It was almost midnight.Torkel got off his horse and walked towards Robert’s house. There were two men guarding the gates of the rather large house. Torkel pointed his fingers to one of the guards and an ice shard, the size of a small dagger shot out from his finger. The guard that the attack was aimed at felt something in his neck and touching his neck to check what it was, his hands turned bloody from the blood that was pouring out of his Jugular vein.

Although they were not looking at each other, the guards were in a small conversation and hearing that his comrade had suddenly gone silent, the guard who was still standing turned to look, and this was the same moment his neck was pierced by the ice shard.

“Too easy”

Torkel walked in through the wide-open door into the corridor that was lit by a dim orb. As he walked through the central corridor, he opened and looked at each of the room silently to find Robert. He was obvious of Robert’s location as there was only a single room that had lights on, but didn’t want to take the risk. After reaching the room that still had lights on, he prepared two ice shards, one in each hand and kicked the locked door open. Torkel didn’t know if the door was locked or not but wanted it open either way and thus put some force into it while preparing to not fall down if the door was not locked.

“Crack”

Stabilising himself after the door cracked open, Torkel quickly scanned the room to find Robert. But instead of a town lord that was sleeping in the bed, what awaited him was a shell made of earth. It had no entrance and was surrounding what must be the bed of this bedroom.

From the moment he pissed off Hristo, Robert always looked out for danger, he would always carry his gun with him and when he went to sleep, he practiced his earth magic to create a small fortress around his bed. This was so that if someone got into the house, he would still have at least a few moments before he got attacked.

Robert had a part of this earthen guard connected to himself and was able to sense vibrations outside of it even when he was asleep.

But when Torkel broke open the door, Robert was still not asleep. He was reading a book had information about the agriculture and farms of Greyston. Hearing the sound, Robert was sure this was in no way a friend. What he had been expecting has come.

Robert immediately took the gun that was near him. He had five shots, and the enemy still unknown.

Robert had a plan that he prepared for a situation like this. There was only a single way to get out of this earthen castle without exposing himself to the enemy. He didn’t know the position of the enemy and the only offensive choice was to attack in all direction. Robert didn’t believe in defending his position, his stance was that “offense is the best defense” This also had taken into consideration that the enemy could be a fire mage and might create an inferno out of this earthen shell.

Touching the shell Robert resonated the earth, making it vibrate and finally cracking and forming a thousand stones and as he was expecting this to happen, the moment the shell broke into pieces, he sent out a wave of magical energy making the shell shards flying outwards towards every direction in the room.

Although this was nothing deadly, or even able to make an injury on an expert, Torkel was taken aback for a split second. This was all that Robert needed. He aimed the gun at Torkel and fired all five rounds simultaneously. The bullet all buzzed through the air and found its target at different parts of Torkel’s chest. Although the gun was rifled and had a good muzzle velocity, none of the bullets were able to penetrate more than a few inches into Torkel’s body.

Torkel felt like he had been hit with a sledgehammer on the chest. But he was a soldier who had seen a thousand battles. He knew that if he gave the enemy even a second, his state would be dire. He immediately sent out the two ice shards that he had already prepared towards Robert.

Robert had dropped his gun the moment it was out of ammo and had drawn two glyphs on his hands, fire, and stone. His hand was hard as a rock and lit up ablaze, seeing that the enemy had some ranged magic prepared, Robert prepared to receive the attack and put up a guard like a boxer to guard his vitals.

The shards were aimed at Robert’s neck but hit on his hands instead. Both of the shards hit his hands, the shards shattered as it hit the rock hand, and gave off a puff of steam as it was set ablaze by the fire that was raging in Robert’s hands.

Robert kicked the ground levitating a few boulders and shot them towards Torkel. But being the soldier he was, his physique was enough to stop the boulders that lacked any momentum.

“That’s it?”

Torkel asked Robert. He was surely feeling confident. From everything that Robert had done, only the five shots from the weapon in his hand were able to injure him. Although he didn’t understand how Robert could set his hands on fire when he was clearly an earth element mage, this gimmick was nothing to even notice. He was sure that Robert didn’t have any more of those weapons in his hand. His low-level magic spell wasn’t even able to hurt Torkel.

Robert was almost out of options.

Almost.