To block the saber, the man had to stop his escape, allowing the guards from Balvan mansion to encircle him again.
Enraged, he tried to find the owner of the saber only to see a small figure getting away at high speed.
In this moment of distraction, Ethan stabbed him on his waist, followed by Sandy and Mark's knives.
In a battle between cultivators, one instant of distraction could cause your death.
That's why Noah's job was to ensure that the cultivators would fight themselves without interferences, and interfering was precisely what he was doing.
He would lie in wait to find an opportunity to cause a misstep in the enemy that would be exploited by his companions.
BOOM!
An explosion resounded from high in the mountain path.
A serpent made of flames was coiling around the deserters' boss's right arm.
On the ground near him, Susan's charred corpse was lying unmoving, and no more life was in it.
"Bos... s."
The man stabbed by the trio made a last plead of help before dying.
The flames slowly dissipated and the serpent with them, showing how tired the mage was after using the spell two times.
Noah, Ethan, Sandy, and Mark regrouped and stared at the pale man that killed their captain.
"Your name?"
Ethan asked, breathing heavily from the fatigue of his two consecutive fights.
"Tsk, what, the Shosti family forgot to mention it when they gave the reports?"
The group and the man stalled to regain some energy.
"We are simple people, reading the names of those that we have to kill is just useless work."
Sandy said, shrugging his shoulders.
"My name is Orson. Why do you want to know it?"
"Well, you killed our captain, we need to report your name after we kill you to complain about their shitty report."
Mark's time to speak had arrived, but Noah didn't care this time as he was wholly focused on Orson.
'Can he do it again? Any one of us that gets hit by that spell will probably die, but Susan managed to make him use it two times. Can he do it a third time?'
"Oh, no wonder she was so strong, it was your captain! Her body should have reached the limits of rank 3. What a pity, if she were a noble she would have had the technique needed to break through rank 4 but alas..."
Orson seemed really sad for Susan as he kept on speaking.
"You know, that's why I rebelled. I have been a rank 1 mage for ten years now and managed to obtain a spell only by stealing it. Don't you think that it's unfair? Don't you think that someone as talented as her, as talented as ME has the right to obtain what he deserves?"
His speech was about the common problem in the human cultivation world.
Noble families would accumulate wealth and techniques to have a monopoly over them. Anyone not belonging to their inner circle could just serve for life, hoping to be rewarded accordingly, or resort to illicit ways.
Ethan's breath returned to an average pace, he looked at his companion and nodded.
"Shall we start?"
Orson shook his head but got in position to fight, he took a big iron mace from the ground with his left hand and yelled:
"Come then!"
The group waited no more and jumped right at him.
Ethan was the first to clash with the mace, causing the ground beneath him to crackle, Sandy and Mark slowed their pace on purpose to deal with Orson's sides.
Before the brother's knives could hit Orson, though, the serpent of flames appeared again, this time protecting him.
Sandy and Mark had to halt their charge while Ethan was pushed three steps back with his hands lightly burned.
The serpent disappeared, and the exchange of attacks and defense repeated itself.
It seemed that if Orson used the magic spell only to protect himself, its consumption of mental energy would be lower.
After three rounds of attacks, Ethan's left arm was hanging on his side while he wielded his greatsword with his right hand.
The wound on his left leg was always spilling blood, and he was deathly pale. He could probably hold only for another round.
Sandy and Mark were relatively better, the fire only touched them superficially and managed to cause only some spots of burned flesh.
Orson, on the other side, was panting heavily, he looked completely drained, like after a full session of training in the Kesier rune.
It was evident that the next round would be the last.
Ethan's eyes became resolute as he charged recklessly toward Orson.
Like the times before that, his greatsword met the mace, and he pushed hard with all the strength he had left to lock Orson in that position.
The attacks of the brothers arrived as punctual as always, aiming for the blind spots of the mage.
At one step from death, Orson resolutely chose to raise once again his right arm to unleash his most potent attack.
The arm lit up, and a serpent of flames was being formed when a blade of wind, with the form of a crescent moon, hit the arm and severed it!
Noah was a few meters away from the mage, kneeling on the ground and managing to keep his upper body erected by pointing with his sabers on the ground.
He had watched the whole battle from a small distance away and understood one thing: the flames originated from his right arm.
So he waited till Orson exposed his arm again to deliver the only ranged attack that his art had.
The execution was perfect, and the magic got interrupted, Sandy and Mark used this chance to directly cut off Orson's head with two strikes from opposite directions.
The mage was dead!
Noah and Ethan immediately fell on the ground.
One had his "Breath" wholly drained while the other was heavily injured.
The brothers, on the contrary, were still standing looking around the battlefield and on Orson's body.
After their search, they came back to where Ethan and Noah were resting.
"No traces of the scroll containing the magic spell, he must have destroyed it."
"Except for some starving women that survived and us, everyone is dead."
They divided their lines as usual, but there was a trace of sadness this time and not the typical irony.
Noah looked at the charred corpse at some distance from them and spoke.
"If she didn't make Orson use the spell twice, at least another one of us would be dead."
Everyone nodded and bowed to the corpse of their former captain.