Dalric didn’t wait for the four to approach. This time, he was the aggressor.

~I summon: Crimson Chains~

As he began his sprint, ahjer gathered below the ground in front of him. A step later, nine deep red chains burst from beneath him. Though they sprouted in the shape of chains, they were clearly plant based. Poison the color of blood dripped down their thorny, porous, and writhing bodies.

The moment Dalric stepped above them they sprung for his limbs like snakes pouncing on a meal. He flicked his unwieldy halberd in response. The air buzzed as the enchanted metal sliced through it and six of the chains. The beastly weapon left a trail of white static in its path. A trail that the remaining three chains were all too happy to burst into. As they did, they were simultaneously burned and frozen.

The original wielder called the state ‘Zen’. If a valinoid had walked into the static they would feel like their body was moving at a hundred leagues per blink while also being completely still. Fanciful name aside, it was incredibly lethal.

~I invoke: Call of the Titans~

~We summon: The Titan of Torment~

We?

At the other end of the hall a massive storm of ahjer brewed. Two of the likely slave traders had backed up to concoct some sort of summoning ritual. By the incantation, a ‘Titan’. The word ‘Titan’ meant a menagerie of different things in different cultures so he couldn’t be sure what exactly they were attempting to summon, but the ‘torment’ part told him it likely wasn’t the usual human take on Titans.

The other two were on delay duty.

~I conjure: The Grey Whale’s Maul~

A giant mouth appeared before Dalric, filling the entire hallway ceiling to floor and cell to cell. The teeth within it were as long as his forearm and likely thicker. Four layers of them separated him and the barbed throat at the epicenter.

Unless you’re going to summon the beast itself…

He leapt directly into the maul, zipping by the rows of aggressively sharp teeth, and rubbed his hand along the white insides of its mouth. The lightning did the rest, deconstructing it like it did the floating swords beforehand.

The things an ahjerist could conjure, be they in the form of a beast or a blade, were at their core arrangements of ahjer. All things contained ahjer, or more accurate ahjer existed everywhere, but unlike summoning which manifested actual matter, conjuration merely imitated it. That meant if one had the ability to break it down then it was no different from a projection of plain ahjer.

The amount Dalric pilfered from the large whale mouth was notably less than the swords though, likely the lack of an attunement, so consuming it gave him effectively nothing. It did clear his path however, just in time for the original swordsman-conjurer to make his reappearance.

Things wouldn’t go the same this time around.

Dalric swiveled his arm and caught the surprise lunge between the blades of his halberd. Before the sword could be retrieved, he twisted his wrist. The maneuver locked it in place. Immediately following it, he whipped his arm to the side. To the wielder’s credit, he held on as his sword was dragged along. His reward was a face full of metal as Dalric slammed him into the enchanted bars. Dalric didn’t give him a moment's respite, viciously kicking him as he rebounded off the cell. The little fire daggers tried to come to the rescue, but Dalric blocked them with his free hand. They still exploded on impact, but their efforts did nothing to stop him from getting another ferocious stomp in.

~I summon: Crimson Chains~

~I conjure: The Lion’s Pride~

Denying Dalric a third kick at their body, the bloody chains reemerged to snatch the man away. Accompanying them were seven lions, each with bloodlust dripping off their fur. They didn’t attack Dalric though, they simply maneuvered themselves between him and the swordsman-conjurer.

I suppose I should say the fire-swordsman-conjurer.

The compatriot that just rescued him was also a conjurer and a swordsman. Apparently. Dalric had no way of identifying them as while they wore a similar armor piece to their fiery companion, their mask did not depict a face. They had a sword on their hip at least. Even if they didn’t seem eager to use it.

The two behind them did not sport the same red armor, but rather the red robes. A bit calmer now, Dalric noted that enchanting thin, light material like whatever made up their robes was incredibly difficult. For so many of them to have adequate enough enchantments to comfortably forego standard armor was… odd.

Then there’s this.

He peeked at the thin blade he confiscated from the fire-swordsman-conjurer. It was definitely an unusual sword. He couldn’t quite figure out why though and this would be a poor time to attempt. For now, Dalric tossed it behind him and continued his sprint.

The lions swiftly moved to impede him, flailing their claws about, but they wouldn't slow him down. He didn't even waste time absorbing them, instead letting the lightning just disintegrate them on collision. Visible sparks of gold shot out as each lion sacrificed themself in ill-fated hopes of stopping him. With no sense or will, they mindlessly offered themselves to the meat grinder.

Though they failed their purpose, the few blinks Dalric took to assess the foursome's armor-weapon situation gave the chains enough reprieve to yank the original swordsman-conjurer to ‘safety’. He recovered quickly from his brief beating and took his place behind his companion. Dalric didn’t mind dealing with the other first.

Past the ineffective lions, he finally crossed into their cocoon. Or what he calculated was their cocoon. From this point on their spell casting would be too slow to be effective, forcing them into a melee. If they were as skilled with their sword as they were with their spells, it could take a moment. If they weren't…

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They unsheathed their blade. It seemed a similar make to the one the other swordsman-conjurer used, though with weaker enchantments. Instead of meeting him, they took a defensive stance. Dalric immediately tested its strength. He swung his halberd high and wide for a heavy blow. It almost scraped the ceiling before falling like a guillotine. They wisely avoided it, stepping backward instead of contesting him.

Hm.

Dalric's control was elite though. He halted mid-swing and switched to a lunge instead. They barely had a moment to recognize the shift, frantically jolting their arm into position. Their sword caught the junction between the tip of the halberd and one of the side blades, just preventing themselves from being impaled.

Dalric twisted his wrist again, snagging both their weapon and their arm. They didn't make the same mistake their compatriot did however, they relinquished their sword the moment they felt the pull. It harmlessly dropped to the floor as they stepped back a few more feet.

They hastily pulled out a dagger from somewhere on their back and resumed their defensive stance.

Dalric tested them again, jabbing his halberd with inhuman speed. They managed to get their weapon in place in time, but it was too small, they were too weak, and their stance was ruined in the process. Blood Hunter barreled through it all, meeting their robe and easily cutting through.

They successfully avoided the worst, their desperate defense dampened its sting, only allowing it to pierce a few finger widths into their shoulder rather than all the way through. They didn’t, however, come out with just a cut. The tip of Blood Hunter had a decay attunement. Unlike something simpler like rot, it didn’t just slowly kill organic matter, it actively deconstructed it. The end result may have been largely the same, but the time it took to reach that result was drastically different.

The recipient of it could only groan painfully as they blinked and lost both their shoulder and their arm. They stumbled backward, still groaning, and bumped into their now fully recuperated cohort. They switched places.

What's your plan now?

Both the swordsman-conjurers were weaponless now, one of them being heavily injured as well. The fire one could technically still cast spells, but unless his abilities spread past just conjuration or he had something far more advanced than what he’d shown so far, that wasn't much of an option.

Dalric peeked over at the summoners, but he didn't have much to worry about over there either. They looked over half done, but the quality and quantity of the ahjer they used was just too low. Titan or not, if you don't give it enough strength it would be meaningless.

It was at this point Dalric had to contend with the thought that had been nagging him since he broke out of his cell and set eyes on the brute. He was hesitating.

This shouldn't have dragged on this long. He told himself he spared the brute because he didn’t have the facts, but that was nonsense. What could they say to explain themselves? He should have killed him then and there, but he felt… reluctant. He, Sin of Wrath, The Black Maelstrom, Dragon of the North, The Deathseeker, was reluctant to kill? For what, for Traffickers? Slave masters? He had been ready to decimate the entire village of tigers for doing nothing but protecting their home, but these revolting pigs made him hesitate?

What's going on?

He looked to his left, into the cell beside him. His rage burned again. It was a human child this time, or likely a child. Human ages were hard to judge, but they appeared small and frail. They didn't seem malnourished, but they were most definitely thin, beaten, and shackled. Seeing them in such a state while matching them to the children he sensed above made magma flow through his veins. They didn’t even have the basic decency to leave the young alone.

As he turned back to the people responsible, the anger changed. He still felt it, but that tick he had when he wanted something dead just wasn't there. Even with Blood Hunter begging him to drown it in their blood, he still hesitated. He still felt reluctant.

What is wrong with me? Is it… that I’m free from the Gods’ influence?

…

No. That couldn't be it..

He had never been a pacifist. Though he had only ever claimed a non-warrior’s life while under the thumb of the Gods, he earned the name ‘The Black Maelstrom’ decades before that. His life had always been fraught with death. From the moment he was born it surrounded him, molded him. He had no family, no loved ones. All he had was steel and blood.

This. This feeling of not wanting to kill was foreign. It felt even more foreign than when the Gods were rummaging around in his head. Actually. It felt vaguely similar to that. There was no pressure, but rather a coaxing. As if someone was…

Dalric paused and immediately scanned his body. Something was wrong, something was definitely wrong. Early signs were good, but the first scan was just for major disruptions. He went more minute, more detailed. Everything still seemed fine, until he noticed something at the crown of his head. There was an incision. A tiny one, no thicker than his fingernail, but an incision all the same. He couldn’t even feel it. Without the deep scan, he’d have never known it was there.

He panicked, slightly, but calmed down when he confirmed the cut didn’t penetrate his skull. He double-checked, but he found no disturbances with his brain. That only gave him slight solace though, there was still a phantom incision in his head.

The two sword-conjurers both stirred in front of him. Not much time had passed, each scan only took a handful of blinks, but they both noticed his change of demeanor. He barely gave them a glance.

Their main goal seemed to have switched to stalling for their summoners so they’d backed up a further distance from him. The injured conjurer seemed to be prepping a more complex conjuration spell, but Dalric only vaguely cared. He doubted they could conjure anything he couldn’t instantly disintegrate. Hell, he may even get some free ahjer if it's good enough. He could need it. This detour, even though it was of utmost importance, was costing him. He was dangerously close to having to disconnect from Thunderfield.

His full focus returned to the tiny hole in his head. The fact it didn’t cut all the way through his skull gave him a bit of calm. If some sort of mind-altering parasite invaded his brain he wouldn’t even know what he could do about that. As far as he was aware, ahjer-weidling parasites didn’t exist.

That terrifying reality averted, he also didn’t know what to do now. A small cut shouldn't be capable of affecting his thoughts, but he was sure it was somehow.

Without being able to tell how it was… doing whatever it was doing exactly, he just resolved to close it and see how that affected it. He moved some of his ahjer towards it, but internally frowned when he faced resistance. His ahjer still gradually moved along, but it did so at a much slower rate than it should have. Within his own body it should have been near-instantaneous, but it wasn’t. A major red flag.

It did eventually reach the area, but once it did it faced even greater resistance. Then, it was completely blocked. He tried to force it, but it didn’t budge. His ahjer just refused to move where he directed it. He scanned himself again, but he found no reason why.

It's almost as—

He reached for the back of his head with his hand.

—if… somethings there.

Something was there.