CHAPTER 143

  TOUGH BUSINESS

  Hans turned his Blessing of the Wind to full swing. His speed surged.

  “Let’s see if you are here or not, Xandor? Come chase me.”

  He knew to have an upper hand over Eclipse, he had to make sure Xandor understood; he wasn’t needed and Theodred could achieve whatever he wanted even without his help. The Rebellion Sword and their help were just his secondary objective.

  “Let’s see how long you could bear this silent treatment, Xandor.”

  He only turned on the medallion but never tried to contact them.

  Needed to be sure that the Eclipse would dance to his tune, from the beginning.

  And even if they didn’t, they had to provide enough support or camouflage required to slay Anfaleen.

  “This time would be different.” The chains were gone; his mana control was way better. “I will cure them all this time—Zilong too. But Concordia needs to see them as they are. I need to turn the world against Anfaleen. That will cut off his whatever support. The one Zilong feared the most.”

  Hans breathed in hard. The iron wind was as tangy as he had tasted before.

  “Let’s get some node points till Xandor’s Dam of Patience lasts.” He convinced himself; his ManaVision, turned on his ruby-red eyes. If the lumen gaze gave him the ability to see anything physical in slow and steady, his human counterpart gave him the ability to see the difference in mana around him.

  “How I wish, I could use both at the same time.” He murmured another impossible dream.

  But none, not even a single infantry or more commonly known two-hands, showed up in his perimeter.

  “This is not working.” He gave up quickly; he wasn’t here to do the hard work but the smart instead.

  His map opened, glowed faintly when he raised it. The nodes burned like stars in its parchment veins: along with barrier’s southern circumference; Concordia was first, then Grimgar, then Sunfall.

  He needed to cross three before the real work began.

  “In the path to the fourth node, I’ll come across a few red demons, that’s for sure. Stay positive, man. Positive.”

  He looked once more. The Deadlands spanned over huge lands, and chances of him encountering Chris and Delimira, who would be coming back to Concordia, were slim, but there was still some chance.

  He needed to avoid it.

  And the red demon territory was thick as rot. Difficult terrain, but not beyond a trek if he was careful.

  He turned to Theodred, changed to his Clandor robes.

  He reviewed his plan one last time, the words like scripture in his head.

  Lead the able with Eclipse to the attack on Anfaleen and send them back to Concordia under Hans’s name. Then cure the infected. That will gain some name for the Parvian prince.

  It sounded simple enough. All terrible plans did.

  He nodded to himself and set off toward Grimgar’s lands — Node second. His wings unfurled around him, flapping.

  And soon his positive attitude or his luck as Theodred, which was oddly good for some reason, bore him some fruits.

  The first red demon hoard came with no ceremony.

  Two-handed, all teeth and tendons, their eyes glowing like wet embers. “That’s refreshes some terrible memory. ”

  The air burned where they moved.

  Hans didn’t bother hiding.

  He met them head-on, broke through their ranks like wind through clouds, effortless. Swords sang here and there. Three cuts, four bodies. The smell of scorched marrow filled the air.

  When the last one fell twitching, he stood over it, breath slow, eyes searching.

  “Too easy,” he said. “That’s never good sign.”

  He knelt and carved the stones out of their chests. Each pulsed faintly in his palm—dying hearts pretending to be jewels.

  They’d fetch some node points, but he wasn’t here for that.

  From the ridge above, he felt eyes on him.

  Humans, this time. Hunters from Grimgar, by their general direction—mud and fear.

  His lumen gaze had tracked them before they could realise.

  He didn’t turn toward them. “If you’re planning to rob me,” he called, “wait until I’m finished counting.”

  One of them cursed softly, another spat.

  He smiled.

  A heartbeat later, the red haze shifted, and the watchers had one problem after another.

  The first problem was stealing their target, none other than an eighth-rank knight, and the other one, the twenty red demons crawling from the fog behind them, drawn by blood and noise.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Hans didn’t stay to watch. He heard the screams cut off halfway.

  All were dead.

  “You take up arms. You should prepare to die.”

  The sword hummed again.

  “Maximacre,” he whispered, and let it sing.

  It was over in moments. The sound it made wasn’t metal—more like a hive being silenced mid-breath.

  When the air cleared, the world was still again, except for the hiss of cooling blood on stone.

  He moved among the bodies with surgical precision, harvesting what he needed. His gloves were soaked by the third corpse, but he didn’t stop until he had filled his pouch.

  He was being followed again. He knew the rhythm—distant, cautious, intelligent. Not human this time.

  He didn’t look back. He simply said, “You can come out now. I’ve been letting you trail me since the ridge.”

  No answer. Only the sound of wind weaving through hollow bones.

  “Fine. Play shy.”

  He walked on, the red sky dimming toward a false dusk. Nights in the Deadlands didn’t come—they bled into existence.

  Days passed in fragments. Sleep came rarely, food even rarer. When he rested, he did so standing, back to a stone wall, sword half-drawn.

  More red demons came—brutes, scavengers, sometimes people. He left other than red demons breathing. Killing them didn’t feel like victory anymore.

  “They’ll die soon enough,” he told the wind one night. “No need to help fate do its work.”

  When he finally crossed into Sunfall’s node, the silence was different — too clean.

  Bodies lay scattered through the valley. Human and red-demon alike. Each killed with precision — one strike, straight through the heart.

  No blade marks. No blood spray. Just… cauterised holes.

  He crouched beside a corpse, fingers brushing the smooth edge of the wound.

  “Four-hands,” he muttered. “Maybe six if luck’s bad.”

  The barrier between worlds wavered here. He could feel it. Space itself itched.

  He switched forms — Theodred’s face fading, replaced by something less fragile. Flesh that could survive what others couldn’t.

  The forest ahead looked wrong — trees too still, roots too deep. No insects. No birds. Just the hum of power thick enough to taste.

  He should’ve turned back yet he didn’t.

  “That’s not spooky at all.” He muttered.

  With cautious steps, he moved forward but still snapped a dry branch.

  “Oh great.” He craned his neck slowly towards the top of the highest tree, a short hissing voice.

  Four limbs and wings. All hanging down like a bat.

  This was the second time he met a Captain, a four-hands. He got ready. “If I don’t have a fight to the death every now and then. Then I won’t be Hans Parv. Isn’t it?”

  Inhaling sharply, he shouted. “Bring it on.”

  He was stronger in the barrier, harnessing the sunstone energy.

  Swoosh!

  Three consecutive, photonised seedbullets targeted the head but warped neatly around the creature.

  “Space manipulation. Almost forgot.”

  His hand reached towards the knapbinder. “Dispellium powder.”

  He had Vanir made them into pellets. Casing them with heat-susceptible material.

  He only had a handful, so it was emergency use only, but he needed to be sure that thing worked in an emergency.

  It was now the time to test them.

  The four-hands opened his insect-like wings. He was ready to take off.

  The attack window was shortening.

  “Not so fast, you coffin-dodging bastard.” He put the pellet into a stretched mana path. Just like when he was learning seedbullets.

  Swoosh! It went through his photonised path. And burned halfway through. Turning into a cloud of Dispelling powers, also disintegrating his own mana path.

  But the effect was on the four-hands too.

  A curved mana path away from dispellium cloud, with a BlastBullet on it, hit its head from behind.

  It worked as he had named it. Blasted the head of the four-hands.

  “Was it this easy?” He questioned, only to eat his words a moment later.

  The headless four-hands appeared behind Hans with a blinking speed.

  “And Deli calls me a cockroach.” He shouted.

  VeganBind

  Every spell of his was photonised in Deadlands, and the moment his conjured shell of tough vines met the blade-like hands. It blew like a bomb. Blasting both of them.

  Yet both stood tall, far from each other. The four-hands was trembling, like some of his limbs had gone numb, while Hans was visibly recovering from burns.

  “Round two, Cockroach.”

  When he was busy dirtying his hands with four-hands. A squad of infantry was surrounding him bit by bit.

  He landed several blows: VeganBind, seedbullets, even landmines. But the tenacity of Four-hands was as usual as the first time he had met in his past year’s encounter.

  “So this ain't enough, Haan?”

  He stood his ground, twirling the heated mana into a spiral.

  “Let’s see how you survive this.”

  Sunfield Sanctuary

  The land turned into a burning pasture, the water evaporating into fumes from the living, yet the tenacious four-hand was moving. It was slow, but it didn’t affect him much.

  However, it wasn’t the case for the ambushing infantry. They were writhing like fish out of water. Pure agony.

  However, the four-hands, learning he had lost his agile advantage, turned to warp. Its space-manipulating ability had returned, all thanks to Hans’s sanctuary of pure heat.

  “I shot myself in the knee! Didn’t I?”

  He chided himself.

  “But that’s okay. I know I am the target.” Exhaling, he took a fighting pose. “Come at me—”

  “Shack!” Four-hands one limb impaled Hans right down his chest in an instant.

  “So my eyes can’t track them.” He vomited blood, but his grip on that impaling hand turned tight. “Goodbye, fucking cockroach.”

  The air trembled as his clenched fist, coiled every muscle with raw power. In a single motion, he pushed forward.

  Solar Storm

  A deafening boom.

  The mana he had been straining was finally let go with his punch.

  It tore through the air, a shockwave rippling out like a cannon blast. Dust, debris, and the very land in front of him erupted, the ground gouged into a gaping path of destruction. Everything in the fist's trajectory—stone, steel, and shadow—was erased in an instant, leaving only the echo of the impact and a hollow silence in its wake.

  Yet the torso survived, still twitching, still regenerating.

  “This is ridiculous.” Struggling, his healing factor absorbed photons quicker. He began limping towards the corpse, and after a few strides, the pace became even and then soon it turned into a sprint.

  His hand dug into the torso, snatching his first captain-level sunstone.

  “Well, and I am the fucking eighth rank. Man, I feel like playing knight made me forget my roots.”

  He turned, focussed.

  And the forest answered as the air grew heavy with an uncanny hum. Veins of green light crawled up his arms, pulsing under the skin like roots reaching for water.

  A cracking sound echoed—first soft, then thunderous—as bark split through flesh, replacing it with rough, ancient wood. Fingers elongated into jagged branches, leaves unfurling from the knuckles. Stones from the forest floor lifted as if drawn by invisible strings, fusing into the new form, plating shoulders and chest like natural armour.

  His voice grew gruff, echoed as he had challenged the entirety of Deadlands. “Let’s see where I can find another of this moron.”