Night had arrived.
Everyone was in position.
The widest section of the canyon stretched before Malik, flanked on each side by the same mountains.
He stood alone, his back facing the village in the distance.
He was calm. Steady.
Because he knew.
He knew how this dance played out.
His gaze lifted to the horizon where the first waves of the enemy walked.
A tide of steel and flesh.
Three thousand foot soldiers.
Two hundred archers.
Dozens of Magi.
Six Sahirs.
A full army against a single village.
A full army against a single man.
At least for a little while.
…Let them come.
Those damned bandits had no idea they were walking straight into Hell.
GHOOOOOAAAAN!
At that warhorn, the first wave reached the field’s entrance.
“FOR GLORY!”
“TEAR THEM APART!”
“NO MERCY! NO SURVIVORS!”
“WE TAKE THEIR GOLD!”
“WE RAPE THEIR WOMEN!”
“WE LEAVE NOTHING BEHIND!”
Their battle cries echoed against the stone walls.
In response, campfires shot beams of fire into the sky, illuminating the battlefield.
“Scorched Grace.”
With that chant, fire surged beneath Malik’s palms, concentrating into a single point.
FWOOOSH!
He shot into the sky like a comet, leaving behind only a swirl of heat and dust.
From above, he scanned the army below—a tide of bodies stretching as far as the cliffs would let him see.
Then… he leaned forward and fell upon them.
His unsheathed blade was dark. Red.
It cut through flesh like paper, ending the lives of ten in under a second.
He moved between bodies with terrifying, almost unchanging ease.
One bandit raised a spear, another swung at his ribs, and the third—Malik grabbed him before he could do anything, swinging him like a club into the others surrounding him.
Without missing a beat, Malik hurled the poor bastard into another group, sending them all crashing down in a tangled heap.
Every motion was precise, and every slash of his sword severed life.
He was refined by countless repetitions of this same battle.
Here, Malik was not a man, a Magi—he was inevitability.
Art. Perfection honed over uncountable lifetimes.
He killed. Killed. And killed.
The bandits panicked, scrambling to rally, only to die a second later.
One man.
He was just one man.
One man who had killed many of their friends.
One man who danced through their ranks, who defied their numbers.
They couldn’t let him live. Not after this humiliation. This defeat. Their friends’ deaths.
And so… the fools took the bait, just as he knew they would.
Like blind, desperate beasts, despite the warnings of their betters, they followed him.
Multiple trails of bodies led to him, allowing those left behind a chance to catch up.
They stepped on their fallen bastard and went forth, screaming their lungs out.
Malik herded them toward a rock formation where the first of his own Magi lay in wait.
And then, when enough of them had reached the zone like obedient sheep—
“NOW!”
Death erupted.
They saw it coming.
It was an obvious trap.
But that didn’t mean shit.
They willingly walked into it, thinking they’d survive.
Thinking that Malik was the only Magi they had to worry about.
The rest would be like the usual slop, Nadhir who could barely activate an ability.
Wrong.
They were so incredibly wrong.
Lightning-infused arrows rained down from above, piercing armor, flesh, and bone.
Fire erupted, consuming entire clusters of men in an instant.
Wind blades sliced through their ranks, bodies torn apart, cut up.
Ice and earth pierced through them, ending their lives in absolute agony.
Screams filled the canyon. Blood soaked the sand.
It was a one-sided slaughter.
And just as the barrage paused, Malik joined in, his sword flashing.
He moved like a phantom, untouchable, untouching, always one step ahead, always striking first.
It was obvious to anyone watching. He had done this before. A thousand times. A million.
And after he was done? Ending this group’s remnants?
He left, joining the fray once more.
The Magi hiding behind those rocks did so as well.
No bandit, no matter how dumb, angry, or humiliated, would go there again.
It had served its purpose. A trap exhausted.
But, of course, it wasn’t the only one.
They had many more.
Over and over, Malik repeated this cycle.
Swoop in, kill, bait them deeper, and let his people butcher them.
Again. Again. Again. The enemy never learned, never understood.
They saw only fury, only fire, only death coming for them.
And by the time they realized the trap, they were already drowning in their own failure.
The caravan’s traps were exhausted one by one, forcing them to retreat deeper and deeper.
If that was it, it would’ve been a relief, but no. That, unfortunately, was not all.
Their Magi were running out of Aether and fast.
Even so, that wasn’t a death sentence.
Not yet, at least.
Ali Baba.
This moving trap was nearly inexhaustible.
He reaped the souls of the dead, using them in his attacks.
His presence was a graveyard on the battlefield. Truly a Trumpeter of Death.
Any that were sent his way left without souls, and when no one came along, he’d go to them.
Most of Ali Baba’s spells needed time to weave, so he’d stay in one of the already ‘exhausted’ traps, using them as cover until unsuspecting groups walked by.
The bandits didn’t seem to care no matter how many of them were killed.
This cycle repeated until finally… a shift.
A bad one.
Malik felt it before he saw it.
He, while flying through the air, caught strange movement in the ranks of the foot soldiers.
Too calm. Too measured. Too focused.
A Sahir.
They had chosen now.
Never once was their ‘now’ the same.
But that didn’t seem to confuse Malik.
Though this Sahir wore a cloak like the others, blending in, pretending to be a mere man, he could see the truth as clear as day.
This was a Sahir waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
And he did. Attacking one group of Magi with a large number of stone spikes.
It was a fast attack, but Malik was faster.
Landing before the Magi, his flames roared from his hands, bursting in front of him.
Fire met the earth in midair, deflecting them away. They shot in all directions, stabbing the ground, flying high, and piercing through bandits who were confused about what had just happened.
Before the Sahir could curse under his breath and retreat, Malik turned his surrounding area into a furnace, cooking him alive.
The average Sahir was great in bombardment and one-on-ones, but right in the middle of chaos? Against a momentarily unseen enemy?
They could do nothing but die.
Whoosh!
Malik flew, searching for the others.
It was annoying. They all wore cloaks.
If not for the way they moved, he might’ve had trouble spotting them.
But he always did. And every time that he had?
They were dead.
Those Sahirs realized too late—they were not the predators here.
A devil cloaked in fire was.