"Snow starts to float like a small cloud on earth, floating gently through the air as it falls from the sky."
"When they drift along with the cold howling winter wind it empties my soul, does it yours too?"
Max heard the melodic tune of a man's voice from the woods singing this or perhaps asking him, he doesn't know who these people are but he doesn't have a good feeling about this.
Sound of footsteps approaching get closer and they didn't even try to hide it either as if they have confidence in their skill and power or they are adventures but even if they adventures they would still be cautions around fellow human they find in woods from the voice of man he seems to be carefree this only lead to one conclusion that they have been observing him for quite sometimes and they have confidence in their skill to take him down.
Max took deep breathing and exhale out the air from his lung as he pretty much sure that this people are bandits now as he can smell strong smell of blood from them as well as smell of human corpse and only thing he doesn't know how big this group is and he somehow have to escape from them and informed everyone at the settlement about this.
"Well well, what do we have here evolving snow deer and an ice mage."
"We really hit it big this time."One of the men said with a grinning voice from the group.
Max still couldn't see their faces but slowly he could see them emerging from the woods, they have at least 12 or 14 people in a group and he isn't sure how many of them are hiding in the forest or this one is just one of the small group.
Soon they their face start to become clear, Max never saw any of them before group is made of man around in their 20's to 40's and they have scar across their face and weapons in their hands and few of them are carrying humans corpse on their shoulder from the clothing of dead body they doesn't seem to belong to this group as the dead body have fine linen clothing like merchant or low rank noble man but this people didn't even try to hide the dead body from them nor the try to hide their hostile nature.
Now Max standing at the one side and in opposite to him is group of bandits and in between them is evolving snow deer the falling snow seems like barrier between this three parties that holding them back from lacing out at each other but the snowfall is the reason why fight would breakout soon as none of them want face snowstorm and had to return to their base soon.
"What do you want?" Max said with worry in his voice while looking at the man who seems to be their leader as he was the only one who stood in the back and had this intense menacing aura around him.
The man starts whistling and the crying prey bird flew down and landed on his shoulder. He looks straight into Max's eyes and opens his mouth, "You can already guess who we are and from that you can also guess what we are after."
He's voice is deep and harsh and he has deep scar on his face from his left side forehead to his jaw and blind from left eye in this falling snow he alone seems to be strong beast with his fangs wide open, "You are mage, you are smart enough to know that we can't let you go like this."
This bandit didn't try to false stories of being mercenary or adventurers or merchant bodyguards
"You can take this snow deer and we would move on to our different ways like we didn't see each other." It would be lie if Max deny he isn't nervous but fighting now isn't the best for him even if all this bandit man is weak but he can't tell how much strong is their leader but only thing he can do now without fight to break out would be left this snow deer to bandits as after evolving its value would be increase too and important thing is snowstorm is about to start they have find shelter before that or none of them going to survive it.
"You clearly look down upon our intelligence, you really think that we wouldn't think that you will bring your companion after us." Said one of the bandits after hearing Max's words.
The leader of the bandit group steps forward, his man drops the dead bodies on the snow seeing that Max understood that they're not going let him leave. The bandit leader lifted his sword and pointed his sword at Max, "Everyone attack together, don't let him run away."
"The real hunting beings now." Said the leader with the wide grin on his face
Everyone took out their daggers and swords and ran towards Max except for the leader as he watched from the side-line while keeping an eye on the snow deer as after its evolution gets complete it wouldn't run away or attack them.
Max quickly summoned numerous ice spikes from snow below the bandits feets. It didn't do any damage to bandits, just made them slow in their pace and the weak one got slightly injured. Bandits laughed at the max weak ice spike as the strongest among them big hunk just ran through the ice spike with his body and destroyed it without getting slightly injured.
"If this is your best then you are a dead mage." Said the big hunk bandit holding a big hammer with his two hands but Max didn't reply to his provocation and continued to attack them with either ice spike or ice spear.
Two bandits hiding behind the trees pull out dagger from their wrist band and throw them towards Max, unaware of these two bandits' existence Max didn't see their attack coming as his attention was at bandits charging towards him.
This two bandits has huge grin on their face as their dagger is soaked in deadly poison that strong enough to kill strong monster inside the forest let alone one weak mage in forest who is exhausted form early fight with snow deer, they are certain about their victory as both of them are really good at hiding and sneak upon their target.
All this year's none of their targets survived their killing move except for a few that they can count on their one hand finger, even if they fail to kill their target they always escape uninjured.
Unaware Max of this threat focusing on bandits in front and Claude that is behind him, thanks to Claude being in bit distance away he is safe for now but can't say anything about future as fight escalate as these bandits have number advantage, if of them target Claude now he won't be able to focus on both side while fighting them as bandits are closing the distance between him and them, and close distance fight is good as dead for mage.
Two bandits look at their dagger silently cutting through the air while aiming for Max head and heart as sometimes mage carry's treasure that keeps them alive as long as their heart or brain is completely unharmed and they don't want to take any risk.
The dagger flew through the air like a shadow in speed, only at the last moment before these daggers hit him Max is able to detect them. He quickly made three ice walls in front of him and saw two daggers aiming towards him but as he quickly conjured up ice walls they weren't strong and the first two walls quickly got destroyed by the daggers and only the last and third ice wall remained.
Max took a deep breath of relief after seeing the dagger being stopped and stuck on the ice wall but that relief didn't last much longer as he heard a loud shout up above him, Max moved his head above to see and a big buff body bandit was in the air with his big hammer above his head.
Max couldn't even run now from the attack but Max still try dodge the attack from big bandit, Max move to his right side at last moment and bandit hammer hit ice wall destroying it in single strike an huge impact on ground, shockwave from the attack made Max body flew in air and hit the tree.
The sound of bone breaking came from Max body his left hand seems to be broken from impact but worst has yet to come as big bandit rushed towards him with his hammer again, max lying on the ground quickly cast ice spear spell to attack the big bandit but without even bothering to dodge Max ice spear spell bandit just the swing his hammer at ice spear and in one single strike from his hammer he destroyed the ice spear like it was nothing.
Max tries to stand up with support of his right hand even though his body hurts from the impact from the tree and hammer shockwave attack but a big bandit closes the distance quickly and arrives in front of him and grabs Max's neck.
He raised the Max body in air without any efforts with single hand as big bandit height is over 7 feet tall, Max face turned red from lack of oxygen as he couldn't breath as bandit grabbed his neck, max tried to remove the bandit hand from his neck by his two hands but it did nothing against the bandit, kicking and punching is useless in front of raw power muscles bandit.
"What a weak and pathetic ice mage." Bandit laughs at Max's useless struggle to fight for his life.
The bandit slams Max body on snow by face and put his one foot on max head and other on his broken left hand and starts applying more and more strength to his legs, bandits charging behind him stop on their track as the mage in front of them is as good as dead now in their eyes.
"Yeah, Daider crushed this mage skull with your feet." Shouted bandits behind them with a maniac laugh.
"Consider yourself as a lucky mage because you will be the 100 person whose skull I'm going to crush under my feet." Daider laughs with a maniac smile and starts to slowly apply pressure on Max skull.
Max screamed out loudly in pain as Daider like demon enjoying tormenting Max before his death, the head crushing pain made his scream hoarse and all the bandits laugh at dying max as for them it was just another dog they're going to kill but one thing that they all ignored was young man standing not far away from them in distance.
They all ignored him as they didn't feel any danger from him, while they were laughing at Max. Claude completed his ice spear spell aiming straight for the Daider head despite Claude's poor aim he shot the spell from long distance.
Daider who was laughing like a maniac suddenly felt an object flying towards him. He took a few steps back as he only noticed this after it got close enough to his body because Daider wasn't paying attention to Claude the attack that wouldn't have harmed him in any way hit his ear.
Claude's ice spear that was completely off mark and going to fly past behind the Big bandit Daider head hit him on his right side ear as in shock that object got near to him while he was unaware and made a mistake to dodge it by taking one step back.
Even though the ice spear didn't do any damage to his ear, head or leave behind any wound as it got destroyed just as the ice spear hit his ear but it did manage to make a buzzing sound in his head and that was more than enough opportunity for Max counter attack.