Chapter 12: MassacreIt had been a test. I wanted to see how Zhao Linghua would react when faced with such a situation.

  Would she first decide to investigate their identities? Would she instead decide to quietly pass, not alerting them of her presence? Or would she, as she did now just massacre them without confirming their identity? And if she did massacre them, how would she do that?

  After I saw it, I evaluated her decision-making skills outside of combat to be one out of ten and her decision-making skills in combat to be eight out of ten.

  Thinking about giving her a lecture ter, I approached the bandit.

  "You fucker! Do you know who you've offended?", the bandit screamed.

  "No, but please do tell."

  "You've offended Emperor Zheng Tianming!"

  "Oh no! Anyway, who's that?"

  Asking that, I turned toward Zhao Linghua. Hearing that, she nearly face-palmed.

  "He's the emperor of this country!"

  "Oh! And why would the oh-so-great emperor station you here as bandits?"

  Saying that I turned toward the bandit again.

  "As if I would tell you that!"

  "Hehe. Don't worry, you'll be spitting the truth out soon enough.", I said with a grin before writing in the air.

  {The one before me won't release a sound.}

  {The one before me will feel unimaginable pain until he's willing to tell me everything I wish to know.}

  With that, his body contorted. He screamed from pain, but no matter how much he screamed, no sound would come out.

  And so, five minutes ter he stopped screaming and I released the soundless magic and wrote a new magic.

  {I will be notified every time the one before me lies.}

  "Now tell me: Why would the emperor send you to this pce?"

  "We're searching for the runaway princess."

  "Just you guys?"

  "Our allies are nearby."

  "How strong is your strongest ally?"

  "It's a four-core warrior."

  "Oh, then let's have some fun with them. Bring us there."

  "Ok."

  After some walking, we reached a camp. Seeing the camp, I started to write in the air.

  {A barrier encompasses the entire camp in front of me. Nobody can leave the barrier without my permission.}

  With that, the scene was ready for a massacre.

  "Let's have some fun, shall we!", I said with a crazed grin and then charged straight into the direction of the camp.

  Meanwhile, at the camp, some people were keeping watch. Well, at least they were pretending.

  "Ha, I won again!" - Watchman One

  "Ya must be cheatin' I tell ya! Ain't no way someone's got so much luck!" - Watchman Two

  "Ts, ts, ts, you just won't accept that you're worse." - Watchman One

  "What did ya say?!" - Watchman Two

  Screaming this, Watchman Two jumped up and froze.

  He could see a smoke cloud moving toward the camp.

  Surprised he rubbed his eyes. But even then, not much changed. What's more, the smoke cloud was moving rapidly and had already crossed a quarter of the distance in such a short time.

  "Hey, what's wrong?" - Watchman One

  Watchman Two just silently pointed at the dust cloud. At this, Watchman One turned around and had a simir reaction to Watchman Two.

  "Ain't that an intruder?"

  Watchman Two finally pointed out. Thanks to that they snapped out of their confusion and both started to scream.

  "Intruder!"

  By now the dust cloud had nearly reached them and before Watchman Two could react, his perspective suddenly shifted rapidly until he could see two headless bodies. With that, he departed from this world for good.

  MC Pov:

  'Aaaah! Exhirating!'

  It was satisfying, cutting through their bodies like a hot knife through butter. At first, I only went for the heads. That was until I noticed how much fun bisecting their chest or torso was.

  From then on I kept variating. Sometimes I halved their skulls, sometimes I beheaded them, sometimes I split them from the shoulder to the torso with a diagonal cut. It was the one I enjoyed the most aside from bisecting them from top to bottom.

  And so, as I moved about, soon there was only one person in my immediate surroundings. It was the four-core Warrior. It seemed like he stayed to give the others time to escape. It was his bad luck tho, that I had already deployed a barrier.

  'Sorry, not sorry. Guess, I'm letting them go anyway. After all the barrier was just for formalities.'

  Well, I didn't care much for his reasons. I just wanted to continue my massacre so I ran toward him and swung my sword down. He tried to use his greatsword to deflect the blow but didn't expect my overwhelming strength and more importantly, my ability to use aura, compressed mana that when infused into a Weapon can increase both its durability and its traits like sharpness or heaviness.

  Only somebody with at least five cores can use aura because four cores aren't capable of producing the necessary pressure. Much less circles.

  I forcefully broke through, cutting through the Warrior's greatsword cleanly before bisecting him in half.

  'Ah, that was satisfying! Now, let's deal with the aftermath.'

  "Ah, fuck, because of the fight with that guy, I can't hold up the Mana consumption for the barrier."

  Saying that to pretty much no one, I released the barrier. Then I felt the two-core presence, that observed me ever since right after I defeated the four-core Warrior, leave the pce.

  As mentioned, the barrier was just for formality's sake. I wanted them to think I tried to chase the other guys but was too tired to do so. With that, they hopefully wouldn't suspect a trap.

  Zhao Linghua pov:

  As I walk beside the bandit Master captured before, I finally reach the camp. The first thing I see are two headless corpses and two heads lying next to them.

  As I move further, I notice the corpses being split in more and more brutal ways. Finally, in the middle of the vilge, I see HIM. My Master.

  He has his head leaned back and his hands stretched to the side with his right hand holding a longsword surprisingly without a single drop of blood on it.

  On the contrary, his originally blonde hair is now blond-red striped and completely ruffled. His face too is coloured red in multiple pces, especially around his eyes which makes the silver in them stand out way more. Looking into them, it feels like my surroundings are ice-cold

  He makes a grin so wide that I'm actually questioning how it is humanely possible. His snow-white teeth make another scary contrast to his red face.

  His blond clothes are also filled with blood sptters, simir to his hair.

  Looking at him like this, only one word comes to my mind:

  'Demon!'