"You! You traitors! I will have my revenge on all of you! I will torture you and make you regret betraying me!" Roland screamed.
Then Roland's face did something that Chronos hadn't thought was possible, it contorted until it looked like a demon's and turned as red as blood.
Wait, was he actually bleeding from his nose? That didn't look good.
Chronos watched as Roland continued to rant about revenge and how great he was going to be as the fat man behind him began to realize just how insane he was.
But as he continued yelling Chronos began to grow concerned, he hadn't been this crazy the last time they had met. At least he had acted with some level of decorum and fought openly once the battle had started. What had changed that caused him to lose control like this?
Looking at the other men Chronos said, "I think there's something wrong with his brain, bleeding from the nose and these insane actions aren't natural. You should take him in for a health check-up."
"Shut up! I'm not wrong, I'm not!" Roland began to get hysterical as the men of the second order started looking at him with concern.
One of them tried to approach him to calm him down but then black mist began to come out of his mouth and his eyes rolled back as he let out an inhuman scream.
"Gh..Gaaaah!"
He swung his sword wildly, cutting the man's arm off in one chop. As the arm fell to the ground everyone in the room froze for a second before chaos erupted.
Half of the paladins ran for it before a patrol came while the half that looked like they had been in too many bar fights rushed forward and tried to pin Roland to the floor. Unfortunately, whatever was happening to him greatly increased his strength allowing him to throw them away like ragdolls.
Bodies went flying as Chronos and Gregory jumped up to the second floor escaping the chaos temporarily.
"You escaped as well?" Gregory raised an eyebrow at him.
"There's not enough room for all of us to fight down there. I'll wait until there's more room before interfering." Chronos commented.
They watched as a paladin was thrown through a rotting wall by Roland and more mist began to pour out of his body. His eyes had turned blood red as his skin began to crack and bleed.
"What do you think he took to become like that? A drug or maybe some type of magic?" Chronos curiously asked as he felt a familiar anger begin to build up in his body.
He was starting to have a bad idea about what was going on, and it didn't bode well for the Leighla Kingdom or any nation in this world.
"I don't know but it definitely has something to do with the devils, that black mist is miasma." Gregory confirmed his suspicion as a large man was thrown up to the second floor.
"Looks like his strength was tripled but he lacks any control or form. Hah, here I was looking forward to a good fight, but this is going to be easy." Chronos complained.
"Then get down there and stop him, I'll call for a patrol to take him in." Gregory vanished through the skylight after saying that.
Giving a tired sigh Chronos jumped down. Roland whipped around at the sound of his landing, upon seeing Chronos he seemed to recognize him and charged.
"AAAAAHH!"
Letting out an even louder scream he became even wilder as he swung his sword in large arcs which Chronos easily stepped inside of. Catching his arm Chronos performed a perfect shoulder throw slamming Roland into the ground, but Roland jumped up on all fours and started skittering around.
"Now you're acting like a bug? I understand that that might be your true form but at least pick up your sword. You've gone through all of that training to wield it after all." Chronos mocked him.
Even in his delirious state he seemed to understand that Chronos was mocking him and became angrier.
"GAAAHH!"
Leaping at Chronos he tried to claw at his face, but Chronos ducked under his arm and delivered a gut punch knocking the wind out of him. Grabbing his arm, he put Roland in a chicken wing hold and pinned him to the ground.
"There, now hold still unti... ngh."
Crick crk!
Roland was using brute strength to break Chronos's hold on him and was breaking his body in the process.
"Nnm, stop struggling, you're not going to escape from me. Even after you took whatever it was, I'm still stronger than you." He grunted as he tried to put him in a double chicken wing.
Roland was flailing about making it hard to pin him down but fighting him wasn't that difficult.
Crack!
Roland finally managed to get out of Chronos's grasp by breaking his own arm. He rapidly crawled across the floor with three limbs as his arm dragged uselessly on the ground. He glared at Chronos while Chronos circled around him, slowly backing Roland into a corner that he couldn't escape from.
"Calm down, you're going to kill yourself at this rate. See you're already coughing up blood." Chronos said as blood leaked from Roland's mouth.
"This would be so much easier if I didn't want to capture you alive. I need to know where you got whatever did this to you, I don't want to see other people being affected by it." Chronos muttered in frustration.
As he was slowly backing Roland into a corner Roland was glancing around looking desperate. Then he came close to a body on the ground and suddenly jumped on the fallen paladin biting into his flesh.
"Aah! Get him off me!" Screamed the paladin, who had been playing dead, as he tried to pry him off.
Chronos rushed forward, punching Roland in the side he rescued the paladin who was now missing a chunk of his arm. Chronos watched in both horror and mild fascination as Roland's arm twisted back into place and healed itself.
"Huh, that's new. None of the other devil beasts I've fought were capable of that, this just became trickier." Chronos muttered as he felt Roland's power slightly increase.
He was starting to wonder if he should just kill the man and study his corpse when a group of paladins burst into the room.
"Don't move! You're all under arrest until further notice!" Yelled their leader.
"Gaah!" Roland dove at them pinning the front one to the ground.
Chronos leapt forward and put him into a headlock. "Don't let him bite you! He gains power through consuming flesh!"
The paladins pulled their pinned friend out from under them before grabbing Roland's arms and legs pinning them to the ground. They grunted as Roland struggled against them before their leader cast a binding spell on him. With a flash several bands of light appeared around Roland's arms and legs.
"Get off him now." The leader said while concentrating.
Jumping off Chronos watched as the bands of light pulled his arms and legs against his body and grew larger until several bands crossed his body.
Roland screamed and struggled against the bands for several minutes before the light flashed again and another band appeared around his head. Once it appeared his consciousness slowly faded until he passed out.
"Finally, that took longer than expected." The leader passed control to three of the others for safety then turned to Chronos. "Young man, I'll need you to come with me, I need to know what happened here."
Chronos was looking around in confusion when the leader spoke to him.
"Sure thing but there should be several other knights and a fat man from the underworld running around here somewhere. Most of them bolted through the front door when the fight began but I didn't see where the fat man ran off to." Chronos replied.
"We'll search for them later, for now please follow me back to the guard station."
"Alright."
Leaving the building Chronos found Gregory waiting for them outside.
"You were fast." Chronos commented.
"The guards were close by."
"Good. Trying to pin down Roland was a bit problematic."
Gregory wondered how Chronos would struggle to pin down one man but decided it was better not to ask. He would find out during the interrogation anyways.
As they reached the main road, they were forced to stop by the sounds of battle coming from bakery road. At the end of bakery road were two women fighting several thugs and a couple of guard paladins.
"What in the world?" The patrol leader muttered as he began making his way towards them.
"Hahaha, I forgot about that. Did you not warn them Gregory?" Chronos asked.
"I did but this idiot didn't believe me when I said some of the paladins were involved." Gregory pointed at the patrol leader.
The patrol leader scowled as he picked up his pace.
They arrived just in time to see Sariah use curses to make several thugs too weak to fight and Lyla was force feeding a cake to a pinned paladin.