With the sheer number of foes in the room, it only made sense to use the moment of shock to cast X’ruhn’s Balance to boost his magical stats. At the sight of the glowing energy coalescing and crossing over Hirrus’s body, the assembled adventurers who correctly identified him as a threat made their first mistake. They backed away from him, making an overdramatic show of drawing weapons and readying their own Arcana.

It just opened the window wider for him. Logarius Shroud was next, tremendously increasing Hirrus’s cast speed, which would make it harder for them to react to what was coming next. Shining Sprocket and Eyes On Me came out lightning fast, sparkling energy suffusing his being and floating around his eyes.

In just over a second, Hirrus was battle-ready. At about that point, the rest of the adventurers in the room realized that this was serious. They were witnessing now empty show of arms from an intruder. They were under attack. The silence of their surprised quickly gave way to a cacophony of panic.

“Who thinks they can come in here…” someone nearby barked angrily.

“What the fuck?” someone cried out. “Leave me out of this, I didn’t do anything to anybody. I surrender, I don’t want any fucking fight..”

“Wait,” someone near the back of the room shouted. “Who is that? Is that the-”

Hirrus unleashed Flames of the Apocalypse into the room.

The sudden screams of alarm, outrage, and fear were drowned out by the roar of the Arcana’s crackling flames. At least a score were caught in the ring of damage around Hirrus. The sheer range of damage dealt to his victims was incredibly wide, indicating a dramatic difference in power level among these adventurers. Some took only a paltry nine thousand damage, and while severely injured, survived the attack. Others were obliterated by over twenty-five thousand at a stroke, their flesh burnt to ash before they could even cry out.

Smoke and the stench of burning filled the air, and the panic truly began.

Someone near death from Hirrus’s attack turned and ran face first into Hirrus’s Ivory Thorns. The thorns of the barricade Arcana immediately ripped him to shreds, dealing the last seven thousand damage to finish them off.

“We’re fucking trapped!” someone nearby shrieked.

“Stand and fight, men!” a man in full plate armor roared from the back of the room. He leaped up on the table before him, pointing his comically oversized glittering golden greatsword at Hirrus and charging. “Stand and fight!” he roared again.

“Fuck this!” someone shrieked, moving to the nearest arrow-slit-sized window and trying very hard to squeeze out that way.

A half-dozen survivors from Hirrus’s first strike tried to stagger away, while a score of the uninjured officers tried to push forward to attack. The moment of shuffle - combined with the stumbling over the bodies of the dead - meant Hirrus was free to fire again. He fired Mortal Ray at the angle where it would hit the most of the oncoming foes. The blast of yellow-white sparks sent everyone in range flying back, some of them taken from their feet. Some of them would not stand up again. The strongest among them only took eight thousand damage, but many took more than that. One poor soul must not have been an officer at all, and took over thirty-five thousand damage.

“Get help!” someone shrieked. The voice was coming from the far end of the room, where about twenty of the officers were pressing themselves against the back wall, blindly trying to get as far from Hirrus as possible. “Someone get the fucking word out! We’re going to fucking die!”

“I’m tabbing out now to put out the call to log the fuck in,” someone barked. “Just don’t let him fucking kill me!”

Someone got close enough to Hirrus to take a swing. It was clumsy and slow and even without any speed buffs, Hirrus ducked under the high swing of the mace. His instincts took over and he struck back physically, slamming a fist into his attacker’s ribs, but with X’ruhn’s Balance swapping his stats, he only did one thousand damage with the punch.

“Ha ha!” the man cackled triumphantly. “Out of Arcana now, are you?”

Hirrus’s hand came up again, and while he would have been satisfied enough with the overexaggerated flinch, he smashed the man in the face with the searing damage of a Resplendent Orb. The golden glow of the Arcana would empower Hirrus’s further Arcana, even as it did five thousand damage to his attacker.

The man with the oversized golden sword finally reached the fray, having charged the entire length of the room atop the table, and he leaped off, raising his sword high to bring it down in a needlessly dramatic overhand strike. The sword came down hard on Hirrus’s shoulder. Despite the big show of the strike, it barely tickled, dealing just under two thousand damage.

“We have him now, men!” the armored blowhard shouted, rearing back for another strike. “Behold, as he falls before my-”

His bellowed boast ended in a wet disgusting gurgling noise as Hirrus slammed his hands into his chest, casting Hopworth’s Rend. The Arcana’s peculiar twisting energy did twenty-seven thousand damage, and turned the man’s armor and bones into a rain of shrapnel that pelted everyone behind him. His soft tissues became a thick layer of red mush the slapped against the floor, table, and a few unfortunate officers who seemed paralyzed by the horror of what just happened.

“I told you!” someone shrieked. “It’s him! It’s fucking him! The Merciless One!”

Hirrus channeled his next Arcana for a moment, and the shrieking purple electricity that ripped out of him filled his immediate surroundings. High Caterwaul lived up to its name, as the energy that bolted out of him drowned out any response. The blast of energy fried the attackers who had closed to within fifteen feet of him, dealing sixteen thousand damage at the least.

There were no survivors.

Another wave of attackers charged in at him, screaming in mingled rage and fear. Hirrus stared them down with Leer, the blue-green sparks dishing out eight thousand damage to the strongest, and up to twenty-two thousand to a few who clearly did not belong here.

Leer failed to wipe out the oncoming attackers, and Hirrus let them close the distance. Their weapons smashed feebly against his body, dealing only a few thousand damage. Even if he were to stand here and let them pummel him, it would take several minutes for his HP bar to even notice. One of them was able to deal over a thousand damage with a short-handled war hammer, and he pushed others aside so that he could swing again.

Hirrus ducked under the next hammer swing, reaching down and touching the ground. The Trembling Arcana rolled out of him, shaking the ground. It stripped his attackers of their buffs, and rattled their bodies for almost exactly ten thousand damage. The Cosmic Barrette’s ability instantly replenished his health to full, even as his attackers died around him.

With that, those who had foolishly decided to attack Hirrus - and those unfortunate enough to be within his reach - were dead on the ground. Their bodies didn’t form half as high a pile as what he’d left behind in Rumi’s camp. Even so, there were still at least thirty more people in the room. Almost a score of them were screaming in panic, pressed against the far wall. Some were trying to force their way through the too-narrow arrow-slit windows. Five or six were sitting in the middle of the room, either visibly stunned at what had just happened right in front of their faces, or outright catatonic.

“Where is Ontario?” Hirrus demanded.

Whatever response was being made, Hirrus couldn’t hear it over the terrified shrieking of those who were panicking and trying to escape through a solid wall.

“The fuck is this?” someone barked from behind Hirrus. Their voice was somehow deep and nasal at the same time. “Some kinda druid bullshit? Fuck you guys! Call for help and then lock the fuckin’ door on us? In my own fuckin’ house?”

Hirrus turned around. Behind him was the Ivory Thorns Arcana he’d blocked the door with. It also blocked his vision, but through the twisting glimmering brambles, he could see movement.

Someone was out there.

“Are you Ontario?” Hirrus asked. “Or is he out there with you?”

“Yeah,” the voice called back. “And the fuck are you? Let me in right fuckin’ now or I’m gonna knock your goddamn block off!”

With an effort of will, Hirrus dismissed the Ivory Thorns Arcana.

He’d expected to be faced with only one extremely irate man. What waited was instead about fifteen. They were all armored and armed, with weapons raised and ready as Hirrus dispelled the barricade to let them in. They seemed confused as they filed in, but the confusion gave way to shock at the sight of the piles of burnt, dismembered, and bloody bodies surrounding Hirrus.

The man in the lead was startlingly short, given the volume of his demands, but he was well-armored, with a thick black gambeson and a sturdy bucket helm. Hirrus was surprised at how much he looked the part of a practical, battle-ready soldier. He would have thought he was a fellow guardsman and not an adventurer at all, if he had kept his mouth shut.

“What the actual fucking fuck happened in here?” he demanded. He started to storm towards Hirrus, gesturing angrily with an iron-banded wooden cudgel. “What the fuck did you let get loose in here?”

“No!” someone from the back shrieked. “Get away from him! He’s- He’s- He’s-!”

Hirrus turned towards the back of the room, raising his arms and blasting the back of the room with Civilization Buster. Twenty-six thousand damage obliterated the cowards there, and the back wall of the stone room crumbled to dust under the destructive power of the Arcana, sending their corpses - those that weren’t turned to dust themselves - raining down on the estate grounds below.

“Which of you is Ontario?” Hirrus asked the small man as he stared in openmouthed shock at what had just happened. “The Merciless One requests a moment of his time.”