He turned his head to the man but soon found his attention pointed to what was behind him.

All his men, including the ones the adventurers hadn't planned for, were lying on the ground neatly lined up next to each other.

On further inspection, most of them did show signs of breathing but were lying in a pool of their own blood. Ezekiel then pushed his knife further into the bald man's neck. He also noticed the other adventurers doing stretches and one in a hoodie examining another's wounds while clearly looking irritated about something.

"Don't worry pal, they aren't dead yet. We still need all the details about you and your little group. Although I can't say if they'll ever be able to move anything other than their heads for the rest of their lives. So feel like doing this the easy way?"

He tried using his magic on his neck but it was to no avail. The blade kept slowly sinking in.

"Although their prices may be similar, this knife's a bit more quality compared to her sword's quantity."

That was a bald-faced lie as his knife's market value is currently twice that of Elizabeth's sword but their soon-to-be prisoner didn't need to know that.

Elizabeth clearly no longer saw the man as a threat as she relaxed herself and walked up to Ezekiel.

After walking up to him she gave a smack to the back of his head.

"Um, Liz, our enemy's right there."

"What took you so long?"

"Well after I downed about half of them, they started trying to get away through the forest and it was a pain in the ass to catch them all."

"Yet you had time to put them over there after you took them out so neatly."

Ezekiel started scratching his head with his free hand and started avoiding eye contact.

"Uh, well it seemed like you had things over here sorted out and you did look at him." He said while pointing to the chubby bald man with noticeable muscle.

Elizabeth shook her head and approached her sword to pick it up.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

After picking it up she wiped off the dust on her sword with her shirt but realized something halfway through. The dirt on the ground had created a gross muck after it combined with the blood already on the blade.

This genuinely pissed her off and her face told as much but she continued nonetheless as her shirt was already ruined.

"If getting a broken hand seemed like I was handling things, I really do wonder if I should ever let Tibaut work with you again." She said as she sheathed the recently cleaned sword. She then held up her broken hand.

"By the way do you have anything for this?"

Ezekiel at this point had his knife touching one of the bones of Saito's spinal column. He was gently wiggling the knife and if he wasn't careful it might accidentally go in between the vertebrae and cut the cord itself.

"Hmm, I still have leftover potion from the 4-pack the old man gave me the other day."

In this casual conversation, there was one who didn't seem to be having a good time.

Saito was gradually losing his mind while those two spoke.

("It's over. Against her is one thing but if this bastard can cut through me just fine then I'm fucked. Either they capture me here and I have to kill myself or they decide to kill me since I might be too much of a handful. Why? Why did it end up like this? I only recently got anointed a priest, I even heard some of the bishops say I had potential. Why do I have to die because of that fuck-up? He was a priest longer than was so I thought it wasn't worth arguing. Why didn't tell him to fuck off then and there?")

He soon came to one thought.

("I'm gonna die, no doubt about it. But. But.") He struggled to think but continued ("But at least I'll bare my fang against these bastards. Then I'll curse that bastard Daniel from the grave. The powder was supposed to last me through the weeks I got back to Akumia but that doesn't matter anymore.")

He slowly but surely put his bisected hand into his pocket that contained a pouch full of an unusual black powder.

Ezekiel noticed this and started to scratch his vertebrae with the knife.

"AAAHHHHHH"

"A hidden weapon isn't going to do you any good."

He then released the magic on his arm and it started pouring out blood. His hand was already in the pouch so he started bleeding all over it. Whether he planned what happened next or not did not change the fact of the matter. His opened flesh came in contact with this mixture of blood and powder. As soon as it touched his exposed flesh it seemed as though his arm absorbed the liquid entirely.

Ezekiel and Elizabeth weren't able to see the full picture but they both noticed a black substance running inside his opened arm.

Before he could run a shock wave blew Ezekiel away from Saito. He kept himself grounded but fought to stay in place as he was being blown away by a dark aura of some kind Saito was producing. Elizabeth was also in a similar predicament. The other adventurers, who were quite a few meters away, looked on in shock.

What produced the dark aura was not Saito but a concerningly black flame that was similar in size to him. The darkness of the flame was impressive. It seemed almost fake, due to its flat appearance. It didn't allow any amount of light to reflect off of it nor produced any, which made it impossible to perceive its depth or any of the finer details a 3-dimensional object would have.

Those present gulped almost in unison in preparation for what would come next.