Nareo was getting cocky because he got one lucky hit in. Idiot. I would show him who was superior between the two of us.

I turned to Cerion, who was sweating in exertion. He was attacking everyone around him wildly while clenching his teeth. To be honest, he didn't look to be all there. I shook my head. Now wasn't the time to worry about him.

"You take care of the trash, I'll kill the big fucker!"

Cerion didn't seem to hear, because he just kept fighting. Well, it didn't matter, because Nareo mirrored my intention.

"You dumb fuckers kill the water guy, stay out of my fight!"

That made things much simpler. Nareo and I started to circle one another. The other combatants gave us the necessary space to fight. The thought of another battle to the death excited me, because I knew I would win anyway.

I grabbed my sword with both hands and took on a defensive stance, forcing my opponent to take the initiative. He swung his hammer in a circle around him, slowly increasing its momentum as it spun. I took on an unstable guard stance, in an attempt to make him overextend.

Fortunately, it worked. His arrogance made him predictable, because he redirected his weapon's momentum right at me, even using a skill that made lightning course through the weapon. I never intended to block though. With my trump card [Ghost apparation] already revealed, it was now or never if I still wanted to make good use of it. I apparated right into his shadow as his hammer passed through my previous position. It made contact with a boulder behind me, which split into multiple chunks, the lightning even melting the stone near the impact.

I didn't waste any time and plunged my sword into his head. I didn't feel any resistance at first, because my equipment was still intangible at the time. A moment later, my sword turned tangible again, inside of his body. Or at least, that's what I thought was going to happen. Instead, the part of my sword that had been inside of Nareo disappeared. It seemed that intangible objects had to give way to tangible ones when they reappeared! My previous theory had been that the weight of the intersecting objects took priority, which caused the chain to pierce me, but now it seemed that the priority simply went to already tangible objects! I felt cheated. How was I supposed to know! Now my sword was only half as long as it had been before. On some level, the weight thing had to be true, otherwise, I would never be able to rematerialize in the air or underwater, but maybe it didn't extend as far as I had hoped?

The sword my parents had given me had been broken because of my own mistake.

"Fuck!" I swore out loud.

Nareo stiffened in fear as he saw the broken piece of my sword fall, but regained his confidence when he realised that whatever I had tried hadn't worked.

"Hah! Fool, did you think your puny attack would hurt m..."

His taunt was interrupted by my broken sword slashing across the back of his neck. To Nareo's credit, he reacted quickly and moved with my blade, preventing it from sinking in too deeply. He activated a movement skill and jumped through the air to make some distance.

I could see him holding his neck trying to stifle the blood flow, and failing. Unfortunately, he drank a healing potion a moment later. Unlike my [Dark form], healing potions healed people incredibly slowly in comparison. It would stop his neck wound from becoming fatal, though, and would help stop the bleeding for a while, which was all he needed in this fight.

From there, our battle turned into a slugfest of two enraged warriors fighting like rabid dogs. I didn't take the loss of my sword well. Even if it was still usable and [Overloaded sword] worked as well as it ever did, I had destroyed something on accident that I was now realising I actually treasured quite a bit. Sentimentality didn't suit me, so I decided Nareo would be the one to die for my mistake.

His hammer met my broken blade and overloaded mana in clash after clash. Several times, I tried to catch him in a maelstrom, but he was a ranged fighter, and kept too much distance.

I had had more success with my extended sword attacks, which had left numerous cuts on his body. His liberal use of healing potions was the only thing that kept him moving, but it wouldn't be enough. Unlike me, he was getting tired as the battle went on.

Despite his laboured breath, his attacks kept coming. Even worse, they increased in frequency the more wounded he got. Was that his build? A combination of his father's and the two lieutenants' combat styles? A hammer, lightning and berserker skill. It was quite the combo. In the end, it wasn't enough.

After a while, his exhaustion and wounds caught up to him, and he fell to his knees. I didn't bother gloating, and simply apparated behind him, decapitating him with a swing of my broken blade.

A system notification popped up, but I waved it away, I could just check it out later.

As his head flew through the air, I could see Cerion start to finish up as well.

Despite the fact that he severely outclassed his opponents, he had accrued numerous wounds. Even I could tell that his swordsmanship and skill usage was far sloppier than usual. What was going on with him?

When I heard Nareo's head drop to the floor, Cerion finished the last tier 2 bandit, that had held on using his tower shield. I blocked Cerion's strike, so that we would be able to interrogate him. Surprisingly none of the bandits had run away. Usually, that would be their first instinct.

I kicked the bandit to the ground and put my blade's edge at his throat.

"Alright, little guy, what was Nareo's band doing all the way out here?"

Instead of fear, I saw reluctance and determination in his eyes. He actually tried to spit at me, but I used some overloaded mana to wave it away.

"I'm not tellin' you shit! I don't fear death!"

I activated some more overloaded mana and spun it around my body.

"See this, fella? This is dark mana. I don't think you're afraid of death, but are you afraid of undeath? Nareo is dead. Speak, and you'll painlessly join him in afterlife."

That threat seemed to do the trick. I didn't actually have any skills or spells that could create undead, but he didn't know that.

"Alright, alright, I'll talk! Just don't turn me into one of those things..."

"I'll ask again. What was Nareo's band doing all the way out here?"

"We... split up from the main group. Nareo's dad, Kazach recently made a deal with a noble from the west. In return for smuggling in a spider, that noble would pay us handsomely. Huge monstrosity, that one. As big as a horse! I helped in transporting the damn thing, I would know! Thing is, Kazach never shared any of the coin with us! He said the contact never paid up, but we all knew he was lying. Nareo couldn't stand for that and neither could we. I mean, stealing from others is fine, but stealing from each other? That goes against the code! So, we left. Nareo had a big fight with his dad and took all the bandits that still had any honour left with him. We were going to leave the Thalia Hills soon!"

I frowned. It turned out that the spider story was true after all. Well, he was dead now, so it didn't matter anymore.

"Why did you take everything the passing merchants had, then?"

"We needed coin to travel to a new spot. We didn't have any other choice!"

"Alright, Cerion. He's all yours now."

I didn't see any point in keeping him alive. There were ways to extract memories in noble courts, sure, but keeping this one fucker alive for the rest of the week seemed like a pain in the ass. We were better off taking one of the main camp bandits with us as a witness.

Cerion hesitated for a moment, but eventually walked up and slashed down.

I could see his breath hitch as he killed the last person. His breathing then quickened as he stared at his bloody hands. I interrupted him by putting my hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry, Cerion. I wouldn't have asked you to come and fight if I had known you were sick."

He calmed down again when he heard my voice, and turned to me.

"I -I'm fine. Just give me a moment to myself."

He headed off to the backside of another boulder, where I could hear him puke. He must have been really sick. I felt like a terrible friend. I had noticed his discomfort over the past few days. I should have seen this coming. He sat behind that rock for what felt like half an hour, before he reappeared.

When he came back around, he had cleaned himself using one of his water-aligned skills. He avoided looking at the scene of the battle and walked over to me.

"Arthur, do you mind if we talk for a moment?"

Damnit. I would have to apologise for being a bad friend.

"Sure thing. Do you mind if I loot Nareo first? Also, can you clean the blood off me, too?"

"Sure..."

I grabbed Narao's chain hammer and looted his bag. He had a few more small potion bottles and some gold coins, but nothing to write home about. In fact, I would be surprised if this hammer was even enchanted. The bandit life wasn't a rich one, after all.

A few minutes later, Cerion and I were seated in a small nearby clearing.

"You wanted to talk about something?"

"Yeah... I -I just wanted to set the record straight. Because we're friends, and friends need to tell one another the truth sometimes. For transparency's sake."

His words were making me slightly scared. What was he talking about?

"What do you mean?"

"You've noticed that I've been slightly uncomfortable since the start of this quest, right?"

"Yeah, I have. What's going on? Are you sick or something?"

"No, Arthur. I'm just having a hard time dealing with the idea of killing another thinking, breathing human being. I've noticed you've had a hard time understanding that."

The idea of killing another person? I mean, we hadn't killed anybody that didn't deserve it...

"Arthur, the truth is... most people feel an instinctual aversion to killing another human, specifically. We'll easily kill monsters, even sentient ones, but other people are a different matter. When one breaks that instinct, we feel really sick. Remember Emer's first kill? Or Cara's? They puked, and cried, and felt like shit."

"What? But those people deserved it!"

"I know they did. That doesn't change how it makes you feel, though. I've noticed that you, for some reason, never had this instinct. Maybe it's because of your affinity, maybe it's because of something else. Don't get me wrong, Arthur, I trust you with my life. I don't believe you would ever hurt an innocent person. You're my first ever friend, and I treasure this connection, but I just haven't been able to ask you for advice about this, because you didn't even understand what I was talking about. I'm sorry for not explaining my feelings to you earlier. I lost myself in this fight, and could have seriously hurt both of us if things had gone wrong. I promise I'll do better next time."

I looked at him, flabbergasted. Instinctual aversion? Why was this the first time I had heard about this? I still didn't really understand what he was talking about, but I understood that my friend had been dealing with an internal struggle this entire time, and I had been powerless to help him. Worse, I had waved away his concerns based on my own experiences.

"I -I'm sorry too, Cerion. I've been a terrible friend. I didn't understand what was going on with you. I just thought you would be able to deal with the situation the same way I did. I never felt bad for killing another person. At least, the act of killing never made me feel bad. The thought of hurting a person that doesn't deserve it does, though. Is there something wrong with me? Maybe people with my affinity are destined to turn out like that necromancer, after all." I added quietly.

Cerion stood up and put his arm around my shoulder.

"I don't think so, Arthur. You're a good person, despite your shitty attitude."

The sudden turn to comedy forced a laugh out of me, making me snort.

"Fuck you too, blue hair."

"And the smell, gah! Did I mention your smell?"

I glared at him, though I couldn't help a smirk from appearing on my face.

"You smell like shit, brother."

"That sounds like a 'you' problem, Cerion. Now that we're talking about shit we don't like about one another, why don't I mention that shitty hairstyle you have? You always look like you're about to go to a ball, when in reality I'm the only person within a square kilometer that can even see you."

He smirked proudly.

"Ah, but you are impressed, are you not?"

"Not at all."

We kept joking around for a few more minutes. Eventually, I asked Cerion to wash away the bodies into a hole I would dig. We didn't want to attract any monsters, or leave any trail of breadcrumbs for the other bandits to follow.