Interlude; Oracle's dreams.

Julea Reytor, apprentice oracle of the empire, suddenly found herself standing in a large field, the last thing she remembered being her going into bed.

This wasn't the first time such a thing had happened, though those were vague and cloudy dreams where you could see almost nothing except vague concepts.

What was infront of her was a person, one that wore a wizard's robe, through the haze, she could piece together a few concepts; 'Brown hair', 'Blue eyes', 'Middle aged'.

He wore many rings and acessories, all of them seemingly enchanted, not even the emperor would wear so many. There were two rings on each finger, fitting perfectly. Along with many bracelets and bangles that should've fallen, but didn't anyways.

The man turned towards Julea, his face giving a distinct feeling of 'Disdain' "It looks like a long dead pest is being a little nosy," It seemed like he was about to do something, but then stopped "No, I'll at least give you a little show, can't leave you empty handed."

The man seemed aggrieved at his own actions, but quickly sighed and put it too the side. Looking to the her left, the man smiled slightly "Ah, hello, what was your name again? I believe it was Halusin?"

"Yes it is, and I assume you're the scourge bringer?" Julean turned her head to the source of this new voice, seeing an older, though still clouded, man. He seemed to be wearing an out of fashion surcoat. And wielding, though seemingly basic, high quality sword and scabbard.

The scourge bringer smiled slightly "Quite a bit distant, though what would I expect from someone wearing an obsolete relic?"

"Well, it's quite hard to get proper plate armour or any other modern items," Halusin said, with slight anger from said problem laced in his voice "With you destroying many major trading cities and kingdoms, especially with the sudden conquering of Belantis, finding any sort of metal good of adequate quality in the current market is like gambling with Veluta."

The scourge bringer smiled slightly, while putting his hand half-heartedly before his mouth "Ah, good, then it's going according to plan." Julea noticing that every single thing he wore was of impressive quality, whether it be the robe, the rings, the necklace, the bangles, or the bracelets, all of them were impressive to even an oracle being pampered by the empire.

Halusin's mouth twitched slightly along with his right eye, but sighed slightly "We're going talk before we fight then?"

"Oh, just slightly, I've been wondering how the Nortalve empire has been since I last saw it." he said, as if there was no animosity between the two of them.

Halusin sighed while sitting down "It's absolute chaos, there's both a religious inquisition, and an emperial inspection unit. Both killing those who do not favour their side, the two of them opposing the other. The economy is in shambles, lacking any copper or bronze to use. And due to the lack of tin, Abyssals have been running rampant, unconcerned with how much attention they accrued, unlike before where they tried their best to stay hidden. How's old man Bernard? Did you really defeat him?"

"What pleasant news," he mused "Ah, yes, Bernard ate dirt. He's become a grandmaster frontline commander." he waved his hand over his bracelets, a vial suddenly appearing in his hand while he was in the middle of said motion, which naturally flowed in to an underhand throw.

Halusin caught the vial that was going to fly a bit above his head, and chugged it down "Thanks, though, you really must be hungry for more achievements. Gertude said that you wanted more, but this is surprising even for those old masters from the last war. You can still wait for the next one, what's the urgency?"

The man shrugged slightly "Might as well make the most use out of you, a by-product of my lack of disciplinary action while teaching disciples in my early days, before I erase you, and use your corpse to find Gertude and his TRAITOROUS mug -Actually, are you open to the idea of becoming a death knight?"

"If you kill me in a one on one, then sure, I'll give it a solid thought." Halusin said while standing up with a single push of his arm, unsheathing his sword with the other hand in the meantime.

"Oh goodie," the man said with a smile "It's so hard to find any good quality death knight material, that I can actually use." With the snap of his finger, hundreds of small, what Julea recognized as mere magic missiles, launched out of his body at rapid speeds.

Halusin saw these magic missiles and frowned while slashing forwards "I'm a spellsword specifically trained to kill you, and you're just playing with me?" His slash cut through seven missiles at the same time, Julea expecting them to just dissapate like a magic missile should, but instead-

A resounding 'Boom' echoed across the plateu, the spells that should've been slashed in half, to dissapate with no strings attached, exploded with so much might, that Halusin was flying backwards, rolling on landing before a few moments after he had gotten back to his feet.

"How boring," The scourge bringer stated, dissapointed filling his voice "I'd expect Gertude's little project to at least be somewhat of a challenge, but I guess he didn't know as much as I though he did, but that's reasonable, I did keep almost everything about myself as close to my chest as I could." He mused to himself, stroking his chin, which Julea came to think had a beard, though she couldn't be sure because of all the fog obscuring the man's head.

Seeing Halusin being constantly berated by magic missiles, some bursting out into thunder or flame, others even dousing him with water, all off them following a weird pattern seperate from the others, constantly finding a way to piece his defences "You'd be surpised with how much effort I put in, just to be able to do this."

The man shook his head after a few moments "This is a waste of time, let's get this over with." He pointed his index finger forwards, right towards Halusin's head, a slight glow radiating from it, as some mana was being drained from the air, shrinking more an more, before he shot out.

At an unbelieveable speed, a small blue bullet of mana shot towards, the Scourge bringer's hand blasting back too, it piercing Halusin's head without him even being able to react, a small 'Pop' resounding, all of the magic missiles sent out being pulled back into towards the man as they were recycled into mana.

With a few steps, propably supported by space magic, he arrived at the newly created cadaver "Finally some good material, reaching master tier is going to be breeze!"

"-Oh, and you, get lost." He waved his hand backwards, and for some reason, Julea found herself pushed back, out of the dream, and snapping back to reality in a cold sweat.