Fear Spell

Tang Qi still remembered the instant before he was sent flying.

He had clearly caught the explosive report.

But he could not make out its source, direction, or even its target.

[Alertness] had made him move his legs instinctively, telling him which way to dodge.

Yet that tremendous force struck almost simultaneously with the blast.

He was not fast enough to drop flat in an instant.

A column of invisible repulsive force slammed straight into his abdomen.

"Bang!"

Tang Qi felt as though a boxer had landed a crushing punch on him.

When he hit the ground, his internal organs clenched, squeezing out stomach acid that surged back up his throat.

"Cough, cough—ugh!"

Pain and dry heaving struck together. Sprawled on the ground, Tang Qi had sour fluid trickling from his mouth and bloodshot eyes, barely able to straighten up.

Without a doubt, if he had never acquired the [Alertness] Feat, any of the earlier volleys of arrows or flurries of blades would have sent him off to embrace his next life.

But it merely "warned" him; it did not truly "prevent" anything.

Limited by Tang Qi's own physique, a single Feat could not possibly carry him through every crisis—

Distant arrows or the path of a swinging blade were things he could react to and see clearly, making them naturally much easier to dodge.

But if danger arrived in an instant, or covered a sufficiently wide area.

If his reflexes and physical abilities were not enough to get him out of danger.

All he could feel was terror and despair.

Another explosive report rang out beside his ears.

He narrowed his eyes, dimly making out its trajectory—

It seemed to be a tremendous, invisible, colorless force. Only as it burst out of the white mist could he glimpse the faint distortion it left in the air, hurtling down from above.

[Magic Blast], a cantrip exclusive to warlocks.

The only reason it was less popular than Flame Arrow was that not many people enjoyed signing away their lives.

Warlocks were Spellcasters who gained power by entering into Pacts with a "Sovereign."

"Sovereign" itself was only a designation, not a fixed identity.

It could be a supreme deity or an ancient, bloodthirsty longsword.

It could also simply be a lesser devil struggling to generate revenue.

If wizards needed to study the "formulas" present everywhere, and sorcerers needed to uncover the magic hidden in their bloodlines.

Then warlocks sold their souls, their freedom, or anything else their Sovereign valued in exchange for the "Sovereign's" gifts.

They could even skip the process of learning altogether.

Overnight, they could master powers that some people would never reach in their entire lives.

Yet even after recognizing the Spellcaster's identity, Tang Qi's body still lagged a beat behind his nerves.

Pain, too, fought against his will.

Fear struck again.

He knew there was no escape—

"Clang! Clang!"

The force arrived in an instant.

But it seemed to explode against steel, producing a sharp metallic ring.

"If you're not dead, get the fuck up!

I can't find my way through this fog!"

Black Snake had precisely located where those two blasts would strike.

He turned the blade in his hand, forcing that repulsive force to slam into his slender blade, barely two fingers wide.

The impact was so fierce that even he had to stagger back several steps.

"Rua!"

Kuru could see in the dark.

It spotted the source of the blasts and immediately waved its wand.

Ice crystals tore through the night, shooting into the sky overhead—

A huge, earth-yellow bat with a raised, ratlike head circled above, concealed in the darkness.

An elderly goblin woman in a pitch-black robe sat on its back.

Seeing the ice crystals approaching, she let out a frightened shriek and hurriedly slapped the bat's neck, signaling it to maneuver through the air.

It narrowly dodged, but before she could congratulate herself, she noticed a layer of ghostly white frost clinging to its left wing—

That was where Kuru had meant to strike!

The bat's wings were already thin and translucent.

Now frost spread across one like a spiderweb, its chill pressing into the skin and seeping into the blood, coating that membranous wing in frosty white.

Even the speed of its wingbeats slowed.

Worse still, its wings now beat with different amplitudes, leaving the bat unable to maintain its balance.

Its body tilted. The elderly warlock lacked the strength to grip its back with her legs and fell from forty feet in the air.

For the clever, calculations were never particularly difficult.

Kuru might not have been human, but it was certainly clever enough.

"Help!"

Panic spilled from the warlock's hoarse throat.

Several nearby goblins and beastfolk had no choice but to abandon their pursuit.

They hastily interlocked their arms into a "net," positioning themselves beneath her and barely catching her.

This instead eased the pressure on Black Snake.

Given an opening, he spotted the enemy and immediately broke into a run.

With the Spellcaster far overhead, he would have struggled to inflict any meaningful harm on her.

But now that she had fallen to the ground, this short distance would take him no more than a breath to cross—

Since Tang Qi could not dodge those invisible blasts, they had lost their chance to fight their way out of the encirclement.

Yet he could not abandon this Poet who could see through illusions.

His only option was to take a desperate gamble: seize the Spellcaster first and win a chance to escape.

He refused to believe that a goblin warlock capable of casting Third Ring spells would be treated as more worthless than weeds, like the expendable fighters sent ahead!

Black Snake's blade had always been ruthless and lethal.

Its edge gleamed with no light, yet moved as swiftly as lightning.

It was about to slip past the shoulder of the beastfolk beside her and slice across her throat.

To date, not a single Third Ring Spellcaster had survived him at such close range.

His blade was simply too fast to leave them any time to react.

Most of those who died beneath it only felt the pain in their necks as death arrived.

But this time was different.

He was facing a Spellcaster surrounded by guards.

That kept Snake Kiss from reaching its maximum speed.

And it left an indelible stain on the scimitar's brilliant record—

One beastfolk reacted in time, swinging its hand axe with all its immense natural strength.

It roared. With a clang and a shower of sparks, it knocked aside the slender blade of Snake Kiss.

That brief opening was enough for the elderly goblin to recover her senses.

As Black Snake's strike failed, she tightly gripped the necklace against her chest.

A sinister, dim light flickered within it. Her pupils suddenly expanded outward from their centers, swallowing the whites until her entire eyes turned solid black.

Her withered hand snapped open, and a handful of black soil from some unknown source suddenly scattered before her on the wind.

The black soil flew, its tiny grains like ants, like gnats and flies.

As it scattered, it swept across nearly thirty feet before her like a passing swarm of locusts!

"Be afraid!"

The incantation she chanted was obscure and incomprehensible, a jumble of onomatopoeic sounds more deranged than delirious muttering.

Black Snake was too close to her to escape.

As black soil flooded his nostrils and "worms" clung to his pores.

Only one thought remained in his mind:

I'm done for.

[Fear Spell: Illusion School, Third Ring spell.

Creates an illusion within a 30-foot cone. All creatures caught in the spell discard everything they are holding and confront their inner fears.

Those who succumb to panic seek the safest route away from the Spellcaster until they can flee no farther.

Those who fear nothing turn the magical terror upon the Spellcaster.]

Why did Spellcasters always hold such lofty status?

Why did the rule of city-states and empires always depend on the support and protection of Spellcasters?

It was certainly not out of respect for scholars—

Only power could ever earn respect.

Perhaps low-level Spellcasters were physically far weaker than battle-hardened adventurers of the same level.

But their vast and varied spells had always been a source of headaches.

"You'd better take out the enemy's Spellcaster at the very start of the fight.

Otherwise, the enemy's Spellcaster will take you out at the end."

Unfortunately, Black Snake had failed to put that universally known rule into practice.

The price of his desperate gamble would be more than he could pay—

Black Snake lost all his strength, leaving only trembling.

As though he had never been brave at all.

Everyone tainted by the black soil, friend and foe alike, buckled at the knees and knelt before the goblin, their eyes filled with nothing but darkness and emptiness.

A fear born deep within their hearts appeared before them—and before Black Snake—

Making him feel as though he were trapped in an ocean abyss.

The deep sea crushed his chest.

Gradually, he could no longer breathe.

"No, don't!!!"

No one knew what he had seen.

But Black Snake, who had seemed so certain of victory moments earlier, now threw down his scimitar and struggled amid tears and sobs.

He wanted to escape at any cost—

Yet just as he wailed and tried to rise.

The darkness receded from the whites of his eyes.

As his vision grew clearer.

He saw an unexpected figure drive a rust-covered scimitar into the warlock's chest:

"Don't what?

You didn't get sold off to whore yourself out in that illusion, did you?"