The taste of the air filled his mouth as he rode at high speed toward the noise. If there was one thing Ducanor felt in this moment, it was excitement.
A lot of excitement...
Ducanor was quite an irascible person; the only reason he hadn't fled and fucked off, abandoning this retinue, was because of the debt that existed between him and these men and women who had saved his life before.
But he had no loyalty whatsoever to them, and doing the group's chores and acting like a servant all the time really bored him to tears.
It bored him enormously, and the frustration of it all had to come out somehow.
And what was this situation if not the perfect excuse to get into a brawl with some strangers?
"Help." Amidst the fire spreading in the forest, a few meters away from the core of the explosion, there was a trail of purple blood that ended at a figure in a pool of blood.
"Shit," Ducanor grunted. He quickly tried to dismount his horse, but at that moment, danger arrived.
A giant, unknown vehicle emerged from the distance, and before he could react, a sort of cylinder on its front pointed at him, and then the air filled with fire and gunpowder.
Two bodies fell to the ground as the enormous pureblood horse dropped dead, half of its head turned into a bloody mass of meat and blood that hit the dirt.
Ducanor himself lost his balance and barely managed to react as he fell beneath the horse.
Meanwhile, from the unknown vehicle, a group of four men in dark red armor stepped down; they carried as weapons a type of javelin with a thick handle that strapped to the arm.
"Shit, why do I always end up in battles in the worst way?" Ducanor growled furiously, immediately manifesting his first dharmic rune.
In a few instants, his strength and speed had increased as he quickly slid beneath the horse's corpse.
"She's dead," grunted one of the men, whose helmet featured a sort of maroon death mask.
"It seems she's dying, captain," said the expressionless man beneath the helmet.
"Good, kill her and take the corpse, and let's take this meddler's body too; we must not let anyone else know that we wer—"
An ice spear suddenly exploded as it struck his crest, sending him flying.
Dumbfounded by the attack but still prepared, the legionaries formed up back-to-back in an instant, aiming their javelins in all directions.
Then he revealed himself.
"Surprise, son of a—" The ice spear in his hand exploded forcefully before reaching its target when a projectile hit him, and to his surprise...
It wasn't just one.
Dozens of projectiles were heading toward him; Ducanor's dynamic vision was barely fast enough to track the finger-sized rounds.
But his body couldn't move as fast as he wanted. The air around him began to thicken, reducing the bullets' speed and partially freezing them.
"Damn it, that's cheating, fight like men, goddammit."
As he ran, one of those bullets pierced his knee, shattering it, but despite that, he didn't feel much pain; strangely, he felt extremely good.
Better than good.
Taking cover behind a tree, he felt the projectiles impacting it, while simultaneously watching more of those strange metal hulks arrive, spilling out more people.
I think I overestimated myself, Ducanor thought with some surprise, feeling the tree shudder.
"Surrender, brat. If you want to live, come out with your hands up. We are the Iaspis Legion, we are the Hegemony. Surrender and you will only be flogged for your insult," one of the men said.
"Ah, so you're the Iaspis Legion. What a disappointment, I thought you'd be more polite." Suddenly, several shadows appeared in the distance, mounted on different vehicles similar to the legion's, but with a more aesthetically pleasing, curvy design.
The one leading this new group was a middle-aged man with short, lead-colored hair.
"Who are you, mercenary? Do you not recognize the legion's emblems?" the captain growled furiously, pointing his strange javelins at the group.
But suddenly, one of them aimed a similar type of javelin, though with a much wider cylinder at the front.
"This is an Iaspis javelin, this is what the legion uses, not that garbage," the man said with a smile. "Besides, it's optio, not captain."
And then the legionary's expression beneath the mask seemed to falter.
Silence reigned.
In that moment of tension, everything ended when the words rang out:
"Kill them all."
.....
Ducanor didn't understand what was happening, but he still smiled as he quickly sneaked toward the wounded girl.
With shots and projectiles flying in all directions, Ducanor used his dharmic rune to defend himself and attack stealthily, when suddenly a figure as tall as a tower emerged from the darkness, striking him directly in the face with the pommel of his weapon, stunning him as he fell.
"Fucking sons of bitches, die."
A sharp pain flooded his back as the burning projectile pierced it, partially searing his nerves with the pain.
But then, in that precise moment, as if it were an epiphany, Ducanor saw it.
With absurd clarity, he didn't just see it, he felt it; the projectile in his back had a shape. It was cylindrical but ended in a conical point, it had edges lining it, and its weight was distributed differently in each section.
It was a piece of craftsmanship.
And now it was etched into his mind and body.
Meanwhile, the unknown legionary planned to hide in the shadows to avoid the gunfire before rejoining the shootout.
Then something pierced his skull. Dumbfounded, he didn't understand who it had been; he was hidden, his own helmet was tough and would resist a bullet of that caliber, and even if it didn't, he was a noble, his skin and bones could...
But he didn't think too much, because the bullet that passed through his head like butter exploded.
Leaving behind a shower of bone shards and frozen blood.
While Ducanor smiled after pointing his index finger at his enemy and also his teacher; after all, he wasn't just an enemy, but a teacher showing him how to kill him, and vice versa.
Hahaha, getting a bit philosophical here, he thought with a laugh, as the pain in his spine increased, but so did his mobility. I'm turning into Uisuk, I wonder how they're doing, he thought sadly.
But as he struggled to his feet, he was unaware that, on his back, the shattered bone of his spine—which was like iron and silver—changed; it regenerated, painfully replacing the old bone with a golden one, while at the same time a thin layer of golden scales began to cover both the wound on his back and his knee.
Despite that, Ducanor remained ignorant of it, assuming the pain was due to the wound itself and not the real-time transformation his body was undergoing.
And he wouldn't know it for a long time.