Chapter 118: High Priest Boniface
Wilbur's tactics weren't wrong. Between the two sides, his group had the knightly strength while the enemy fielded nothing but mages. That kind of imbalance meant everything, if the fight stayed at range — mages could tear through them from a distance without a single blow landed in return, leaving nothing to do but stand and die. Close the gap, force a real melee, and the whole picture changed. Once a mage had someone on top of them, the outcome was usually already decided.
He'd overlooked Evan, though. As his horse thundered forward, several earth spikes burst up from the road ahead. He had no time to change course, ducking low as his greatsword flared with light, cutting the nearest spike apart before it could touch him.
The men behind him weren't so lucky. Spikes surged up in their path, and horses screamed as several took spikes straight through the belly. Riders leapt clear, turned from cavalry to infantry in an instant — one of them wounded, a spike catching his leg, limping forward regardless.
Worse still, one horse shied violently at the sight of the spikes ahead, twisting aside too sharply, and its rider was thrown clear only to land directly atop another spike, his scream cutting off the moment it caught him.
Horses and riders went down together, the charge broken apart entirely by the spikes. Scorching rays and ice lances followed, claiming two more men to spellfire. By then there was no way back, and Wilbur roared, driving himself and his horse forward as one straight at Evan, his blade already falling — a flicker of triumph rising in him, the taste of revenge almost within reach.
Evan's expression didn't change. His left hand gripped the cane's sheath, his right the hilt. Steel rang as the blade slid free, a bright arc of light rising with it. He turned with the blade, stepping wide to the right, clearing the line of the charge, and thrust the sword forward — straight for Wilbur's throat.
"A knight! You're a knight!" Wilbur shouted in genuine alarm. His attack, brutal as it had been, cut only empty air where Evan had stood a moment before — Evan had already moved clear.
Magic tore through the field around them. Jessica's incantation completed, and a red flash brought her fire giant into being right in the midst of the riders. Two thieves closed in with long daggers, while the man with the leg wound swung his long-hafted hammer just as the giant's blazing sword arrived. His injured leg gave him no room to dodge, and the blade cut him clean in two, his hammer still following through on momentum to strike the giant's body with a heavy thud — no knightly force behind it now, and no real harm done.
The two thieves pressed the attack from either side, and the fire giant roared as it fought them both at once. Lidis's fireballs rained down, one detonation after another, while Raight's ice rays followed close behind, not quite freezing anyone solid but slowing every movement to a crawl. No one broke through their line except Wilbur — and Wilbur himself was in trouble now, Evan's blade striking for his throat like a snake.
He twisted his body just in time, his years of training paying off in that instant — his body moving faster than conscious thought could keep pace with, joints cracking under the strain as he dodged clear at the last possible moment. The blade still grazed him, a thin line of blood opening across his neck.
Cold sweat broke out across his skin. Fear caught up with him only after the blade had already passed. He pulled his horse back several strides, having planned to use its momentum to press the advantage — but Evan hadn't met him head-on at all, and the counter had landed with a precision he hadn't expected.
Wilbur knew he couldn't hesitate. He crouched low, driving his horse forward again, his greatsword sweeping down in a curving arc — half cut, half thrust, like a small whirlwind bearing down on Evan.
Evan moved as one with his own body, force rising from the ground up. Both his hands flared to life at once as he stepped forward — a step carrying the effect of Ground Compression. To Wilbur, the world seemed to blur, and Evan's blade was already there, trailing sword-force. The two swords crossed, and both men twisted aside in the same instant, neither landing a hit — but Evan's blade dipped just slightly on the way past, catching the horse's flank. The animal screamed, its hindquarters buckling. Wilbur vaulted clear and landed steady on his feet, roaring in fury. "You break the knight's code! Striking at my horse!"
Evan gave a cold laugh. "Who told you knightly conduct forbids striking a horse? Your head's addled. This is a fight to the death between us." Evan held nothing but contempt for that kind of code — though he understood well enough that it still shaped a knight's instincts regardless, no matter how shameless the man. It was the same reason none of them had struck while Evan and the others were still climbing down from the carriage. Evan cared nothing for any of it. He was an outsider here, after all.
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Wilbur, furious, was about to press the attack again when Evan called out, "Wait!"
He froze, half the force he'd gathered draining out of him at once. "What is it?"
"Your friends don't look like they're holding up too well," Evan said. Wilbur glanced back and found five or six of his thirteen men already dead, and the rest carrying wounds of their own, plainly losing ground. Just then he caught the whistle of wind and, at the edge of his vision, saw a fireball streaking toward him.
"You bastard!" he snarled, and swung his greatsword up in a flash of white light to shatter the fireball apart before it landed. He hadn't even finished the swing when a second flash of white light closed in on him. His foot shifted to meet it — and slipped instead. Grease, the word surfaced in his mind. A trivial spell, one he'd never have given a second thought under ordinary circumstances — a shift of weight would have kept him steady easily enough. But his foot slid regardless. His reflexes weren't slow; pure instinct drove him to plant his weight and crouch low, and he caught himself. And in that instant, a blade of light struck him through the chest like a snake, the force behind it detonating before he'd even registered what had happened. Evan had already withdrawn the sword by the time he understood. He stood frozen for a moment before his body crashed to the ground. His horse limped over to him, lowering its head, letting out a mournful, grieving cry.
Jessica and the others looked at Evan with open curiosity — none of them had expected the whole exchange to end with nothing more than a single cast of Grease. Evan saw it differently. Zero-tier spells like Grease cost almost nothing and demanded almost no effort. To him, magic wasn't about raw power for its own sake — if a small spell could handle something, there was no reason to reach for a bigger one. He'd noticed, too, that pairing these minor spells with his swordwork produced results that genuinely surprised him.
With Wilbur dead, the rest of his men fell apart at once, scattering in every direction — including the mage and the archer. Eight bodies lay across the ground. The magical effects had already faded, the earth spikes vanishing without a trace.
Evan didn't let his guard down. His attention stayed fixed on the mountain. Jessica, puzzled, was about to ask why when a roar broke out from the summit — a skull woven from thick black smoke came surging down the slope toward them, stretching several miles long, its presence overwhelming. Jessica and the others recoiled in shock. Whatever this was, it belonged to at least a necromancer of Arcanist rank.
Everywhere the black smoke passed, leaves stripped from the trees and swirled up into its wake, adding to its terrible momentum. Evan caught something familiar in it. Boniface. It was him.
Evan let out a long howl — a modified version of the Lich's Wail, one he'd refined over time until it barely resembled the original spell anymore, carrying now mostly high-frequency sound and concussive force, though it still kept the Lich's Wail's power to shake the soul. What emerged from his throat now hit with ten times the force of the original. The moment it left him, the sky itself seemed to darken. Dark mist gathered unseen, weaving into a thin, ash-grey band shot through with faint shapes of wraith-skulls, surging up the mountainside to meet the enemy — its power, on the surface, seeming far weaker than the black smoke skull bearing down on it.
The two currents of mist collided, and in that instant, both froze in place before exploding apart at once, a chorus of shrieking wraith-voices tearing through the air. A wild gust tore through the forest below, stripping leaves in a storm that took a long while to settle.
Three figures stood atop the mountain. Boniface, standing at their center, watched the aftermath and let out a sigh. "He's grown stronger again."
"High Priest, shall we go down?" one of the figures beside him asked.
Boniface shook his head. "I have unfinished business with him, but no confidence I could beat him. Let's go. We still have work to finish for the noble and glorious Lord Ormani. May everything of the sacred Ormani come to pass in this world. Move — if we're too slow, those Druids will find us again."
"Honored High Priest, your words are law to us. Praise be to you, great Ormani!" the two men beside him intoned. Boniface swept a hand through the air, and a rift opened in space. He stepped through it, the two men following him into the tear, and all three vanished, borrowing on Ormani's divine authority to break through space and escape.
Down below, Evan let out a long breath. So Boniface had gone. It seemed he'd made real progress lately — had he crossed paths with Ormani again? He'd been banished to some alternate dimension the last time, and now here he was, showing up again. Strange. What connection did he have to this devil cult — was he its founder? He hadn't shown his face directly, which meant he had no confidence he could beat Evan outright.
Most of what Evan suspected turned out to be close to the truth. He'd doubted the devil cult's origins from the start, and now, at least, a corner of it had shown itself. Still, all of this remained speculation for now. Evan had no intention of reporting any of it to the school — even if word got out, they'd assume it was nothing more than Wilbur's failed revenge.
"Who was that?" Jessica asked.
Evan shook his head. "I don't know either. Whoever it was, they're at least an Arcanist-level necromancer, though they never showed themselves. I do wonder if Wilbur's group had some connection to them. That's as far as I can guess — the rest is beyond me."
Jaymes and Peter were already busy searching the battlefield, working through it thoroughly, stripping the eight bodies clean. They came away with a decent haul, several pieces of jeweled finery among them — plunder from who knew where. Evan and the others didn't bother asking. Once the bodies were buried, they climbed back into the carriage, which rolled on steadily once more, toward Hollingburton.