Deacon snapped his head to the side just in time to avoid a fist meant to cave his skull in, causing the strike to smash into the mud instead, splattering muck across Deacon's cheek – and blocking a quarter of his left eye's vision. "Bastard-!"
The man pressed down harder as he had Deacon pinned, and delivered a series of jabs to Deacon's liver, commanded to inflict the utmost amount of pain onto Deacon as he could give. Deacon clenched his teeth, gritting through the spasms, and mustered enough strength to drive his knee upward with everything he had, slamming it into his attacker's groin. He braced for a grunt, a gasp, a sudden shutdown of the guy's body so he could take advantage of it and get him off of him.
But nothing happened – the man didn't even flinch at the full force knee Deacon sent onto his groin.
His dead, hollow reaction made Deacon's stomach turn. What the actual fuck?
Before he could think further, his attacker's right hook came flying in, sharp and fast, aiming to smash the side of his face. Deacon's arm twitched upward to block the blow, and while doing so, as his attacker leaned closer, which simultaneously allowed him to hook his leg high and around the man's neck.
And in one motion, he yanked his leg backwards with all the strength his body could muster in his current position, dragging the man off-balance and off of him. Deacon came up first, boots digging in, now standing over his attacker.
His mind barely had time to register the reversal before instinct hurled him forward again. His heel came down on the man's throat, holding it in place with his weight for a moment, before he stomped down.
Even with all the chaotic noises of the battlefield around him, Deacon was still able to hear the sound of his attacker's cartilage and bone crumpling with a wet, snapping crunch as a glob of blood and spit poured out from his mouth and down the sides of his face before mingling with the mud.
Deacon's breath tore out of him in ragged bursts as his eyes darted to the hilt of the dagger still lodged in his side.
Best keep this in, he said to himself as he glanced down to see the body of his attacker convulsing before slowly losing his strength and going slack as his head twisted into the muck with bubbling gurgles.
*[Human Lv 12] has been slain – XP has been given.*
"Can't take another potion for fifteen fucking minutes anyway," he hissed through clenched teeth, glaring down at the corpse as the feather attached to the dead man's neck dissolved into a thousand motes of lavender lights and vanished into the wind.
Just as he watched the lavender feather's motes of lavender light travel away, the ground shook violently beneath him – sending him stumbling against a one-armed skeleton soldier who had just cut down a human soldier.
A heartbeat later, a deafening eruption of holy power tore across the battlefield, the light so bright it painted the mud and air around him golden.
Pushing himself off the skeleton soldier, Deacon turned his head just enough to see General Obi in the arena created by the beam of light he appeared in, roaring like a beast.
He watched as the general's halberd cleaved through cadets like they were made out of bamboo, while his shield glistened with holy runes, shattered curses, spells, and arrows hurled against it.
Deacon should've been there. He knew it. His Party was already in that crater, fighting tooth and nail. But he couldn't, not yet. Not until–
His eyes caught movement across the burning lines of the battlefield.
There.
"Got ya, you pink-haired rat," Deacon muttered darkly as his gaze locked onto Jeremiah, who stood on a ruined siege tower as his long pink hair billowed in the wind.
"I'm so fucking gonna kill you this time," Deacon growled, his eyes shifting from Jeremiah to the cadets surrounding him with lavender feathers sprouting from their necks.
There were at least six of them, positioned in a semi-circle but packed close enough that their shields formed a barrier around Jeremiah, who stood at the center, hurling spell after spell at the Undead General's defenses.
Clicking his tongue, Deacon tore his eyes from Jeremiah and glanced at his Party. Jass was already charging straight at General Obi, glaive covered in stone as she met his halberd that had cleaved through three cadets before reaching her head-on, while Sam and Esmerelda covered her flanks with spikes of stone, blades of wind, and spears of ice.
He needed to be there, to help them out.
But what made Deacon's stomach twist wasn't them –it was Bonehead.
Even with the chaos of the crater and a hundred bodies between them, Bonehead's eyes had managed to find him – Staring right at him, confused as to why he wasn't fighting the general alongside them.
Deacon grimaced as he lifted his hand and flashed him three fingers. Bonehead's jaw tightened, but he gave the faintest of nods.
Deacon lowered his hand and bolted, all the while gritting his teeth as he attempted to swallow the guilt that continued to build up in him.
He barreled straight for Jeremiah, hacking down anyone dumb or unlucky enough to be in his path. When wielding Echoform Reliquary in its Broadsword form, he would wield the heater shield to bash aside blades and maces while using the opportunity of the bash or block to split attackers in two. And when the situation required it, he would hook his shield to his side and shift Echoform Reliquary into its Dual Shortsword or Crowbar form.
How many does he have under him? Deacon thought to himself with growing uncertainty as he bashed the skull of yet another soldier that had a lavender feather growing out of their neck.
It seemed that with every couple of steps he took, he would catch sight of yet another person with a lavender feather growing out of the back of their neck. And every time Deacon saw one, he cut them down – stripping Jeremiah of any chance to turn them into an advantage, and closing off every path that might keep that slippery, pink-haired rat alive.
Jeremiah's expression warped the closer Deacon got. From arrogant concentration to twitching fury. The pink-haired bastard looked like he was about to blow a vein in his forehead, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted expletives at those who were attacking General Kaius.
Taking out two throwing daggers from their sheaths on his back, Deacon flooded them with his mana before muttering the incantation for Flame Mine atop them both. As their steel blades became layered in magic circles, he dumped a quarter of his total mana pool into each of them – causing the blades to turn molten red.
"It's all or nothing," Deacon muttered to himself before he flung both daggers straight at Jeremiah's visibly angered face.
The cadets reacted instantly, raising their shields and weapons to intercept the projectiles, exactly what Deacon wanted.
As the daggers were millimeters away from colliding with the shields that moved to intercept them, they erupted.
The explosions ripped the brainwashed cadets off their feet, fire and shrapnel tearing through their formation. Two were flung backward so hard they slammed into Jeremiah's protective barrier, creating a large patch of spiderweb fractures where they crashed into, while the rest fell off the drawbridge of the moveable siege tower and hit the ground with their armor blackened and their skin charred.
Jeremiah wasn't spared either. The blast rattled his footing, knocking him onto his face against the clean planks of the siege tower's drawbridge that were on the inside of the barrier that remained up and active.
Now onto Step 2.
Shoving through the undead soldiers and knights in his way, his boots churned through the mud, his eyes locked onto Jeremiah and Jeremiah alone.
Jeremiah scrambled to his feet, wand snapping up as his face, which was covered in soot, twisted into pure rage. Spit flew from his mouth as he barked strings of spells that came to life all at once as various rings on his fingers began glowing various colors.
As soon as he finished casting and stabilizing the spells, he unleashed a barrage – Fireballs, Ice Spears, Wind Arrows – all of them locking onto the small finger-like bauble attached to his upper robes, which glowed as they zeroed in on Deacon.
Deacon darted forward, zigzagging through the storm of spells that shot towards him.
Dodging to the left suddenly caused the massive globs of flame to crash into the backs of the vampires he ducked in front of, then running into a lunge caused the barrage of Ice Spears to pierce the stomachs of the human soldiers, and as he pushed himself up and swayed between the blades that shot towards him, he limboed beneath the Wind Arrows that burrowed into the skulls of his attackers.
Snapping himself back upright, Deacon threw himself into the sea of soldiers and knights that surrounded the movable siege tower, letting them eat the brunt of the spells meant for him. Screams tore through the air as Jeremiah's magic ripped into those Deacon positioned himself behind to use as cover, weaving as though he were a shadow.
And ever so often, Deacon would flick forward a throwing dagger from out of the pouch on his left leg and hurl it at Jeremiah from a new angle with little to no mana within them.
Some hit shields, some clattered uselessly off armor, but every throw had the same goal—rattle Jeremiah, make him paranoid, and force him to waste mana into reinforcing his shield and overloading the spells he fired.
And it worked – extremely so.
Jeremiah's expression twisted further with every flash of steel. His face, already streaked with soot, reddened with fury as he cursed aloud, his voice shrill.
"You, bastard! You, whoreson!" Jeremiah screeched, spittle flying as he whipped his wand to deflect another dagger. "You think you can fucking hide from me?"
He reinforced the barrier around him with a flick of his wand, layering it in glowing magic circles as another dagger came from his left. He whipped around, deflected it with a screech of steel against magic, and fired off a blast in the same direction.
"Die already, you godsdamned whoreson!" Jeremiah spat, his voice breaking with manic rage. "Once I'm done with you, I'll carve your fucking Party into pieces!" His voice rose into a shriek as he pointed his wand skyward. "That traitorous noble, Samuel! That revolting, undead alchemist freak you're around – I'll shatter his core to smithereens and use his skull as a piss bucket! And those two whores you drag behind you!"
He fired another explosion downward as his eyes locked on movement — black hair, bloodied armor from the Barbarian's series, locked in combat with a human soldier.
"There you are!" Jeremiah screamed, veins bulging across his neck and forehead. "I'm going to break them and turn them into my—"
The words died in his throat as a hand clamped over his face from behind, iron-tight, cutting off his shout mid-word. His eyes went wide, wand twitching uselessly as his body was wrenched backward and slammed onto the planks of the drawbridge headfirst.
Jeremiah's screams muffled under the palm pressing into his mouth as he attempted to release the spells that remained inside the rings he had on his fingers – but their glows died out as his face was met with an overpowering, down-striking fist that broke his nose and his concentration.
Crouched over him with one knee pressing hard into his chest and fist raised, threateningly above his face, was Deacon. His face was cast in shadow, but his eyes burned through the dark like coals, his lips drawn back in a snarl that displayed his unbridled fury.