Jacob stood face to face with the wizard, watching him with an evil smirk.
Charles's mind raced, his face a mask of strained calm. 'I think I bit off more than I can chew this time. I'll test him first, and if I can't kill him, I'll run away.' With a gesture of his hand, his two remaining skeletal hounds lunged from the shadows, their ember-eyes fixed on Jacob, maws gaping to drain his power.
Jacob didn't even glance at them. "I'm done playing with dogs."
In a blur of motion too fast to track, Shusui, still crackling with residual electricity, swept through the air twice. Two precise, horizontal arcs severed the charging creatures in mid-leap. Their bisected forms crumbled into piles of scorched bones before they even hit the ground.
Without pause, Jacob raised the Desert Eagle and fired. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The gunshots echoed like thunder in the clearing.
Charles's eyes widened, but his hands were already moving, tracing a shimmering, intricate symbol in the air as he muttered in Latin. "Glacies Scutum!"
A disc of solid, translucent ice materialized before him. The high-caliber rounds slammed into it, fracturing the surface into a spiderweb of cracks but failing to penetrate, dropping to the ground as flattened lumps of lead.
A wide, exhilarated grin spread across Jacob's face. "Oh! A wizard! Interesting!"
He decided to play.
The wizard attacked, clenching his fist and chanting in Latin. A volley of icicles, each the size of a spear and sharper than any blade, shot toward Jacob with bullet-like speed.
Jacob responded in kind. He conjured arrows of superheated flame and launched them with pinpoint precision. His fire arrows didn't just melt the ice; they flash-boiled it into scalding clouds of steam that rolled back toward Charles.
The old wizard didn't flinch. He mumbled again in Latin and waved a hand, and a hurricane-force gust erupted, shredding the steam cloud and heading toward Jacob. The wind was so sharp it carved grooves into the bedrock beneath the mud.
Jacob answered not with more fire, but with earth. He stomped his foot, and the ground in front of him erupted. A ten-foot-thick wall of soil and stone surged upward to form a massive barrier. The decapitating wind slammed into it, leaving deep scars but failing to penetrate, and dissipated harmlessly.
Seeing his attacks neutralized, Charles changed tactics. He slammed both hands onto the ground. Instantly, the rainwater at Jacob's feet flash-froze, trapping his boots in a block of enchanted ice that crept up his calves. Simultaneously, Charles gestured overhead, and the air itself crystallized, forming a cage of razor-edged ice bars that descended to encase Jacob.
Jacob raised an eyebrow, impressed. "Not bad."
Then, fire ignited all around his body. The ice at his feet didn't melt; it sublimated, turning directly from solid to vapor with a violent hiss. With a wave of his hand, a huge, serpentine flame shot forth, vaporizing the descending cage before it could touch him. He then extinguished the fire around him and took a step forward, completely unfazed.
Frustration flickered across Charles's face. He began layering spells with dizzying speed. A beam of soul-numbing cold shot from his left hand to slow Jacob, while his right hand summoned a localized tornado filled with spinning ice shards.
Jacob weaved through it all, a dancer in the storm. He met the cold beam with a puff of dismissive fire from his palm. As the icy tornado closed in, he simply pointed a finger, calling down a single, precise bolt of lightning from the clouds above that struck the vortex's center, disrupting its magical core and causing it to collapse in on itself.
They fought like that for a while, Charles attacking and Jacob defending. After Jacob had his fun, he decided it was time to attack, too.
Charles began a powerful, complex incantation that required absolute focus, his hands weaving intricate patterns as he prepared to freeze the blood in Jacob's veins.
Jacob didn't wait for him to finish. He made a simple clenching motion with his hand. The earth beneath Charles's feet instantly liquefied into a pit of quicksand. It was a crude trick, but Charles, his focus entirely on his high-level spell, was caught completely off-guard. He sank to his waist, his spell disrupted. The magical backlash hit him like a physical blow, and he coughed a spray of blood into the rain.
He glared at Jacob, wheezing. "Damn it, kid! You have no martial ethics!"
Jacob just smirked. "I guess I don't."
Charles started to struggle to get out of the quicksand, Jacob's smirk turned evil. "Let me help you out." He said, then stamped his foot on the ground.
Charles felt an ominous dread but had no time to react. In a panic, he froze the quicksand solid, but it was too late. A sharp, upward-jutting rock spike erupted from the pit, stabbing him through the taint with brutal force. The impact nearly shattered his pelvis and launched him out of the pit, sending him crashing to the ground with a cry of pure, undiluted agony.
Jacob smirked. "Oh, you're bleeding. It seems I missed your hole."
Malia, watching from the cave, let out a short, sharp bark. Jacob looked at her. "You think it's funny too? I turned the old bastard into a shish kebab."
Malia shook her head, indicating she did not.
"You don't find it funny? Well, I think it's hilarious."
Charles, screaming in pain, managed to unscrew himself from the rock spike. He fumbled a vial from his bag and drank it, his grievous wound beginning to knit closed. He looked at Jacob's smiling face and a cold realization settled in.
'This wasn't a hunt; this is an execution, and I'm on the wrong end. The kid is just toying with me, and I'm almost out of energy.'
'But I must live.' He thought, desperation clawing at him. 'I will find powerful allies and return. His body will definitely be mine, but not today!'
Gritting his teeth, he poured his remaining energy into a short-range teleport. With a pop of displaced air, he vanished from the clearing, reappearing ten meters away as he turned to flee.
Jacob didn't immediately give chase. He simply smiled, a cold, knowing look in his golden eyes. He took a deep breath, his chest swelling, and roared at the sky. A massive bolt of blue-white lightning shot from his open mouth, piercing the storm clouds.
He used his Storm Call ability, and unlike the last time when he was testing it with Lydia, this time he poured more energy into it. The sky, already heavy with storm clouds, became even darker. The heavy rain transformed into a torrential downpour.
Charles, running as fast as his legs and injured pelvis would allow, felt the massive magical energy gathering overhead—a suffocating pressure that made his own power feel like a flickering candle next to a bonfire.
"Damn it!" He cursed, his blood running cold. He tried to teleport again, but his body screamed in protest; he was too drained. Even if he could, a ten-meter jump was useless against the colossal storm that was now hunting him.
Jacob followed now, but he kept his distance, a specter in the downpour, his glowing eyes fixed on his prey. He was letting the storm do the work.
The first lightning bolt struck a tree beside Charles, splintering it into a thousand burning shards. The second hit the ground where his foot had just been, blasting a crater of superheated mud and steam. The third, fourth, and fifth came in a relentless, deafening barrage. Charles danced a desperate, terrified jig of survival, using his remaining energy to conjure ice shields.
CRACK! A bolt shattered his first shield.
BOOM! Another vaporized the second.
He erected a third, stronger shield, but a simultaneous strike from two bolts smashed through it, the magical feedback throwing him to the ground. He was running out of time, energy, and hope.
With a look of great pain in his eyes, as if wasting a priceless treasure, he fumbled potions from his bag and drank them. The liquid energy surged through him, giving him just enough strength to raise more ice shields against the lightning strikes.
After about ten minutes, the relentless fury of the Storm Call began to wane. The intervals between lightning strikes grew longer, and after a few more seconds, the ability stopped completely, though the heavy rain continued.
With a final, desperate surge of will, Charles triggered his teleportation, vanishing from the spot and reappearing at the edge of a ravine, his body screaming in protest. He gasped, looking around wildly. He saw no sign of Jacob and dared to hope he had escaped.
It was an illusion.
Jacob was flying silently above him with his dragon wings. He landed behind the wizard without a sound.
"Going somewhere?" Jacob's voice was a low, amused rumble.
Before Charles could react, Jacob's black-scaled, clawed hand shot forward to stab the wizard in the back of the neck and read his memories.
But the moment his claws made contact, a searing, excruciating pain erupted in his hand. A vile, black energy erupted from Charles's body—a final, desperate defense. Jacob recoiled, watching in shock as the scales on his hand decayed and fell away. The flesh underneath was left bleeding and necrotic, dark veins crawling up his wrist like thick, black worms burrowing beneath his skin.
Charles, despite his predicament, let out a wet, triumphant laugh. "I know I'm dead! But at least now you will die too! That curse will spread with each passing day until it reaches your heart and kills you! Hahahahaha!"
Jacob looked at his cursed hand and sighed internally. 'Note to self: never touch a wizard or try to read his memories without magic immunity.'
He looked back at the proudly laughing wizard.
"I didn't know what you were before." Charles wheezed. "I'd never seen anything like you. I was just drawn to the immense magical power inside you." He looked at the now-shirtless Jacob, with black scales covering his torso and arms, and the great wings folded behind his back. "But now I know... you're a weredragon, aren't you? I can't believe I killed a weredragon! Too bad I'll die before the world knows my achievement! Too bad I can't use your body for my potions!"
Jacob's smirk returned, cold and sharp. "Well, I hate to disappoint you, old bastard. But I'm not dying. And I'm not a weredragon." He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping. "I'm a real Dragon."
Charles's eyes went wide with utter disbelief. "What? That's impossible! Dragons are extinct!"
"Nothing is impossible." Jacob said, his voice a deadly whisper. "Now..."
Before the wizard could process this, Jacob—using his already-cursed hand to avoid risking the other—drove his claws into the back of Charles's neck and started his brutal mental assault.
Charles's eyes rolled back into his head as a flood of memories—decades of depravity—were forcibly ripped from his mind. Jacob's face contorted in pure fury. He saw it all: the butchering of adults, children, and even babies for potions; the sacrificial rituals using innocent virgin girls; a bottomless well of evil.
As the mental connection broke, Charles staggered forward, free for a moment. He turned, a final spell forming on his lips.
He never got to cast it.
Jacob appeared behind him in a blur and drove his cursed, decaying hand straight through the wizard's back. There was a sickening, wet crunch. Charles looked down, disbelief in his fading eyes, to see the bloody claw protruding from his chest, his heart clutched in its grasp.
Jacob leaned close, his whisper the last thing the wizard would ever hear. "I really wanted to torture you for the horrors I saw in your mind. But I don't want you to live for even a second longer in this world, you evil monster."
He retracted his claw, and Charles's body crumpled to the ground, lifeless. Jacob let the heart drop into the mud. He then took a small bag Charles was carrying and, without ceremony, unleashed a torrent of dragon fire, reducing the vile wizard to ashes.
He looked at his cursed hand. It wasn't healing. The dark veins were creeping further, the pain a constant, burning agony. He clenched his jaw, his decision made.
With a savage, brutal motion, he grabbed his own forearm with his other hand and tore the cursed limb clean off from the elbow.
"AAAHHH! THAT HURTS!" He screamed into the storm, staggering from the self-inflicted trauma.
Gritting his teeth, he looked at the bleeding stump. Already, his accelerated healing was kicking in, the flesh knitting and bone beginning to regrow at a visible, but slow pace. He released a jet of fire from his other hand, incinerating the severed, decaying arm on the ground.
After ensuring no trace of the dark magic remained on his body, he thought. 'Tonight was crazy. Malia almost died, and if that curse had reached my heart, I would have died too. I hope I can get magic immunity soon. And damn, that wizard's memories were too dark.'
He took a steadying breath and shifted back to his human form. Then he headed back to where he had killed the hunters, his body healing but his mind heavy with the darkness he had witnessed.
To be continued... 😊