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We stood in the alley, staring at each other, weapons raised. I licked the wound on the inside of my cheek and then spit a globule of blood out as I began leaking darkness mana from my body in the form of a dark haze spell, and directed it to creep toward the lizardman.

In response, the lizardman reached behind his back with his free hand, and unsheaths a second sickle, then took a dual wielder's stance.

The moment I was sure the dark haze had obscured me from his vision, the both of us burst into motion. I pointed forward and a third circle lightning spell I had been spinning up in the background shot forth, but by then, the lizardman had already jumped to the alley wall and sprung off it to gain more altitude, and at the peak of his jump, he flung something at me.

Taking no chances, I jumped backward and out of my own dark haze spell that was not able to keep up with my movement speed, a moment later, there was the sound of shattering glass from where I was just standing, followed by the sounds of a fizzing chemical reaction, and the sight of vapors rising from my low lingering dark haze spell. And in front of all that landed the lizardman ready for action.

Not wanting to take any chances of breathing in whatever the lizard man threw down, I waved my hand to cast a zero-circle spell to summon a breeze, blowing away whatever fumes there were out of the alley, I just hoped the neighborhood was not too badly affected.

The lizardman sighed, “Why did you have to be so competent? I thought grabbing a few kids would be easy money, but you just had to make it difficult. But oh well, we were told to bring you and your friends in alive and able to talk, not unharmed, and I don't think you need your limbs to do any talking.”

Just as he finished his speech, the lizardman dashed forward, and at the last moment, he dashed so low to the ground I thought he could kiss it. When I angled the tip of my sword down, he raised a sickle over his head, caught my blade, and moved it out of the way before invading my space and swinging his other sickle at my front foot.

I hopped over the speeding lizard to avoid my foot being cut off, only to see his tail coming up to strike at me like a scorpion, and with my sword to the side at an awkward angle, I was in no position to strike back and cut off that damned tail, instead, I kicked off his tail toward the alley wall to bleed off my speed and cast a bolt of lightning at the speedy lizard.

This forced him to jump high to avoid getting struck, but I was counting on that. The moment he was midair and had nowhere to run, I shot another bolt of lightning as he brought his sickles up in front of himself, which I highly doubt was going to help him.

Or so I thought, when the lightning hit the sickles, runes that I was pretty sure were not there before lit up, and my lightning spell fizzled out, leaving the runes still glowing on his sickles.

I squinted my eyes at his sickels, and from what I could tell, this was either a dispel or adsorption enchantment, and I was really hoping it was just a dispel, because if it was an adsorption type, that meant the sickles were either powering something or waiting to unleash something, and nether sounded good for my health, but from the look of those still gowling runes, I would put my money on adsorption type.

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The moment the lizardman touched the ground again, he was once again low to the ground and speeding at me.

As he closed in, I twisted my back foot on the ground while discreetly using instinctive magic to turn the surface of the paved ground to dust and kicked said dust at the lizardman with the assistance of some wind magic to really puff up the dust in his face.

The moment the lizardman caught a face full of dust, I stepped to the left and gave my best golf swing with my sword at my low opponent, only for him to raise one of his sickles at the last moment to catch my blade.

The moment our blades made contact, I felt the impact and saw a dust-obscured figure veer away from me, but at the same time, I also felt a jolt of electricity run from my sword and into my body, seizing up my muscles and dropping me to the floor like a falling statue.

By the time I hit the floor, my muscles were once again under my control and I scrambled to get to my feet, and just in time too, because a sickle swiped and made a gash in the ground where my right foot was just a split second ago.

On instinct, I was about to swing my sword back in the direction of the swing, but remembered what just happened when our weapons made contact and pulled back at the last moment. Instead, I jumped forward to make more distance between us and prepare for another clash.

As I got back into a ready stance and readied more spells for quick use, the dust cloud settled to reveal a dust-covered lizardman just standing there, and as I looked at his sickles, one of them had lost the glowing runes, which confirmed my suspicions of those sickles being absorption enchanted weapons that released my own spell back on me when our weapons made contact.

But on the bright side, I can see that his eyes are caked in brown dust, and him losing his vision in a fight is a great advanta-...

“You got to be shitting me!” I cussed out loud as some kind of membrane opened sideways to reveal clear eyes. Does that mean that lizardfolk also have traits of other reptiles like this third eyelid? What were they called again? Nictitating membranes or something like that.

Well, this is bullshit! First the hobgoblin brute, and now this. This is the second time I have ever used the pocket sand technique and both were not blinded. I swear, one of these days, I am going to get sand in someone’s eyes and beat them senseless!

The lizardman picks out the accumulated dust at the corner of his eyes and looks down at his body, “You are going to pay for this, now I am going to need to have my clothes laundered and the underside of my scales cleaned. Do you know how hard it is to find someone to do it properly?”

The lizardman opened his mouth to continue his rant but stopped as an identical lizardman landed beside the one I was fighting, but the newcomer was holding a bleeding stab wound on his side.

“We need to wrap this up, we will have incoming soon.” the new lizard man said.

The lizardman I was fighting nodded and replied, “This one is skilled, you go after the other two, they are on the way to the Adventurers Guild.”

The new lizardman nodded and jumped to the wall to spring up to the roof, but I denied his exit. As the new lizardman was in midair, I used instinctive magic to manifest a strong down draft that pushed him off balance and forced him to land.

Next, I stomped the ground and a wall of earth rose from the ground to cut off the exit to the alley, “I can’t let you do that.” I said.

I was hoping to just hold this guy off until help arrived, but now that there are two of them and that our minders are most likely dead because of these two, I cannot hold back anymore. The only thing I will need to make sure of by the end of this encounter is that there are no witnesses.