"You should not have robbed the same town where I was stopping off," Aldous whispered towards the man, who could only gasp at him, choking on his own life blood. Realizing that he was trying to rationalize his actions before they were even done, Aldous crushed the anger within him out with a will.
"Yuki! Mark!" Aldous' ears piqued up at the sounds of yelling and cursing coming from behind and he quickly bent his knees on the ready for that inevitable screeching of door hinges being opened. When they came, he shot straight up with Seal Floater, slightly aware that the one named Mark had left his bloody mark on the sole of Aldous' boot, but Aldous was more alert about the fact that he had just been seen flying off from the dead body of a bandit by the rest of his fellows. "Shit! It must be that bloody mage from before!"
Aldous listened for the right words to come out, the wind halted from rushing around as he stopped at his designated optimal combat distance, looking down at the five bandits dispersing across the deck,. They were no longer dressed in their disguising black robbery gear, instead arming themselves in brown leather armour, unsuitable for sea-work, but very suitable for combat. They had been expecting him, perhaps with incredible enthusiasm, from the looks some of them were giving him, undoubtedly brewing with fury, while others were heading for other parts of the ship. One in particular, a female with her long hair tied in a ponytail to the side, was heading for the wheel fixed prominently at the stern.
"Shoot the bastard down!" Once the female had her hands on the wheel, she gave off a cry that prompted three of the bandits to pull out flintlock pistols, aiming at the only target that was worth shooting.
"Tch," Aldous spat as he jerked his right leg, prompting three shimmering circular bars of light, criss-crossed by the rings supporting a globe, to form around the tip of his foot. His activation took a little too long and the cockiest of the three bandits managed to pull off a shot before Aldous could avoid it. The loud bang of the pistol was only background noise compared to the bee-like whizzing of the bullet passing just under Aldous' left ear, but before it reached that, Aldous gritted his teeth as his left cheek exploded in pain, the bullet having managed to scrap an already bloodying cut across it.
"BRINGER DARK!" Aldous called out in the midst of his pain, twisting his foot in against the solid air to push him off towards the side. Just as he was about to launch himself, the three circles begun to shrink into a tiny ball at the very tip of Aldous' foot and then, with all of that concentrated energy, the ball spurted into a black cone, propelling Aldous and sending the world flying about him in the briefest of supersonic instances. In that moment, he no longer had the time to care about the other two bullets that clearly sailed through where he was a moment ago, missing entirely. In the faster-than-sound speed, he couldn't even hear the pistol shots. In that moment, his perception of time slowed down by adrenaline, all he could hear was silence as the world seemed to stretch around his speeding body.
Frankly, in the past, he had little time or will to try out this new spell he had found from a rotting book in an old, dilapidated library left abandoned in the wilderness of Spooky Forest, but as the sun turned into a streaking comet of orange fire and the snaking waves of the clouds blurred into a monotonous splash, Aldous knew, from the muscles straining from the speed and the cloth on him nearly tearing at their seams, that Formula #20 was not the most pleasant of high-speed movement spells. As he instinctively drove his foot into the solid air to call upon whatever little friction his Seal Floater could give him, Aldous realized that the lack of a stopping mechanism in the spell made it difficult to manage, even though it faded away just as quickly as it had appeared. Initially, he had expected himself to be 7 metres to the side, but instead, he had gone a little further than that, about, from the steam clouds evaporating from red-hot friction even in solid air, 15 metres.
"C'MON, WE ARE SETTING SAIL! LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!" And that was 8 more meters than he wanted to be away from the boat now starting itself up, as he could hear from the groaning engines and the humming of energy lacrima powering up, turning its bow towards the dock entrance and the open seas.
"Not on my watch!" Aldous yelled with as much mock-bravado as he could summon up, as he extended out four fingers, sending off four Breach Line straight for the boat now running forty meters away from him. He had no one target in particular, just hoping that he could scare them to sacrifice straight-line speed in return for evasive manoeuvres. As the black lines, a deep contrast to the rays of the sun, bit and chewed into the ship's floor, one of them in particular managed to strike one of the bandits who was trying, what Aldous could guess from the lever mechanism he was turning, to pull up the anchor. It blazed its way right through his arm, leaving a smouldering hole where his biceps would be, and as he gaped at what gruesomely looks like a giant and twisted bite mark into his arm, one of the bandit shooters rushed up to take over the anchor, while the other hooked his arms around the now screaming man, pulling towards the door leading to the boat's inner sections.
As the boat begun to veer right and left, just as Aldous hoped (he cringed again), he would wonder later on whether that man had drowned in the torrents swallowing the boat's wreckage or he was instantly killed in the blast that was to come. Either way, he was going to die. Aldous knew it then and so without hesitation in his movement, he extended out his arms to his sides, sweeping them around in front of him in a circular motion. He did not flinch at the appearance of two thick-edged circular seals, with the bigger one joined to the smaller one by a bar of intricate and thick runes. As the Formula begun to pitch itself down to angle its face perfectly towards the boat below, Aldous knew that at 40 meters and growing, the boat now at the deep end of the docks was beginning to reach the maximum possible range of Formula #21, but sadly, it is at the maximum range that spells, with their users utterly focused due to the lack of a permissible margin of error, are at their most frighteningly accurate. He continued to aim with that same focus.
Enemy
Quick Bandits (5/10, 1 injured)
Status
Health:
MP at 44%
Seal Floater Duration at 2 posts.
2 Bringer Dark usages left before damage to body.
Aiming Formula #21.
Cooldown
Formula 1s x 2 (2 posts)
Fomula 1s x 4 (3 posts)
Formula 8 x 1 (3 posts)