(SO)Chapter 151: Spread the word (Patreon)

The air howled as we clashed like a storm of unnatural fury. The trees at the edges of the road swayed and dust was flung away with each impact. The other forty nine people saw that their trump card was not only NOT winning but slowly getting suppressed in his own specialization. A few of them moved to interfere but ice spiked through them the instant they made the attempt. This warrior was powerful and highly skilled too but he was not nearly good enough to fully command my attention.-

I always kept a bit of my attention on the other people in his group. Battle is not a clean affair where it's one person versus only one person. More often than not it was a group against a group. I knew this and refused to allow myself to be sieged if I could help it. This warrior also couldn't spare the time or effort to save the people who thought to join in. Not when it was taking him everything he had not to die himself. The group was well trained though and the deaths of a few didn't discourage the rest, only made them more bloodthirsty.-

The mages started pelting me with spells while those with spears and shields poked at me in order to throw me off. I pushed especially hard on my next swing at this point to send the warrior stumbling before inhaling deeply.

"Fo(frost) Krah(cold) Diin(freeze)!"

A blizzard erupts from my lips as I arc my head to get as many of these annoying people as I can. Skin, eyes and flesh froze and shattered wherever the cone of devastating cold passed.

Twenty seven dead or crippled in an instant.

The warrior roared and charged me at this but I easily intercepted his swing before stomping on his knee, HARD.

"CRUNCH!"

It bent in reverse and he went down screaming.

A quick flourish of my blade and his head came off his body before he could suffer overly much. The edge of my sword flared to life with a brilliant glow and the survivors tried to scramble as they realized what was happening but my arms moved like reality itself glitching. One moment the blade held at my right the next the tip resting at my left as the she` hai cut them all down in an instant.-

All but a single one who stood at the edge and was spared intentionally.

"Tell everyone you meet what happened here today." I commanded the shaken man as I started to put away my blade.

"Y-yes!" he said in terror before running away like his ass was on fire.

I used [telekinesis] to strip the armor, jewelry, weapons and gold from the corpses before piling them up and hitting the pile with a fire breath shout. I then stoked the flames with magic until nothing remained but ash.-

I summoned my toad again and mounted up without a word before we continued on our way. No more attacks came until we reached the village of Oakrest a day later. The village was a small one with no more than a couple dozen neat stone brick houses with wooden rooves. The woman insisted on staying at the inn because she was sick and tired of sleeping in the carriage and wanted to rest on a bed. This made my eye twitch because while she and her daughter had the carriage the rest of us had been sleeping on bedrolls on the ground.-

Still I did my due diligence and set up a temporary ward at the door and window of her room so no one could sneak in. Even further I secretly had us switch rooms without telling the inn keeper. When the assassin came that night they weren't met with two soft Breton noblewomen. They were met with a half-breed who was very unhappy at being woken up by the sudden draft that came from the window opening. I didn't kill the assassin though but choked them to unconsciousness before binding them in a way no amount of cleverness would get them free.-

I tied their hands around a stone so their fingers couldn't bend and their ankles tied behind their armpits. I had to dislocate their hips for that but they'd live. Once that was done I went back to sleep until the grunting and crying woke me up a few hours later. By then the sun was already on it's ascension so I didn't mind much. I casually lifted the assassin by their ankle knot and walked downstairs to get breakfast going all while ignoring their whimpers and screams of pain. Alontar was among the first to show up while I was cooking.

"Assassin?" he asked while eyeing the man trussed up painfully.

"Assassin." I answered in the affirmative.

"Feeling generous? Usually you'd just kill him and be done with it." He pointed out.

"I would but you see someone told this fellow which room the prissy lady was supposed to be in. I don't like that. So I figured we could just wait she wakes up and let her decide what to do about it. Personally I'd prefer to just kill him and his conspirator and be done with it. Unfortunately we are in Highrock and unless an official, I.E her, says we can killing a citizen is highly illegal." I say without looking up from the pan of bread cooking over the inns fire.