The Kind of Evil-Chapter 144: Sea of flames.
"You said it’s a hideout?" Rasmus looked at Uriel with his brows raised. "Why does it look more like a headquarters than a hideout..." Rasmus went on one knee and looked down the cliff where the abandoned small town had been reinforced and fortified like a small fortress.
The hideout was covered by nature, with a small mountain on the back, cliffs on the sides, and a forest at the front. They had a waterfall with an infinite water supply, and the forest was filled with boars and other fat and meaty animals.
"We didn’t expect this as well..." Uriel walked over the dead body of a bandit who patrolled around the mountain. "But this convinced me that Calseus is down there."
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"Worse than that man from back then," Aris warned Rasmus as she looked at the dark energy coming from the mansion. "You will die in his hand if you choose to fight him with swordsmanship."
"Thank you for the warning, I’m not going to fight him. She will," Rasmus looked at Uriel’s gaze that had been staring at the mansion after Harold told her that demonic energy was coming from there.
Uriel gathered her knights to make a plan on how to infiltrate them. Rasmus and Aris were on the side, listening to their plan of attack.
"We don’t have enough people to prevent the enemies from running away. Calseus is just one of the many pawns now, and he’s replaceable," Uriel drew the hideout on the ground. "There are so many spots that we can’t cover, and if one of those possessed bodies escaped, it would be troublesome," she added.
"Isn’t that a good thing?" Rasmus asked as he looked at the drawing. "Let one escape and they will lead us to their other hideouts."
Uriel’s knights looked at her and decided that the idea wasn’t bad. Uriel hummed and nodded as she stared at her drawing with a serious expression. Eliminating future threats would help them a lot, and they could prevent innocent lives from being dragged into this mess.
"There are only nine of us, we can’t let so many of those bandits and criminals escape. If we let a lot of them escape, the nearest villages would become their target for hiding. We don’t want innocent lives to die because of our incompetence," Uriel responded as she put dots outside the bandit’s hideout. "Our hands are full, and we might not be able to follow them all."
"If that’s the case, why don’t you let me deal with them first and you handle the remaining ones?" Rasmus suggested, crossing his arms and staring at Uriel.
Uriel looked up at Rasmus and then at Aris, thinking if Rasmus planned to let Aris deal with them.
"And how are you going to do that exactly, Count Blackheart?" Uriel asked.
"I’m a mage, remember? I’ll get rid of them and you’ll deal with the remaining ones that survived," Rasmus answered with a cold and relaxed expression. "They won’t know what’s coming," he said with confidence.
"All you have to do..." Rasmus paused and went down to one knee as he pointed at the drawing. "Secure these areas outside the hideout and make sure nobody escapes, and you can let a few of them escape on purpose at the same time. While you, Lady Goldmane, you can wait here and when the damage is done, you can confront Calseus and do whatever you want to him," he pointed at the top middle of the drawing.
Rasmus began to explain the plan in detail and made sure it was a fail-safe one. He even used Harold in the plan to locate and spot bodies that had been possessed by demons. Aris would be by Harold’s side in case those demons tried to hunt him down as he would look like a sore thumb with that divine energy around him.
Uriel found that the plan was fail-safe and that it could work even with so little force in their arsenal. She then ordered her knights to secure those areas that Rasmus had proposed. Once she was done giving them order, the knights started moving silently and stealthily down the mountain and went to their positions. Aris went with Harold to their position as well.
"Count Blackheart, there’s something that I would like to ask," Uriel said as soon as she was alone with him. "What are you planning to do with the hostages or prisoners if there are any?" She asked.
"Don’t ask for something that you don’t want to hear. Keep your eyes straight and don’t look around. If you don’t know, you won’t feel any guilt," Rasmus answered. "I have seen what they have done to women, and I can assure you, even if something happened to them, they won’t feel any pain," he looked at Uriel with a serious expression.
Uriel nodded and had heard enough. She then left and went down the mountain to go to the designated position.
Rasmus walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the hideout of the bandits. He rubbed the ring on his middle finger with his thumb and looked at it for a moment. He slowly pulled the ring off and as soon as it was removed from his finger, he felt free from the weight and pressure.
"Why do I feel more sensitive with Mana?" Rasmus muttered as he looked at the ring on his palm. "Is it because I have been enduring the weight of this ring ever since I took a lot of loot back there that I get stronger?" He furrowed his brows and thought how much he kept feeding the ring with Mana to endure the pain on his finger.
"Would be nice if I could store and pull out items without having to wear the ring," he scoffed as he put the ring in his trousers’ pocket. "Well, let’s see if I really get stronger..." he muttered and looked at the forest, thinking that everyone should have waited in position.
Rasmus closed his eyes and imagined the magic formation that he had made during his free time. He slowly lifted his right hand and pointed it down at the hideout.
When he gathered Mana from his surroundings, he was shocked by the amount of Mana that had entered his body. He felt the radius of which he could gather Mana had increased and he could absorb more than he used to be. He couldn’t help but smirk as he kept concentrating on creating the magic formation.
The first layer was to create a fireball, and the second circle was to enhance the spell by feeding it with oxygen. In the third circle was to use wind magic to pressurize the fireball to stay in a small shape. In the fourth circle, he created a Mana barrier around the fireball as he kept feeding oxygen into the fireball. In the fifth circle, he turned Mana into hydrogen and gathered enough to obliterate the hideout.
Rasmus shot the fireball down the cliff, to the center of the hideout and watched the Mana barrier around the fireball struggle to maintain the fireball. He made sure the Mana barrier broke before the fireball reached the ground.
The instant the barrier shattered, hydrogen and fire fused in an uncontrollable reaction. A blinding flash swallowed the hideout, then came the shockwave. Houses crumpled like paper and then flattened to the ground. The bandits disintegrated before they could scream or react to it. The heatwave burned everything into ashes and nobody could survive in that vicinity. Lastly, the loud deafening bang crackled the air and woke the bandits who got knocked out from the first blast.
Uriel and her knights were petrified by the magic Rasmus had created. It was silent for the first few seconds, and the scariest part was the fact it killed and flattened everything before the loud bang was produced. They had never seen anything like that, something that they could call a Silent Death.
The second blast was wider than the first and it pushed Uriel and the Knights a few meters back. They were startled and thought they were about to die at that moment, but luckily it was safe and they barely had any scratches on their robes.
"He calculated everything and sent us here knowing that we would be safe from that spell..." Uriel muttered as she looked up at the mountain. "What a terrifying spell..." she looked at the hideout that had become a sea of flames.