"Oh… this is it… this one shall meet his beloved again… in the warm embrace of hell…" the goblin lamented between sobs.
Just as the fire tore the Mana Barrier, I used my left hand to take hold of it, countering as I used Darkness and Hellfire. From my hand, another kind of fire surged. It was a blood-red fire covered in a dark miasma that spread around it, making it almost seem like the fire was dark itself. The fire torrent and the imitation of Holy Power that was empowering it were easily being consumed by the Darkness and Hellfire in my hands, which then spread to the rest of my body in a combination of fire and darkness.
"I'm sorry, but this is what must be done!" Daniel shouted, thinking that it was his fire that was covering me.
After a couple of seconds, the fire torrent was gone, but the fire burning on me didn't, simply because it was my fire; it was the Hellfire. I swung my arm to clear away the fire, leaving only bits and pieces of fire burning on me, while my left hand kept a steady red flame surrounded by darkness.
"Huh?" Daniel asked, dumbfounded about my shape still being intact.
"I warned you that you would get hurt," I said, glaring at him, and my voice sounding like it came from the underworld.
He ignored my response as his expression turned to fury, gnashing his teeth. "You should've just let me—"
I wasn't about to let him keep going, so I interrupted him by closing the distance in a similar way to how the girl had done to me. He widened his eyes and tried to block by creating a barrier, empowering it by the Holy Power contained in his ring. I punched with my Hellfire covered fist and the barrier easily shattered, leaving me a clear path to Daniel. But he seemed like he wasn't about to give up, so using that small window that the barrier gave him, he took a step back and prepared other spells to fight back.
A golden spike sprung from right under Daniel's feet, its tip pointed at me as the spike broke the earth and went straight for my head. I didn't bother with dodging or blocking it, as such an imitation of Holy Power wouldn't have enough power to harm me, especially when the person doing it didn't have the experience to use it properly.
With a swing of my darkness-covered right hand, I easily broke the rock apart, sending small rocks all over the place as motes of golden light spread in the air.
Daniel groaned in frustration and prepared a golden lightning that ran from his forearm down to his hand.
"D-Daniel! You can't! The leaders won't like it if—"
"Shut up!" he shouted, interrupting the girl as he quickly fired the lightning at me.
I couldn't dodge this one, so the lightning hit me straight in the middle of my body. My muscles spasmed and I faltered in my step, forcing me to lower myself slightly. Daniel smirked as I felt the golden currents running through me, but thanks to the Darkness and Hellfire Power within me, his spell hardly did any damage.
I glared back at him, and the smirk on his face quickly changed to a look of surprise. I closed the gap with him. With a quick jab, like the many that I had traded with Reeta today, I aimed at his stomach. He tried to block again, but he wasn't nearly as fast as I was, so my punch easily hit him. He was lifted off the ground slightly, falling on his knees a short distance away. I wasn't trying to kill him, so I went with something that I knew he could survive.
He barfed whatever he had eaten before, staining the ground in front of me, and I looked down coldly at him. "Surrender to the police."
He coughed a couple more times, spitting as he did, before taking in air. "I won't surrender… to darkness!"
I knew the kind of man that this was. Men like him would hardly ever change his ways. I would either have to force them to submit or be forced to put them down. But I wasn't willing to put him down, so forcing him would be the best option.
I reached again for the God's power within me, and blood-red fire spread around my feet, expanding in a circle that would cover both me and Daniel, while Brian and the other girl would take a few fearful steps away.
I stretched the darkness in the fire even higher, making it so the only thing that either of us could see were the red fire and the darkness that enveloped us.
"W-what? What kind of power is this?" he asked, looking around the fire and keeping himself away from it.
"Darkness and Hellfire," I plainly replied. "The kind of power that sinners and evildoers get dragged to."
"Huh?" he dumbly exclaimed, quickly turning to look up to me before exclaiming in terror.
I didn't know what I looked like when using this kind of power, but if it's anything like the Holy Power, then some of my features would be slightly changed; probably making me look like I had red eyes, or a set of horns in my head. However, they were nothing more than the power being overlaid on me. None of those features were actually mine.
I stretched my left hand in his direction, and the man tried to back away. But there was nowhere to go in this circle, so he unknowingly touched the blood-red fire that was surrounding us.
"Ow!" he exclaimed, pulling his slightly burnt hand back and looking at me.
He was cornered, and like a cornered animal, there was only one thing he could do, which was to try anything to desperately get away. He raised his hand with the gold-glowing ring, and I saw a ball of fire infused with golden streaks being created.
There was no need to let him do as he pleased anymore now that I was so close to him. So I swiftly moved my hand to take hold of the forming fire. It disappeared as my hand passed right through it, letting me directly take hold of his hand—rather, the finger that had the golden ring.
He looked with terror at me and my likely glowing red eyes.
"N-no wait! Please spare me—Ow!" he exclaimed when I slightly clutched my hand. I ignored him and with my other hand I reached for the golden ring. "N-no! You can't take it! Darkness can't touch the light!"
When I was about to place my fingers on the finger that had the golden ring, it suddenly glowed much brighter than ever before. An explosion of Holy Power followed, which spread some of the Darkness surrounding me and blinded me momentarily.
I could feel Daniel struggling to free his hand, but even if that light was strong, it was, at the end of it all, just an imitation of Holy Power, so I wasn't about to let go of him or his hand.
I looked down at him and reached for the ring once more. He reacted by desperately using his other hand to stop mine, but my arm was coated with Hellfire, so as soon as his hand reached me, he was forced to remove it.
"Arhg!" he exclaimed before looking at his trapped hand. "Let me go!"
Without paying attention to his pleas, I quickly reached for the ring. It was glowing once more, threatening to explode like last time, but I moved much faster, grabbing the finger in his hand and clutching the ring under my hands.
It exploded once more, but this time, it didn't do anything as I overpowered the Holy Power with the Darkness and Hellfire Power within my hands.
Daniel was desperately trying to take his hand back as he pulled and pulled with uneven breaths to no avail.
It was time to end his struggle.
While holding the ring, I used as much Darkness as I could gather into it. The Holy Power contained in the ring tried to resist, but it couldn't compare to the real power that ran within my body. The ring cracked once, then twice, then several times, until eventually, it exploded.
"Ahh!" Daniel shouted painfully, reaching with his hand to mine, but being repelled once more.
I resisted the shockwave, trying to contain it within my hands. It felt like my hands had been set on fire, exactly like how it felt when I used Holy Power a few days ago, but this time, it only lasted for a couple of seconds as the explosion settled and the power disappeared.
Finally, I let go of his hand, revealing a completely blackened finger. Daniel quickly pulled his hand back and clutched it between his other hand. He carried a look of pain and desperation as he looked at his finger several times.
"W-what have you done!?" he shouted.
But I wasn't going to explain myself, so I took the opportunity to punch him on the side of his face, knocking him out cold as he sagged to the side. I was tempted to finish him off right there and then, but it didn't feel right to do that to a defeated foe, so I just left him as it was.
Right after he had passed out, I withdrew the Darkness and Hellfire power, returning the whole place back to the normal cold night that it should be.
There was a moment of silence as both Brian and the girl sitting some distance away looked at me.
"Did you kill him!?" shouted the girl who was trying to wake up the other young man.
"No, he's just passed out," I replied with a shake of my head.
"Y-you…!" The girl wanted to shout at me, but I could see in her expression that she was terrified to get closer to me.
"This one already called the police!" shouted the goblin with a phone held high in the air. "They shall be here right away!"
"Oh no…" the girl paled.
"Uhhggg…" the other young man groaned, slowly waking up. "What happened…"
"Come on! We have to get out of here!" the girl shouted, forcing this young man to stand up, before going over to their leader who lay in front of me.
"And what makes you think I'm going to let you off?" I asked while looking down on her as she was about to reach Daniel.
She looked up to me momentarily, only to run away as fast as she could right after. She was indeed a fast runner, being able to cover a very long distance in the blink of eye, but she wasn't faster than me at the moment, so I easily caught up to her, grabbing her by the wounded arm and dropping her to the ground as I twisted the arm behind her back.
"Let me go!" she shouted, struggling as hard as she could.
But I ignored what she said as I dragged her back to the other young men, pulling her next to them, and securing them with a few rock bindings I made with what little remaining mana I had.
There was only one person left. I turned to look at Brian, who looked at me with terrified eyes.
"Why are you with them?" I asked.
I hadn't secured this young man, as from the start to now all he did was just quietly stand back. He didn't try to attack me or the goblin, and he didn't try to help Daniel or the other couple of people, so I decided to hear what he had to say.
He looked back at me with widened eyes, his pupils shaking as they tried to sustain their sight on mine, but I simply looked back at him; no glare, no frown. I just waited.
After a moment, he tightly closed his eyes and looked down. "I… I just… They said that if I helped them, they would give me artifacts, skill books, and elixirs to improve my powers."
"Help them? With killing the goblin?" I asked as I gestured to the small goblin standing right behind me.
Brian opened his eyes and looked down at the goblin as well. The goblin didn't say anything as it simply looked between me and Brian with a questioning look.
The young man slightly nodded a couple of times before shaking his head. "Yes and… no. At first they just wanted to have your contact information, since you refused to give it to them." He frowned. "They asked that to both me and Steven—mostly to Steven as he is the one that appeared to want to grow stronger faster than anyone but…"
I matched Brian's frown. I didn't expect these two to be involved with something like this, however, I should've known better from the moment that Daniel spoke to them.
"But…?"
"That dumbass didn't give them anything. He let go of that opportunity, so I took it instead of him," Brian responded, almost spitting on the ground before looking up to me and back to the ground. "I'd hoped that just by giving them your phone number or where you lived, that they'd give me things to be at your ranks, but then they just said that if I wanted to have all of that, that I'd have to follow them and prove to them that I was a true warrior of the light."
"Ah!" the goblin exclaimed and I looked down at him. "Is that the reasoning behind this completely and utterly surprising encounter, one in which this most humble and noble one had to suffer most grave injuries in the grand body that was bestowed to him?"
Never had I bothered to listen to a goblin speak, since they had always been a target of subjugation in my past, so I didn't expect the small being to say so many words. But I tried my best to put aside my surprise as I waited for Brian to continue speaking.
Brian slowly nodded as he looked at the goblin. "Yes… they said that tonight was a night where the light would fight the darkness, so we went hunting for any beings that could be hunted… and you were one of those."
"Ah…!" the goblin painfully exclaimed as he kneeled on the ground. "The shame, the misery, the powerlessness of this most esteemed one!" he then suddenly looked up at Brian with a bright smile. "But this noble one has no ill, for this great one has been saved by the darkness of the most beautiful of heroes that hell could have brought up from its warm depths. One will extend the dark claw of forgiveness and wishes for those who have wronged his regal form to go on the path of peace!"
Brian looked confused as he frowned and kept his stare on the goblin. In a way, I was also somewhat astonished to hear how wordful this being was, but judging by his attitude, it appeared that he wasn't angry with Brian.
I once again considered what to do with the young man. He hadn't actually done anything wrong here, but he had been complicit in the acts of the other ones—as well as giving them my information—so I wasn't sure about what to do with him.
Suddenly, there was a loud noise coming from behind me. It was the sound that sometimes police cars would make, so both me and the goblin turned to look behind us to confirm that it was indeed the police that had arrived.
While we were distracted, Brian took that opportunity to run away. He wasn't nearly as fast as me or the people that I just fought, so it would've been easy for me to catch him but… I decided not to. The goblin had forgiven him, and he'd seen what I was capable of doing. Hopefully, it would be enough for him to leave those followers of the Holy Gods and try to make up for what he'd done.
"Isn't the most beautiful one going to grab the weak, cowardly one?" the goblin asked with his head tilted as he looked at Brian's running back. "Observe, that one is most expeditiously getting away from your glorious grasp."
I was well aware of that, but I shook my head. "It's fine. I hope he learned from this."
"Ah… how very chivalrous of the magnificent one. This brotherly one will follow the will of the darkness," the goblin replied with a soft smile and a nod.
The police car stopped next to us on the road and a couple of police men walked out of it. The one closest to us looked at the bound people on the ground, before looking at me and the goblin.
"I take it you're the one that called us?" the man asked as he crouched to be at eye level with the goblin.
"Ah! That is most certainly so!" the goblin replied.
I watched for a while longer as Brian ran around a corner and away from my sight. I doubted if it had been alright to let him go like that, but I was willing to give him a chance, so with a sigh, I turned and joined in the conversation with the goblin as the little being wordfully recounted what happened.