Roland stretched a bit as he arrived back at his little camp. He felt very unsure of how to feel right now, on one hand, he felt a lot of tension as there was a possibility he was getting hunted, but on the other hand, he knew magic, like actual proper magic.

He pointed at a nearby tree and used his slicing spell on it, it cut nearly a full centimeter into the tree, going through the bark. He decided to temporarily name the spell ‘Cortar’. It was the Spanish word for cut and since he was in a Spanish-speaking country it only felt right to name the spell this way.

After practicing the spell another eight times, emptying his magic power once more, he managed to cast the spell within a second, he felt like improving the casting time would be a lot harder now and so he wanted to focus on another spell.

He decided not to use the other spell with three nodes he named ‘Respirar’ the Latin translation of breathe, but as it had some addictive properties he didn’t want to deal with.

The problem was that if he wanted to learn a new spell it would be quite a bit harder. All of the nodes he had used thus far were clustered up next to the large silver node. If he wanted to make new spells he would either have to move double the distance to a new small node or start awakening medium-sized ones.

After some deliberation he decided to go for the distant ones, he was afraid that if he failed to awaken a medium-sized node there would be serious repercussions and he didn’t want to risk that just yet. He decided to attempt and cast a new spell the following day, even though the sun had only just gone down he decided to sleep for the night. He made sure his noise traps were operational and hidden properly before entering his tent.

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Two hours later in a hotel room in Caztar.

“The target is definitely within ten kilometers from my location, requesting a specialized scan,” the asian lady asked tapping her earpiece, after a few minutes a response arrived.

“Confirmed, start heading north, we are closing in on the target location.”

The lady nodded as she made sure her crystal was lodged into her mouth properly. Finally, after three days, she had gotten a proper reading letting her know that her target was in the area. Nonetheless, she was still extremely pissed off. Normally the hard part of her jobs would be finding a way for the targets to be on their own in a location where they could easily retrieve them without witnesses.

She made her way to the north of the town looking at the few people passing by her. Earlier she had been sent the list of the forty possible marks, she remembered all of their faces and paid proper attention, unwilling to have the mark slip out from under her fingers again.

A few minutes later another command was given “Objective has been changed. Target is currently in the forest to the north of Caztar, approximately three kilometers in. Retrievement has become impractical, the job has been changed to a kill order. Eliminate the target on sight.”

She tapped her earpiece once to confirm before heading straight for the forest. After walking in for about a hundred meters she took a small pistol out of her left boot and a silencer out of her jacket’s pocket. She quickly assembled the two parts and started heading deeper into the forest. Headquarters had not completely zeroed in on the target’s position and they told her when she was going off course.

Her steps were extremely silent, yet she was still moving at a decent pace.

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Meanwhile, Roland was in his tent trying to sleep. He was having some difficulties doing so as he couldn’t stop thinking about the entire situation. He was still awake when he heard clanging coming from the north, it was his noise trap being set off.

As soon as he heard it he woke up and rushed out of the tent, hiding behind a large tree just next to it. He didn’t move and simply listened. He didn’t hear a yelp or curse meaning that whatever walked into his trap wasn’t some hunter or junky as they would probably make quite a bit of noise out of surprise.

It was most likely some sort of animal so he hid, waiting for whatever it was to pass by. Even though this was what his logical mind told him he was still afraid, afraid it was someone sent here to abduct or kill him because of his magic. Even though he had no idea how ‘they’ could’ve found him that fast, it was still a fear he had right now.

Suddenly he heard a sound coming from the other side of the tree. It sounded like how you would expect a lightning strike to sound if you had headphones in, the sound came five different times and at the same time, he heard a ripping sound coming from the tent, followed by the sound of dirt being hit.

Roland stopped breathing as he listened, he could now hear the breathing of someone on the other side of the big tree, they moved toward the tent even though he didn’t hear any footsteps.

He had to breathe in but instead took a step to the side and pointed at the tent. Even in the current darkness, he could see a lady looking at the tent, she had long black hair and was seemed to be walking on heels. As soon as he saw her she spun around to look at him, but terrified Roland finished the spell and a faint purple line sped toward the unknown lady. He then jumped to the side in terror, he felt a bullet skim the back of his neck as he did so.

He fell onto the floor and turned on his back, his lip was quivering and he felt terrified, as if he was waiting for his death. But the sight before him now was different than he had expected.

The lady was standing still, her head slightly bobbing to the left and right, her pistol had fallen to the floor and a bloodied hand was holding her neck. Blood was seeping from that area completely ruining her clothes. She tried to speak but instead of sound, more blood arrived, a fountain of blood came from her mouth falling on the ground before her.

She just stood there like that for about a dozen seconds, barely moving even a bit. There was no hate in her eyes, just fear, a fear that kept Roland from moving. After these dozen seconds had passed, she tried taking a step forward but she lost her footing and fell to the ground. A few seconds later she stopped moving entirely.

Roland looked at the corpse lying just a few feet before him, not he had a clear sight of the woman’s face and neck. She seemed to be asian in heritage and would’ve been relatively pretty if her eyes didn’t look so terrified. Her neck looked ghastly, he could see the open wound that had killed her and the blood that was still gushing out of it.

Minutes had passed before Roland managed to get himself to move. He got up, turned around, and ran as fast as he could. He ran through the woods and soon cuts and bruises covered his arms and legs.

He didn’t care where he went and just kept moving forward, pushing his body beyond its limit. He fell to the ground multiple times, and every time he wanted to stay on the ground, but when he did he recalled the face of the lady he had murdered and he got up again, running so he didn’t have to see that sight in front of his eyes.

He didn’t know for how long he ran, but when he finally dropped to the ground the sun could be seen on the horizon. And as soon as he fell, he puked before falling unconscious.