Chapter : 220

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He delivered a powerful, lightning-fast thrust that sent a third magician flying backward into the mud. Then he pivoted and slammed the butt of his spear into a fourth attacker's mask, shattering it completely. The frontline of the Hollow was crumbling. The dark mages were falling back, surprised by the ferocity of this lone warrior.

"Stay behind me!" Paul shouted to his people. "Do not let them break through!" For a moment, just a brief, desperate moment, it looked like the Chief might actually hold the line.

Then the leader of the Hollow stepped out from the shadows.

He was taller than the others, his robes darker, his mask adorned with thin, jagged lines of crimson. He walked forward slowly, casually, as if he had all the time in the world. He did not carry a weapon. He did not need one.

The leader tilted his head, observing the chaos through his crimson-lined mask. Then he laughed. It was a cruel, bubbly sound, like boiling mud popping and splattering. It made the skin crawl.

"A spear," the leader said, his voice dripping with lazy amusement. "How quaint. How wonderfully, painfully primitive."

Paul's jaw tightened. He adjusted his grip on the RabbitKing Spear and faced the leader. "You have attacked a peaceful people. You have burned our homes. You will answer for this."

"No," the leader said softly. "I do not think I will."

He reached slowly into the folds of his dark robe and pulled out a card. It was black, completely black, with a faint, sickly glow pulsing from its surface. The edges of the card seemed to drink in the light around it, creating a small, swirling halo of darkness.

The leader held the card between two fingers. He began to chant. The words were not in any language the Dimitri tribe had ever heard. They were harsh, guttural, and wrong. Each syllable seemed to make the air heavier, the light dimmer, and the ground tremble.

Paul did not wait. He charged.

The RabbitKing Spear blazed with its full silver glow as Paul launched himself at the leader with every ounce of strength and speed he possessed. The thrust was perfect. A killing blow aimed directly at the leader's heart.

The leader did not move. He simply crushed the black card in his fist.

The earth split open.

A colossal, horrifying black skeleton erupted from the dirt right in front of Paul. It was enormous, at least three times the height of a man. Its bones were not white. They were black as midnight, radiating a toxic, mind-numbing aura that pressed down on everything around it like a physical weight.

Paul's spear struck the giant skeleton's ribcage. The sacred, ancestral blade bounced off harmlessly with a ringing, metallic clang. Not even a scratch. The dark bones were impossibly hard, as if they had been forged from pure, concentrated despair.

The skeleton moved. It raised one massive, bony hand and swatted Paul aside like a man swatting a fly. The blow sent the Chief hurtling through the air. His body crashed into a thick tree trunk with a sickening crack. The RabbitKing Spear flew from his grip and shattered against the ground, its silver glow dying.

Paul slid down the trunk and crumpled at its base. His eyes were still open, but his body would not move. Blood ran from a deep gash on his forehead. The broken shaft of his sacred weapon lay in the mud a few feet away.

"The Chief is down!" a warrior screamed. Panic ripped through the Dimitri defenders like wildfire. The villagers who had been fighting bravely began to falter. Their spears trembled. Their steps grew uncertain.

The Hollow leader raised his hand. The dark purple miasma surged forward, rolling over the village like a tidal wave of nightmares. The black skeleton stood motionless behind him, a towering monument of absolute, inescapable dread.

And then the mind control hit.

The purple fog touched the villagers, and their eyes changed. The warm, brown irises were swallowed by a sickly, corrupted dark purple energy. Their expressions went blank. Their weapons dropped from limp fingers. Their bodies stopped fighting and stood perfectly still, like puppets whose strings had been cut and then reattached to a new master.

One by one, the proud warriors of the Dimitri tribe fell under the Hollow's Black Magic. Their minds were no longer their own. Their will was no longer their own. They belonged to the dark mages now, body and soul.

In a matter of minutes, the entire Dimitri tribe had been enslaved. The last sound in the village was the cruel, bubbly laughter of the Hollow leader, echoing through the purple fog like poison seeping into a wound.

---

The village that had been full of laughter and cooking smoke just an hour ago was now completely silent. The only sounds were the soft, shuffling footsteps of the enslaved tribesmen and the low, crackling hum of the dark purple miasma that clung to everything like a second skin.

The Dimitri people moved like sleepwalkers. Their eyes glowed with that sickly purple light, their faces completely empty of emotion. They did not speak. They did not resist. They simply shuffled forward in whatever direction the Hollow's magic pulled them, like leaves floating on a dark, poisoned river.

A young mother walked past the smoldering remains of her own home. Her baby was not in her arms. The child had been taken by another enslaved villager and placed in a line with the other children near the great tree's roots. The mother did not look back. She could not. Her mind was not her own anymore.

An old elder, a woman named Tula who had taught three generations of Dimitri children how to identify medicinal plants, was now hauling heavy stones from the riverbed alongside the strongest warriors. Her thin arms trembled under the weight, but her purple-glowing eyes showed no pain. No exhaustion. No awareness at all.

The Hollow magicians moved through the village freely now, kicking aside broken spears and stepping over fallen cooking pots. A few of them laughed quietly to each other, making casual comments about how easily the "savages" had fallen.

One of them was roasting a small animal over the still-burning remains of the grain store, treating the destruction of an entire people's home like a campfire convenience. Another was flipping through a Dimitri prayer book he had pulled from the shrine, snickering at the simple drawings of forest spirits.

The leader stood in the center of the village, his arms folded behind his back, surveying his new domain with calm satisfaction. The colossal black skeleton had sunk back into the earth after the battle, its purpose fulfilled. It would return when it was needed again.

"Gather them in the clearing near the altar site," the leader commanded one of his subordinates. His voice was casual, almost bored, as if he were giving instructions for organizing a storage room rather than enslaving an entire tribe. "The ritual preparations must begin immediately. We are on a schedule."

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