Mage Slayer

But the instant the dagger struck Tebir, an eerie red light flashed, and Tebir reappeared ten meters away completely unharmed.

When Tebir appeared again, his expression was grim. That strike had truly hit his heart! If not for his life-saving means, he would have returned to his clone by now.

"Shadow Avatar, Weakness Insight, Black Dagger. It's you! Mage Slayer—Rambir!!!" Tebir said coldly as he looked at the black phantom. At the same time, an opening actually split open in Tebir's body, and wisps of black smoke continuously emerged from it. Then, a strange doll that looked as though it had been woven from straw crawled out through the opening.

The black smoke was coming from that doll as well. Once it had completely crawled out of Tebir's body, it stopped moving entirely and fell from Tebir. While still in midair, the doll slowly began to burn. Before it even reached the ground, it had been reduced completely to ashes.

"Hehehe! A substitute doll. Hehe, who would have thought a legendary mage would use such voodoo methods?" The black phantom let out a strange laugh as it watched the doll fall toward the ground. Its voice sounded like metal scraping across a blackboard—shrill, hoarse, and chilling.

"Hmph! So what? Mages have always been pragmatists. As long as something is useful, we can use it."

So-called substitute dolls did not belong to the domain of mage spells. In fact, the civilized world knew very little about them, and substitute dolls could not even be accurately categorized under any particular supernatural power system.

Substitute dolls had originally come from certain barbarian tribes in the wilderness. Faerûn was simply too vast. Even after all these years, no one truly understood every living being on this continent. Those wilderness barbarians might have seemed savage,