When Merik saw someone break into the library again, he repeated the sleep spell. The fog spread to all the same hundreds of meters in the area. Soldiers who entered the library fell to the floor one by one.

When he finished collecting papers, he rushed outside. Although there were Mages in the city, Tarrister in particular, he was not at all afraid of them. However, just hiding in some house in the area was too dangerous, the acolytes could find him, and then it would be too difficult to escape.

It was necessary at least to get away from the crime scene. Merik walked several blocks and hid everything stolen in a previously prepared cache of one of the houses. Moving around the city with such a burden under the current circumstances would be unwise.

Oddly enough, the sounds of the bells subsided and the night city again plunged into silence. Only the shouting of the soulless could be heard somewhere outside the fog.

Having changed his appearance and put on the clothes of one of the locals, he was going to leave the fog. There were quite a few soldiers lying unconscious on the border of the fog, but he was struck by what was beyond the border. Through the fog of his spell, he saw crowds of guards with crossbows at the ready, they stood in combat readiness outside the fog border, not letting anyone in or letting out.

Frowning, Merik checked another street and found the same picture. Then he simply entered one of the houses on the border of the fog and tried to get out from the other side of the house through the window where the border passed.

However the moment he opened the window, bolts from crossbows flew in his direction!

Merik summoned the element of ice in front of him, covering himself with a piece of ice wall. Cold steam began to emanate from the wall. The wall stopped the bolts with a slight tremble, however, on impact, light explosions sounded, accompanied by bursts of fire, and the wall split into pieces. Merik at the sight of this barely managed to hide from the next shot, moving away from the window.

He was both furious and scared at the same time. The radius of his spell was about a hundred meters, in order to block his retreat from all sides up to a thousand soldiers would be needed. But what worried him more was the speed with which those soulless managed to organize such complete surround. Their strange crossbows was also bothersome.

Merik realized that he could not get off with a little effort and took out a smoking pipe hanging from his neck. Using his mental energy, he activated the artifact. Fire ripples formed around his body.

He didn't have much mental energy left, so he didn't waste it on the sleep spell again. At full speed, he rushed towards the window and jumped out. One of the bolts hooked it, but a fiery protective screen partially appeared at the point of collision and repelled the attack.

Outside, there were more people than he had seen initially, and everyone opened fire to kill. Merik himself, on the run, summoned a whole series of thin ice needles and with a wave of his hand sent them to those who stood in his way, trying to aim at the head or legs.

To his surprise, behind the first barrier of soldiers, the next one was already waiting for him, at least there were almost no owners of crossbows among them. He called out to the element of ice over and over again, neutralizing the especially bothersome enemies and ignoring the rest.

Suddenly, a warrior in full armor jumped out from the side at high speed, considering the speed, it was clearly a Knight. Realizing that it would not be so easy to shake him off, as well as to run away, Merik froze the ground in front of himself. The knight slipped on the ice at great speed and crashed hard into the ground.

Merik continued to run without looking back, but to his horror he realized that there were even more people further! The streets were filled with mercenaries with various flags, and their eyes seemed to light up with excitement at the sight of him. And behind him were still many soldiers chasing and attacking him in the back. His artifact will not be able to protect against all attacks forever, the fiery magic crystal in it will soon run out. It was necessary to at least get out of the line of fire.

Gritting his teeth, he looked around and rushed to the door, but it was expectedly closed. Paying attention to the window, he noticed that it was made of pieces of thick moon glass tied with a lead lattice and doubted that he could easily break this without using a full-fledged spell.

All this time, he was poured with a hail of arrows and bolts by both mercenaries and guards. Merik's eyes were bloodshot with rage, those pitiful soulless ones were everywhere around him like countless ants.

Merik began to cast the spell again under a hail of attacks, and soon another portion of the mist began to spread around. He had exhausted almost all of his mental energy and even felt slightly dizzy.

I frowningly watched this rank 3 acolyte from the roof of one of the buildings above. He was too busy to pay attention to me while I waited for the right moment to attack.

As soon as he began to perform another spell, I jumped off the roof right on top of him. Using life energy, I performed the Knight's secret move. It consisted in a banal all-round strengthening of the body. My entire body, along with the sword, began to shimmer with a pale green color, and in the blink of an eye, the sword collided with the magician's barrier.

A powerful shock wave went from the collision site, accompanied by an equally powerful sonic boom. It was the very first spell that I performed after becoming a disciple and collecting the element of sound, I called it Sound Burst. I was also affected by the effects of my spell, but I was ready for this and flying off to the wall due to the shock wave, I rushed back to attack again instantly.

The sound wave pushed the mist of the unfinished spell in all directions and even pushed the people in the area, causing them to stagger back or fall to the ground. Their ears bled and almost all of them fell to the ground completely stunned. Glasses burst, lamps and torches went out, dust and debris flew up from the ground randomly scattering in all directions from the collision. The arrows and bolts of the crossbows strayed from their flight path.

All this happened in the blink of an eye, it seemed that someone changed the picture and suddenly utter chaos erupted.

This Mage's shield was cracked, as was the fire crystal in his artifact. His spell was interrupted and he spat blood from his mouth from the rollback of his own spell. His face turned pale and his body trembled violently.

Even he was stunned by the deafening sound of incredible power, which was eloquently indicated by the blood spraying from his ears.

- I give up ... - the acolyte managed to croak, trying to come to his senses.

Without hesitation, I continued a series of strikes with a sword filled with life energy in a lightning-fast sequence. A fraction of a second later, the shield finally broke into pieces, and in the same instant, the acolyte's head flew into the air.

With the next blow, I pierced the already headless body with a blow to the heart, making several turns of the sword. Staying vigilant, I began to test him with mental energy and remove everything that could pose a threat from his body.

Judging by the mental energy checks, this acolyte was indeed dead, neither from his head, nor from his body, I no longer felt a drop of strength or signs of life. After making sure I cleaned the body properly, I burned it with the fire element, just to be on the safe side.

I reached rank 2 acolyte a couple of months ago, which I was incredibly happy about. The first rune of the mind was simply too hard, working on it for a year and a half made me go crazy with headaches and suffering caused by the process.

However, despite the fact that I had to build the next three runes in my mind from scratch, after the first rune the process went much easier. The runes themselves were also not so complicated. Of course, the breakthrough to the True Knight also made itself felt.

It was the first rank 3 acolyte who decided to rob me, so I decided to play it safe. Even if he didn't kill anyone, I still wouldn't risk letting him live, as I wasn't confident in my ability to disable him.

Chaos reigned all around. The mercenaries and my soldiers came to their senses clutching their heads, obviously unable to hear normally. Some were especially unfortunate and managed to run into someone's sword or hit their head unsuccessfully, resulting in death.

I realized that I could end up causing even more damage than this acolyte and sighed. Although I have been trying to experiment with the sound element for a long time, I have not yet come up with an optimal way to attack a single target. Still, there was too little information about this element, musical instruments also did not really help in the experiments.

Gradually, people began to recover, fortunately there were only a couple of deaths. The rest got off with a fright.

Carter, one of my Knights, came over and apologized.

- Forgive me, Lord Tarrister, I have disgraced myself.

I watched as he ran into an acolyte and slipped, he really was neutralized like a stupid child, but there was nothing to blame him for. I couldn't provide all my fighters with the experience of fighting Mages.

- It's okay Carter. You fought a rank 3 acolyte and survived. There will be something to tell the grandchildren. - I encouraged him with a smile.

- Was it a rank 3 acolyte? - the fighters and mercenaries began to chatter, looking at the burnt remains.

Raising my voice, I answered.

- Right. I am sincerely grateful to everyone who participated in today's fight. 3rd rank acolyte, also with a protective magic artifact. You don't see that very often. You can be sure that I will repay everyone who was involved in the defense of the city, the victims will receive tenfold compensation.

People began to chatter, some about the fact that Tarrister killed a rank 3 acolyte, someone thanked for the generosity or sincerely expressed their willingness to fight for the lord.

My people have collected all the remains and things, I will examine them later. Assessing the damage, I looked into the library and raised my eyebrows realizing that it was completely looted. Of course, the library did not have key knowledge like 0th rank spells, such transactions were made only by me personally. I did not regret the paper, so that all the knowledge in the library was a copy. However, restoring them was troublesome.

I ordered specially trained dogs to be brought in and soon they found all the records in one of the houses. The residents of the house were killed.

Mages are accustomed to paying attention primarily to magical traps and barriers, often ignoring the tricks of mortals. However, unlike magical traps, mortal tricks are much harder to spot. So I used a combination of magic and nonmagical traps to protect my possessions. The papers were covered in a special scent that had nothing to do with magic, so finding them wasn't a problem.

Bertram usually helped deal with such attacks, although mostly as support, however, his current condition left much to be desired after breaking through to a rank 3 acolyte. Now he was trying to recover in his own residence. Considering his age and build, he is still very lucky to have survived at all.