Reidar watched as the various creatures fought Silas. The summoner's shared skills had turned Lena into a one-woman army. Skeletons clawed at Silas's legs; the primal pack's beasts tore into his sides. The contubernium attacked from a distance.
But Silas moved like smoke, twisting away from claws and fangs as if it was nothing.
One skeleton shattered against his elbow. A wolf yelped as his boot crushed its skull.
Torren burst from the trees first; the Zweihänder had already been drawn. Jorik lumbered behind.
"What the hell is this?" Torren tried to keep his eyes on Silas, but it was impossible.
Jorik scanned the area for Reidar and Lena, his face hardening once he saw them. "Reidar? Lena?"
"Kill him!" Lena shouted in fury. "He is with the church! He's the one who killed Lysa!"
Torren didn't hesitate once he heard that, despite the problems he was facing. He charged, blade high, as Jorik raised a shimmering barrier to shield them both.
Without a second thought, they charged. They didn't care about the level disparity; all they saw was their leader, their friend, in mortal danger.
They plunged into the fray, ignoring the death statement represented by the level 83 written above the man's head.
A part of Reidar's mind, the part that coldly assessed numbers and power, screamed in protest. He'd seen Silas's level. It was a number that shouldn't have been possible this early, not for humans at least. It was a chasm of power that made their own hard-won levels seem irrelevant. This wasn't a fight none of them could take, even together.
"Stop! Run!"
Reidar was trying to stop the others amid the snarls and clashes. "You can't take him! Get out now!"
But it was too late. Torren, fueled by loyalty and battle lust, was already engaging the man. Jorik, seeing his friend advance, gritted his teeth and poured more mana into his barrier.
Silas turned toward Lena and snapped a vicious kick. His foot smashed into her ribs, sending her flying like a discarded ragdoll.
She flew backward, slamming into an oak tree with a sickening thud. Her skull cracked against the rough bark, and she crumpled at the base, blood seeping from a gash on the back of her head, darkening her hair as her eyes rolled shut.
Torren roared and swung his massive blade, capitalizing on the opening where two of Reidar's spectral knights pressed Silas from the side.
Silas's head turned slowly, his eyes, calm, almost bored, locking onto the charging man.
The Zweihänder was aimed at Silas's shoulder. Jorik used his magic, the barrier expanding to cover Torren's flank.
Silas tilted his body to the side; the blade went close to his ears, missing by a few centimeters. His fist drove forward, straight into Torren's chest, shattering Jorik's barrier.
The impact echoed through the forest like a roaring thunder. It was not the ring of steel, but a deep, sickening crunch. That of bone and flesh caving under inconceivable force.
Torren flew even farther than Lena, and the wound was far worse.
\\[Torren Vahl has been defeated.\\]
"Torren!"
Jorik tried to catch him; his own barrier flickered as he divided his focus.
Then Torren hit the ground.
Jorik reached Torren and froze. There was a gaping hole yawning in his chest. His friend's ribs were shattered, and his heart burst. Torren's eyes were staring up, unseeing, fixed on the treetops. There was no breath. No twitch. Nothing. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Jorik turned to Silas. His hands came up to summon a lance of pure energy. "You bastard!"
Reidar's heart hammered. His summoned creatures surged, but even with the spectral knights slashing, the bone militia piling on, the primal pack trying to rip at Silas's legs, and the contubernium attacking from a distance, nothing worked.
Once Jorik's attack was ready, Silas turned, and a fireball, no larger than an apple, shot from his fingertips. It wasn't a grand, roaring inferno. It was just a concentrated sphere of annihilation.
The orb streaked toward Jorik, who created a barrier.
It passed through Jorik's hastily raised magical shield as if it weren't there and struck him square in the chest. There was no explosion. Just an instantaneous whoosh as Jorik's robes and flesh were engulfed in white-hot flames.
Flames erupted across the man's chest in a blinding corona; white-hot tongues licked upward in spikes that devoured the edges of his robes.
The fabric curled and blackened, unraveling into ash that swirled in the sudden surge. Reidar's gaze locked on the inferno's core, where Jorik's broad frame twisted in agony.
Reidar almost stopped breathing. He couldn't believe his own eyes.
Silas's gaze then landed on Reidar. There was no hatred there, no fury. Just mild curiosity, the way a man might look at a peculiarly determined ant.
Those dark, pointed ears framed a face that held no strain, no fear, only cold certainty. That certainty was that Reidar was going to die that day.
The air thickened around Silas, mana coiling like snakes or worms. Reidar felt it press against his skin, and fear crept into his mind.
Three of Havenwood's strongest fighters were killed in seconds. They were insects before a god, and despite everything, he wasn't different.
Panic clawed up Reidar's throat. The summons was a pest to Silas, a distraction at best.
"Attack!" Reidar ordered. "All of you, now!"
The spectral knights blurred forward. The bone militia Bone militia rattled into a wave. The primal pack charged.
Reidar gave skills to everything he could, and more creatures appeared. Hundreds of skeletons, beasts, and dozens of guardian shades appeared. If only Reidar had higher proficiency in summon spectral knights and summon rift-sprite contubernium, he might have been able to kill Silas. Even if the creatures were lower-level, he would still get hundreds of 50-level beasts.
The problem was that, given his current proficiency situation, everything he summoned was progressively weaker.
As the sea of creatures surged towards Silas, Reidar ordered his wolf to turn around and flee. The beast bolted, leaving a laughing Silas to destroy every single creature that dared to attack him.
"Run if you must, summoner. But know this: the Progenitor set his eyes on you. We'll meet again."
Reidar kept his eyes forward. Branches lashed at his face while the wolf crashed through the bushes. Back there, the fight was still going, and he could feel it dying down.
<They are dead; they are all dead!>
It didn't make sense. Jorik, Torren, Lysa, and Lena were not weak. Yet they all died, while Silas didn't have a single scratch on him.
Reidar gripped the wolf's fur tighter. The settlement. Martin. The church.
<What the fuck did I end up in? I just had to visit the vendor!>
For a second, Reidar thought about leaving. Havenwood was tangled in lies, and the Church was just too strong for the town to survive it.
His family waited. He couldn't die here, not for a war that wasn't his. And yet.
<I can't simply leave…>
If the church of unbinding got too strong, it wouldn't be just Havenwood falling prey to it, but the entire region, and after that the country, then the world. Despite his heart protesting, wanting him to just leave and get out of that mess, his mind said that logically, the best thing Reidar could do was to keep helping Martin to contain the problem the church was representing.