How does someone defeat a guardian who was practically everywhere, could see everything and grew back every single part of them you kept cutting down? Alaric had no clue.

It was part of the reason he’d stopped worrying for his life during this whole charade. He’d watched the mercenaries sever the vines he conjured up, he’d watched them try different things to try and evade him.

One even had the Ability to phase through anything, and for a moment, that worked well… until Alaric poured a little aether into the vines restraining him. Alas, aether was a lot harder to phase through than ordinary matter.

This ill-placed confidence, however, vanished the instant Alaric laid eyes on the abomination that was currently chasing his friends with a black chilling scythe and a murderous gleam in his eyes.

Alaric had stopped talking and turned all his focus on the mercenary. He manifested empty pods at high speed, swarming them around the real ones and pushing his friends even further North.

What was more, he completely abandoned the bound mercenaries at the start of the forest once he realised he couldn’t keep his consciousness spread so far. To keep the illusion of his control, he’d left aether lingering in the vines and doubled their thickness before letting them be.

On the bright side, Garin and his fellow Slayers of the Tower had intercepted that group by the time he let go of their restraints. While that was a note of relief, Alaric found himself more worried about the scythe-wielder than all the other bandits combined.

The bound bandits were bound to stall Garin and the Tower Slayers for a few moments as Alaric struggled against the monstrous mercenary.

His movements were swift and his attacks were sharp. Alaric shifted entire trees, turned the forest into a maze, raised dust with the help of whipping root vines, and created messes of enchanted vines to bar the man’s path.

But alas, with each passing second, the man broke through Alaric’s defences.

One by one, the decoy pods fell to the man’s scythe. His search spell had weakened now that he was focusing on destroying the pods and navigating the shifting woods to get to the fleeing children.

[Start casting an S-class Concealment Spell.] Alia’s voice softly whispered into the mind of the tired boy.

Alaric was no expert at magic… but he’d trained under his guardian’s guidance for four years. He was no novice either.

A deep guttural voice hummed through the woods as the boy began chanting the ancient tongue. It was a long and complicated spell that required a lot of focus.

Fortunately, in this form, splitting his focus was a boon he could enjoy. The sound of the spell reverberated through the woods as Alaric poured more and more aether into his voice.

The mercenary cleaved a tree in half and burst through a mesh of vines with a flurry of strikes, leaping over vines that were ready to retrain him on the other side. With each step, he shot even further through the woods, only slightly impeded in his progress.

Through all that, the man looked around him and allowed a small grin to grace his smile, “You’re so full of surprises, kid… But a barrier of that calibre won’t work. If you haven’t noticed, we are moving too fast to stay within such a barrier. You don’t even have the power to cast one large enough to trap me.”

The man’s evil cackle echoed through the woods.

Alaric fought back relentlessly, tossing some pods into the man’s face at the last moment in an effort to stall him.

This proved ineffective.

The man forged on, cutting down more and more pods…

His speed… was a lot faster than anything Alaric ever thought he’d have to deal with. Even in the form of an ethereal being that travelled through the trees of the forest, he was having trouble keeping up with the fiend.

The barrier began to form as Alaric continued chanting. The boy felt his aether reserves drain even faster as he continued casting the spell.

One of the side effects of casting the spell, however, was that he lost some focus on the forest. His chaotic control of the forest started to dwindle in strength. The man cut down more pods than Alaric could conjure up and he made slightly more progress than Alaric could cover up.

The distance between him and his friends started to get even less and less. Alaric grunted, feeling his mind buzzing with pain as he pushed himself to his limits.

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The pressure was starting to grow far too heavy. He wanted to sleep… He wanted to rest… He wanted to drink a sip of water and take a break.

But he couldn’t… Not when each passing second meant the man got even closer to his friends. He’d already seen the black scythe cut through the stem of a full-grown tree like it was made of butter.

Had that been one of his friends, they would have lost their lives.

[Almost there…] Alia edged the boy on.

A few lines of the spell remained… Alaric poured everything into those lines, buying more and more time as he chanted. He attacked more chaotically, throwing trees in the man’s way now instead of pods.

Alas, he watched the man get closer and closer to his friends, his mind jumping from one tree to the next with chaotic speed. To the outsider’s eye, it would appear as though a soft amber glow was dashing along the tree stems, branches and leaves in pursuit of the destructive dark mercenary.

Two lines were left in the spell… and with those two lines, Alaric drew a sharp breath.

The black scythe had just cut down the last empty pod and not far from that pod, Aiden was bundled up inside, frozen with fear and hugging himself so tightly that he almost looked like he was trying to calm his beating heart.

Of course, Alaric only knew this because he could see into the pod and through the invisibility spell he’d cast on the Aspirants.

One line was left in the spell…

The man had already crossed the distance between himself and the pod containing Aiden.

The dark-haired boy’s vision went black as his instincts kicked in. Vines shot from the ground and all around, constructing a humanoid figure made of vines and leaves.

Unfinished, the figure shot straight for the mercenary, placing itself between the fleeing pod and the evil mercenary, a sword weaving itself from branches.

At the last moment, the two swords slammed into each other with a powerful clang.

The construction had happened so fast that the dark man was taken aback by the sudden appearance of the humanoid nature warrior.

The man smirked, “Finally showed your face coward.”

The scythe sang through the air.

Alaric felt his heart beat faster… but not in fear.

Oddly enough, Alaric wasn’t afraid. No, anything but that.

In the moment he’d witnessed the scythe start its path for the pod containing Aiden, Alaric had lost all forms of caution and lashed out, summoning all the power he could muster.

That power, allowed him to create a human replica of his body, albeit still covered in green. His limbs were all created with branches and twigs. The only difference between his body and the woods around him was the thick concentration of aether infused within his body.

It was because of this aether that the pitch-black scythe clanged against the wooden great sword Alaric had conjured.

The man’s smirk vanished right before a fist went crashing into his gut. The plant wraith sent him slamming into a tree.

The mercenary chuckled, tasting blood… and yet, in the next moment, he vanished, appearing right above the towering abomination of nature, scythe raised and plummeting fast.

Alaric’s form reacted in kind, raising his sword in time to block the attack…

The clang of metal never came…

Instead, Alaric felt himself go dizzy and weightless. To those who had been watching, The scythe had flipped hands only to switch to a horizontal slash that completely severed the hands and head of the powerful amalgamation of a human and plants.

“TRAVELLING CONCEALMENT BARRIER: S-CLASS,” Alaric’s chanting voice echoed through the woods one final time before everything went still.

The wooden humanoid’s head, which looked a lot like Alaric’s face, lost the amber glow in its eyes and fell to the ground with a soft thud.

The forest went silent… the leaves going still, the branches seizing in their swaying. The fleeing pods had long since disintegrated, dumping the invisible aspirants a few paces away.

They had witnessed the whole fight… from its inspiring start to its short and dark end.

“You… you killed him,” a feminine voice breathed.

The dark-skinned scythe-wielder was panting hard. He looked up in the direction of the voice, then up at a translucent barrier that shimmered high in the air… ‘What’s this boy’s angle?’

“You wanted orbs!!! Not death!” Darla yelled, forgetting about her safety.

The man chuckled loudly, sounding deranged as he went on, “Oh no, little girl. You confuse me for those wastes of space back there. Who would hire a professional killer like me to steal a few measly ‘awakening orbs.’?”

The man looked up at the towering humanoid mass of plants in awe. Even after cutting him down, Alaric’s form remained imposing, as though it still beat with life.

“I haven’t had this much fun since… oof!”

An overwhelming force cut him, slamming him into a tree trunk. The man let out a loud grunt and sent an angry scowl in the direction the force had come from.

Sticking through his shoulder was a steel arrow humming loudly with powerful magic. In the distance, light weaved the feminine being he’d been talking to into existence.

The invisibility spell that had obscured her from vision faded as a young girl of fifteen was revealed. Only this girl had streams of tears dripping down her face and a glowing bow made of pure light growing from her hand.

Floating beside her was what looked to be a little fairy dressed in a neat suit… Only that this little butler fairy emanated a pulse unlike any other the man had ever seen in his life.

“Nice shot, Master,” the fairy replied in a gentle voice.

“A talking guardian…” the mercenary gawked.

“One more shot,” the guardian’s voice reverberated.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Darla replied drawing a bowstring along her hand. The arrow weaved itself from pure aether as she drew the string taut.

Before she could launch the arrow herself, however, a voice interrupted them, “Not just yet. I want to kill him myself.”

The shadows bubbled around the tree-like abomination that had been Alaric, and from their depths emerged a two-meter-tall Amazon clad in black lightless armour.

Her aura… sent shivers down the mercenary’s spine as it seemed as though the world itself had been drained of all life and happiness.

The power of the guardian made the barrier above them tremble just to contain her presence. The mercenary, for the first time in a very long time, felt his heart beat in fear as he stared at the lightless visor of the black knight.

‘So this is an S-class guardian…’