The Sinful Young Master

Chapter 323: Spoke too soon?

But Jolthar was not finished.

As the people of Tekkora watched in amazement, he began to rise into the air himself. His feet left the ground smoothly, as if he were floating.

The silver lightning around his hands spread to cover his whole body, making him look like a figure made of living starlight. His long silver hair flowed around him like water, and his clothes rippled in winds that touched nothing else.

”You want to kill innocent people?” Jolthar’s voice carried clearly across the square, though he spoke no louder than normal. The power in his words made the stones beneath everyone’s feet vibrate.

”Then face someone who can fight back.”

What happened next was almost too fast for human eyes to follow.

One moment Jolthar was floating twenty feet above the ground.

The next moment he was directly in front of Preeyonka, moving so quickly that he seemed to simply appear there like a ghost stepping out of the shadows.

Preeyonka, despite all her skill and training, barely had time to widen her eyes before Jolthar’s hand closed around her throat. She felt her feet leave the ground as he lifted her effortlessly, his grip like iron bands around her neck.

”Maelruth,” Jolthar called without taking his burning gaze off Preeyonka’s face.

”Burn them to ashes.”

The great drake needed no further instruction. She reared back her magnificent head and drew in a breath that seemed to pull air from all corners of the square. The pile of soldiers looked up at him with terror-filled eyes, finally understanding what was about to happen.

Maelruth opened her massive jaws and released a torrent of flame that turned night into day. The fire was not the red and orange of normal flames but a brilliant white-hot inferno that made the air itself shimmer.

The soldiers’ screams lasted only a moment before they were lost in the roar of the drake fire.

The entire square was filled with their screams and cries of pain; people who couldn’t watch turned their heads, while the ones who were hurt by them just stared with determined faces.

Nora and Roblan stared where Jolthar had disappeared.

”I didn’t know he could be this cruel,” Nora said.

”Yeah, wait till you see what he can do with his powers,” Roblan said. He had seen first hand how much terrifying Jolthar can be up close. He was even amazed that Jolthar still hadn’t drawn his sword.

Cleora watched with a serious expression, the fire burned in her eyes as she clenched her fists.

But Gales was no ordinary sellsword, and he reacted with the speed that had kept him alive through countless battles.

As Maelruth breathed his deadly fire, Gales launched himself forward with a battle cry that echoed off the stone walls.

Jolthar saw him coming and moved like lightning.

Still holding Preeyonka by the throat, he shot upward into the air and flew toward the dark forest that bordered the city.

Gales’s sword swept through empty air where Jolthar had been standing just a heartbeat before.

The flight to the forest took only seconds, but to Preeyonka it felt like an eternity. The ground rushed by below them, and the wind tore at her hair.

She tried to speak and tried to use her daggers, but Jolthar’s grip was too strong, and she couldn’t breathe properly. She struggled against his grip, but it was to no avail.

At the edge of the forest stood a hill covered with gray stone that the local people called Giant’s Rest. It was a massive stone hill with trees and plants here and there.

Jolthar pulled back his arm and hurled Preeyonka at the rocky hillside with all the force of his enhanced strength. She hit the stone wall with a sound like thunder, and the entire hill shook from the impact. Cracks spread out from where she struck like a spider’s web, and then a whole section of the old rock face crumbled away in an avalanche of stone and dust.

-

Back in the square, Gales stood alone among the cooling ashes of his men. His scarred face was grim, but his eyes held no fear—only the cold calculation of a professional killer who had found himself facing an opponent unlike any other.

”FUCK!!” he said to himself, testing the weight of his sword in his hand. ”You fucking killed them all.” His face was all red. There were 30 of them, his men, who had been with him for several years.

Jolthar descended from the sky like a falling star, silver lightning crackling around him as he landed softly on the ground. His green eyes fixed on Gales with an intensity that made the air between them seem to vibrate.

Gales had come after Jolthar, running out of the square.

Now standing before him, he saw Preeyonka lying in the debris of the hill.

”Guess you weren’t expecting the same to happen to you when you were killing those innocent people,” Jolthar said simply.

Gales laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. ”I’ve been killing since before you were born, boy. Let me show you something we used to call the Hailstorm Pincer.”

The mercenary leader suddenly split into motion, but not in the way anyone expected.

Instead of charging straight forward, he began to move in a complex pattern around Jolthar. His sword flashed in rapid strikes—not aimed at Jolthar himself, but at the air around him.

Each strike created a shimmer in the air, like heat waves rising from hot stone.

Jolthar frowned, wondering what he was doing, but he soon got his answer.

The shimmers left by Gales’s sword began to solidify into something that looked like ice but moved like liquid metal.

They formed a cage around Jolthar, closing in from all sides with the speed of falling hail. Each piece was sharp as a razor and hard as steel, designed to cut their target into pieces before he could react.

But Jolthar had grown far beyond what he had been before.