His ears were left ringing now that the bandit's laughing was gone, exhaling as he earned himself a reprieve. Standing there, he looked around at the desecrated woods, with trees uprooted and soil left splintered. It looked as if a natural disaster had swept through the land, leaving the forest critters in disarray.
He looked towards a squirrel left lost by a fallen tree, "Well, sorry about that," he apologized.
Taking a moment to consider the situation, he sat down on a collapsed trunk. Fixing his coat, he brushed the pollen from the lavish fabric.
'It seemed like the Brotherhood was able to figure out I was here as soon as I arrived. They must have some sort of way to scout the area around the Haul Domain. If the other four are anything like this guy was, then…This is going to be a long night,' he thought.
Just as the sigh left his lips at the sight, a vague sound met his ears–a laughter that crescendoed, coming from the sky. The ground darkened with an expanding shadow, beckoning the arrival of that which came back down from the sky before–it collided.
Leon picked himself up, conjuring an ethereal shield as dirt pelted against it from the overwhelming impact, "At this point, I'm not surprised–but seriously, not even that worked?"
From the settling dust, the barbaric figure emerged from a crater left in the soil, laughing with heartfelt joy. There wasn't so much as a scratch left on the red-bearded man, as though his skin was forged of diamonds.
Björn dismissed the haze with a stomp, grinning, "The clouds felt nice against my skin today! To see the beauty of the stars so closely–oh, what fun!"
'Plan A…a no-go. Well, that's why Plan B exists–though I'm not the biggest fan of it,' he carefully thought.
Keeping his eyes on the towering figure hardly helped to stay ready as the half-giant dashed towards him. The man moved like a lunging snake, crossing the distance between them in a single step.
"Haste!"
—Imbuing his body with mystical agility, he slid between the warrior's legs as the hammer was slammed down. He immediately jumped to his feet, placing his palm against the bare back of the massive man.
A vibrant, emerald-and-violet light shined between his hand and the warrior's skin—
As the figure spun around, he was forced to pull his hand away and duck down. The axe sailed above his head, slicing through the wind.
'Of all the types of magecraft, this is the hardest to pull off—especially while trying not to get turned to paste,' he thought.
As a shadow cast itself over, he flipped back just as the hammer befell the soil. Like an earthquake bellowing for a single breath, the forest trembled as the ground split.
Björn expelled his joy, lifting his hammer as the earth he walked on cracked beneath his feet, "—You're pretty fun, boy!"
The barbaric laughter was permeated through the bandit's wild swings. Each motion of the axe left a gash through the forest, cleaving through logs; slams of the hammer caved in the ground.
"Let's go! Let's go!" Björn hurried, picking up the pace.
Like pistons firing off, the warrior's shoulders rotated rapidly, launching a flurry of rapid strikes.
A single hit could spell the end, bringing the young man to push his senses to the maximum—
"Silver Acceleration."
The spell invoked "overclocked" his brain, increasing his perception tenfold. Like placing his mind on an astral slipstream, the world around him seemed to unfold, taking note of each small detail.
[One.]
From a single leaf falling ten meters away, to the sluggish crawl of a warm from the torn soil; his mind perceived.
In front of him, the elated grin of the half-giant came with the swings of his forest-splitting weapons.
[Two.]
He perceived it as though they moved in slowed time, slipping through the motions.
[Three.]
The problem laid in one factor—it had an extremely limited duration, less he wanted to suffer a brain hemorrhage.
He slipped between the axe and hammer, pivoting off his right foot to get behind the bandit.
[Four.]
Against the exposed back, he firmly pressed his hand. The magical light bubbled up, swelling with a colorful prominence.
Within the slowed world of [Silver Acceleration], the time it took to formulate a spell within his mind was greatly reduced. This in turn led him to conjure the magecraft he sought—
[Five.]
Blood trickled down his nose, forcing him to dismiss the acceleratory spell. It was enough as the shining light gripped the impervious body of the half-giant.
"What…is this?!—" Björn grunted, trying to look back, though his body paralyzed by the shine.
Woven from verdant threads of bountiful life, interwoven with the nature of those that walked the forests, the magic was imbued throughout the self of the man known as "Björn."
Leon finalized the invocation with the words leaving his lips, "Polymorph: Rabbit!"
"Guaaaaah!" The half-giant roared as the glow filled that took the form of double helixes bound his body like chains.
All at once, the shine consumed the massive man, turning his low scream into a higher pitched one. As the light dispersed, all that the young man found standing in the middle of the battle-torn woods was a rather muscular, snow-white rabbit.
Leon knelt down, looking down at the critter that stared back at him with the very same ferocity of the warrior, "This is the only way I could think to get around that toughness of yours. Don't worry–it's not permanent, but I'm not sure how long it'll last. If I'm being honest, you're pretty damn strong, so I went with the maximum output."
All that came from the rabbit were spiteful hisses, only leaving him to guess what kind of foul language was intended by the bandit. Leon wiped the blood that trickled from his nose before standing up, letting out a slow exhale.
'I guess I know my limit with Silver Accelerate. That's one down–I hope this guy wasn't indicative of the rest of the Brotherhood,' he wished.
–
Attempting to protect his neck using his own flaming sword, Phoenix winced as the nimble threads instead sliced right against his forearms. As though his armor was nothing more than paper mache, he felt the weaponized material dig deep into his flesh before he pulled away.
"You can't keep this up," the man of wooden skin calmly said from behind. "You might as well be naked against my strings."
Phoenix ducked down while turning, avoiding the threads that attempted to ensnare his neck as he retaliated, "--Yeah, so what!? A few cuts aren't going to do shit!"
Kicking off a burst of fire at his feet, he closed the distance with a flaming slash, only to witness the top half of the bandit separate from the bottom with a "pop." Only sending embers through the air, he quickly pulled back, sliding his boots across the stone tiles of the ruin.
'Right, this bastard is way too damn strange–I can't cut him with broad swings like that,' Phoenix noted.
The doll-man reconnected himself, grabbing his own hips as if to pop himself into place completely with a sigh, "You already tried that, you know. I don't mean to be rude, but it's an exercise in futility to keep trying things that you know don't work."
"Oh, yeah? How about this then?!" Phoenix shouted, lifting his blade.
Like fireflies to a light, embers gathered along the sharpened steel. It quickly coalesced into a shining ray of heat, parting the wind with the glow of the sun.
The wooden man brought his hands together before spreading his arms hurriedly, expanding many lines of the eviscerating threads. With the lines closing in with certain fatality, the sword was brought down, sending forth a mass of flames–
Through the glistening strings, the wrathful element roared forward like an unrestrained beast, burning through it all as it sailed straight for the man made of wood. In the view of the wooden bandit, all he saw was the bright-orange wave coming right for him, no time to move.