My skull burst into cracks of bone and slabs of gray matter. A hammer ramming into it with the full force of a warrior's swing. The world went black.
'Not yet.'
In the next moment burning wires strained my mana, making me stumble. A dagger pierced my chest, blood gushed and with a simple twist my heart stopped beating.
'Not yet…'
In the one after a djinn that cut off its crispy limb lunged at me, using sharp fangs to tear into my throat. My Adams apple burst and the sandy innards began flowing into my body. My lungs refused to draw breath.
'Not. Yet.'
Yet suddenly the Shaman gripped my wrist and pulled, making me fall forward. A handsome looking djinn thrust his saber into my eye socket. A violent blast of mana ripped the back of my skull open in a torrent of blood.
I clicked my tongue as myriad visions flashed through my increasingly strained mind.
Feeling the blade slip through the soft flesh of a human, I scowled. A drop of sweat rolled down my cheek. My eyes began feeling warm, my skull throbbed and my lungs felt stifled. The mask on my face felt heavy but incomparable to the blade in my hand.
Even so, I forced my gloved hand onto the robed man's neck that hung on my blade. Dripping on the short sword like freshly butchered meat.
Things were moving too fast. I had timed my entry according to the optimal future but it was still a bit overwhelming.
I shook off all illusions, slamming the robed human into the ground to knock him out.
Then without wasting more time than necessary I dashed up to the man with the saber, slamming Omen while activating [Wildblood] for a short burst of power.
As expected the man parried, but with a look of surprise was thrown back, slamming into an already overturned table.
Without a second thought I let my mana wires go. I had used them as a simple measure for the amount of Djinn I would be facing, making them cost less mana by limiting them to only attach to Djinns.
It was a little unnerving to know I had to fight eight entire Djinn plus a fully fledged hero. But a good plan mixed with a little flexibility can gap the disparity in strength.
So following my directions, I sent a little bit of my mana down the wires. My affinity to fire made it burn brightly and put strain on the form of the wires, fraying them.
Still, it did its job in lightly searing the limbs attached to the Djinn, slowing them.
Letting the wires fizzle out eased up my mana consumption pretty well but considering the crystal skull was still active and keeping the strongest one here under an illusion, it wasn't much.
But with the little wiggle room I did have, I could still cast affinity spells to conserve energy.
So that's exactly what I did, the man with a hammer swung it down to crush my skull but was intercepted by a bone white dagger that seemed to growl at the contact.
A moment later, his fingers trembled and spasmed as electricity arched off his hammer, into his body, charring him completely and boiling his insides.
For a human, this would mean death, but for a Djinn it meant a minor inconvenience. Such a minor inconvenience repeated 20 or so times though, would probably stop his heart.
'One.'
I blinked as stars flooded my vision.
"...for real?!" Using the electricity to magnetise the hammer to Lich before turning and blocking a Djinn with a dagger.
The sneaky bastard let out a shaky scoff and choked as the same electricity coursed through the blade, the hammer and finally the dagger.
With a swift flick, I encrypted Lich, directly grabbed the hammer and used wildblood in a burst to slam the sneaky Djinn in the chest.
'Two.'
I heard a disgusting squelch but continued the one arm swing to throw him back at yet another enemy.
I only saw the djinn with the bloody corpse lying on top of it, even so I could tell by the squirming teeth that it was the one who would use its teeth. It looked like his mouth was filled with countless moving spines.
Taking the chance to catch my breath and decrypt Lich, I cast my eyes around.
The hammer and dagger djinn were out of commission. The strong looking djinn with a saber was looking around with a calculative expression. He was analysing the situation but by the way he grit his teeth, he seemed to be boiling with anger and confusion.
"...He's the one under the illusion. Meaning, he's the strongest…"
'Which means I can't let Yeonha fight him. It has to be someone else… the two in the basement should be coming up soon…'
Hearing a soft click, I looked up to see a woman with a great sword land on top of a bookshelf.
"Damn menace. It's the kid!"
The spine mouthed Djinn rose from beneath the bloody corpse.
Forcing my legs to move, I dashed towards the woman on the shelf, hurling a ball of flame into the shelf and causing it to tumble.
The woman seemed to expect this, her muscled arms swinging the blade violently in a downwards strike.
I hopped lightly off the ground and twisted my body uncomfortably. My legs bent and my feet touched the flat side of the massive greatsword.
With another pulse of wildblood I launched myself off the weapon and into the savage djinn, latching onto it with my legs and repeatedly stabbing the djinn in its skull. Blood and gray matter covered me from head to toe.
'Three!'
I took in a sharp breath, as the stars flooded my eyes once again.
A moment later I dropped onto my back, onto the hard wooden floor. Watching as an arrow whizzed past where my head previously was.
Using a roll to face the assailant, I managed to catch sight of the archer who had drawn another arrow.
I growled and sent a blast of fire to my side as a familiar great sword narrowly missed my catapulted body, which had been thrown in the blast.
Landing on my feet, I rammed Lich into the eye socket of the archer, cleaving upwards to finish him off.
'Four!'
Without missing a beat I turned on my heel and used both my blades to block the great sword strike that came down on my skull.
My arms trembled from the impact and I almost dropped my sword completely. Fortunately I held on, only it was at the cost of my knees buckling and my shoulder being ripped off my torso.
Seeing it, I chose to abandon blocking and used my arms to slam the massive sword to my side, grazing my arm but allowing me to slip under her attack and slide my blade between her ribs and into her heart.
'Five!'
There was only the disoriented leader and the human left in the room now.
No, the leader isn't disoriented anymore. He's dashing for the exit.
"No, we can't have that." I sighed, throwing omen towards the top of the door frame. At the same time, my suit pocket glowed a kaleidoscopic purple as the eyes of the crystal skull lit up.
The leader slowed slightly, casting his gaze up with suspicion. Only to watch as the room flipped on its head.
What was once a completely free wooden door was now guarded by a trembling figure in a dog mask. He clutched his side and his shoulders shook as though he was laughing.
The djinn raised his saber to make a last stand- but wait, he knew he was under an illusion. Meaning that, this was not the masked assailant and instead-
But before the thought could fully take hold, the djinn was engulfed in flame and burnt to a crisp.
'That's six… There are two downstairs but since I dismissed the strings I have no way of knowing where they are… but lets hope they enjoy the gift I left them in the sewers. Now onto what I'm really here for…'
I walked through the flames and towards the man clad in white, he was pale and bleeding profusely. The mana around him was raging and roaring like a beast, but I ignored it and grabbed him by the head.
"You White Clad… honestly, I don't have the time for you to be sneaking around like rodents. I knew heroes were no good, all of them are the same. Fakers, liars, cultists, criminals. You all get away scott free… but now you're working with Djinn?"
I dismissed the weapons I dropped onto the floor and pressed my knuckle against his eye. Slowly, I increased the pressure, making the robed man squirm and choke out vile little pleas.
But before I could crush the man's eye, I stopped, grinning behind the mask.
"I really hate this shit. But unfortunately, you'll have to wait." My grin widened as I felt something in my mind click.
"See you soon."
I channelled mana into my hand and watched as from his feet, the man began to fade out of existence. Tiny particles of flesh and bone transformed into sparks of white light that danced around my palm.
His nerve endings began to burn too, leaving the man in absolute agony, squirming, retching up liquids and choking out tears. His eyes rolled back into his head but the man was unable to fall unconscious.
Soon everything below his neck was gone, and then above too. The man had turned from a physical human being into an entity of information and history.
He had been [Encrypted].
"...Glad that felt painful for him." I cracked my neck, my gloves scaly and slightly warm. The blood from the Djinns had already flaked off and scattered into the air.
I took a moment before snapping my fingers, sending a few wisps of flame across the room.
Then I fished out a piece of paper from my pocket, this one had a small circle with the strokes for established connection and detonation, forming a neat little rhombus.
This spell was connected to around 21 posters that are scattered about important sky scraper infrastructure. It was the reason I held back from just burning everything in the room until now.
I simply needed all eyes away from here as I escaped unscathed.
The paper was torn in half, and at that precise moment, the room seemed to grow darker as the windows lit up with bright light. Smoke obscured my view as I walked into the back room, the ground trembling beneath my feet made my heart race.
"I think it was a wonderful plan." I hummed to myself.
Walking down the stairs from the back room and into the basement I spotted the open manhole under the flipped up carpet. The ground was slightly cracked with whip marks and small holes.
Another gout of fire melted away the evidence.
So now, with loose ends tied, evidence destroyed and the heroes busy for the foreseeable future, it was time to make the not so grand escape through the sewers.
Feeling a cold sweat on my back I hurried into the manhole, melting the surrounding concrete with more flames and fusing it together for good measure.