"So they planned to lure us into the canyon and slaughter us..." Cassian said, watching as Naset dropped the last cultist to the ground, blood leaking from their eyes and ears. Cassian didn’t know what torture technique Naset had used, but it looked excruciating—each cultist had trembled and spilled everything within a minute. Intrigued, Cassian wondered if it would work on him, though the thought wasn’t enticing enough to ask Naset to try it.
Naset nodded, his expression calm. "It was a solid plan. These flesh golems didn’t seem too strong—I could’ve handled them, but it would’ve taken time to cut through each one." He glanced at Barok’s lifeless corpse and smiled faintly. "But you stopped it by killing that mage before he could summon them. That’s earned you a fine reward."
Naset, the middle-aged commander, glanced toward the canyon. "That reward will have to wait a few minutes while I handle things there," he said. With a sudden shockwave, he vanished, leaving only a streak of white light—like a star—blazing toward the canyon. It plunged into the distance, unleashing a massive shockwave and a cloud of dust, rivaling the force of ten mana bombs the cultists had used on Cassian earlier.
Exhausted and seething, Cassian trudged toward camp. His anger burned—not just because the higher-ups hadn’t come to his aid despite knowing he was in danger, but also at their idiotic plan to feign ignorance and "surprise" the attackers. ’Who the fuck thought of that?’ he muttered under his breath. Along the way, he scooped up the mage’s spatial ring and other valuables—riches he couldn’t leave behind, no matter how drained he was.
On the other side, the Flesh Mender and his students stood poised to slaughter the Magisterian soldiers, already scheming to harvest valuable materials for their experiments—particularly from low-tier Circle Warriors, aiming to trap or kill as many as possible.
The Flesh Mender’s eldest student, a purple-haired woman named Brigid Cryew, addressed the cultists. "Everyone in position! From the sounds earlier, the first few will be here soon. The first to kill one gets a special reward..." She blew a flirty kiss, but the cultists shuddered, far from thrilled at the prospect of her "reward."
Perched atop the canyon, the Flesh Mender’s eyes blazed with a shocking red glow as he stared toward the Magisterian camp. Suddenly, he snapped his eyes shut and shouted in terror to his fellow cultists, "Run!" But his voice cut off, his facial muscles frozen, unable to twitch. A massive shockwave rippled through the canyon, halting everything—not just the cultists, but the air itself, the water standing still, the leaves suspended mid-breeze. A blue-haired man appeared, floating at the canyon’s center just above the Flesh Mender, gazing down at his petrified, sacred expression. "You know," the man said, his voice calm, "when I first opened my domain, I still remember it vividly, like it was yesterday, every time I use this ability..."
"I mostly use it now to deal with weaker foes, but the first time I stopped someone was when my wife was about to be killed. I froze that man, like time itself stopped for him," Naset said, floating down and walking toward the frozen mage. Despite being an astral-ranked mage—equal to a Seventh Circle Warrior—the Flesh Mender couldn’t move, couldn’t mutter a spell, his mana locked in stasis. "He’ll stay like that forever unless I release him. Quite the invincible ability, right? Don’t even need war armor to crush cultist pests like you. The only ones it can’t stop are pesky mages like you or Circle Warriors stronger than me..."
Naset gazed down at the frozen cultists. "But none in your pathetic little group seem to fit that bill..." He paused, then continued, "Enough talk. You won’t be spilling anything, I can tell. The others are just low grunts—time to die. Though, she..." he glanced at Brigid Cryew, "might be a fine addition to my collection."
As Naset spoke, he rose into the air, his figure radiating an aura of effortless dominance. Behind him, the frozen form of Brigid Cryew, the purple-haired woman, floated helplessly, her body locked in the same temporal stasis as the others. The remaining cultists, still suspended in Naset’s domain, began to change. Their skin, once taut with life, started to writhe unnaturally, as if time itself rebelled against their flesh. Their hair lengthened, turning brittle and white, cascading like ash. In mere seconds, their faces sagged, wrinkles carving deep furrows, their bodies aging decades before Cassian’s eyes. The cultists’ skin peeled away, sloughing off like dried parchment, revealing muscle and bone that crumbled swiftly into dust. Skeletons stood briefly, only to collapse into fine, gray powder, scattered by the returning breeze as Naset’s domain released its grip. The world stirred again—water flowed, leaves drifted, and the air hummed with life—leaving only bone dust and a haunting silence where the cultists once stood.
Naset, the Seventh Circle Warrior, drifted away, his blue hair glinting under the moonlight, Brigid’s frozen form trailing behind like a trophy. The sheer terror of his power lingered, a chilling testament to why Circle Warriors of his rank were feared across the lands. With a mere thought, he had unraveled the cultists’ existence, reducing them to nothing without lifting a blade. His domain didn’t just freeze time—it accelerated it, condemning his enemies to centuries of decay in moments. No war armor, no spell, no resistance could defy him; only mages or warriors of equal or greater might could hope to challenge such a force. The Flesh Mender, an astral-ranked mage, had been powerless, his vaunted blood and flesh magic useless against Naset’s temporal mastery. This was the true might of a high-ranking Circle Warrior—a living cataclysm who could erase entire squads with a glance, leaving only whispers of their demise.
Had Cassian witnessed this, a question would’ve burned in his mind: if Naset was this powerful, why did others have to fight at all? Their lives seemed to matter little when a few dozen lower Circle Warriors and almost thousand other cultists could be snuffed out with a mere thought from Naset. Was he uniquely gifted, even among Seventh Circle Warriors? And if so, why hadn’t he unleashed this power last time? Why hadn’t Julius, another formidable warrior, done anything when facing that artificial god-maker of a mage?