'What did he do?' Kurt thought to himself while taking a closer look at his wounds. A silver liquid penetrated them.
The only reason why Kurt was reckless enough to fight Grenald bare handed was because of his fast regeneration.
Now that Grenald had found a way to neutralize his regeneration, even if slightly, he needed to change his approach. And what do you know, he happened to pick up the visage of his spear embedded in the soil right at that very moment.
His next action was already set.
With a plan in mind, Kurt went on the offense by releasing a barrage of punches on Grenald, which had him pushed back.
The moment that happened, Kurt bolted for the spear. Fighting without a weapon, especially since it wasn't his style, wasn't a disadvantage Kurt wanted to suffer.
Grenald himself found some breathing room as, instead of trying to stop Kurt, he looked over to the ongoing battle between Ulrik and Cavarl.
Now was the best time, if there was any, to intervene.
—---------------------
*VOOM!*
'Sh#t! How is this a mage?'
Ulrik stepped backwards to dodge that which arrived in front of the face while summoning more vines from beneath the earth to force his opponent back.
In response, Cavarl spoke while adjusting his staff…
"Is that you trying to tell me to stay away?"
He then released another one of his signature wind blades to cut down his vines, while not forgetting to blast it away with a final gust of wind to prevent the poisoned prickles along the vines from touching his skin.
Ulrik retreated even more while hosting a grave expression.
The moment Cavarl activated the enchantment on his boots, his speed increased two fold and Ulrik got a taste of Cavarl's uncanny ability to use the staff as a weapon.
As a result, a number of his ribs were now broken, while a strike on his head left him with a headache to remember.
Meanwhile, Cavarl's skin had been torn in different places by the sharp vines. His left arm took on a shade of dark green, indicating the spread of poison across his veins.
Both men hosted wounds and took heavy breaths to battle their exhaustion.
After all, mages weren't known for their physical strength.
In exchange, the earth they stood on had deformed even worse than that of where Grenald and Kurt battled. The soil had been decorated and destroyed by the slashes of the wind blades and the uprising of vines over and over again.
As both men looked at each other trying to find a weakness to exploit, Grenald's voice rang out…
"Take this!"
Imbuing more power into his arms, Grenald threw it at Ulrik with deadly accuracy.
The ax rolled like a carriage wheel and arrived in front of Ulrik within moments.
At the same time, Cavarl moved into action, once again spinning the staff between his fingers as he prepared an attack of his own.
Ulrik had seconds to decide on how to defend against it.
And he did not disappoint.
With extreme haste, an illusionary circle of green light formed beneath his feet and, from it, thick and heavy vines burst forth, which then wrapped around each other to form a wall in front of Ulrik just as the ax reached him.
With an uncanny sharpness, the ax cut through the vines like a hot knife through butter. It seemed as if it would reach Ulrik, but is ultimately stopped in its tracks.
That said, Ulrik's expression only grew worse as he turned his head to see Cavarl spinning his staff while the wind current grew heavier.
He didn't know what it was, but he knew letting that attack through would be fatal, his instincts said so.
So he tried to divert the rest of the vines towards Cavarl to disrupt his spell.
Only…
"You're too late"
Cavarls spell had been finalized. Holding the staff up with two hands, he swung it downwards as we see a wind blade bigger than any before coming slashing down on Ulrik.
In a desperate attempt to survive, Ulrik jumps to the side, and then….
*ZIIIN!*CRACRACRACK!*
The earth cleanly split, before parting and cracking, with the recoil blowing up a large amount of dust.
Even expert ranks that had stayed far from the battle felt enough tremor to make them lose their balance.
The missionaries approaching from the mountainside flipped over, breaking a few bones in the process. The likes of Winston and his men were promptly thrown off their frightened horses, who then took off in the opposite direction, leaving their masters to fend for themselves.
All these happened simultaneously, and in the minutes that followed-
"AHH!"
-a loud cry was heard.
Not one of triumph, but one of pain.
Within the dust, we see it was Ulrik.
He screamed at the top of his lungs, his body on the ground just before the crack. His left hand held the stump that remained of his right hand.
The last attack had taken his right arm, right from the shoulder.
It was an unbearable pain, one Ulrik was experiencing for the first time, and because of that, he couldn't think straight.
But how would he know? That this action was what would truly lead him to his demise.
His dignified demeanor, along with his staff, was nowhere to be seen.
His hair had become disheveled and dirty. His eyes were closed shut because of how much dust fell into them. His clothing had turned filthy and ragged. He was bleeding continuously from his unoccupied shoulder.
As his wails resounded, he failed to hear the sound of footsteps approaching till it was too late.
His wails only stopped when a voice broke him out of his misery.
"Let me put you out of your misery"
It was an unmistakable voice.
"You! No, wait, don't!"
It was Cavarl.
Expending a little mana, Cavarl conjured a wind blade and used it to cut Ulrik's head off.
There was no need to question the result. Because Ulrik couldn't use spells fast enough without his staff, and because his mind was still disoriented because of the pain, he could not defend against the attack.
And so was the end of Ulrik, a Avillian Master with plant affinity.
As Cavarl looked at the now dead body, he shook his head.
'What a fool'
Within such a dense dust cloud, Cavarl would've never found him had he kept silent and quietly slipped away.
But oh well, all's well ends well.
Now it was time to reap the rewards.
With newfound vitality, Cavarl stripped off everything of worth from Ulrik's body and placed them in his space ring, before placing Ulrik's space ring on his index finger.
A rarely seen smile bloomed across his face as he checked the contents, before gulping a healing potion and a mana recovery potion from within his space ring to heal his wounds and recover his mana.
The feeling was nice, but Cavarl couldn't dwell on it for long.
That was because, even while all such events happened, Kurt and Grenald were still battling it out.
He had to go and help out whether he liked it or not.
