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The villagers didn\'t manage to escape this latest barrage.

Ten of them died in the assault. The others cried out beside them, afflicted by the shrapnel. It was a mess of blood and bone. It was entirely against the laws of nature that they had grown up accustomed to.

For most of them, the fastest thing they had ever seen was a horse. Francis knew that, for before he had obtained magic himself, that was also the fastest thing that he had ever seen – a horse.

Now they were assaulted by a projectile twice a horse\'s speed, and twice its weight, and tipped at one end to be as sharp as a spear. They should have felt like they were thrust into an alien land, they should have been on the very precipice of despair… They should have, and yet… They weren\'t.

Even as more of them died, their hearts seemed unlikely to waver. It was as though this were a magic circle – by Francis\' understanding – and someone had offered up a sacrifice, a core, of such a magnitude, that its gravity simply couldn\'t be overcome. It was unnatural, and to that end, revolting.

Francis bit his lip in outrage, and criticized them.

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"Animals then, the lot of you," he said scathingly. "They call me mad in the city, for what I\'ve done. ARE YOU NOT THE MAD ONES? To react nothing, in the face of your fellow man\'s death? To claim no fear, despite your coming demise? ARE YOU NOT MAD?

ARE YOU NOT BRAINWASHED? ARE YOU NOT VICTIMS OF SOME GOD OR SORCERY?"

Yes. That was it. Francis felt he\'d hit upon it. It must have been something along those lines. For no mere village would hold strong against such an attack, not without darker forces at work, not without magic.

He had a hint of realization… Was it that Elder? Had he realized that Francis cared not for him? Had he set something up in advance to hinder him?

"Bastard…" Francis murmured darkly, but the realization brought with it a hint of a smile. He\'d known the Elder was getting close to discovering the secrets of mana, but he hadn\'t realized just how close. He was suddenly feeling rather glad to have been able to kill him when he did.

\'Still, I suppose he was more useful than I could have imagined,\' he thought to himself idly, as his rage began to calm, and he looked at the problem in a different light.

The Elder had managed some form of magical interference. Francis didn\'t know what. The field of magic was a vast thing, each power that a person possessed as incomprehensible as the last. It could be that the Elder had awakened to a different power than he – perhaps he had the power to control minds, to manipulate emotions.

That reasoning would make sense. The unwarranted moral that the villagers had. The resilience despite the circumstance… But then, to cast such a spell over so many people, he would have required an immense amount of mana. He could not have done that without a full awakening…

A frown came again. There were too many inconsistencies. What of the despair that he saw forecast earlier? It had all been going swimmingly then. They\'d given themselves to it, and they had fed Ingolsol as a result. If it had kept going like that, to have sacrificed three hundred people for the purest, most delectable despair, Francis had no doubt that Ingolsol would have given him a second blessing.

His first blessing from the Dark God had put him on par with knights of the Fourth Boundary, or so Francis reasoned, given the powers that he felt from them. Inside his own Domain, he was even more powerful than that.

And inside this Domain that he had spent months preparing, using hundreds of his subordinates, and thousands of monsters, and the cooperation of that village Elder… He was even stronger than that. His power likely eclipsed even the Sixth Boundary.

That was not enough for Francis, however.

He could indeed flatten the whole village as though it was a fly in his hand, he could make a whole army burst into a bloody storm if they attacked him there and then… But it was only there and then. It wasn\'t what he wanted. What he wanted were the reins that held Stormfront itself. He wanted the throne, and he wanted a country worthy of his power and his intellect.

One more sacrifice, that was all he needed to reach that state, or so he predicted, given Ingolsol\'s receptivity to his last. He\'d only killed a handful of people then – granted, they had been members of his family. He knew such a thing would hold weight.

That was why he went above and beyond preparing such a grand stage, subtly guiding the Yarmdon towards where they lay, creating a hundred different little stages of tragedy with the kidnapping of the children, and the monsters…

And it was all meant to be for a grand fire, a grand explosion, a beautiful symphony of suffering.

But those notes failed to play, despite his efforts, and with every instance that he gave way to anger, he was losing precious sacrifices. Those three knights too – they were even more precious than the others. The breaking of their souls would surely please Ingolsol far more than the others. But how?

He could kill them, and they would die.