Chapter 44: Madmen

As things were starting to pick up on Marcus's side, the same could be said for the group of three who were now entangled in a brawl with ten vandals.

Tom and Jerry were engaged with two vandals each, as well as having two more circle them to watch their movements and make sure they didn't get a chance to rest. Meanwhile the other two wolves were sneaking past them to kill the weak detection mage whom the two men were attempting to protect.

"Sneaky bastards," Tom spoke as he swung his spear forward in an arc at the two vandals that had come too close.

After securing a bit of distance between himself and the two fire-wolves, Tom tried to leap backwards and further enforce the wall they were trying to setup between the mage and the vandals; however, one of the two vandals that was encircling Tom took a slash at the man's back as he tried to retreat. This caused Tom to feel a slight sting at his back as blood seeped down from the newly made scars.

"Urgh. Dammit!"

The vandals were only elementary ranked monsters and posed almost no threat when fighting in a one on one battle; yet, when a pack of them attacked, their attack power could even rival that of a upper ranked intermediate mage or martial artist.

The vandal that took a strike at Tom repositioned itself back along with its other compatriot to continue acting as overseers of the battle and only interject when an opportunity presented itself. By this point the other two vandals had also repositioned themselves back in front of Tom and were now back to assaulting the martial artist with a flurry of claw strikes and bites.

Whilst Tom was reengaged in battle, the two vandals from earlier moved in an attempt to end the life of the detection mage so that it could support its brethren in fighting the two most troublesome opponents.

Jerry, who had also been engaged in a fight of his own, noticed this and grit his teeth.

'Dammit. I ain't wanna use this yet but got no choice.'

Jerry made a wide slash around him to give himself some space from the wolves and mimicked his partner in jumping backwards. Almost as if on queue, one of the vandals that had been circling him leaped at the opportunity to wound its prey, but Jerry already accounted for this.

As the wolf lunged at him, Jerry turned to face it mid jump and delivered a downward slash with his sword that caught the beast entirely off guard. The slash managed to split the beast's face in half and caused its corpse to fall limply to the ground, with only its forward momentum carrying its dead body forward past the swordsman.

'Ha... dumb mutt thought the same trick'd' work twice.' Jerry smirked as he once again readied himself to continue fighting.

Once he noticed the vandals around him started to eye him more cautiously and gave him a bit of distance, he raised his sword into the air with both hands and roared.

"Radial Blind!"

Right after he spoke this, Tom, who had his back to Jerry, had a small grin appear on his face as he stared at the vandals who looked directly at the human's flashy sword display.

The sword became a bright silver color that temporarily blinded all those who looked upon it, and once Tom noticed all the wolves around him were blinded, he immediately jumped into action with his spear and roared a technique of his own.

'Perforate!'

Tom appeared right in front of one of the blinded wolves and pierced forward with three quick spear thrusts that stabbed holes right into the vandal's chest, head, and eye, instantly killing it. Then he turned to another wolf beside it and executed another technique.

'Coup De Grâce!'

Tom used the shaft of his spear to sweep the wolf off its feet and once the beast had fallen to the ground on its side, the spearman pierced the vandal through its side and directly into its heart.

After swiftly killing the two wolves, Tom continued on his slaughter to kill the ones closest to him before they could recover.

Back where Jerry was, the swordsman also moved to deliver two swift sword kills to some of the wolves behind him and instead of continuing to slaughter the wolves, moved to protect the detection mage.

It seemed the technique he used earlier took a toll on the swordsman as he was now struggling to hold his sword up and sweat coated the man's face and arms.

Overall though, the two martial artist seemed to be faring quite well against the pack of vandals.

On the other side of the battlefield however, Marcus couldn't say the same as he dodged out of the way of a fireball that had been sent in his direction. He only managed to narrowly dodge the fireball and as a result received further burns to his already scorched right arm.

Marcus wasn't even allowed time to acknowledge the pain, as Callum was now upon him. The fire mage grabbed the omen up by the throat and lifted him to be eye level with himself and pulled him close enough so that he could witness the little demon's final moments up close.

He didn't bother saying anything to the omen because the time for words had long past, and he only spoke the same word he'd spoken to his previous victims.

"Burn," Callum spoke in a voice comprised of utter madness and disgusting pleasure.

Marcus struggled to pry the man's bloody hands from his throats to no avail. Even his little crow summon furiously pecked at the madman's fingers in hopes to free his master.

Callum hardly took notice of the small bird as his palms began to heat up.

Marcus became hypersensitive to his immediate surroundings as he was slowly being encroached upon by deaths cold embrace once again.

He could feel the dried blood that must have come from Jerome, the detection mage, and probably even the madman himself as it scratched along his throat. He felt the slight warmth from the palm of Callum's hand as the mana in the atmosphere started to coalesce inside it, and he also felt that irritating feeling of helplessness that took hold in his heart.

He bitterly struggled and fought in the face of the madman before him and this only seemed to further please the maniac as his grin spread further and further along his face.

As he looked at the monster that derived some sort of sick pleasure from his pain, Marcus started to think this man's face resembled that of the world's. The sick pleasure the man derived from his pain was the same way almost everyone who he encountered felt when they interacted with him.

He was sick of it.

Wrong, he was furious, he was incensed at this man and more importantly the world. The only peaceful and reasonable people he'd encountered were among his family members and Beatrice, and now Beatrice was dead and he had no clue about the whereabouts or even the well-being of his own family.

The world seemed to be entirely against Marcus and wanted nothing more than to crush him and everything he cared about, but he refused to allow such a thing to happen without making those who'd wronged him pay a price.

'Screw this twisted freak!' Marcus thought internally as the skin on his neck began to burn and blister.

Surprisingly, Marcus stopped trying to pry the man's hands from his throat and moved his own hands to Callum's face. It was beyond difficult to ignore the heat that now burned his skin, but he still managed to get his hands to reach the man's face, and even that madman wouldn't expect what happened next.

Marcus positioned his hands around Callum's cheeks and the man only laughed at his prey's futile attempts.

That was until Marcus's grip around his cheeks became firm and he saw the boy's expression.

Though, he couldn't see Marcus's eyes behind the red blindfold, he could see the mad grin that formed on the little bastard's face. This infuriated him to no end because he couldn't understand why it was his prey was smiling right now.

It should have felt fear.

It should have felt anger.

It should have felt regret at being born.

However, for some reason the little monster didn't seem to feel any of these things. In fact, instead of those emotions, Callum started to sense a dark malevolence coming from the thing in his hands, but before Callum could question it, his vision went black, and he felt an immense stinging pain in his eyes.

Marcus had pierced both his thumbs into the Callum's eyes and caused the madman to scream in pain and rage. This caused him to immediately let go of Marcus, who fell onto the ground coughing and trying to intake as much air as possible.

Callum could only grab his right eye, while his left opened up and was more red than orange now. If looks could kill, Marcus would be dead a hundred times over judging by the furious look he was giving the boy, and just as he was about to finish the omen off, something crashed into his back.

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