The old preacher stumbled forward several steps and finally burst out of the area engulfed by the "Light Banishment" spell. But stepping from total darkness into the dimly lit corridor—even though the fluorescent glow was far from blinding—still forced his eyes shut in reflex.
The blink was brief, but by the time the old preacher could make out what lay before him, a glob of acrid, sickly green liquid was already hurtling toward his face with no room to dodge.
"Aaagh!" The old preacher's shrill scream echoed through the enclosed sewer, bouncing off the walls. It startled Jackson and the other gang thug who was charging at Lucian, and both instinctively turned to look.
The old preacher clutched his eyes, the skin on his face rapidly darkening and charring. Writhing in agony, he rolled back and forth across the ground before, with a heavy splash, he tumbled into the underground river.
Jackson and the other gang thug shuddered violently at that gruesome shriek.
But the two of them had long since grown accustomed to the cruelty of ripping hearts from living bodies. Their vicious nature surged past fear in this extraordinarily perilous situation, and they charged toward Lucian with savage determination.
Retreat meant death. Only moving forward offered any hope!
They were still over twenty meters from Lucian, and after the hesitation and delay, they had barely taken two steps when the strange, guttural chanting that reverberated through the sewer rang out once more—as if it had never stopped.
"Run! We have to reach that person! That's the only way to escape this evil magic!" That was the single thought racing through Jackson and the gang thug's minds. Never having faced a mage before, it completely escaped them to hurl their daggers—even a missed throw might startle a mage whose casting focus hadn't been properly trained, causing them to lose control of their mental energy or fumble the incantation.
But after a few more steps, when they caught a clear look at the mysterious figure's face, their charge suddenly faltered.
It was Lucian!
The mystery evaporated, and malice surged up. Jackson and the gang thug gritted their teeth and were about to close the last two or three meters to stab this bastard full of holes—
But then Jackson saw Lucian extend his right hand forward. A shimmering beam trailing frost shot out at impossible speed, striking the gang thug's face with the precision of a guided attack, impossible to evade.
A thin layer of ice rapidly formed, sealing the gang thug's eyes, nose, and mouth behind its frozen surface.
The cold seeped into his brain, slowing his thoughts to a crawl. By the time he realized he was suffocating and tried to shatter the ice on his face, he had already lost most of his strength.
The suffocation grew more and more unbearable. The gang thug could only collapse forward, slamming his head against the ground.
Jackson finally snapped to the realization that the Lucian before him was no longer the common street urchin he could bully at will. This was a wizard who wielded mysterious, terrifying magical power!
An evil wizard!
But Jackson was no fool—on the contrary, he was shrewd and sharp. Behind that plain, smiling face beat a ruthless heart. Knowing Lucian would never let him go, he stifled the urge to beg for mercy, took two hard steps, and lunged at Lucian with his dagger raised high.
But just as Jackson closed to within a few dozen centimeters, his body suddenly felt impossibly heavy. His forward-leaning momentum threw him off balance, and he pitched face-first toward the ground.
"Oh no!" Losing his balance at the critical moment, Jackson was seized by a terror beyond anything he had ever known. He understood he was in mortal danger. He flailed his arms wildly, trying to regain equilibrium, but as an ordinary man caught completely off guard, he could do nothing effective—only be swallowed by despair.
If this had been a fall he could have anticipated, Jackson might have at least managed to hurl his dagger before letting his body drop and rolling out of the way.
The "Ring of Instability"—a defensive ward Lucian had laid around himself before casting "Acid Splash," capable of lasting two minutes.
Because he had practiced this spell so thoroughly, a mere slight murmur of the incantation was enough to simulate the vibrations. So after completing the Light Banishment, seizing the window when his enemies were disoriented and panicking in the darkness, Lucian had cast it smoothly and without producing any significant sound.
Lucian sidestepped, avoiding the falling Jackson. Coldly watching him wave his arms in a futile attempt to stay upright, he calmly and precisely drove Jackson's own dagger into his neck—and twisted it.
The blood that sprayed out was sparse and light. The altered gravitational pull was immediately obvious; droplets drifted down like scattered flower petals. Because Lucian had been mindful of his aim and his control, not a single drop touched him.
Jackson's final, anguished gurgle died in his throat, unable to escape. He could only collapse to the ground, convulsing in agony with harsh, rasping breaths—until his wretched, sinful life came to its end.
By then, the gang thug had just managed to crack the ice from his face, but his frozen and ruined eyes, nostrils, and mouth left him so slow to react that Lucian dispatched him with the dagger effortlessly.
The old preacher had struggled in the underground river for a good while before finally going still. The current carried his body toward the iron grate.
Seeing him dead, Lucian finally let out a long, deep breath of relief. Of all nine of them, the old preacher was the one he had been most worried about—connected as he was to some evil deity, there was no telling what bizarre ability he might suddenly unleash.
Only twenty-something seconds had passed. The darkness from the Light Banishment had not yet dissipated, blanketing the corridor, the underground river, and the iron grate alike.
The two beggars who had been stabbed in vital spots by their own companions writhed painfully on the ground, not yet dead.
The beggar and the gang thug in the underground river, driven half-mad by the mysterious, terrifying mage, scrambled desperately to find the iron grate and escape into the River Belen. But having fallen in, they had already lost all sense of direction in the darkness, crashing into walls and stumbling this way and that, unable to find the entrance to the water.