Chapter 29: Hexenmeister Jagd

Tobias had dodged, rolled, and weaved through the tendrils which barraged him. While the book’s tendrils were countless, only five or six tendrils were spared to deal with him.

The other tendrils were positioned behind the Warlock, to provide protection from Stella’s attacks, which had been bombarding the Warlock with countless light beams.

The Warlock only stood there, staring at him with an amused gaze even as blood dripped from his mouth. The ground next to him was the same sword which inflicted a terrible, yet non-lethal injury to him.

“Come on friend, don’t worry about me –” The Warlock coughed out blood again, but his eyes still shone their full lunacy. “Let’s focus on having fun, you and me.”

Tendrils had begun to move again. Tobias sidestepped one, before having to twist his body to evade another one, and finally had to roll on the ground to prevent himself from being pierced by yet another one.

“Oh, I know! Let’s discuss economics!” The Warlock clapped. The tendrils began to move again, at increasing speeds. “Did you know about the phenomenon known as Sunk-Cost-Fallacy?”

Tendril, sidestep. Tendril, backstep. Tendril – his dagger moved to slice it in half. It did not slice it in half, but it did seem to cause it some damage, causing it to withdraw, as if it was hurt.

“No? Of course you wouldn’t. But this is why we’re talking now, isn’t it?”

Armed with new knowledge, Tobias had incorporated cutting techniques to try to drive away the tendrils whenever footwork and dodging doesn’t work.

“Sunk-Cost-Fallacy is... the decision of a human being to choose a sub optimal option, just because they started investing in said option to begin with.”

Sidestep. Lunge forwards. Hop to jump over a low sweeping tendril. Torso-height tendrils which tried to pierce him could be stopped with a dagger swipe.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? A person could be renovating their old house for the past five years, while dumping in swathes of money which could only buy them a new house with less effort to begin with. And you know why they don’t stop and simply decide to buy the house?”

Tobias’ breaths had become deeper, and he began to breath faster as well. His limbs were beginning to exhaust themselves – no, he was tired since earlier, from having to run around and kill the hooded men that the Warlock employed.

“Because in their mind, they are thinking, ‘ohhhh but I’ve already spent so much time and money in this house it would be a shame to stop now’, or ‘I’ve been living in this house for my entire life, it’s a shame to just buy another one’ or whatever goes through that small, tiny head of theirs.”

But it didn’t matter. Tobias had been whipped whenever he fell down, didn’t he? He had his limbs hit with sticks whenever he just laid on the ground from exhaustion, didn’t he?

He was trained to surpass his natural limits. It would be insulting to his mentor and his training if he let this minor exhaustion slow him down.

With renewed resolution, his movements sharpened, as he began this deadly dance of avoiding certain death from those tendrils.

“And that, my friend, is the basic explanation for Sunk-Cost-Fallacy. I hope you got it from my oversimplified explanation, I really do. Now, if you survive longer, I will tell you why I began to talk about it to begin with.”

And with those words – the tendrils moved faster. It wasn’t much faster than they were before, but Tobias’ creeping exhaustion had made his limbs feel sluggish and slower than normal.

From the almost-comfortable pacing of the tendrils, where he had dodged their strikes by a wide margin before, the tendrils now were merely inches away from killing him.

Each strike was a bare miss. Each step only had a fraction of a moment’s respite, before he needed to will his body to move again. His legs pushed to their limits, he even started using his left hand for his dagger, his right arm having burned out from exhaustion.

His left calf flared in burning pain, as it was still sore from his injury earlier.

Tobias looked at the looming tendrils, in motion above him as they seemed to rain down strike after strike.

It was pointless, wasn’t it? He was only dancing to prevent his inevitable death, wasn’t he? Death...?

Death. Death. Death.

His heart surged with flaming anger. Death who had took his life, and took away his friend from him, and sent him on a journey to grow stronger...!

Who was he, to simply accept death from this man who was deranged and was no more than a lunatic?! Just what the hell was Sunk-cost whatever?! Why did he even bother to pay some attention to it?!

His words and his thoughts didn’t matter...

What mattered was to move his body, into this unending dance to avoid his death.

His limbs burned – they were pushed past their hardest limits. And yet, Tobias still moved. Even when they protested with as much pain as they could muster, he still moved.

Because as long as he was still alive, he would keep fighting. Keep moving. He was never supposed to give up.

The Warlock and his tendrils were clear to him. They were the enemy. It only meant that he needed to defeat his enemy.

So with a furious howl of desperation, he moved himself to draw closer towards the enemy. His lead-like legs burned to move, avoiding the tendril’s strike here. His lead-like arms burned to move, slicing a tendril in half.

And then – and then...

“Kuh...!” His body shut down. Like a puppet whose strings were cut, he stood still, his muscles locked up and convulsed with such intensity, it seemed to crush his very bones in his body.

“Your resolve is also an example of a Sunk-Cost-Fallacy, my friend. You could have simply took the optimal option to simply let yourself be overcome with despair and die, but no. You kept fighting until your last breath, and that only made you suffer, no?”

A tendril had pierced through his stomach. Tobias slowly craned his neck to see the tendril penetrating through his stomach, and his eyes narrowed with pain. But he looked up, and glared at the man who even until now, still kept speaking.

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This guy... Could he actually shut the fuck up...!?

“Well, you’re going to die soon. But before that, I’ll tell you what my intentions are. I. Fucking. Hate. Adventurers. Just because they’ve already poured so much sweat and blood and effort into Adventuring doesn’t mean that their next quest would be any more safe than the last, and worth it in the end. Kahahaha! It’s merely my job to tell them to stop wasting their fucking time. Oh, did I speak too much? No matter. Be gone with you.”

And with those words, the tendril flicked, and his body landed towards a tree. His back almost snapped at the impact. “Gah...!”

His vision wavered, as his consciousness slipped into black, then white, cycling over and over again. His limbs did not listen anymore, and he could only crane his neck at the ongoing barrages of light which met countless tendrils.

Stella was still fighting...

He had done everything he could, didn’t he...?

So did this mean he was going to die after all of that...?

Dammit... why were his last thoughts about that damn concept known as Sunk-Cost-Fallacy? Was it really worth listening to that deranged man...?

His body let out a breath that sounded like a hiss. He closed his eyes, letting darkness cover his vision. He was only resting... There was no way he would allow himself to die like this...

“Hey, Rogue.” A voice came from behind him, and his eyes almost snapped open. “You look like shit.”

Was that...? He craned his neck to see, but he could only a hooded man. A chill traveled through his spine, before he had saw that this hooded man had a porcelain mask. Those words belonged to Bastille, yet it was another person who uttered them...

“M... Magic... ian...”

“That’s me, Rogue.”

“Why... are you... here...?”

“Son of a bitch needs to pay. Here, kid. Drink up.” Magician pulled out a healing potion from his own pouch, and fed it to Tobias.

After that – Magician had pulled out a grimoire from his coat. He started chanting in some other language, as the grimoire surged with blue light of power. The way that he held the book... it reminded him of the man who held another person’s hand back at the recovery room.

And no longer after that thought, Tobias’ consciousness finally gave up on him.

The Abyss seemed eager to accept him into their domain. And for once, it was comfortable.

***

Stella’s runes were starting to run out of magical energy. She had set them to their maximum offensive potential, and fired barrage after barrage of full-powered light beams, and while they burned away tendrils in masses, the accursed Grimoire only regenerated them just as quickly.

And over the corner of her vision, she could see Marcus dodging countless attacks from the man, who only seemed to talk down to him, like a person talking down to a dog while cackling maniacally.

She felt her anger flare, and her runes matched the potency of her anger. More and more powerful beams continued, as each rune’s power was depleted at alarming rates.

But the only concern she had was to kill the Warlock who had committed such atrocities.

And finally – Marcus had stopped moving. He seemed to suddenly freeze, as his body violently shuddered. Shortly after, he was stabbed by a tendril, and flicked away like a bug.

Her anger flared brightly, and all of her runes in the air – just like the tendrils, they too, began to burn themselves out from the sheer power she was unleashing.

And then – there was something which gleamed blue from the corner of her vision. A beam of blue light emerged from the forest, and impaled through the Warlock’s head. His head exploded in a gory shower of blood and brain.

A spear of light pierced into a tree in the distance, before the spear faded away, only revealing a large hole in the middle of the tree’s trunk.

And the figure which stepped out of the forest... was none other than Magician.

The accursed book which had been dropped to the ground had its tendrils freeze. Then they seemed to look around, before each tendril tenderly touched their former master’s dead corpse.

And then – the thousands of tendrils ripped the body into thousands of bloodied pieces, the sounds of bones and flesh being torn apart filled the silent, forest air.

Then the tendrils, each with their own bloodied piece, retreated into the cursed book. The book itself was sucked into a black, vortex-like swirl, before disappearing entirely. The only thing which validated his existence was Marcus’ sword, which was dropped to the ground, and the explosion of blood which painted the ground red.

It was the price for power, and the Devil only claimed his due.

Stella let her runes dissipate, and she let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. The display was brutal, but her first focus was to see if Marcus was still alive.

She had no idea what she would even begin to tell his party about what happened to him... She sprinted past Magician, and only rushed to where she remembered Marcus was flung towards.

And – there he was. His body sat upright, leaning against a tree. His stomach – was actually sealed, but she could still see the gross, mangled flesh which indicated that he had been stabbed there. It was terrible to the point where a healing potion could only seal it, at best.

She knelt down, and placed a finger to his neck.

There was a pulse. And another one. A steady, rhythmic pulse...

She let out a sigh of relief. Then she smiled at the unconscious boy who almost died. It was a bitter smile, one filled with apologies.

“You’ve worked hard.” She said, her hand giving the boy a pat on his head. “We managed to win.”

And then, there was the crunching of dirt behind her. She stood up, and turned to look at the newest arrival. Her eyes narrowed. If this man had only arrived earlier... “What made you decide to do this? I thought you had backed out.” She growled lowly, her teeth gritted.

“My party member died.” He said, his voice strained. “She wasn’t even allowed to die in peace. She was made to kill herself, while she was still aware about it. She screamed and cried and begged for help... But I only let her die.”

She blinked. Then she gave a nod. “I’m sorry for your loss... It must have been another Hex.”

“What are you waiting for, then?” He asked, his voice dull this time. Then it turned into something... indifferent. “If Anna was Hexed... then there’s a high chance that everyone else might have also been Hexed... You have to go there quickly, if you want to save them.”

“That’s...” Stella trailed off. Then she shook her head, and only gave Magician a polite bow. “I see... Thank you, and I’m truly sorry for your loss.” And just like that, she fled through the night, running as fast as her Rune-enhanced body would allow her. The Magician only looked at her, his expression hidden by his mask and the shadows cast by his hood.

She felt sorry towards Marcus, and towards Magician. But she knew that she had something to do right now, and she promised that she will return back to help him.

That night, a Warlock who lost his way had been slain. It was only Stella’s rightful duty to do so, as a fellow, rightful Witch.

***

This was... different. The Abyss which surrounded Tobias was ever familiar, but at the same time, it was... no, it felt different from the Abyss which seemed to prowl in his sleep.

It was the same darkness, where his eyesight failed to see, and the same silence, where his ears failed to hear, and the same nothingness, where his fingers failed to touch anything.

It was the existence of nothingness – where his senses failed to work. And at times, he wasn’t even sure if he was standing on anything, or if he was simply free-falling in this endless darkness.

And yet...

[You did well.]

A message within the void. It just appeared out of nowhere, and the fact that it was written in white, glowing letters almost burned his eyes... On second thought, he was within the realms of his unconsciousness, so it really didn’t hurt or anything. It was just shocking to see.

He stared at it. What was it exactly implying? No, more importantly, why was it existing in here? For the longest time, his Abyss-like unconsciousness had nothing except for him, until he eventually woke up.

So why was this here?

He stared at it even more, and the same words only greeted him almost indefinitely. Then he raised his finger, and proceeded to tap it. As he did, the words shifted, disappeared, and replaced themselves with new ones.

It was... new. Mesmerizing was one way to put it; alluring was another.

[Your rapid progression has earned you some attention from the one you seek.]

When he finished reading the words, he didn’t know what it was entailing, or what he was supposed to expect.

No.

He simply did not know if this was a product of his subconscious, or if it really was something which existed.

And reading these words inscribed with light, with the ever stretching darkness for distances untold... These... Panels of Light, did Marcus not mention that once? It had been brought to mind for a few moments, as he wondered and pondered to himself about this new discovery.

And again, staring at those words which brought a strange, yet hopeful message... Yet at the same time... The lingering thoughts of whether or not it was real dominated his mind. It was too vague, yet too specific. Too surreal, yet too familiar. It was simply too incomprehensible.

Once more, the letters shift.

[The Seeds have been sowed. Your reward is due soon...]

And with those words, light invaded the Abyss. It started off as cracks of pure light against the black landscape, before it burst into rays of countless light, staining the landscape and blinding him, even within his own unconsciousness.

But... What did those words mean? What seeds? What reward? Did he even do anything befitting of a reward – actually... Now that he thought about it, if this message is telling him that Death had given him some of their attention...

Then was slaying that demented Warlock a huge achievement for him?

[Wake up from this Dream.]

But he couldn’t ponder about it anymore. Another message replaced the one he read. Those few words of light which burned even brighter than the brightest lights held absolute power, and Tobias felt himself get dragged across unknowable, vast distances, as he returned to the world of the living once more.

He woke up, as he slowly blinked to himself.