's staff lifts up ominously and shoots a bolt of lightning at another bandit. The arc of lightning leaps to 5 other targets in a long chain, and all 6 men die immediately.

It appears that with every dead bandit, another Will joins Kaalhyme's spear in battle.

Being short of mages now, Lornal splits some of his attention from Haalfrin's cage, and he spends a few seconds conjuring up another fireball while the 2 possessed weapons kill more of his men.

Kaalhyme's Will manages to dodge out of the way nimbly, but the mage's staff is caught and blasted into a puff of ash.

The staff was actually fast enough to get away, but Haalfrin only had so much concentration to spare as he was about to black out. When it came down to it, Kaalhyme's spear was just better than anything else he had, so he wanted to keep it alive and undamaged.

Perhaps his strong protective Will for Kaalhyme translated to the spear having more self-preservation instincts.

Haalfrin then wills the "enchanted" spear to go engage the bandit boss. Putting all his waning concentration on directing the spear, he releases his hold of the smoke and air in his magical cell.

Then, with both his freed hands, Haalfrin reaches out to all the bandit's lingering Wills; since they all died in the range of his death aura, he can certainly snatch them!

Haalfrin lifts the dozens of weapons up into the air, and they start whizzing about. They aren't being handled with nearly as much finesse as Kaalhyme's spear, but they don't really need it; it's the same logic as not really having to aim when you have a thousand archers peppering a field.

And so, with the bandit lord preoccupied with the "strangely powerful spear", Lornal's isn't able to defend his men against the haunted weapons that began slaughtering them.

Once his men are all dead, their weapons, too, rise ominously from the ground and all face their former master – point first.

Lornal has a brief moment of panic seeing his men die and 2 dozen swords, axes, and knives fly at him.

The volley of possessed weapons cuts toward him so fast that he doesn't have time to react properly. So, acting on instinct, Lornal tries expelling them with a strong ripple of air… only for Kaalhyme's spear to expend the rest of its innate mana, puncturing through the air wave, and stabbing the bandit lord right in the heart.

With a brief scream and the thud of the bandit lord's hammer hitting the ground, the Lornal flops disgracefully onto the ground, and the barrier trapping Haalfrin fades away.