Supreme Magus

Then, Lith and his Sigil Demons had unleashed six weak Blade Tier spells against the dome, attacking it from multiple directions at once. They had held back to avoid flattening the Mherka Hills and killing Mak, but the final result was still impressive.

Six fissures cut deep into the ground, reaching far below and beyond the Grindstone Fortress. The forces stationed near the points of impact had been slaughtered and all the defensive measures destroyed.

Lith had exploited the ensuing confusion and the many cracks in the damaged arrays to find the quickest path to reach Mak the Mad Ax before he could call his mysterious backer for help.

The Eyes had already spotted him before the attack thanks to his cyan core and powerful equipment. Compared to him, everyone else in the fortress was as weak as a baby.

The problem was that the arrays were so carefully overlapped that the Eyes of Menadion couldn’t peer clearly into Mak’s personal quarters.

On top of that, breaking through so many magical formations would have taken time that Lith didn’t have. The combined onslaught of Blade and Cursed magic had solved the problem, while the Demons’ simultaneous charge worked as a diversion.

Lith encountered only a few people who tried to stop him on his way to the operation room, and he disposed of them without ever slowing down. He advanced in a whirlwind of Davross and a hail of blood, reaching Mak in just a handful of seconds.

"Whoever you are, you are in a world of trouble." The burly giant wielded the crimson twin axes that gave his gang its name and threw himself at the intruder. "I’m-"

"Not interested." Lith cut the Blood Axes asunder with a single horizontal slash of Ragnarök. He grabbed Mak by the neck and lifted him off the ground like a grocery bag. "The treasury. Where is it? Where is everything you plundered?"

Mak would have loved to stand his ground and smile in defiance, but his feet dangled in the air, and his mouth was wide open in a desperate attempt to breathe.

’I don’t want to die! Not like this!’ He thought as blind terror and despair ravaged his mind and heart.

"I need you alive. Not in one piece." Lith grabbed Mak’s right hand and crushed it in his grip. "The treasury. Where?"

Pain snapped the Mad Ax out of his daze, and he hurriedly looked at a door behind him. Lith threw Mak against the door, using him as a living ram. The thick wooden door broke, but so did the Mad Ax’s left shoulder and elbow.

The enchanted armor had kept him from becoming a pincushion of wooden splinters, but it couldn’t save his pride, body, and mind from shattering like glass. Mak was a seasoned warrior who could gauge the might of any opponent in three exchanges.

He had lasted only one before Lith overpowered him, but the strength of his grip and the violence of his toss made up for the two remaining exchanges.

’That guy is a monster.’ Mak thought. ’He will flay every bit of my skin and pulverize every bone in my body if I don’t do what he says.’

"Where?" Lith moved in a blur, reaching the Mad Ax and lifting him again before the gang leader could finish to assess how desperate his situation was.

Mak pointed at a hidden passage in an apparently solid stone wall, but the invader just nodded. Two vertical and one horizontal swings of the angry blade cut along the door’s outline, severing its hinges and deactivating all the traps.

Lith kicked the stone slab in, sending it flying and neutralizing the magical formations between him and the fortress’ vault.

"What is this shit?" Lith had hoped for a massive Adamant door, something he could take home as a bonus.

Instead, he was staring at a cave whose entrance was blocked by enchanted stones.

Mak tapped on Lith’s hand, trying to signal him that he needed to breathe in order to reveal the password. Lith plunged Ragnarök into the stone like a key into a lock, and the door opened on its own.

Inside the room, Lith found piles of gold, ingots of non-magical metals, and several precious gemstones of various shapes and sizes. The Blood Axes had clearly sold everything they had stolen at a fair price.

"That’s it?" Lith snorted. "This isn’t even half of what has been stolen in Ghishal."

’It amounts to one-third of the total sum, if we take into account fencing prices and the gang’s expenses. Bandits don’t live on air.’ Solus said after making an accurate estimate of how much the Blood Axes were supposed to have earned and how much Mak had to pay his followers to keep them from revolting or leaving him.

"I stand corrected. This is less than one-third of the value of the goods stolen so far." Lith echoed her words for Mak to hear. "Is there another gang in Ghishal I’m not aware of? Answer me."

His voice was the rumble of thunder that announces a storm, and his Abomination Touch was death’s chilling embrace. Mak shook his head, feeling tears stream from his eyes.

While staring at Lith’s cold eyes, he didn’t feel like a ruthless bandit anymore, let alone a warrior worth that title. He had found himself in the shoes of his helpless victims, facing someone who held his life in his hands and handled it like garbage.

’Why did no one warn me that Ghishal County is filled with monsters?’ Mak wasn’t worried about losing his wealth anymore. No price was too much to escape that nightmare. ’If I knew that Keyla Lark had someone this powerful among her retainers, I would have never listened to that lying piece of-’

The news of Lith’s investigation came to his mind, and suddenly the identity of the invader wasn’t a mystery anymore. Mak found no solace in the answer to all his questions. He fell limp like a rag doll, knowing he was doomed.

"One third." Lith echoed, uncaring of his prisoner’s mental breakdown. "One third for you, another for whoever leaked the intel about the caravans to you, and the last one for the mysterious friend that set up the arrays. Am I right?"

Mak nodded, his eyes empty and his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish.

"Who’s your inside man?" Lith loosened his grip on the Mad Ax’s throat.

"Baron Carkas." Mak replied.

"Can you prove it?" Lith asked, as a wave of his hand emptied the vault, leaving only dust behind.

Mak took dozens of small rolls of paper out of his dimensional amulet. Each one contained detailed information about the caravans’ routes and the mercenaries hired to protect them.

Each roll was signed with just a C, but by cross-referencing the rolls with Count Carkas’ penmanship, a good Constable was likely to identify him. If the information they contained matched Keyla’s secret plans the Count had access to, however, having him charged would be child’s play.

Mak was supposed to destroy the paper rolls after reading their contents, but the Mad Ax wasn’t that stupid. If anything went wrong, without the paper rolls the nobleman would have pinned everything on him, and no one would have believed Mak’s side of the story.

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