The moment he had that thought, Irik froze. The cognitive dissonance of his recent behavior caught up to him, throwing his thoughts into turmoil.
He had honestly gotten carried away. In allowing his memories of Irik to take over in order to fight more efficiently, he had allowed parts of the dead noble's character to take over, overriding parts of his consciousness.
He didn't even klnow there was a risk in using the Irick part of his memory. Which made sense, there was a lot he didn't know.
'I'm in control of this body!' He screamed internally.
In response, the white flame in his heart pulsed, and in the next moment he had a stray thought.
'What does it matter anyway? I'm being efficient in killing. That's all that matters right now, the rest can be dealt with later'
"NOOOO!" He shouted, this time out loud. Making the warriors around him pay attention. He was standing over the body of one of the most dangerous combatants on the battlefield.
All of their fellow fighters had given the clearly superhuman freaks a wide berth, in order to avoid being caught up in their fight.
After all, honor is nice. Being alive is nicer. None of them were particularly interested in giving their lives for the cause.
But Irik looked vulnerable and distracted. So much so that one of the bandits decided to take a chance.
It was one of the archers. This particular archer had managed to recover some of the arrows that were strewn all over the battlefield during their fight with a soldier. Therefore, their quiver had a couple of arrows.
He was quite a sharp warrior, and one of the more trained ones. In truth, he had once been part of the escort of a noble, and had been cast out for coveting what wasn't for him.
Such stories weren't rare, but they stoked the young man's hatred for the system that had caused him such pain, and those who benefited from it. He wanted to kill this young master.
The archer disengaged with the battered soldier he had been fighting in close combat with and leaped back and in one smooth motion, unslung the bow with one arm and retrieved the arrow with the other.
It barely took a couple of seconds to notch the arrow and take aim.
The subsequent events, however did not go as planned. While the arrow rang true as the aim was honestly quite impressive, Irik instantly sensed it.
With an internal pulse of the rampaging white flame he reacted, grabbed the arrow by its shaft and spun around. He made use of the centripetal force from his enhanced body making a complete 360 degree turn and let the arrow loose.
The arrow flew like a white-hot streak of death. In that brief moment of contact, Irik had managed to not only augment and set the arrow ablaze, but he had also aimed true.
The arrow stuck right in the visor of the leather helmet the archer was donning, right in their dominant eye. The flaming arrow then proceeded to explode, as the energy contained in it was too much for it to contain.
This had the unfortunate, (or fortunate depending on how you see it) effect of exploding the head of said archer.
Such a gruesome death dissuaded any opportunistic individuals from trying to take advantage. If he was like that at range, what chance did anyone stand at melee?
However, just because the grunts couldn't take advantage of the opportunity didn't mean they were out of solutions. One of the faster and more ambitious of the bandits had managed to stay mostly out of the fray.
He was nicknamed Roach, because he had a penchant for survival when most others lost their lives.
He was the ultimate opportunist and when Roach saw that their target had awakened but was incapacitated by something weird, he assumed it was a poison from the battle with the Little Snake who he had slain.
And so he ran. He knew of an excellent awakened who loved preying on the weak. He also knew he could get some juicy rewards if he brought this information to him in a timely manner.
He ran to the head of the column. That was the primary target of the Awakened and higher ranked, because that is where all the most powerful and most important people were gathered. This particular Boss was certain to be there as well.
In the meantime Irik had managed to somewhat put himself under control. He felt like the power that had awakened in him was more in line with the original owner of the body and so was amplifying those traits in him.
It was almost like the dead noble was mounting a resurrection in him, because the part of his mind that had been occupied by the memories and experiences of the noble was getting more and more lifelike.
It was even responding to him!
While he couldn't say that it was the level of a second consciousness, he could easily see how he could end up in such a situation.
He was dangerously close to having a split personality with some magical spices.
His heart pounded as a sudden pang of fear hit him. He did not want to end up with a split personality, or worse, assimilated instead.
He had gotten a boon in being isekaid, and was gonna be done in by his own power? Not a chance!
Unfortunately for him, the white fire seemed to be tied to his emotion. Every time his emotion spiked, his flame spiked as well, as did the aspects of Irik over Rick.
And so even his determination only sunk him deeper into the quagmire. By this time he was fully kneeling next to the corpse of the rogue known as Little Snake.
By all accounts it looked as if even though Rick had won, the Little Snake had still dealt an awful amount of damage to him.
But his mind was far from the battlefield. Rather, it was more accurate to say he was stuck in a battlefield of his own.
He was almost out of his wits end when he though of something. Hadn't he encountered a similar situation before? A situation where a flame tried to take over is being and hijack his body?
How had he solved the issue back then? By pitting two flames against each other!
But the Black flame was nowhere to be seen now. The battle and the awakening had only awakened one of his flames, and he was beginning to think that these two were not meant to be separate at all.
Rather, they worked best as a set! And the key to solving his predicament must surely lie with the other half of the set!