Corrupted blood lord

Once the gate opened, Zaxx and Derrick rushed in.

Teclos and Falcon, meanwhile, slipped back into the shadows. Teclos summoned a black curtain over them as they hurried away from the gate, trying not to be seen while they waited for the right opportunity to assassinate the baron.

"Oi! Why the hell are you opening the gate?!" one guard in the station shouted.

He stepped closer to see what was going on, since his friend wasn’t answering him.

In the next second, a massive golem smashed through.

Derrick hadn’t waited for the gate to fully open. He simply stormed in.

The gate flew into the servants’ quarters, destroying half the wall of the building and injuring a few servants in the process.

The guard’s eyes widened, and he sounded the alarm, but in the very next second, a fireball erupted in his face and exploded.

He died in a heartbeat.

"Hell yeah! Right on target! Hahaha!" Zaxx smiled like a madman and started slinging fireballs left and right at anything that moved.

Proper chaos began.

The guards scrambled out of the station to defend against the ambush. There were five guards remaining who could still fight. One had been knocked out, and the other was already dead.

Derrick smashed into the guard station and tried to trample one of the remaining guards beneath his foot, but the guard managed to dodge at the last second by summoning a jet stream beneath his feet, sliding away and avoiding being ground into mush.

Sadly, his little victory was short-lived.

In the next second, Derrick simply picked up a boulder from the ground and threw it directly at his head.

The guard screamed for only a moment before impact.

Then his scream was brutally cut off.

Zaxx, in the meantime, took on two guards simultaneously by propelling himself forward, fire blazing from his feet. He appeared between them in a heartbeat and spun around with two maces in hand, trying to knock their heads clean off their bodies.

One summoned an earth wall, while the other ducked.

Both came out unscathed, but they were still on the back foot, as Zaxx seemed to have the upper hand in close combat. His movements were erratic, his strikes quick, and with flame propulsion behind each swing, they landed even heavier.

He was a proper little demon.

Teclos watched it all happen with his new senses, and he had to admit they were more brutal than necessary. But then again, once the knights came into the picture, both of them could very well die if Teclos and Falcon weren’t quick enough in killing the baron.

Of course, this commotion managed exactly what they intended: a diversion, with both knights rushing in to kill the attackers.

Although locating the baron was proving to be an issue.

"They have the house warded off... I can’t see anything inside," Teclos said.

"Alright, let’s break through the balcony where his bedchamber is and work from there."

Teclos nodded, and they were off.

—

Zaxx was slowly pressuring both guards, pushing one guard back with a wall of fire and swinging his mace at the other.

The wind user flew backward and avoided being burned, then sent out two wind blades after Zaxx in rapid succession. The earth user raised a wall in front of him again and deflected his mace upward, then spikes erupted from the wall.

Zaxx casually stepped forward and sideways. The wind blades missed by a hair’s width, then he used one of the spikes as leverage to somersault over the wall, throwing his mace into the guard’s face. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

The mace was scorching hot and melted half his face off. The guard screamed in agony and was momentarily out of the fight.

Using that opportunity, Zaxx dodged two more wind blades and blasted a massive jet of fire from his feet. With a sonic boom, he appeared before the wind-attributed guard, surprising him. He swung his remaining mace at his face, but the guard was agile enough to dodge the strike and counterattack with another wind blade.

Zaxx spun midair with the help of his flames and easily dodged it again. Then he latched onto the guard.

"Ugh! Let go, you bastard!"

Zaxx just smiled and opened his mouth, breathing flames directly into the guard’s face.

"Arrggghhhh!"

The scream continued for one more second before his voice was forever extinguished.

Just then, a massive boulder flew toward him, threatening to squash him like a fly, but he tossed the dead guard aside and propelled himself out of the way. Then he built up a massive fireball and threw it at the guard, who in turn answered with another rock wall, blocking his fire completely.

But as he did that, he lost sight of Zaxx, and when he looked up, a smiling Zaxx was waving his hand at him as if he were greeting him.

The guard tried to shield himself, but it was already too late, and a stream of fire engulfed him completely.

"Phew... this was fun after a long time."

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked in Derrick’s direction, only to see him turning the last guard into paste between his golem hands. He waved at him, and Derrick just shook his head.

In the next moment, he pointed at the entrance of the mansion, where a knight was walking toward them.

Clad from head to toe in silver armor, he wore a helmet crowned with a crimson horsehair plume. A T-shaped visor concealed most of his face, leaving only his icy blue eyes visible through the narrow slit.

The armor had runes carved into it, much like the blue, menacing-looking bastard sword hanging at his waist.

"Well shit..." Zaxx grimaced.

The first knight already promised to be a big headache.

Derrick picked up two massive boulders and threw them at him, not waiting for an introduction from the knight.

As the knight took his next step, he moved in an unnatural way, sliding out of one boulder’s path with ease.

Then he unsheathed his sword and, in a single motion, sliced the other cleanly in half.

Thick white ice bloomed where he had cut it, and before the two pieces even fell to the ground, they shattered harmlessly in the air.

Zaxx threw a fireball at him, but it was blocked by a dome of ice the knight summoned in front of himself.

As they saw that the knight was easily blocking or dodging their attacks, they resorted to teamwork. Derrick started using pitfalls and earth spikes, while Zaxx took to the sky and bombarded the knight with fireballs and streams of fire. They kept their distance after seeing that sword cut through the boulder.

Finally, as they worked together, the knight seemed to have trouble dodging and defending against every attack. He sent out counters in the form of ice blades and ice needles while skating along the ground unnaturally, making himself harder to hit.

But the counters were dodged or blocked by them, and even with his unnatural way of moving, he still wasn’t the fastest, so he had to take some of the hits with his armor.

They thought they could finally start grinding the knight down slowly with that method, but then an old man appeared behind him, and the tide of battle turned against them.

He was dressed like a butler, wearing a sharp black tuxedo that made him look strangely out of place on the battlefield. Gray-white hair framed his aged face, and a neatly trimmed beard gave him an air of quiet sophistication.

If not for the longsword in his hand, he might have looked like a servant waiting to pour tea.

He looked at Zaxx, making his blood run cold. As his foot sank into the ground slightly, he suddenly appeared before Zaxx’s face with an extended hand coated in magma, ready to melt his face off like the old man had seen him do to one of the guards.

Zaxx reacted quickly by dropping back to the ground, then rolled sideways as a flood of magma dropped right behind him and hardened a second later.

Meanwhile, Derrick had to fend the ice knight off. If he hadn’t been in full gear, Derrick might have succeeded in holding him at bay, but that sword and armor were a big problem.

The armor could take all the punishment he dished out, while the sword could cut through anything he threw at him.

They fought in a retreating motion, trying to stay alive against them until Teclos and Falcon came to help.

—

Teclos and Falcon arrived on the balcony at the back of the house while Derrick and Zaxx were still killing the guards.

They remained silent, but it seemed the bedchamber was empty, as there was no light or noise coming from it. They were cautious just in case the baron was hiding and chose the more silent option.

Teclos summoned his pocket dimension and pulled out the gray liquid in a vial. The rune dissolver. He poured it onto the door handle, and it melted through the runes carved into the door and handle pretty quickly.

Once inside, Teclos could feel everything again through his shadow sense, and he knew exactly where the baron was.

In an emergency room in the cellar.

The problem was that another knight seemed to be guarding him. He was definitely weaker than the old man, but not by that much.

"Shit, there’s a knight down in the cellar where the baron is..."

Falcon smirked and shook his head in disbelief. "Hah... you amaze me every time with that ability. Can we sneak in, or do we have to fight him frontally?"

"There is only one door that leads to the baron, so a frontal clash..."

"Hmmm. I’ll lure him while you hide your presence and wait for the perfect moment to strike," Falcon proposed.

"Alright," Teclos nodded. "But holy hell, three knights... this baron has quite a lot of money."

"Just focus on the job," Falcon said as they moved through the corridors.

Now that there was a huge commotion outside, the halls were empty, as the people seemed to be hiding, making it perfect for Teclos and Falcon to rush along.

Once they were in front of the steel door with the baron behind it, they stopped.

Falcon signaled for Teclos to move to the shadows and hide while he knocked on the door.

"Come out, you bastard. I know you are in here."

He slashed the door with wind, but nothing happened. It seemed this would take a while to break through. They tried to think of a way in, as time could be running out for Derrick and Zaxx.

Then Teclos beckoned Falcon out into the corridor.

"What?" Falcon whispered.

"Let’s break in through a wall. I know where the baron sits, so we can take advantage of this situation."

The plan seemed plausible, so they went back into the corridor and into an adjacent room.

Falcon gathered wind into his blade and condensed it as much as possible. It took him around thirty seconds of gathering his mana, but when he was ready, he sliced through the wall with ease.

The baron was directly in the path of the wind blades, but a pendant around his neck instantly summoned a dome of solid blue light, protecting him for a brief moment.

He screamed like a girl when the ambush happened, but even if he was an incompetent coward, his knight was not.

The man drew his blade, and fire blazed from its edge. The strike would have cut Falcon almost in half if he had not been yanked back by the collar by a dark hand.

Teclos got a nod of thanks from Falcon, but the knight charged him again immediately. Now, Falcon was a skilled fighter, but against this knight, he was like a kid going up against their parents inclose quaters combat.

The knight had a similar fighting style to Zaxx.

Teclos, meanwhile, just waited, cloaked in a dark corner of the corridor, waiting for the perfect chance to end the knight’s life or at least make Falcon do it.

The odds of them coming out of this job unscathed were slim.

And the night promised to be long.