A massive sinkhole opened up below the bandit den. All low-stage Novice realm and below martialists were caught in the collapsed. Whoever fell into the hole was crushed or suffocated to death. The Human realm martialists were completely unable to resist the pull of the mud, and they died without the least bit of resistance. The Novice realm martialists were able to resist for a few seconds, but they were either swallowed up by the ground or able to flee to solid ground.
Only about twenty bandits remained after Andric’s sinkhole attack. He spent quite some time removing dirt from underneath the bandits’ campsite, and he was rather satisfied with the results. At a later time, he could go search through the rubble in the sinkhole for any valuables the bandits who were swept inside it might’ve had.
One of the survivors was Veremund, who leaped over fifty feet in one go and jumped onto a tree branch. Many of the surviving bandits had done the same, but they didn’t jump nearly as high. The remaining survivors backed away from the sinkhole. They hurriedly scanned their surroundings, searching for a clue as to what just happened.
Andric silently sneered and watched the actions of the bandits. The sinkhole had killed many of the bandits, and it couldn’t be tied to an entity trying to exterminate them. If Andric had killed the bandits using long-range magic attacks, the bandits would’ve instantly known that someone was attacking them. To keep his presence a secret, Andric could only operate in ways that couldn’t be tied to a person’s actions. The bandits never would’ve thought that someone would create a sinkhole underneath their fortress!
“What is this? Outrageous!” Veremund shouted as he looked over the area of destruction that used to be his fortress. The veins on his forehead were bulging, and all of his muscles were ready to be used at any moment. Strangely, Andric could actually feel Veremund’s anger.
‘Is this killing intent?’ he wondered, resisting the urge to shake in fear. Only a few hundred feet away from him, an undeniable source of danger loomed. If Andric was a normal Human realm martialists - and not a reincarnated magician - he would’ve fallen to the ground the moment Veremund’s killing intent washed over him.
“Lord Veremund, we should check the mine,” the old man said with an anxious look. His head turned to an area behind where the buildings used to stand, directly at a dimly lit tunnel that led underground.
“Right, I’ll check it. You see if there are any survivors in this hole,” Veremund said, and he jumped to the cave in one leap.
Andric hadn’t seen the cave when he was monitoring the campsite, and it wasn’t caught in the radius of the sinkhole. Veremund quickly disappeared inside the cave, and the other bandits began to search through the debris in the sinkhole. A few martialists were still alive, but many were crushed to death, and few could hold their breath for long enough to be rescued.
Andric waited a few seconds, then made a quick decision. The leader of the bandits had left the rest of the behind, giving Andric a good opportunity to kill all of them. If Andric could kill all of the lesser bandits before the leader came back, he would be able to fight the bandit leader one-on-one. Unfortunately, Andric couldn’t know when exactly the leader would come back, or if he would be able to kill all the lesser bandits in time. A better opportunity might’ve come along, or the opportunity might never come again.
He revealed himself from his hiding spot and flew into the air. When in the sky, Andric was visible from a far distance, but he didn’t plan on staying airborne for long. He threw a few spells downward, and they caused the trees surrounding the campsite to grow uncontrollably. Their branches grew hundreds of feet over the course of a few seconds, enveloping the campsite. A giant fence was erected, one hundred feet tall and three feet thick. The trees closed off the campsite from the outside world, trapping the bandits inside.
“What’s happening?” a bandit yelled in shock over the massive growth of the trees, and the bandits around him reacted in similar ways. They turned away from the sinkhole to look at the wall of branches around them.
Andric had to move quickly. Next, he launched a few spells which would convert the air inside the campsite into poison gas. Novice realm martialists were unable to resist breathing, and Andric’s poison was highly potent. Within a few seconds, all of the martialists who were in the campsite were dead.
Once the exposed bandits were dead, Andric’s flew down and landed behind the entrance to the mine. Now, he only needed to wait until Veremund walked out of the mine, or for the poison gas to kill Veremund.
Andric had watched Veremund jump fifty feet into the air when ten or fifteen feet would’ve done the trick. After that, Andric guessed that Veremund’s maximum jump height was around fifty feet, and that it wouldn’t exceed one hundred feet. As long as Veremund wasn’t allowed to jump twice, he would be stuck inside Andric’s tree barrier. While Veremund was stuck at the base of the campsite, Andric could comfortably fire off spells from above.
The Human realm and Novice realm bandits were killed almost too easily. Human realm martialists were no different from ordinary human beings, and Novice realm martialists were only on the cusp of transcending the limits of humanity. If spoken in numerical terms, Novice realm martialists were equal to two Human realm martialists. A Novice realm martialists could absorb twice as much poison gas before dying, but Andric created many times that amount. Also, because of Andric’s wall of branches, the poison gas didn’t dissipate over time. The poison gas sank into the campsite and slowly mixed with the air inside the mine.
A few minutes later, Veremund exited the mine, still flaring killing intent. The second his head emerged from the cave, Andric shot a spell at him. The spell would erupt once it hit Veremund’s head and explode his skull into millions of pieces. One sneak attack would be all it took to kill the leader of the Erfdag bandits.
But, at the last fraction of a second before the spell hit Veremund, the Apprentice realm martialists jumped out of the way. He drew his sword from his waist and threw it at the spell, causing it to explode. The spell burst into the sword, but the sword wasn’t a human head, creating a conflict with the thought energy that existed inside the spell. The sword fell to the ground, unaffected by the spell in the slightest.
Veremund’s head instantly shifted toward the source of the spell: Andric. It didn’t even take him a second to recognize Andric as a threat, and he immediately jumped up. The strength of an Apprentice realm martialist was more than Andric had expected, and Veremund jumped seventy feet at once.
Andric quickly reacted by throwing a few Explosion spells at the trees Veremund was closest to landing on. His spells were much faster than Veremund’s jump, allowing him to successfully blast apart wherever Veremund intended to use as an intermediary for jumping at Andric.
With the tree branch he intended to jump on destroyed, Veremund could only fall to the ground. He noticed that he wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to Andric in short time, so he stuck out his fist and released a bolt of lightning from his knuckles.
The bolt of lightning caught Andric off guard, and it traveled much too quickly for him to react. Luckily, it was poorly aimed and shot from a distance, and it arced away from Andric before hitting a tree. However, the resulting explosion of wood blasted Andric off his perch and pelted him with fragments of wood and shocked him with tiny sparks.
“Ah!” he shouted, feeling pain worse than anything he had felt in his life. He tightly closed one eye and continued to watch Veremund with his other eye. Andric quickly righted himself and flew to another tree branch, but Veremund had reached the ground and retrieved his sword.
Andric tossed another few spells, destroying several more trees. Veremund agilely dodged Andric’s spells and punched the base of the tree that Andric was standing on. The tree shook profusely, then cracked where Veremund punched it.
With one punch, Veremund felled a one-hundred-year-old tree that stood over one hundred fifty feet tall. Andric used a spell to propel himself to another tree while simultaneously throwing Explosion spells at Veremund. Still, Veremund dodged them.
Veremund threw his sword at Andric, and Andric cast a spell to disintegrate it. The sword disappeared in smoke, but Veremund had used the second that Andric’s attention was on the sword to hide behind a tree. Of course, Veremund had no idea that Andric had a spell that could locate his presence, and Andric accurately shot another Explosion spell at Veremund.
Veremund seemed to have an ability that allowed him to sense danger. When Andric’s spell entered within ten feet of Veremund, Veremund jumped out of the way and kicked a piece of wood toward Andric’s spell. The wood hit the spell, causing it to detonate. With that kind of tactic, Veremund managed to evade several more spells from Andric.
The two of them fought at a stalemate for several minutes. Then, when Andric had grown comfortable with launching spells from above, Veremund used his second martial technique of the fight. He pranced strangely for several steps, then stomped on the ground. With his final step, a massive amount of dirt surged from the muddy ground. The dirt and rocks erupted like a volcano, blasting high enough to hit Andric, if he didn’t flee.
Andric saw the incoming dirt and flew higher. He couldn’t go to a different tree. Veremund’s martial technique covered the entire area with mud, making it impossible for Andric to shoot any more spells at Veremund.
Only a few seconds after Andric flew into the sky, Veremund emerged from the canopy. He used the blindness caused by the wave of dirt, rocks, and mud to jump up, and his movement put him only a few dozen feet away from Andric.
But, in the air, only Andric could freely maneuver his body. Andric used a continuous-type spell to control his flight, so he could only shoot one spell at a time at Veremund. At the same time, Veremund’s martial techniques activated almost instantly, and he didn’t have a constant drain on his mental capacities. Veremund used his Thunder Fist martial technique to shoot a bolt of lightning at Andric, missing him by only a hair.
Andric threw his first spell at Veremund, and Veremund threw a tiny piece of metal at the spell. As it was every time before, the spell detonated before reaching its true target, but, this time, Andric added a cloud of black gas into the spell.
The cloud of black gas blocked Veremund’s vision, but it also blocked Andric’s vision. Andric moved himself away from Veremund, and Veremund used another Thunder Fist, again missing. The black gas would dissipate quickly, so Andric acted fast. He deactivated his flight spell and used both of his hands to simultaneous shoot spells at Veremund.
As Andric fell, to Flesh Eruption spells zigzagged toward Veremund. The flightpath of zigzagging was a complicated one, and Andric could only do it if he didn’t instruct the spell to hone in on his target. But, when Veremund was in the air and could only fall downward, Andric could manually calculate where Veremund would be after half a second from sending out his spells.
Andric fell twenty feet, then recast his flight spell and stabilized himself. He turned to watch Veremund exploding into bits, but the two Flesh Eruption spells had already hit and done their damage.
