Chapter 1080: Chapter 1080

The massive magic circle Davey had deployed in the sky above the mountain began to rotate slowly, as if a timer had been set in motion.

The people on the mountain couldn’t help but panic at the sight of the warping terrain. It was a natural disaster! With their understanding of the world, there was no way they could make sense of what was happening.

One of the bandits panicked and shouted, “Boss! T-This is bad! The mountain! The mountain—!”

“Shut up! I’ve got eyes too, you know. I already saw it.”

“W-What do we do?! That’s why we said not to mess with Heins Territory.”

“It’s fine. This is within expectations.”

“Shut your trap and go gather everyone! And bring that damned Paxon’s girl, too!”

Watching the others scramble to follow orders, Fogg, the boss, wiped cold sweat from his brow and let out a chilling smile.

“Yeah, it’s about time. Come if you dare.”

Just then, their short-range communication crystal started to transmit static.

“Boss!! We’ve spotted an intru—”

The transmission cut off, and Fogg frowned at the disruption. “Right. This is all part of the plan.”

“Hey, stop right there! Take another step, and I can’t guarantee your life!” said one of the enemies in a cold tone.

As they quickly closed in, Davey turned his head toward Rinne. “Go ahead and rescue all the children they’re holding hostage.”

“Master Davey, does Rinne possess approval to execute lethal judgment?”

“Just subdue them. But that guy halfway up the mountain who won’t shut up about himself? You can take care of him.”

“I’ll carry all of his karma with me.”

As dark energy began to seep from his body, Rinne silently lowered her head.She then vanished in an instant, so quickly that it was as if she had teleported.

Noticing her sudden disappearance, the ones surrounding Davey began to panic.

“D-Don’t come any closer!! If you do, we’ll kill all the hostages!!” they shouted as they pulled out strange-looking weapons.

“Interesting toys you’ve got there.”

They were far too unusual to be in the hands of mere bandit scum who made their living through illegal activities.

“There’s nothing I need to hear from the likes of you. You should know by now why no criminal organizations have managed to take root in Heins Territory.”

Ssss. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel✦fire.net

The magic circles floating in the sky began to twist. At the same time, the men surrounding Davey started to wobble and falter.

“If you’re gonna come at me, you’d better go all-out. Otherwise, it’s just going to be even more pointless.”

Right after he finished with his words, a red arc flashed through the air. It moved so fast they couldn’t even perceive it, slicing through a chunk of them before flying past and carving straight into the massive ridge behind them.

A few seconds later, a deafening sound of destruction rang out as the massive ridgeline split cleanly in two and crumbled apart. The ones caught in the path of the arc spewed blood and collapsed simultaneously.

The crimson blade, Red Ribbon, began to hum with a subtle resonance.

“W-What the hell is this?!”

When dozens of their comrades fell in a spray of blood, those still standing stared in stunned disbelief. It didn’t take long for their faces to turn pale.

“Why are you just standing there?”

At his words, their expressions twisted with fear.

“Thanks to you, I had to kill a citizen of the territory.”

‘And the price for making me do so is going to be steep.’

When Davey slowly drew back Red Ribbon and met their eyes, their faces turned ghostly white.

Those words made Davey chuckle. “Go ahead and try.”

The scent of blood filled the air around the mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Standing at the center of it all, Davey spoke to Gnoass, who had manifested as a small clay doll.

“Bury all the bodies.”

[Hm? Don’t you humans have a saying about making an example of one to warn the others?]

“Don’t need it right now.”

“There are plenty more I could do that with.”

Gnoass fell silent. Then, without another word, he acted.The earth twisted and rumbled as it began to swallow the corpses into the ground.

“Oh, right. There’s a geyser somewhere around here.”

[Indeed. By human standards, it’s very fine water, although I’m not particularly fond of it myself. Especially this spring—it’s been saturated with mana for a long time. Just soaking in it would nourish living beings.]

“Sounds effective. I could make some good money off it.”

“Let’s move, Gnoass. There are still a lot of bastards left to kill.”

Davey reached a hand up toward the magic circles floating high in the sky. As he did, the circles began to collide and resonate, creating an enormous surge of light.

With a quick flick downward, massive clusters of light exploded across the sky all at once. Immediately, the flow of mana across the entire area began to slow down to an almost unnatural crawl.

[Wait... Contractor, are you planning to...?]

He was using Chain Mana Dissipation. It was a technique Davey had once used in his battle against the vampires.

“It’s a modified version of a mana EMP. Simple enough, but once it’s set off, I can’t control the mana flow anymore.”

[Is that really necessary?]

“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t bother. It’s also to stop anyone from escaping.”

Lightly spinning Red Ribbon in his hand, Davey strode into the forest where the mana had been frozen.

“Gaaa!! Please! Please, spare me!!”

“My body... My body!!”

Blinding white flashes streaked across the sky at incredible speeds before crashing down to the ground. The lights seemed intangible, yet everyone struck by them let out horrified screams as they collapsed to the ground, unable to move.

Spears made of searing light then rained down on them like sitting ducks.

Naturally, the ones who survived twisted and shouted in pure terror.

“M-Monster! You monster bitch!!”

“Damn it, why won’t this thing work?! Useless piece of junk!!”

The men guarding the mountain stronghold, desperate after their strange staves failed them, quickly switched to their usual melee weapons. However, their resistance was ultimately meaningless.

With their special weapons powered by unique mana wavelengths broken, they were no better than ordinary humans. Sure, a few among them were Expert-level or higher, but none of them could possibly withstand Rinne’s assault.

It didn’t take long for the entire stronghold to be completely wiped out. Treading upon the ruins, Rinne slowly approached the last man standing, holding a dark-colored crowbar in her hand.

“M-M-Monster... please... spare m—”

Blood splattered as the man’s body crumpled to the ground.

Rinne, her face as emotionless as ever, calmly activated the communications device and said, “Master Davey. Rinne has an operational circuit error.”

“Rinne estimates total enemy death. Rinne evaluates miscalculated operational error lowly.”

He knew it was an obvious lie. She hadn’t shown a shred of mercy from the beginning. She had simply slaughtered every last one of them without hesitation.

- You know, I told you not to kill a single... ah, whatever. Good job.

Davey had a lot more to say, but he didn’t voice it and simply ended the call. Rinne silently turned away from the mountain of corpses and walked off.

She soon arrived at a spot where a massive geyser was gushing from the ground. The erupting geyser had eventually formed a large pool nearby, with some of the water pouring down like a waterfall.

Standing silently before the steaming pool, she slowly stepped barefoot into the hot water. Her bandaged, pale feet didn’t even flush red despite the heat.

Wading in up to her knees, she quietly looked up at the falling water, then opened her mouth.

She began gulping down the hot spring water without hesitation. Her expression remained perfectly blank as she drank.

After a long while, she finally wiped her mouth with her pale arm and muttered, “Rich mana, but strange taste.”

She then pulled a small pouch from her waist. Opening it, she scattered some powder into the pool. Stepping back into position, she opened her mouth again. The powder dissolved into the water, tinting it a unique color.

Despite her bizarre behavior, her face remained as blank as ever. After a while, her body slightly shivered. “New taste. Rinne rates it highly.”

The pouch had been a gift from Yuria Helishana, the leader of elves of Heins Forest, and the self-proclaimed connoisseur of bizarre flavors.

Though Rinne was a bit different from Yuria, their strange taste radar was uncanny in its similarity and bizarreness.

Davey didn’t scold Rinne for her reckless behavior. Perhaps it was to avoid burdening her with karma, or maybe for some other reason. Either way, it brought out a sigh from him.

He kept his focus squarely on the massive mountain stronghold ahead. The gang had a total of seven strongholds across the mountain. With six having already been wiped out, the one in front of him was all that remained.

Inside were about fifty men. In total, the gang had totaled over two hundred members.

They knew Davey was coming, but thanks to Gnoass, they couldn’t flee. With the magic circles freezing the surrounding mana, they couldn’t pull any other tricks either. All they could do was hole up and try to wait it out, desperately racking their brains to think of a way out.

“D-Don’t come any closer!! One more step and these brats are dead!!” one of the men shouted, pressing a sharp dagger against the neck of a trembling child.

“Waaah! Please help us!!”

The terrified children broke into tears with loud wails, while the gang members kept their tense eyes locked on Davey.

He gave them no response.

“You monster! There were a hundred and fifty of us at the other strongholds! Did you kill every last one of them?!”

“Yeah. Killed them all to the last.”

“You monster! You hypocrite! How can someone who calls himself a saint—someone who’s supposed to value life—kill people without a shred of guilt?! What do you think human life is, you—”

The air around them suddenly grew heavy.

“Because of you lot, I had to take the life of one of my people.”

The man’s face twisted with rage. “So what?!”

“Let me spell it out for you. To me, the life of one citizen of the territory outweighs the lives of all two hundred of you. So at this point, you should just save yourself the effort and die quietly.”

“Murderer? That’s a bit harsh.” Smiling coldly, Davey slowly lifted Red Ribbon.

Fogg, the gang’s boss, panicked and pressed his dagger even harder against the child's neck. “D-Don’t mov—”

Accompanied by a brief sound, his arm was cleanly severed and flew through the air.

Davey then calmly retrieved Blue Ribbon with his other hand and began walking toward them. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave at least one of you alive.”

“This... This can’t be happening!!” Fogg screamed desperately, rolling on the ground. “What the hell are you doing?! You said you’d help us if we were in danger!!”

Once his desperate cry rang out, someone began to walk out from further inside the stronghold. Unlike the regular gang members, the individual was a young man who exuded a very dangerous aura.

He wore a relaxed smile, but there was a strange madness flickering deep within his eyes. “Is that him? Is he the strongest one in this land?”

“Then once we deal with him, we’ll officially be the strongest on this continent, right?”

His words and actions suggested he could barely contain his own strength from bursting out in a fight.

Davey, unimpressed, asked with dull eyes, “You’re not a human from Tionis, are you?”

The boy clapped his hands with a grin. “Correct! Originally, you weren’t even our target. We’re looking for someone.”

“Yeah. Someone named Aria.”

There was only one person Davey knew of by that name: someone connected to the avatar of Goddess Freyja that had been on her vacation.

The guys were human, but Davey could tell there was something different about them. They weren’t from Tionis, but they also didn’t feel entirely foreign. It was almost like they belonged to another world, yet still somehow fitted in.

“The others who came with me said they sensed her presence in your territory.”

It was becoming clear that the waters were far murkier than anyone expected.

Davey quickly realized that guys shouldn’t exist. Powers like theirs shouldn’t exist either.

Interrupting the pondering Davey, the boy said, “Hey, wanna hear a riddle?”

Leaving the gang members behind, the boy strolled out casually and slowly drew the longsword slung across his back.

A strange black flame began to flicker along the edge of the blade, but it wasn’t mana. Neither was it spirit mana, holy power, or devil mana.

It didn’t feel like a simple ability of a Special One either—something about it felt fundamentally off.

The bigger question was how they knew about the avatar of Goddess Freyja, and why they were looking for her.

The boy, still wearing a relaxed smile, spun the sword once and asked in a leisurely tone, “How many seconds do you think you’ll last?”

Davey took a single step forward in response.

In that instant, nearly without any warning, the boy was suddenly right in front of Davey, his sword poised at his throat.

“Not even one second, huh?” He chuckled and continued to talk with a smile on his face. “Humans are weaker than they think. No matter how strong you are, once you're dead, it's all over.”

Still smiling, the boy thrust the blade forward without hesitation. “Don’t hold too much of a grudge. It’s nothing personal—I’m just keeping a promise, and that happened to put us on opposite sides.”

The boy became still for just a moment. Everyone watching also froze.

The boy clearly had complete confidence in the strange power that allowed him to instantly close the distance. However, his blade cloaked in black flames was stopped before it could even touch Davey.

Confusion spread across his face.

Davey calmly grabbed the trembling sword with his bare hand. “Good timing. I had some business with you, too.”

The boy’s power was certainly unusual, but in terms of pure hierarchy, it was nothing Davey couldn’t handle.

When Davey seized the sword enveloped in black flames, the boy widened his eyes in disbelief. “Dumbass! The moment you touch that fire—”

A formless current shot out from his fingertips, devouring the black flames in an instant. The consumed flames were scattered into nothingness in the air.

The black fire had disappeared so quickly that the boy didn’t know how to react. “What the hell is going on?”

Davey pressed a curled finger against the boy’s forehead and calmly said, “I heard that your buddies headed toward Heins Territory not long ago.”

The boy, still confused, stared at Davey.

“Mind telling me more about that?”

Seeing his casual smile, the boy trembled violently before he shouted, “W-What are you all doing?! Attack! Attack him!!”

He received no answer. When he turned to look, he saw that every gang member who had been guarding his back was already down.

They had all died without a scratch, never realizing how or why.

Seeing that, the boy began trembling even harder, his expression shifting from confusion to full-blown denial. “W-What the hell are you?”

“That’s what I should be asking you. What are you?”

The boy gritted his teeth hard at the implicit accusation.

Now that Davey had come into direct contact with him, his suspicions were solidified into certainty. The transformation was so eerily convincing that it could fool anyone for a moment. “You’re no human. Just pretending to be one, eh?”

When the boy instinctively tried to leap away, Davey reached out his hand.

Red Ribbon had come flying in from a dead angle, piercing straight through the boy’s heart. The boy tried desperately to summon his black flames to defend himself, but Red Ribbon beat him to the punch.

“See? You’re not human. There’s no way a real human would still be standing with a hole pierced through their heart.”

It wasn’t that he was undead, just that it wasn’t a fatal blow to him.

Davey had seen something like it before—it was back when he’d adjusted Perserque’s memories and witnessed the rift that had appeared over Heins Territory.

The power felt similar to that rift’s energy, but also mixed with something else. The boy standing before him was something like the agglomerated mass of a spiritual entity.

At the same time, a loud explosion echoed in Heins Territory.

Perserque lightly twirled her staff, which hummed with energy, eyes narrowed at the beastfolk girl who had suddenly appeared before her.

“Hey, ugly. You right there. You smell kinda similar to the one we’re looking for.”

“Illyna,” Perserque began.

Meanwhile, in another part of the territory, Aeria flinched in shock, and in front of her stood a pure white rabbit, its muscles twitching as if ready to strike.

“Ugh, gross. This isn’t the right one. She’s definitely somewhere inside this territory though,” a small, frail-looking child muttered with a scowl.

“Hey, you there! Is there a woman named Aria here? If you just tell me, I won’t hurt you.”

Aeria only looked back at him, confused and wary.

“But if you know and don’t answer...” The kid flashed a sinister grin, madness flickering in his eyes. “Well, in that case, I guess I’ll have to start breaking things.”

The small boy instantly charged at Aeria. It didn't last long before the pure white Killer Rabbit twitched its muscles and snatched him midair without hesitation.

Killer Rabbit slammed the boy down onto the ground with overwhelming force. Normally, even a Master-level being wouldn't be able to withstand that level of strength. However, the boy’s form scattered like light and reappeared a distance away, completely unharmed.

“E-Evangeline?! No! It’s too dangerous, you shouldn’t be here!”

“I’m not leaving you, Mother!”

Holding Twilight in one hand, Evangeline instantly arrived at Aeria’s side, her expression dark with anger.

“Man, what a parade of meddlers. Oh well. Since more might show up, I guess I’ll just put up a barrier around the territory.”

The boy didn’t feel like a normal being at all.

“Miss, could you move aside? I just want to ask some questions, that’s all.”

“Why would I trust someone who’s already killed our guards while claiming you just want to ask questions?”

The sudden attack had thrown Heins Territory into chaos and confusion.

High atop the tallest tower in the lord’s manor, a woman calmly scribbled words onto a tablet.

[Hang in there, Davey.]

She then disappeared into thin air, unfazed by the barrier the boy had just erected.