Aki was rather disappointed in himself. Not only had several goblins been able to run away from him during his last few raids, but as they were about a day and a half away from the city, he had been critically injured by an ambush he HAD detected.

Rather, the secondary fucker who didn't dress like an actual bandit avoided his half assed passive mana detection and whatever the fuck the other two used only to end up a broken mess of flesh and blood on the woods, but that was only after he had managed to get a long and poisoned dagger in one of his lungs and his forearm, the original strikes being for his heart and neck.

Unlike a certain guy who could turn into an armored giant when injured, he had no way to heal himself out of nowhere when such a professional went for the kill. Rather, bleeding lung aside, he also wouldn't be able to deal with the amount of potent necrotizing poison that'd been injected into his body normally.

Luckily, he was able to fight the panic of incoming death for long enough that his emotional resistance kicked in, allowing him to focus as if time was slowing down. With that, three bandits found themselves experiencing gravity as if the planetary core was right in front of his feet, their bodies being dragged onto the dirt as if rag dolls on a tempest.

He fell knees first on one of them, hands resting onion the chests of the other two. They screamed and wailed as flesh parted under his will, his limbs slowly sinking through into their bodies. A couple of arrows were fired his way, bit he had not stopped looking at the battlefield even as he prepared and the projectiles were easily diverted by simple gusts of wind.

Kirian and Sera would eventually win even without his interference, the power gap was so big that it simply didn't matter that there was a couple dozen to each of them, nevermind that these people would be routing at any moment, especially with some of them being sacrificed live in front of the rest like he was doing.

Then his hands grasped around two hot, rhythmically beating organs and he established a connection, pulling onto all that these enemies represented in their physical form.

His wounds closed as the vitality reached him, the poison overwhelmed soon enough, mana pool going slightly above max as he drained much more than was healthy for his targets.

And all of a sudden all the bandits still standing felt their chests constraint, hearts missing beats as he manually shared the suffering on the man bellow him with the rest, the adrenaline not enough for the stronger ones to sustain the weaker ones and the corpses as well. Especially as the sudden change in blood pressure from a battle high to a forced low allowed even more of them to be made into cadavers on the floor, hearts stopping even faster than it was natural.

By the time it was done, he was breathing hard, his mana mostly gone despite how fast his allies managed to defeat the distracted bandits. The system said he’d gained a couple of levels in a few intermediary and advanced talents due to experience exceeding the amount that could be stored at once or something, but fuck had that been inefficient.

Rather than such a forced soul and flesh sympathy he should have done something to increase the weight on their backs one at a time or even just fucking blasted a ray of radiance through their eyeballs, but no, he had to have such weird instinct to his spell casting. This was going to take years to beat out of himself, wasn’t it?

“Out of mana.” He informed out loud while fishing for a mana potion in his belt and looking around. It was more like 20% mana, but any possible assailant was more than welcome to come figure out what he could do with it.

Still, the potion wasn't shot out of his hands and they ended up regrouping easily enough. After a throughout swipe of the area it was clear whoever else might have been there before was gone by now.

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"Was there a third guy in black?" He asked while looking at Kirian. His only answer was the shade summoning a humanoid arm from his shadow. "I could make a bone compass pointing to the owner if you think you can get them alive. Won't work if they are too far away though."

"Don't bet on it. We don't have the time or tools to make that worth our while." Sera dismissed the idea as she continued to equipp the rest of her armor while flanked by the two of them.

"There are other, similar options, but the chance if success diminishes with time and I am progressively less confident in getting those right on the first try. Should I freeze the arm for storage?" He offered, to which there was moment of introspective silence.

"Freeze it. I will have it examined for clues and then you can have a shot." She decided and he received the detached limb with his left hand, robbing it of temperature quite quickly before delivering it to the only one of them with an actual spatial pouch.

He wasn't going to chance making one of those for himself without both reliable training and a bigger domain range with fine control, but damn did he want one of those.

Maybe if he was capable of purposefully creating something like the Rose's order of beauty he would have made a liminality elemental to substitute for it, but the reason he'd dared experiment with beauty to begin with was that he was sure he could survive some backlash in case things went wrong with it.

After so much reading on his part however, something with his understanding of Liminality would at the very least cripple him by just existing considering how developed it's more offensive parts would be.

…………………

This time there was no hotel, no, they went straight for the lord's mansion.

Their battle ready state was apparently something used to make their presence known through town, as they gathered quite the crowd just by walking there since the princess was wearing so many royal symbols, so as to better ensure the cooperation of the city's Count with dealing with their current 'rat' problem.

The… he wasn't going to actually ask whether it was a man or woman or hermaphroditic demon kin with androgenous features, but they were clearly not pleased at having their hand forced.

Really, it was impressive to see someone so readily start questioning loyalties and upping their game, but if he'd learned anything about the impulsive girl in question, it was that she didn't even trust herself, and was more than ready to jump the gun.

Sarcastic distaste aside, he had to admit that he knew little of the actual political scenery and would be remiss to even attempt an opinion while so many players were getting out of their asses and moving, so stirring up the court of public opinion and questioning the honor and ability of a border noble might very well be what was needed in this situation.

Even if those looking to get them actually benefited from the immediate consequences, this was not a problem. Rather, playing vulnerable could very well be what they needed, as security was something they could always guarantee due to personal power, while allowing such a loose individual to remain free could have dire consequences later.

Which is why he didn't complain about pretending to still be poisoned.

Considering the fact that he was the only one to actually get hit, it'd been rather surprising at the time to see that both the assailants he'd one-hit killed with a wave of pure force were in fact over level 40, but it had rather just been the fact that he had reacted far too quickly and too violently to their appearance that made them seen useless.

He himself would have looked completely incompetent if surrounded by some kind of instant deployment, damage over time aura for example, as even if he teleported out of it quickly, there was still a great chance of death.

Back to a reality seen through less biased lenses however, for anybody unable to use exterior vitality like extra health those wounds he took would have indeed been fatal due to the sheer size difference between his health pool and the poison's damage over time, while the princess had only just lost an armor piece to avoid being stung with it, which only worked because the thing was completely enchanted and made specifically for that kind of situation.

That meant that showing that they were all completely fine would have no good results independent of what mental leaps other people made to come to terms with reality.

Obviously though, he had not suddenly grown completely selfless out of nowhere and decided to take all the responsibility for finding these criminals, it was simply that the risks matched his newly discovered benefits quite well.