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Given the man's age, that would probably be bad enough to deal with on its own, but considering what happened with Bloodeye's weird transforming powers, Hector had to expect some kind of nasty surprise with this guy, too.

An enormous smokescreen filled the area around Banda, a tactic that the man probably didn't realize would not help him against the Scarf of Amordiin. Hector could still sense the man's location within it just fine.

So Hector riddled him with holes. Or tried to, at least. They didn't entirely take, instead getting stuck partway through his body and oozing out molten iron like blood.

Still, that had probably surprised him. And perhaps Banda learned a lesson from it, too, because he vanished into his own smoke. Becoming his own smoke, Hector realized. Just like he had watched Xuan Sebolt do with the power of pan-rozum.

Only three of Banda's men were still moving, the rest having been caught by Pauline. They were going after the golems and getting quite close. Hector had no way of knowing who they were or how dangerously their abilities might be, but it didn't entirely matter, because the golems still shredded one of them to pieces before being brought down.

And by then, the golem that Banda had destroyed was already regrown and revving up more molten cubes. He started regenerating the downed two, in new locations this time, spread farther out.

All things considered, Hector didn't mind this state of affairs too much. Banda was definitely going to be a problem, but they'd whittled his forces down from twenty-seven to three, including Banda himself. And the bastards were stuck playing a deadly game of whack-a-mole that was clearly not in their favor.