Our strikes met nothing but air as he once again vanished. However, this time I had a plan. My palm loosened, and my lightning spear shot out behind me, instantly reversing my grip on it so that its tip was pointed back. For the first time, I heard a pained grunt as the attack connected, causing me to grin.

“Got you.” I said as I spun around again, righting my grip on the lance to strike once more. Kahli was a beat slower, not as used to melee confrontations. Martin was finally wounded, even if it was just a burnt hand.

Two quick flashes of movement, and Martin appeared several meters away from us, looking mildly annoyed for the first time. “It is too early to celebrate.” He said, bringing his hands up to assume a combat stance. Kahli was already charging at him again, appearing to be in a state similar to a berserker’s rage.

Her melody rang out and echoed through the battlefield, her tone dark and thunderous. When she engaged him this time, I saw her bring her daggers forward, only to be met with his palms slapping her hands away. Borrowing the force from the exchange, she spun around in the air to kick at his head, causing him to duck.

Finally, her other leg came down, crashing against his head and forcing him to take a step back. From what I could tell, her new melody had a different effect. Whether she meant to or not, she was controlling the rhythm of the battle in the most literal sense, her bardic song pulling him to act in a certain way.

Naturally, this was not a chance that I’d let go. Even though she was currently controlling the flow of battle, that wasn’t enough to make up for the difference in their physical abilities. She could at most inflict small amounts of damage, as evidenced by how little his bar of life had dropped with her previous kick. Yet, if he seriously struck her, she might just die from it.

My right hand lifted up, the spell formation still fueling me with a continuous stream of lightning that empowered my lance over time. The battle was still not long enough for me to reach full power, but it was already around twice as strong as when I hit him before.

“Kahli, switch!” I called out to her, and she used the momentum from one of their clashes to send herself flying back in an arc through the air, poised to land behind me as I charged forward. Martin looked briefly confused by the event, but soon turned his focus to me as he saw me stabbing the lance in his direction.

“That’s not going to work again.” He calmly spoke, performing another vanishing step to appear off to the side. As I readjusted my posture to pursue him, he took another step to appear beside me, slapping one hand against my side lightly.

Pain flooded my body as I felt a strange energy exploding within my side. My own bar of life appeared, a small chunk of it vanishing away. At the same time, he had already stepped back out of my reach. “I don’t know what that bard is doing, but if it’s you, you won’t be able to touch me like that.”

“I know…” I panted out, feeling blood rising up in my throat. “But… I did it once. It can’t hurt to try, right?” Correction, it could hurt. It could hurt a lot, but there was a secret about my lance that I didn’t want to let him know. Something I knew even he couldn’t avoid, once I reached full power.

“Stubborn.” He said, sounding as if he were right beside me. Oh… I turned my body just enough to avoid his hand slapping against my back. Instead, it landed on my left arm as I intercepted his attack, making me clench my teeth as I felt a bone snapping.

“Theol!” Khali called out, and I felt her energy filling me again. I wasn’t sure how she managed to keep her song unbroken while shouting, but I won’t complain since it lessened the pain. And more importantly, it finished the charging for my spear. I could feel the lightning seeping through the enchantment on my gloves, surging into my hand.

“To the skies!” I cried out to Kahli, and we both lifted into the air with a powerful gust of wind. This was something I had told Kahli about before, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to avoid using this move in a battle. Although we could not keep ourselves airborne for very long, we just needed to stay out of his reach for a moment.

Several more spell diagrams began forming around me, one after another. And for each, I spoke an additional line. “King of the skies, sovereign of lightning. Judge he who has sinned before me. Let none escape your wrath. For those who violate the laws of man, let the heavens show no mercy.”

The spell diagram around my wrist expanded, taking with it all of the stored lightning and joining the other four that had just formed. Then, a single bolt of lightning shot up into the skies. The clear sky became darkened as a black cloud spread out from the spell, covering at least a kilometer in every direction.

Martin seemed to realize what was happening, and immediately began to run, each step taking him further and further to try to escape the spell’s effect. Seeing that caused a cold sneer to surface on my face. If I hadn’t managed to land a hit on him before, I really wouldn’t be able to use this spell confidently.

But now, a massive bolt of blue lightning descended from the cloud. It completely ignored myself and Kahli, who were still suspended in the air, and charged straight towards Martin. When I struck him with my spell earlier, it allowed me to plant a small amount of my energy inside of him, using it as a way to guide the true ‘sky bolt lance’. Though, I still didn’t like that name.

Needless to say, even with Martin running as fast as he could, he could not outrun lightning. The full force of the bolt struck his body all at once, causing him to cry out in pain. His bar of life plummeted, reaching near the bottom within the single instant the spell struck.

When the spell ended, the sky began to quickly clear, the last of the energy gone to sustain the cloud. Likewise, Kahli and myself descended to the ground, landing heavily before running in the direction of Martin. I could still faintly see a bar of health above his body, meaning that he had not managed to die from that blast. No doubt he had used his ki or mana to shield himself as best he could at the last moment.

Nonetheless, he was no longer in any position to fight. By the time we arrived, his back had been charred black. Red lightning-shaped scars spread across his entire body as he laid flat on the ground. The only signs of movement from him were the occasional twitches of his fingers.

Kahli kept her daggers drawn as she approached, unwilling to be careless at the last moment. She gave a brief look to me, seeming to ask permission. I knew what she wanted, what she had wanted ever since Mander was killed, so I gave a faint nod.

“You….fools.” A faint voice came from Martin, though blood flowed freely from his mouth. His eyes were tightly shut, though I could see lines of blood flowing from their corners as well. “My… work.”

“Save it.” Kahli said, her tone unusually cold. Finally, her humming had stopped, silence descending around us. She had no interest in hearing his last words, more content to watch the last bit of his life fade away. “For those you have killed, the young, the old, the innocent. For how you tortured them, broke their bodies over and over. For all of the families you ruined… Death is too good for you.”

Though she said that, she stood next to him, striking down with her dagger to sever his neck. “But it feels good to kill you myself.” When she stood up, I saw a faint tear falling from her cheek.

I walked over, patting her lightly on the shoulder with my good arm. “Take his head and return to town.” I told her, glancing towards the place we had just recently left. “See if you can find an alchemist for me. I’ll be needing looked at. In the meantime, I’ll see what else he has on him.”

She glanced at me curiously, but nodded and picked up the head. There was no real fear of me hoarding his treasures for myself, just as there was no fear from me that she would claim the bounty for her own. After all, it was unlikely that he had any treasures that would make it worth giving up the bounty, but at the same time the bounty wasn’t enough to make one ignore what treasures he might have.

Trying to sort that logic out in my head, I kneeled down at the now headless corpse, and began rifling through his robes. To my rather pleasant surprise, he had a plump coinpurse hidden in his robes, as well as several quest scrolls that likely contained his various belongings. In order to preserve fairness, I did not investigate them immediately, choosing to wait until Kahli and I were back together before we went over it.

That said, reuniting with her really didn’t take long at all. By the time I got back to town, she had just finished explaining to the local guild receptionist about what happened. Word was already being sent back to the main guild that the bounty had been completed, so we would be able to return home and claim our reward.

Of course, that meant that she hadn’t been able to find an alchemist for me, but luckily the receptionist himself had trained in that. Although it cost a little bit, we were able to get a potion that would help mend my arm. The real surprise came to Kahli and myself when we went back up to our room, and began looking at the various quest scrolls.

The obvious one was the body of the forest tyrant, the scroll for which we set to the side. No need to damage the guild hall by bringing it out here. The other scrolls contained his research journal, and something he called the ‘oculum prototype’.

The journal listed all of the various victims of the Mad Monk, labeling them as research subjects. It mentioned the steps that he took to ‘test’ them, how he would use potions and his own ki to keep them awake throughout the entire process, educating them about various subjects until they leveled up, and then studying the entire process. For the first several victims, he didn’t seem to have any definitive progress made.

By the sixth, though, he began to find something. That’s when construction of the oculum began, a device that would allow him to measure the energy of the strong. For the most part, what he listed was theories until one of his most recent murders. After that, he began listing different qualities that represented different classes, and how they covered the body.

None of this made sense until I looked through the oculum myself, seeing Kahli sitting next to me. I almost dropped the circular crystal in shock from what I saw. Kahli’s body was lit up with a brilliant golden glow, strings of light wrapping around the majority of her body. Only her head seemed different, which seemed to indicate the earliest levels.

On her head was a mix of small flames, blue waves of light, sharp green blades, or brown peaks poking through her features. Yet, it was clear that she didn’t notice any of that herself, from how she looked at me in confusion. Instead of explaining it to her, I handed her the crystal to use herself, and she looked at me through it.

“We have to report this, Theol…” She said softly, and I nodded my head. Something that was able to measure the classes of another person… this was an item that had never existed before. And, although gruesome in its conception, the journal had a detailed description of how to craft it.

“For now, let’s get some rest.” I said as I was collapsing back into the bed. Although it didn’t seem like I had used a lot of energy in the fight against Martin, that spell always takes nearly all of my mana to fire. As such, I was severely depleted right now. “We can deal with all of that later.”