Sacrifice Mage

Chapter 239 (B3: 66): Living Excuses

Hamsik was of half a mind to send the runaways back where they had come from. They didn’t deserve his mercy, didn’t deserve kindness. Not after what they had pulled. But the kneeling woman with the two young children pulled on heartstrings he really should have buried by now. All three were dressed in night clothes. They had clearly been roused from their sleep before hightailing it out of their estate.

“Please,” she said. Her face was distraught, her whole body shaking in fear. For now, she had the young boy and girl pacified, held tightly to either side of her, but they were clearly picking up on their guardian’s fear. They were moments away from bursting into wailing tears. “Please, they’re after us. They’ll kill us all when they catch up. Please, you must help us!”

Hamsik’s face was stony. “I ”

“I didn’t mean it in that sense, my lord.” For all that her desperation had made her gaff, she was way too afraid of what was going on to be properly contrite. “But if you bear a grudge against me, then please, just take in these two young ones. We—”

“No, mama!” the girl cried, clutching the woman tightly. “We’re not leaving you!”

Like his sister, the boy embraced his mother desperately too. Unlike her, though, he just started bawling.

The woman squeezed both children tightly, tears seeping from her eyes as she had greater and greater difficulty holding it together. “Hush. You need to remain safe. You need to keep your brother safe. I—”

A loud burst made her next few words inaudible. They all looked farther behind them, where a rain of sparking red energy fell like meteors from the sky. Hamsik had already noted the devastation in the direction of House Uralivanth, but now, it seemed to be spreading out.

And if he wasn’t mistaken, a few of those powers were heading straight for Kalnislaw estate. His old but new home.

“Why here?” Hamsik asked. “Why not go to the other nobles? Why not go to Weren’t they supposed to be your accomplices, the ones who helped your criminal acts?”

“Please,” the woman said. “We’re not all involved in any of that!”

“A likely story. Don’t claim innocence via ignorance. I am well aware that news travels fast, that these things wouldn’t be hidden so well out of the House. You must be a fool to think that I’d simply take you in if you shed some tears.”

“The children, my lord,” she insisted. “Have mercy and take the children. I will hold the pursuers off or lead them astray.”

Hamsik growled. Uralivanth should have thought about their future, about how their actions could reflect on the potential that their scions could reach. But there was no point belabouring that fact. Right now, he needed to make a decision.

Which was kind of made for him when the pursuers the woman was afraid of finally appeared.

Claderov. Hamsik was sure of that from the moment he laid eyes on the trio. Their tunics, the way they carried themselves, the very presence of their boosted auras. He was absolutely sure that he was dealing with a small contingent of people seeking vengeance for the fallen lord.

Or so it seemed.

“Vandre,” Hamsik said. “Take the woman and the children and get out of here.”

The Scarthrall—and several others at the estate—had come over to see what all the commotion was. Hamsik hadn’t chased them off yet, though he really should have. They didn’t need to be gawking. Even worse, they really didn’t need to be caught up in whatever mess was about to go down.

“You cannot be serious,” said the leading Claderov Rakshasa, twin axes hanging at his waist. “You’re to protect criminal scum?”

“ scum,” said another of them, a Scalekin woman with a strange, sinuous gait.

“Right. Murderous scum. That’s who you’re trying to hide, Kalnislaw. Shouldn’t you think better of such a decision?”

His voice was so authoritative, so commanding, that Vandre and his charges all paused. But a glare from Hamsik broke them out of the trance and they continued onwards, the Scarthrall shepherding the woman and her children along.

“You have no right to claim anything here,” Hamsik said, standing tall.

“No right?” The third Claderovian scoffed. He was a human. Or an Ogre. Half and half, no doubt. “Our lord was murdered by these filth that you seek to protect, and we will not rest until justice is meted out.”

“What you’re trying to do isn’t justice. You’re just exacerbating the problem by going after the wrong people.” Hamsik took a calming breath and tried to modulate his voice. He had always been terrible at this side of noble politicking. “You’re forgetting nuance in favour of your blind need for vengeance. Unless… all this is just some sort of ploy. A scapegoat for your real intentions.”

“I didn’t come here just to be insulted by the likes of you, .” The axe-wielder stepped up. His weapons were out, the blades gleaming in the low light. “You chose death.”

Hamsik slowly grinned. He was outnumbered here, which wasn’t good. And considering these Claderovians were perfectly fine with taking violent actions in a foreign city, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t be pushovers of any sort. Hamsik’s grin turned tight. Oh, yes. He might just have his work cut out for him here.

Without any further preamble, the axe-wielder charged in. Hamsik was quicker, evading at the same time as his Aetherblood sent a wave of sparking, burning crimson at his enemy.

Who cut through it with his axe like it was nothing more than a curtain.

Great.

Hamsik heard the others firing up their Aspects, readying to attack him from different angles too. Peals of thunder preceded the lightning wreathing the Rakshasa, while strange sounds that reminded Hamsik of ripping, tearing flesh had him wondering what the Aspect of the last one was. The Scalekin’s scales were rupturing, his entire arm turning into the neck and maw of a dragon.

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“Stay still and ,” the human screamed as he leaped at Hamsik.

Dodging was easy. The swings came in wide, and the human clearly didn’t possess enough Power or Agility to rival Hamsik’s own. That said, getting struck by those axes would .

The problem with dodging was that it instantly put him in the line of fire from the other two. They were coordinating tremendously well. As soon as Hamsik had evaded the axe swings, everything around him sparked with charged light falling upon him. A second later, a storm of lightning blitzed down on his position.

It was only Hamsik’s supreme Agility, almost at Opal now, that had him evading. His Cheat Death Augmentation always showed its true, overpowered colours in moments like these.

Didn’t matter if it needed him to get hit just enough for the danger to be potentially life-threatening. The sparking storm that rained down on him was enough to suffice, which pushed him out of the storm of lightning.

And into the path of the third Claderovian, whose draconic maw roared in his direction.

This one Hamsik wasn’t able to dodge fully. The maw managed to grab onto his arm and rip off a good chunk of the limb, blood and flesh splattering everywhere as a scream ripped free from Hamsik’s gullet.

He bit through it quickly. He was forced to. The lightning wielder had threaded a storm of bolts crisscrossing across his back, like wings made of pure electricity. Then he slammed in Hamsik’s direction with the exact sort of speed that his Aspect implied, a thundering blitz ramming like a comet straight at Hamsik.

There wasn’t even any time for Hamsik to call out his Icon. A well-placed shot now would have done wonders. But he was forced to dodge yet again, finding no choice but to end up in the crosshairs of yet another one of his opponents.

These people were him, fully aware of what they needed to do to win and how to manipulate him into the exact spots they needed.

The twin axes slashed into him with such force, Hamsik was thrown off his feet. He tried to rise, spitting out the dirt he had been forced to taste, but a heavy boot landed on his back.

“Stay down, mongrel bloodsucker,” the axe-wielder said. “You’re just like the lowborn mud-eaters from back home. All puffed up and seemingly important, but possessing no real abilities of your own. You’re .”

The axe gleamed over Hamsik, ready to swing down in a fatal arc. Well, he wasn’t going to that easily, being a half-Scarseeker and all, but it was going to . Even worse, it might seriously debilitate him, rendering him essentially defeated in this little battle.

Now was something Hamsik could never stand.

“Don’t count on your victory so early,” he growled.

The boot pressed down on his back harder, digging into his ribs to make them crack. “What in the Pits do you really think you can do, you leech?”

Hamsik almost went compliant. Seemingly. He stopped struggling, letting the human’s boot crunch down hard enough to actually break skin. To make blood emerge. Blood that Hamsik then manipulated with his new Aspect of Crimson Iron.

A of blood burst out of the relatively small wound the boot had delivered. So much so that the axe-wielder was forced to step back in surprise.

As Hamsik rose, the blood compressed and hardened. Twin axes swung at him before he could fully rise, but Hamsik was ready now. The hardened blood solidified into their metallic consistency, vastly reduced in volume, but all the stronger for it. Axes met blood blades with fiery sparks and terrific clangs. The human couldn’t push back Hamsik.

“You appear highly cocky,” he said to the human. “For someone who couldn’t fully kill me even with the assistance of two others. .”

The taunt worked like a charm. Enraged, the human swung in with wild abandon. Not so much that he forgot about his other Aspects, going by the way the blades just lit up with magic. Every clanging exchange of blows had shockwaves rippling out from the exchange, sending both Hamsik and the axe-wielder tumbling back and away.

When the lightning Rakshasa attacked again, the hardened blood diverted away the electricity harmlessly into the ground.

Except, Hamsik once again got caught by the flesh manipulator. The Scalekin had now summoned up fleshy, scaly tendrils waving through the air everywhere, which stormed in Hamsik’s direction with a vengeance. He thought he had evaded the worst of it, but then several popped out of the ground.

Needless to say, Hamsik got hit. His legs were shredded, and he was once more forced to retreat a bit.

It was hard to tell if these people were really stronger than him or not. One on one, Hamsik was certain he’d have been able to take them all on. He would have .

But the cowards were treating him like some kind of dungeon monster, a being who needed superior numbers to kill. It was flattering in a sense. But flattery wasn’t going to see him alive through this encounter.

“Last chance to surrender, vampire,” the axe-wielder said. “Give up, let us take the Uralivanth runaways you’re hiding, and we’ll let you leave.”

Hamsik scoffed. “You don’t have the slightest clue on how to kill me.”

“Don’t we?” The Scalekin stepped forward with a menacing look on her face. “How do you think we’ve been keeping the vampire population in Claderov at bay?”

The Rakshasa laughed. “Believe me, , you don’t want to experience what your fellows do in the slums of Claderov. You’ll lose your mind, your sanity, everything that made you .”

Instead of making Hamsik step back, those words just incensed him further. But he wasn’t the only one enraged by the Claderovians.

A painful pulse ripped through the air. It was so fast that Hamsik could easily have been fooled into believing it hadn’t even been there to begin with. Except for the follow-up. Space itself glowed for a moment, brimming with blistering energy so quickly that not a single one of them had time to react.

An infinitesimal instant later, a torrent of power slammed into the axe-wielder. A horizontal geyser of gold and molten orange, wrapped in sparking threads of void purple and making everything shine. The man didn’t even get time to scream. One heartbeat, he was in front of Hamsik.

The next, all traces of him had vanished.

All that was left was air sparking and miraging with intense heat and energy, light scouring so bright that it had left burning impressions behind Hamsik’s eyelids while singeing his skin and setting half his clothes on fire. He coughed as he rose, his face feeling like it was one step away from melting right off, while ensuring that he didn’t accidentally fall into the molten trench in front of him.

“What the fuck do you think you bastards are doing invading us?” Ross asked, voice low but carrying, the eye following the first wave of the storm. The eye preceding the next, more devastating round of the hurricane.

Hamsik involuntarily shivered. Ever since the business with House Uralivanth had taken a turn for the extreme with Sreketh’s attack, Ross had always been on edge. Always a hair’s breadth away from snapping at the next person to needlessly anger him. It was a side of him Hamsik hadn’t thought he’d see. A side that was way too dangerous to keep active for so long.

He only had to look how Ross’s power had just torn through one side of Kalnislaw estate just to obliterate the fool attacking them.

A fool from Claderov, whose death was no doubt going to make everything even worse.

Yet, the other two fools weren’t daunted one bit. Both stepped forward. Hamsik frowned. Were they… even eager now? They were absolutely grinning harder, eyes alight with mad fire, like they had been anticipating Ross’s arrival.

The reaction disquieted Hamsik more than he wanted to admit.

“Ross,” he said. “Be wary. They’re trying—”

“Doesn’t matter what they’re trying,” Ross said. “I’m sick of these people who think they can run roughshod over everything we have. It doesn’t matter if they’re from House Uralivanth or from Claderov or from fucking Moonfall. It’s time they learned their lesson.”

The lightning-wielder laughed with a wild cackle. “Listen to him! All jumped up because he’s on a win-streak.” That made Hamsik go colder than before. Were they keeping tabs on Ross? “Wrong, little cultist. It’s time we cut you down before you grow too far out of your filthy britches.”

With a thunderous spark, he attacked. The battle resumed, and Hamsik was forced to push aside his worrying contemplations and focus on surviving.