Low-Fantasy Occultist

Toneburg was built to withstand the brutal northern winters, its architecture heavy with thick granite blocks, steep slate roofs, and narrow windows. Yet beneath the grim exterior, centuries of wealth had carved out a distinct culture. As Nick navigated the soot-stained rooftops of the merchant district, he could see it all, including the fractures in the city’s foundation.

Banners hung from the wrought-iron balconies of the lesser nobility, painting a clear picture of the shifting political winds. House Cinder and House Tor prominently displayed the Ultimer hawk, their courtyards bristling with hired swords. These were the opportunists who’d fully bought into Ephor’s promised new order.

Whether out of fear of his wrath, greed, or something else, it doesn’t matter. They’ve made their choice.

Other estates, such as the fortified compound of House Brant, flew the rampant bear of Duke Mordhau von Toneburg along with their own banners. Their gates were barred, and their walls were manned by disciplined archers who kept both mercenaries and Ultimer loyalists at bay.

Ephor Ultimer treated the Duke like a puppet, a relic of a bygone era kept around only to sign tax decrees. With greater care and the benefit of Silas’ wisdom, Nick watched the city and realized just how dangerous that assumption was.

The Duke’s personal guard, the Silver Falcons, held the main intersections of the upper city. They wore polished breastplates over gray wool and carried long, sweeping halberds, and were clearly a cut above mere city watchmen.

Nick had seen a squad of five Falcons repel a sudden charge by a dozen Black Hounds. The guards wielded wind-assisted martial arts, and their boots barely touched the cobblestones as they pivoted and struck in unison.

The mercenaries were quickly broken apart, but they weren’t killed for their bravery; instead, they were allowed to flee back into their territory.

That is very interesting. They could have eliminated them all, and no one would have had anything to say, not even their commander, but they chose not to.

The fact was, the Duke possessed a highly trained, elite military force, yet he held them in reserve, selectively defending specific chokepoints while letting the rest of the city tear itself apart, even though he could have, if not taken it all back, at least vastly expanded his control.

Nick kept moving, tracking the scent of fresh blood. He really needed more exp. The gap between his current power and that of the Ephor Ultimer was not something he’d ever been unaware of, but a glimpse of the old man had made it all too clear for him to be comfortable.

He found his opportunity in a ruined plaza lined with shattered storefronts. A violent clash had just ended, leaving the cobblestones littered with the bodies of a noble retinue and a group of mercenaries wearing blue tabards. The fighting had been brutal, and he could see signs of elemental spells in the cratered cobblestones.

Silence hung over the plaza, broken only by the ragged breathing and low groans of the survivors, as the few still up and about began to retreat.

It was odd to leave their allies behind, but the retinue was still charged with protecting the fat noble, and the mercenaries had taken too many losses to dare mount another attack. It seemed they’d decided to leave the injured to their fate and hope they’d crawl back on their own.

Nick counted roughly two dozen men and women bleeding out among the dead. As far as he could tell, their levels hovered in the high seventies, with a few commanders in the mid-eighties.

It was not an insignificant force. Floria’s guards were all around levels forty to sixty these days, and they were considered very well trained.

Here, however, these people were little more than ants crawling in the shadows of monsters, and while their loss would be noticed, no one would make a fuss about it.

I have nothing against them, but my needs are too pressing to consider their potential innocence, and I’ve seen them destroy homes and shops with very little regard for civilians.

Nick slipped into the plaza, his boots making no sound on the broken stone.

He moved methodically through the wreckage, stopping to kneel beside a dying mercenary and placing a hand over the man's heart. A focused pulse of lightning stopped the damaged organ, granting the man a quick death. He stepped over to a noble guard clutching a severed arm and clamped a hand over the man’s mouth, driving a needle of compressed air into the man’s brainstem.

It was grim, unglorious work. Nick cleared the plaza, dispensing lethal mercy and gaining more experience with each soul that passed. It wasn’t much, since he was only dealing the final blow, but the numbers added up, especially since he was making sure to kill them all with different variations of his spells, trying to squeeze as much exp as possible out of them.

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Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

He found a mercenary lieutenant pinned beneath a collapsed stone pillar. The man looked up, eyes glassy with pain. Nick ended his suffering with a swift burst of spiritual mana laced with kinetic energy.