He didn’t wait for them to approach. This time, he was the aggressor. He dashed towards them at full sprint, Blood Hunter brimming ready for blood.

~”I summon: Crimson Chains”~

Ahjer gathered below the ground in front of him, disrupting and deforming it. A step later, nine deep red chains burst from beneath him. Though in the shape of chains, they appeared plantlike. Thorny, thick, and writhing. Also on brand, they absolutely oozed blood. The moment they came into view of Dalric they sprung for his limbs like snakes punching on a meal. He could have opted to evade them, but had no need to.

Once a few of them lined up, he flicked the unwieldy halberd. 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 vallinoid had walked into the static they would feel like their body was moving at a million kilometers per second 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?

In front of Dalric, 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 Maw.”~

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 maw, zipping by the rows of aggressively sharp teeth, and rubbed his hand along the white insides of its mouth. The lightning did the rest, infecting 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 just specific arrangements of ahjer. In some cases, they were very complex arrangements, but in this case they weren't. To Dalric, they were simple and amateur. That's what allowed him to break them down and consume them as raw ahjer.

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

Things wouldn’t go the same this time around.

Dalric swiveled his arm and caught their surprise lunge between the blades of his halberd. Before they could retreat he twisted his wrist. The maneuver locked their sword in place. Immediately following it, he whipped his arm to the side. To the wielder’s credit, they held on as their sword was dragged along. Their reward was a face full of metal as they slammed into the enchanted bars. Dalric didn’t give them a moment's respite, viciously kicking them as they rebounded off the cell. Their little fire daggers tried to come to the rescue, but he 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 them 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 them was also a conjurer and a swordsman. Apparently. They had a sword on their hip at least. Unlike the fire one, they did seem far more focused on spells though.

They covered their face with a mask, much similar to the fire one’s, but they weren’t adorned with a similarly colorful set armor. They didn’t wear any armor actually, just an enchanted robe. The two behind sported the same thing. Enchanting thin, light material like whatever made up their robes was incredibly difficult. For them to all have adequate enough enchantments to comfortably forego standard armor was… odd.

Hmm. And of the six of you, only one has an enchanted weapon?

That was exceptionally odd. Especially considering the regular patrol had enchanted weapons. Enchanting metals was magnitudes easier than fabrics. He peeked at the thin blade he confiscated from the fire-swordsman-conjurer.

Maybe not.

It was definitely an unusual sword, but that was just another to add to the list of dozens so he put those thoughts to the side.

He tossed the sword 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 seconds Dalric took to assess the foursome's armor-weapon situation gave the chains enough reprieve to yank the original swordsman-conjurer to ‘safety’. They were still reeling from their brief beating, but they were 'safely' behind the new one. And the new one was yet untouched by Dalric. Yet.

Passed the ineffective lions, Dalric 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…

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They unsheathed their blade, a similar sort to the one the other swordsman-conjurer used though unenchanted, and took a defensive stance. Dalric immediately tested its strength, swinging 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 meeting it head on.

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 worse, their desperate defense dampened its sting, only allowing it pierce a few centimeters 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 chaos attunement. Unlike something as simple as decay, it didn’t just set the area it affected to rot. It actively shattered it into pieces. 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 recovered cohort. They both fire one allowed them to retreat as they stepped forward to face Dalric.

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 they knew spells outside or conjuration or something far more advanced than they've shown that wasn't much of an option. He 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. Something at the back of his mind was stopping him from killing these people.

This shouldn't have dragged on this long. He could have ended this much sooner. He could end this right now, but he was hesitating. He, Sin of Wrath, The Black Maelstrom, Dragon of the North, The Deathseeker, was hesitating. For what, for slave traders? Traffickers? 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 made magma flow through Dalric's veins, but as he turned back to the people that caused it he didn't have it.

That tick he had when he wanted something dead. It just wasn't there. He couldn't feel it. Even with Blood Hunter begging him to drown it in their blood, he still hesitated. He still felt unsure.

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

…

No. That couldn't be it, it wouldn’t even make any sense.

He was by no stretch of the imagination a pacifist. Though he’d valiantly argue that every example of him monstrously rampaging came during his centuries of under the thumb of the Gods, he earned the name ‘The Black Maelstrom’ years before that. His life had always been fraught with battle. While he never truly had a taste for murder, he also never ran from it. It was all he knew at one point. 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 up, something was definitely up. 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 seconds, but they both noticed his change of demeanor. He barely gave them a glance. Their main goal was still just delayment so they’d actually backed up a further distance. 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.

Wait.

He released the brute from his cage, the two streaks of lightning returning to him. Thinking about it now, there was no point in keeping him in it anyway. It was actually kind of foolish of him. The brute was twitching before, but now he was just comatose. Keeping the cage running burned his ahjer for nothing.

So many mistakes, so little time… is this a part of it too?

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 calm, if some sort of parasite invaded his brain he wouldn’t even know what he could do about that. To be fair, he also didn’t know what to do now. How was a small cut affecting his thoughts, he didn't know, 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. It should have been near-instantaneous, this was taking a number of seconds. A major red flag. It did eventually reach the area, but once it did it faced even greater resistance. In fact, it was completely blocked.

Wait no. They weren't blocked, the healing is being blocked.

More worries for him. He scanned himself again, but he found no poison. There shouldn't be anything stopping him from healing himself. He tried again but got the same result.

It's almost as—

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

—if… somethings there.

Something was there.