Up ahead, there was an attractive-looking human woman, clutching at her bloodied leg, screaming in pain, sitting in the middle of the road. Her dress had originally been beige, but now it was covered in brown dust, and blood, and whatever fancy accessories it may have had in the past, had all been torn away.

“I count twenty, including the woman,” Edmund said.

“I count twenty-three. There are two underground, and one hidden inside that fake tree on the right,” Sylver said, as Edmund clicked his tongue.

“I thought that was just a very old tree… Who do you want?” Edmund asked as he stretched out his small legs.

[Human – Lesser Noble + Lesser Scribe – 32]

[HP: 271 – 22%]

[MP: 70 – 60%]

[Stamina: 4 – 3%]

[Corpse – Inferior]

[Soul – Lesser]

“How easy is it to fake a status?” Sylver asked.

“Pretty easy,” Edmund said, as he stood up on his seat, lightly jumped, and landed on the roof of the carriage.

“Alright… You get the 4 guys in the trees, the 3 men behind us, and there’s a group of 5 ahead of us. Try not to kill anyone, but if you do, don’t worry about it,” Sylver said.

“Shout if you need help,” Edmund said, as he nodded at Sylver, and disappeared.

There wasn’t a bright flash of light, no bang, no intense wave of air, the only proof Edmund had used his magic was an ever-so-faint crackling. The hole in the clouds above probably gave it away, but people tended to not look up.

The faint sound Edmund’s flight had made had also been masked by the noise of the wheels, as they came to a complete halt.

Sylver jumped down from his seat and did that little, half walk, half run, people normally did when they were trying to cover an awkward distance as quickly as possible.

“Please, they-they-” the woman tripped over her words and took a moment to take a shaky breath, as Sylver got close enough to hear her.

Before she could continue, the tip of Sylver’s boot reached the bottom part of her chin.

He could have easily kicked her hard enough to send her head flying, but because he wanted these bandits “alive,” his kick merely knocked her out. He very likely loosened her teeth in the process, but in Sylver’s defense, he didn’t give a shit whether these bandits had teeth.

The already silent empty road somehow managed to become even more silent, as Sylver pulled his foot back, and clasped his hands behind his back.

“I know you’re out there. Next time you use pigs' blood, dilute it a little. And maybe have the bait wear something that will absorb the blood. People will have a harder time spotting the color difference,” Sylver said towards the empty road and surrounding forest.

Sylver waited for a moment, then another, but everyone remained where they were. As bad of an actor as the girl was, the others were pretty good at masking their presence.

“Surrender is still an option,” Sylver said, a bit louder, as he took a step towards the unconscious girl.

“Three,” Sylver said, as he placed his boot onto the girl’s small head.

“Two,” Sylver said as the girl’s skull made a creaking sound as Sylver applied pressure with his boot.

“One,” Sylver said, as he began to place his full weight onto his foot, and heard a very violent intake of breath behind him, followed by a half gasp.

Sylver lifted his foot off the girl’s head and turned around.

A man with a dark brown beard was on the ground, pinned down by five shades, with a sixth that was strangling him with a thick leather belt.

[Human – Hunter + Lesser Warrior – 71]

[HP: 14,880 – 82%]

[MP: 0 – 100%]

[Stamina: 22,510 – 71%]

[Corpse – Normal]

[Soul – Petty]

Sylver cocked his head at what he read.

“I thought…” you would be stronger…

The man continued to struggle, but with Sylver this close to the shades, he didn’t have a chance.

Sylver took a small step backward and watched as a glowing arrow whizzed right in front of his face, followed by 4 more arrows, that also missed him by roughly a centimeter. Sylver turned towards the source of the arrows and squinted.

A volley of arrows appeared out of thin air, and the few that would have hit Sylver were instead flicked away by his robe.

[Human – Farmer + Lesser Hunter + Crow Archer – 51]

[HP: 9,950 – 98%]

[MP: 400 – 60%]

[Stamina: 6,733 – 54%]

[Corpse – Petty]

[Soul – Petty]

Just as the woman was about to ready another arrow, a dark club collided with the back of her head and knocked her unconscious. The shade that had hit her caught her before she fell off the tree branch.

With his hands still behind his back, Sylver lifted his foot and stomped it on the ground. There was a muffled yelp, followed by a muffled thump, followed by two unconscious bodies being pulled out of the loose dirt ground.

One of the mages had a shattered nose, while the other was bleeding from his left ear.

The rest of the bandits were handled similarly.

They tried their best, and a couple even worked together, but the thing is, countering an army of exceptionally well-crafted shades is hard when you know what shades are, and what they’re weak to, and downright impossible if you’ve never seen one.

Sylver mostly remained where he was, as bandit after bandit was knocked out, and carried over to the carriage.

“What’s Ed doing?” Sylver asked, as Spring split himself into two, and went to check up on the pyromancer.

“He’s fighting 3 men, and coaching them on how best to attack him,” Spring said, without the note of disbelief such a statement would normally deserve.

Sylver just nodded at Spring.

Once all the unconscious bandits were loaded onto the roof of the carriage, Sylver jumped up into the seat and willed the undead horses to continue.

It didn’t take long for the sound of metal hitting metal to reach Sylver’s ears.

Exactly as Spring had said, Edmund was simultaneously keeping 3 grown men at bay. One was armed with a battle ax, another had a curved saber, and a third wielded a makeshift mace.

But they weren’t fighting against Edmund, not really.

The bandit wielding the ax was battling a floating metal ax, the sword wielder was battling a floating metal sword, and the man with the makeshift mace was battling an identical floating makeshift mace.

All 3 metal weapons were perfect copies of the real weapons they were facing.

Sylver jumped off the carriage as it came to halt and quietly had the shades move the unconscious bodies laying behind Edmund onto the roof.

“No!” Edmund shouted, “spin it, spin it!” he barked, as the sword-wielding bandit continued ignoring him, and for the tenth time tried to move Edmund’s floating sword out of the way using brute force.

To no one’s surprise, save for the sword-wielding bandit, it didn’t work.

Edmund was holding an empty sword hilt behind his back, while his other hand was pointed towards the three floating weapons. The movement he made with his fingers was smooth, and continuous as if he was a conductor commanding an orchestra to play a slow song.

“Watch your step!” Edmund barked, as the battle-ax wielder tripped over his own feet, and nearly fell over.

Instead of taking advantage of the mistake, Edmund’s floating metal ax waited for the man to regain his footing before it continued with its onslaught.

“Don’t make that face,” Edmund said under his breath.

“I can’t help it,” Sylver whispered back.

“Look at them!” Edmund said a bit louder than he intended.

Sylver did as his friend suggested, and took another look at the three men fighting against floating metallic replicas of their weapons.

“I prefer not to have this argument with you,” Sylver said, as he continued making “that” face.

“Look at their eyes!” Edmund shouted, as the mace wielder narrowly dodged a direct hit to the head.

“Adrenalin in high doses tends to do that, yes,” Sylver said, as Edmund continued toying with these poor men.

But, in Edmund’s defense, underneath utter terror, there was a hint of excitement in their dilated eyes.

To Sylver, this sort of action was akin to playing with your food. It was prolonging the suffering of a hunted animal, it was needless, pointless, and in some cases, offensive.

But Edmund didn’t see it that way.

If you asked him, he would describe what he was doing as “giving them a warrior’s death.”

In Sylver’s opinion, if he were in the shoes of these men, he would prefer to be killed by himself, rather than Edmund.

Because when Sylver wanted someone dead, he killed them. A knife through the throat, the brain, the heart, the goal was to end the opponent's life as quickly as possible.

Edmund on the other hand would make people fight until they reached their “peak,” and only then would he kill them. Normally that sort of action would be best described as torture, or dishonorable, but the interesting thing was that Edmund had an eye for this sort of thing.

The way he explained it was that he could tell when someone’s heart wasn’t in it.

If you didn’t fight back with everything you had, he would just kill you, and with the speeds Edmund’s magic could reach, more often than not the person wouldn’t even realize they died.

In Sylver’s opinion, those people got off easy.

It’s the ones who fought back that he felt sorry for.

Because Edmund did something to them.

Not using magic, or some sort of secret sword technique, Edmund infected people with his enthusiasm for battle. It was nothing more than pure undiluted charisma, the kind that’s impossible to put into words, people just lost their minds whenever they fought against him.

It didn’t matter who they were, what they did, or what they stood to gain or lose by defeating him, people just lost their fucking minds, and couldn’t think of anything other than beating him.

If a person had that inside of them, Edmund would bring it out.

Truth be told, it was a power almost as deadly as Edmund’s other abilities.

The three men were so focused on Edmund’s floating weapons, that they didn’t notice that one of them tripped for a final time, and with a giant smile on his face, lost consciousness, as Edmund’s metallic mace hit the man on the back of the head.

Sylver looked around, and while he was waiting, sent his shades out to find a good spot.

The ax wielder was the next to go.

He roared with so much oomph in his voice as he attacked Edmund’s ax for the final time, that it would have made Sylver flinch if he hadn’t been ready for it.

Sylver mostly remained where he was, and waited for the battle to conclude.

He wasn’t in a rush, he enjoyed watching the way Edmund manipulated his mana.

Even in the Ibis, there were less than a handful of mages that came anywhere near close to Edmund’s level of skill. Some of it was due to natural talent, sure, but Edmund wasn’t the sort of man who was satisfied with merely being better than everyone else, he wanted to be the best there ever was.

And to his credit, he was pretty fucking close.

In terms of combat ability, there were maybe 4 people in all of Eira that came anywhere near him, in a one-on-one fight, Edmund never lost.

The fight with the swordsman ended in an extremely classic spinning of the blades, that resulted in the man’s sword being whisked out of his hand. Thankfully for him, by the time his eyes informed his brain that his hand was empty, the hilt of Edmund’s sword had already struck him in the back of the head.

The three floating metallic weapons floated towards Edmund and merged into a single bubble of liquid metal. The warm-to-the-touch blob formed itself into a thick blade, and as Edmund reached out towards it with his hilt, it solidified into a sword.

Sylver stayed quiet as Edmund mumbled out a quick prayer for the three fallen warriors. He walked over to the swordsman and very gently used his fingers to break off the tip of the man’s sword. The shard of metal melted in Ed’s hands, as if it was quicksilver, and was then inserted into Edmund’s sword.

“It only now occurs to me… Couldn’t we have just had the dark elves come with us?” Edmund asked as Sylver shook his head.

“I’ve never used this waystone before,” Sylver explained, as Edmund’s eyes widened slightly.

“Ah… So this is one of those. We’re not going to end up in the demon realm, or something, right?” Edmund asked as Sylver shook his head again, albeit a bit less confidently.

“I mean… considering I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to teleportation, the chance is very small, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible… We should be fine,” Sylver said, and now it was Edmund’s turn to make a face.

“This is the waystone you made when you failed to transfer skills and perks from one man to another, right?” Edmund asked.

“I wouldn’t say “failed,” but yes,” Sylver said.

“How likely is this to kill us?” Edmund asked.

“Us? Considering I’m already dead, and you can’t die, very unlikely. But if you’re asking about these guys…” Sylver made a ‘so so’ gesture with his hand.

Edmund’s beliefs were mostly centered around fights, and people who could fight, his opinions regarding already defeated opponents were…

Very convenient for certain people… like the type that needed corpses to grow stronger. Sort of how a vulture might follow a pack of wild dogs.

***

After a few minutes of traveling into the forest, they found an empty clearing that was good enough for what Sylver was about to do.

The unconscious bandits were laid out in a neat circle around Sylver and Edmund, all twenty-three of them, with their heads pointed towards the middle of the circle. What Sylver couldn’t store in his [Bound Bones] had been burned into nothing by Edmund.

In terms of complexity, using a waystone was simple enough that most magically gifted children could do it. There wasn’t much skill involved in the process.

Sadly, the “waystone” Sylver had made was only sort of a waystone, despite what the item description might say.

He channeled his mana into the small rock trapped within his internal ribcage’s shoulder blade, and immediately felt a response from the magical tool. It felt thin, and slimy like Sylver was trying to catch a long slug, but the harder he squeezed, the more the slug slipped away.

Sylver gave up on maintaining complete control over it, and instead directed the slippery effect to where he wanted it to go.

Without any warning Sylver, Edmund, and the 23 unconscious bandits, all glowed bright blue for a half second and then disappeared.