Low-Fantasy Occultist

Nick did not take the captain’s word as absolute truth, despite having an intimate view of his soul. Deception was a tool he often used, and he knew better than to base a campaign on the desperate ramblings of a single terrified man, especially one who might have been fed false information.

Leaving the unconscious officer in the dirt, Nick moved through the rest of the ruined camp toward the soldiers still rooted to the ground by Rhea’s alchemical resin. Some wept, while others stared with the hollow, vacant expressions of men completely broken by war.

Nick applied his Charisma and some spiritual manipulation liberally, forcing them to speak. He cross-referenced their accounts, pressing them on supply routes, troop numbers, and the specific banners that had retreated behind Toneburg’s walls. The details varied slightly—the perspective of a spearman differed from that of an archer—but the core intelligence remained consistent.

House Ultimer had long since stopped fighting in the war, leaving only a few soldiers as tokens. They were hoarding their strength, letting the royal army and the other nobles bleed out while they sealed themselves within an impenetrable fortress.

"They are all telling the same story," he said quietly, turning his back on the prisoners and rejoining his team at the edge of the ravine. "Toneburg is locked down. I’m afraid that approaching directly might give our hand away too soon.”

Gaelen grunted with a dark look, but didn’t deny his assessment.

"What do we do with them?" Rhea asked, gesturing toward the captives with a slight tilt of her head.

“My house’s patrols are too far south, and we cannot afford to leave witnesses to our passage," Nick replied, entirely devoid of malice, even as he condemned the men to death.

Gaelen offered a slow nod. He drew two hunting knives from his belt and moved through the line of prisoners. There was no hesitation, no wasted motion. He stepped behind each rooted soldier, clamped a hand over their mouths, and slit their throats.

When the gruesome task was finished, Nick took over. He did not want to leave a scene that could be investigated by a passing patrol or a skilled tracker, so he called upon his Fire Affinity, channeling a focused flame without concussive force. He directed it over the bodies, the armor, and the alchemical resin.

Within minutes, the camp was reduced to a fine gray ash, which the harsh northern wind quickly scattered across the rocks, leaving no trace of their passage or any sign of an ambush. They were simply gone.

"We need more intelligence before we test the north," Nick declared, turning back toward the tree line. "Let's see if we can find another band of deserters. I want to know exactly how far the dark dwarves have advanced.”

For the next two days, they scoured the cold forests of the borderlands. Gaelen tracked every broken branch and disturbed patch of frost, but the trails they found were either days old or led nowhere. The harsh environment and the monsters had already claimed whoever else had fled the front lines.

They did not find any more soldiers, but the wilderness was not entirely empty.

On their second afternoon, a pack of frost-stalkers—predatory beasts resembling oversized, six-legged wolves—ambushed them near a frozen stream. The creatures were agile and vicious, around level forty-five.

It was a violent skirmish, and Nick took the opportunity to continue his experiments. As a stalker lunged at him, its jaws snapping with unnatural cold,

Nick summoned water and fire mana, attempting a different approach to his catalyst theory. Instead of using raw control, he tried to blend the opposing energies within his soul to temper the reaction.

Forcing the elements together was easy, as he could press his willpower to blur the boundary between them. For a fleeting moment, the water began to boil with a luminescent orange light, producing a superheated liquid that refused to evaporate.

But his focus wavered as the stalker's claws raked against his kinetic shield. The spiritual catalyst slipped, and the spell collapsed into a violent burst of scalding steam that erupted from him in a shockwave.

Nick sighed in frustration, flying around another beast and driving the blunt end of his staff into its skull. The impact cracked bone, and a quick pulse of wind magic severed its spine.