chapter 6

O(I)O(I)

Whisk after whisk of his bony hands Niaz launched a giant arrow at Saitama until it was a fusilltude raining down. His underlings exclaimed their satisfaction by clapping their hands and having big grins on their faces. Although it seemed Niaz had an infinite amount of arrows he could use they were debilitating his mana supply he kept in reserve for a more powerful group of spell(s)...so he stopped the onslaught and watched the sparkling long arrow fade arrow to show him the bloody body of the human intruder.

"Well done, Lord Niaz!" the fairy imp exclaimed in joy.

His excitement was premature-should've been obvious there wouldn't be any excitement from the way Jucket was fixated on the door and furrowed his eyebrows. At last, they saw the intruder completely unharmed, no cuts on his arms, no tears in his suit or dirt on it, no holes, and he was still standing where his bald head seemed to be shinning even brighter than before.

"Where do you keep your prisoners?" He asked nonchalantly.

Niaz couldn't believe what he was seeing. Before he had time to rethink the strength of the intruder, the fairy imp shot forward like a nocked arrow towards Saitama, his hands cusping a cloud of pink in the shape of a heart.

"I'll teach you not to disrespect Lord Niaz! Fairy Death Shape!"

While he made his attack in the shape of a heart to symbolize how love was the greatest killer of all or whatnot, Saitama dragged his feet forward, his body moving so fast he was already in front of the monster before he had time to notice him, and then the fairy imp was killed by a punch so fast yet less powerful than his other hits it looked like he didn't cock all five fingers, but still knocked the monster's face off until all that remained was red innards with a white dot near his chin.

"A-Amazing." Niaz stammered.

'He killed Luvnou in one hit. He didn't even use a weapon.'

While Niaz was thinking, Jucket was setting himself on fire, searing his wings and skin with blue fire while his claws cusped the air. He repeatedly roared outwardly and inwardly as it seemed to cause the flames to become bigger and livelier with each uproar. Fire was streaming all over his shoulders, torso, and encumbering his wings in its blue flame enfold.

"Being a demon and a dragon fire is easy to summon, control, even say when I can summon it and where at any time...but using it this way is far too cumbersome even for a lieutenant like me." Before he finished his monologue of power he thought was special, really wasn't, flames peeled off his body and merged into a serpentine looking dragon with eight stubs the size of a human arm and sharp teeth of raging fire. "But you've shown me if I don't hit you with everything I have now...I might not get a second chance! Fire Fire Hell Hell Dragon...Haymaker!"

A large dragon making an unearth shattering roar was on its way to swallow Saitama and he didn't even sweat from his cheeks. By the time it was towering over him, reeling, trying to intimidate, Saitama already had a fist behind his back.

When it whooshed down and tried to devour him...he delivered his punch popping the dragon like a balloon and simultaneously giving the demon a haymaker he wouldn't forget...it punctured something inside of him that made his body get set violently ablaze.

"RAHAHAAHAGGHH!"

His cries made Saitama bored while they made Niaz, an eldlich thought to have no way of crying, tearful at the site of his body turning into flakes of ash.

Niaz was alone, one limp body and a pile of ashes from a dead second-in-command, he had his hands pressed against the ground trying to find a way to recompose his undead self.

"Y-You butchered them...like they were nothing." Niaz wept.

"I only fought back because they attacked me." Saitama said, not being able to understand how even a monster could be mournful of his friends.

"Yes, but you weren't in any danger...you chose to kill them." Niaz was on his knees, his tone getting a little more infuriated. "You came all this way...for what? To give the villagers freedom? I was never trying to inflame you adventurer's to come after me...I kept my business to myself. Or did you want to take my gold and jewels out of here? You could have asked, I am the embodiment of greed but I am beyond a normal lich that I need to keep all this extravagance to myself. So why...why did you come here?" Even with a bony face the eldich's face was empurpled. "WHY?!"

Saitama looked placate compared to the boiling going on inside Niaz. He took a deep breath before he spoke "I'm looking for someone's husband. Do you have any prisoners?"

What happened after that was an odor unlike anything Saitama has ever smelt; it was like those cartoons he watched where the villain would have this fog simmering around them to show how strong they are and how their bad; an aura. Niaz's aura was purple with some turquoise as his eyes faded to complete darkness. He was irked, frustrated, vengeful and if Saitama had to guess he was going to use his strongest spell.

"When a lich reaches a high enough level they can learn to instantly suffocate a human to death making their primary innateness for necromancy all the more efficient. This is my second time using it...first time I wiped out a dragon and brought him back...as my second-in-command."

A dark cloud swarmed in Niaz's right hand before he planted it in the ground. The darkness contorted into what looked like long slimy strands before appearing as a dark door. The door unfurled into a puddle of inky blackness streaming towards Saitama. While he watched unamused it drew closer. At last he was standing on top of the black pond.

Saitama out of detestation for the black pond getting on his boots tried to raise his left foot off the ground, but the gravity seemed to be getting heavier. His foot was now stuck in what appeared now as tar while he was sinking in the pond.

"Even when Jucket had wings and fire he couldn't escape." Niaz, recollecting his thoughts, explained. "It kept him trapped long enough...to get to my real spell." Niaz closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, canted something that looked like prayer but was really his strongest spell. "The happy will be eradicated by the melancholy: Entity of Plague: Pneumonia Death!"

A cloud of purple and a behemoth of a skeleton with four two-claw appendages around it―one was heading towards Saitama while he was ensnared the other laughed maniacally. In Niaz's mind the human had nowhere to run, and now he was completely surrounded by his miasma of death.

In Saitama's mind, he was seeing if this overlord, this harbinger of death and necromancy, was strong enough to survive his one punch; his servants dying so fast showing he may be getting his hopes up. He also called the spell an instant death to anyone he uses it on, but so far it has been two minutes since Saitama held his breath on its approach and he's felt no different than going swimming at the community pool.

'This is boring. Maybe I should just find this guy myself.'

He took two steps, holding his nose with his left glove, when the maniacal image of a purple seven foot tall skull acted as a wall in his way, laughing at him with much mania. It was almost goading Saitama to punch it.

"WHEN YOUR DEAD...YOU SOUL WILL BE MINE! I WILL THEN SHOW EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE YOUR CORPSE GIVING THEM THE MESSAGE THEIR WORLD IS DOO―"

His monologues as a eldlich weren't any less tedious than his monologues as a visage, so Saitama delivered a right hook that felt normal to him as the right hook of his first punch before becoming a hero...where everything in the room was vacuumed out: the tar, the smoke, the throne, even the body and the ashes.

As Saitama blinked back into reality, he realized how strongly the eldlich sprawled from where he stood. He was now on the ground...lost most of his body other than his skull head, the right side of his ribcage, and his right arm. Everything else including his clothes made of the finest swathe...was so fractured they became dust particles.

"How...How is this possible?" He choked.

Saitama, squatting by his side, said another nonchalant thing "Since you won't tell me where you keep your prisoners is it okay if I just explore past this room? Niaz was too busy gasping in defeat to answer. "Okay, bye."

Saitama speed to the other ride of the room before punching through the already deteriorating wall. Niaz was left alone to contemplate how he would handle someone with such power.

His contemplation was interrupted...he was no longer alone.

O(I)O(I)

Although she was told to wait outside, Savatia was running the same path Baragon went through, her right hand shinning an incandescent white light from a simple Light spell. She kept running until she saw Baragon going toe-to-toe with an albino feral creature with pointy ears. Swipe to swipe it relentlessly kept going at him, but Baragon managed to deflect the sharp claws with his blade before leaping in a direction that awarded him with a momentary distraction; even cave dwellers have trouble seeing in the dark at times. He used a little empowering skill...

"Dwarf's Forging Hands: Molding Axe Spin!"

He left his hands steadily held to his left temple before making an arc, his blade orange and sizzling with newly burning iron. In one swoop, the creature's head lopped off leaving only a bloodless decapicated neck with sizzled black splotches where his axe went through.

He put his axe back in his backpack feeling good about himself...that changed when he turned around and saw Savatia; she made a critical mistake. She went in a cave with a white light brimming from her hand.

"Are you crazy?! You just walced into a cave with white light! White light...do you know how easy it is to let yourself be killed if a monster sees it?! Their probably seeing your light right now and coming to get us!"