Chapter 190: The Madman Dies
Something sharp flickered in Evan's eyes at the thought. Whoever the man was, Evan intended to let him come to his own destruction — better to lay a proper trap first.
Evan ran through the terrain in his mind and let a faintly cunning smile cross his face. He pulled several daggers from his ring — trophies gathered along the road, the finer items already claimed by Xiaoshuang and Jenny. These daggers, he found, would serve well enough, especially with the poison still coating their edges. He smiled.
He rose quietly and drifted downward like a breeze. He'd already chosen his ground — beneath the cliff face, thick with weeds and underbrush. He set his materials in place with care, then, after a moment's thought, buried the crescent blade among the loose stones, covering it with a thin layer of sand. Everything ready, he drifted back up and settled onto the rock once more, running through every possible scenario the coming fight might take.
The man had to be some kind of knight-type fighter, Evan judged, and he worked through the possibilities accordingly — knightly technique, but also the chance he was a thief, a mage-archer, a dual cultivator. He carried a short blade and a long-bladed hand-axe. Evan considered whether he might have reinforcements waiting, running every angle through a mind that had long since surpassed any ordinary limit. What he was doing now went well beyond what any mage or knight might normally prepare — closer to the calculated planning of a war room.
Poor Bilden had no idea that every possible move he might make had already been accounted for, etched deep into Evan's mind like data fed into a machine. The battle awaiting him had already been decided, in every practical sense, before the first blow ever landed.
Dawn broke. Xiaoshuang woke, but Evan hadn't gone anywhere. Puzzled, she watched him conjure another sphere of water, and the two of them washed up in the cave. As Xiaoshuang ate breakfast, Evan moved slowly through a series of exercises, tuning his body to its finest edge.
"Wang, why aren't we moving on?" Xiaoshuang asked.
"I'm waiting for someone. He's been tracking me. I expect he's arrived by now," Evan said with a smile.
"What? Someone's been following you? Why didn't I know about this?" She fell silent mid-sentence, sensing it herself, and turned her eyes toward the cave mouth. A figure was approaching in the distance.
It was the madman Bilden. The soaking he'd taken the night before hadn't affected him physically, but his mood remained sour, never once suspecting it had been deliberate — he'd simply assumed the mountain weather was fickle. Waking irritable that morning, he'd washed up in a hurry and set out on the trail. Though a night had passed, the traces hadn't entirely vanished, and he'd picked up the trail quickly enough.
As he drew closer to the mountain's base, Evan told Xiaoshuang to stay out of sight. She pouted. "I've got my sword — I'm not scared of him!"
"Stay in the cave. You're my hidden card. Don't reveal yourself yet," Evan said.
That settled her, though her eyes kept darting about, clearly turning over some scheme of her own.
Watching Bilden draw nearer, Evan rose and drifted down. His sudden appearance startled Bilden badly, who gripped his hand-axe at once — he'd already recognized the man before him as his target.
Bilden glanced up and understood at once that Evan had been staying up above. Remembering how he'd been drenched the night before, while Evan had stayed dry in his cave, anger flared in him — he suspected Evan had spotted him from up there all along, given the height. He forced a pleasant tone. "Friend, you gave me quite a start. Living up there, are you? Any particular reason you're blocking my path?"
"Blocking your path? I only saw someone out here and thought I'd ask directions, not knowing this region well myself," Evan said, a smile spreading across his face.
"I know these mountains well. You've asked the right man," Bilden said with a laugh, lowering the axe, seeming to relax as he stepped closer — three or four paces off — before suddenly roaring, fire flaring crimson as the axe swept down toward Evan's head, wreathed in flame.
Evan smiled darkly, twin beams of grey light shooting from his eyes straight toward Bilden's face. Bilden twisted aside, dodging the beams, and swung the axe in an arc toward Evan's neck, the flame given real substance, its force unmatched.
Evan drifted backward — not directly back, but curving to the right, his feet barely touching down as he slipped clear.
Bilden lunged forward, another roar tearing from him, his presence swelling with menace, his modest frame seeming to grow larger and fiercer. The axe hadn't yet fallen when his roar cut off abruptly, replaced by a startled, furious cry. "You coward!" His body jerked back — his foot had come down on a blade's edge, an inch-long knife standing upright in the weeds, its edge gleaming faint blue, blood already staining it. The dagger was viciously sharp, and Bilden had stepped squarely onto it, the point hidden so well in the underbrush that even careful scrutiny would have missed it.
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As he retreated, a scorching fireball shot from Evan's hand like a falling star. Bilden felt no pain at all — only a growing numbness in his foot, telling him the blade had been poisoned. Fortunate that he was an ability-user himself; the poison wouldn't take hold as quickly as it would in an ordinary man, though within moments his foot had gone entirely numb.
His axe flashed several times, shattering the fireball before it could explode. Balancing on his uninjured right foot, his left hand flicked open a vial of antidote and downed it in one swallow, the axe in his right hand still weaving through the air. The moment the antidote hit his throat, he hurled the empty vial at Evan.
Evan tapped it once with his cane, and the glass shattered on contact. He gave a slight shift and stood his ground, then took a single step forward — not toward Bilden at all. Steel rang as the blade slid free of the cane, light flaring violently as he thrust it into the empty air to his right-front. There was a clang, and a figure materialized where the blade struck — while, at the same time, the Bilden standing where he'd been flickered and vanished. Evan had guessed right. The man was a thief.
Evan's thrust landed, and Bilden reappeared, then vanished again — only to surface once more mid-retreat, a fresh cut opening across his chest. Evan's blade hadn't come cheap. Bilden had managed to block the strike itself, but the sword-intent behind it hadn't been stopped at all, driving straight through into his chest regardless. Evan felt the strike land as though against a rubber ring — he'd only barely managed to breach the man's defense, and what got through carried little real force, leaving nothing worse than a surface wound.
"Interesting. So you're an ability-user too," Evan said with a smile. This rubbery quality was clearly innate — a kind of paranormal gift. The instant an attack landed, the skin bulged outward like a toad's, turning rubbery enough to deflect a blade — though such a gift rarely extended to the palms and soles, the hollows of the body where such defenses tended not to reach.
Bilden glared at Evan. He'd come intending an easy kill, confident in more than his surface identity as a knight with some thief's skill layered on top — he carried one more secret still, skin like rubber, able to turn aside most blades entirely. Anyone who'd ever learned that secret was already dead.
"You're — dead," he said, drawing the words out one by one. Now that Evan had seen through his secret, he couldn't allow him to live — once such a secret got out, it lost its value entirely, since others would simply learn to guard against it. Evan had to die. He had no idea, though, that Evan attached no real significance to any of it — a person with some rare gift wasn't so strange a thing, and Evan had never once considered harming anyone without cause. He had no way of understanding Bilden's own logic. People, in the end, could differ from each other by an enormous margin.
Bilden's body split abruptly into three figures, all lunging forward at once. Evan gave a cold laugh, and with a crack, a wall of bone shot up from the ground around him — hiding him from view entirely, though he could still see clearly through it.
There was a crash as the bone wall took the impact. Wreathed in flame, looking almost demonic, Bilden's axe flared red several times and tore through the wall entirely. Evan wore a mocking smile as black smoke rose around him, countless skeletons surging out to meet the attacker — the whole scene dissolving into a mass of bone and black mist. Undead Calamity.
He swung his axe like a whirlwind, unease rising in him as the skeletons only kept multiplying. Ghouls appeared. Hellhounds and gargoyles wheeled through the air above. Time to end this, Evan thought, a faint smile crossing his face.
Seeing the ranks of undead swelling around him, Bilden fought on desperately, but couldn't keep pace with the flood. His foot caught — a skeletal hand had burst from the ground and seized his ankle. He stamped hard, wrenching free, and a gargoyle dove at him from above. Red light flared around him, and he swung the axe upward, sending the gargoyle flying — but a wave of skeletons closed in from the ground at the same moment, and the red light around him grew steadily thinner, black smoke pressing in from every side.
He tried to break free of the encirclement, only to find skeletons on every side. He roared, drawing the short blade at his hip with his left hand — he remembered Evan's direction from before, and sent the blade spinning through the air toward it. He had no idea Evan had already moved from that spot; going by his last known position was a mistake of the barest fraction, and yet fractions were all it took. Evan watched the blade spiral down and bury itself harmlessly in the dirt.
He smiled, pointing a finger — Yin-Chill Strike — and a band of mist appeared instantly in the air. Bilden felt something wrong at once, raising the axe defensively. There was a crack, a surge of force washing over him, and for a moment he felt relief settle in — before a sudden chill struck him, his soul itself under assault. He knew, too late, that something was badly wrong. His whole body went rigid, his soul taking a crushing blow, and before he could recover, the ghouls and skeletons surged in all at once, the light around him extinguished entirely, ghouls tearing at him, blades and swords falling in a rain he had no way to answer. His paranormal gift remained, but it only prolonged his suffering now. A gargoyle's claw caught him square on the head, and his skull burst open. He collapsed, torn apart between bone and rotting flesh within moments.
Evan gave a sweep of his hand, and the black smoke scattered at once, the undead vanishing as quickly as they'd come, leaving only a ruined, unrecognizable corpse on the ground. Evan never even learned the man's name — not that it mattered. Just a minor player.
Still, he gave a small gesture, and a thin thread of black smoke drifted into his bone staff.
Evan slowly raised his head, his eyes fixing on a particular direction. Three figures came into view — and Evan recognized all three of them.