A man with long, dark green hair was in a cave. He carried a chain whip at his waist alongside a wooden frog talisman.
The cave had many paths, but he followed just one, passing by the remains of a goblin camp and continuing inside, reaching a tunnel with holes in the walls. He stopped before them, passed his hand in front of one, and quickly retracted it. From the small hole, a blast of air pressure shot out, strong enough to smash the wall on the other side.
"The defenses are still active. They were simply ignored?"
He grabbed the frog talisman from his waist and injected mana into it. The talisman's eyes shot out a green light and remained that way.
The man walked through the tunnel. The holes shot no air pressure; the frog talisman worked as a type of key. He reached an area illuminated only by a glowing moss. It had several coffins, and atop a dark monolith rested a black coffin.
The place had the remains of a fight. The ground was smashed in some parts, while others looked like they had exploded. The man looked at it attentively, a puzzled gaze in his eyes. "Interesting indeed," he thought.
"That person is not strong. The remains of battle show struggle—a lot of it. There is also dry blood on the ground, so that person got quite damaged. Explosions... either mana bombs, normal bombs, or explosive attacks. There are multiple areas with a lot of blood, but the blood doesn't look human." He approached and sniffed the blood. "Indeed, indeed. Goblin blood. They didn't attack alone—a summoner? Or a tamer? I don't want to find trouble with such a troublesome enemy, although they seem quite weak."
In just a few minutes, he was able to deduce almost everything that had happened there, missing only a few details. He walked over to the black coffin and looked at it, then kicked it away. His kick was strong enough to make the coffin fly and crash against the ground. Below the coffin, there was a small aperture, with an orb inside it, glowing with a dark red and orange color, mixing perfectly.
He grabbed it and opened a small pouch at his waist, tossing it inside. The pouch had a strange appearance; from the outside, it seemed like ordinary leather, but when opened, it emitted a transparent, shimmering light—like a sea of tiny, glistening stars.
"This dimensional thingy is so useful. I should have bought it for the last mission—it would have helped quite a lot..." The man sighed but continued to examine the area, finding nothing else. He prepared to leave.
"There are five villages nearby. I passed by two of them on the way and felt no mark. But since I have the orb now, it won't take much longer to find. I can already weakly sense it, hehe. I just need to be quick and take my deserved time off. I can already feel the wind on my face when I go sailing—oh, the ocean, how beautiful it is..."
He left the cave, taking the same path he had used to enter.
***
Faust was walking through a dense jungle, where trees were taller than buildings and their trunks were wider than houses.
The air smelled of mud and wet wood. The sun was strong and hot.
He observed from a distance as one tribe tried to invade another. They were killing each other with spears, fire, and bows. Some among them even used mana, while others had a faint light covering their whole bodies—some blue, some green, some red, and other colors. This was aura, also known as "the mana of warriors." It couldn't be shot like mana, nor molded into different forms, but it protected the body and strengthened a person's physical abilities, making them stronger, faster, and sharpening their perception.
The number of warriors was great. There were mostly men, but some women fought as well. Their bodies were strong and full of tattoos. They wore tribal clothing, covering their intimate areas and using leather parts as armor, though it was quite rudimentary. On the other hand, their weapons were very refined and well-crafted. They had a clear priority.
His eyes showed an interested look. "Perfect. This is the perfect chance to test it," he thought, immediately opening a pouch at his waist and grabbing a journal and a feathered pen. He started to draw a strange rune, much more complex than any he had drawn up to that point.
He then removed the page, injected mana into it, and approached the battlefield. The smell of blood was strong, mixed with the stench of feces and rotting flesh.
As he rushed toward the battlefield, warriors from both tribes started looking at him. He couldn't clearly differentiate them; the only aspect that set them apart was their tattoos, but he didn't care about it.
"Outsider!" a warrior seated on a high chair exclaimed. He was the commander of the attacking tribe.
The warriors tried to attack Faust, but he was too agile, dodging their blows until he reached the center of the battlefield. He purposefully attracted the attention of the warriors. "Come at me! You are all weak!" he shouted.
These warriors greatly valued strength; being called weak by an outsider was a ridiculous offense.
They started rushing toward him. A grin surfaced on his face as he grabbed a knife and cut open his arm, from the shoulder to the hand. Blood started flowing quickly, and the skin on his hand grew pale. He spun and formed a circle of blood around himself.
The warriors stopped in their tracks, puzzled. But it was not merely the blood that made them stop—a circle of fire surged from Faust's blood and danced wildly.
"Shameless sorcerer! Be a man and fight! Don't kill yourself just because you're afraid!" one of them screamed.
Faust grabbed the strange rune he had drawn earlier and threw it into the fire. Quickly, it turned into ash—but the ash was not black; instead, it was purple. It started flying across the battlefield, moving along the wind. Within a few seconds, a thick fog had formed over the entire camp.
The warriors started falling one after another. Their bodies developed thick, dark veins, and their skin turned bluish. They clutched their necks as they gasped for air. The effect was fast. In less than a minute, the whole battlefield had fallen—more than three hundred men dead in a few seconds.
He laughed as the fire around him diminished and faded. He walked toward the village; the fog had already invaded it too. Men and women, the elderly and newborns, as well as animals—all dead.
"Wonderful! It is even better than I thought. I could have done it faster if I had better runes to merge, but whatever. There's no doubting it—its efficiency is close to perfection."
He went over to a part of the battlefield and started drawing runes on some of the warriors' bodies with a knife, working quickly.
When he injected them with mana, over thirty bodies rose, though they remained dead. "Destroy the village and prepare the zone," Faust instructed. The bodies started moving and ravaging the village, then began drawing on the grassy, muddy ground.
"It shouldn't take too long..." he sighed as he climbed a tree and sat on one of its branches, closing his eyes.
***
Faust's eyes shot open. He stood up as blood flowed nonstop from his face; he coughed and spat blood onto the stone floor. He was still locked up in the underground of the guards' headquarters, alone.
"That was too vivid... way too vivid..."
Faust thought it over. At this point, he was almost a hundred percent sure these weren't just dreams but memories of Red. He just didn't know if all of it was real. He had no reason to find it too strange—Red was a damn voice in his head, after all. It couldn't get much weirder than that.
"I wonder how many people Red has killed... and this time they weren't shadows."
Faust's hands were trembling slightly. Although he didn't react strongly, he was still wary of Red. He hadn't reacted before because Red had been killing shadows, but now he had killed a whole village—of humans.
"But I can't deny that was interesting. Maybe I can also make my own runes," he thought, recalling the weird rune he had seen in the dream. Apparently, it was a type of poison. He was very curious about it and quickly forgot the killing part, focusing on the rune instead. His curiosity outweighed any worry he could have had.
He kept still, cleaning the blood from his face. Red probably wouldn't help him with the rune anyway; he only helped when he wanted to. In fact, Red had been talking less to him each day. Some days, they didn't exchange a single word.
He had just finished cleaning up the blood when he heard footsteps coming down the set of stairs. A young guard appeared from the dark underground and walked toward Faust.
"I'm here to—what is that blood? Why is there so much?" he asked, looking at Faust's bloody hands, the clothes he used to clean his face, and the blood that had dripped onto the ground.
Faust kept quiet, his heart still burning with resentment against these guards, who abused their power simply because he had none. They had taken all his money.
"Ahem... anyway, you will be interrogated today. Put these on, and then I'll open the jail door." He picked up a pair of shackles and threw them between the iron bars. The young guard's face showed clear signs of nervousness.
"Unbelievable, they're too lazy even to do that..." Faust thought as he put the shackles on both his hands and feet. "Also, why can't they interrogate me here? It's not like I can do much against iron bars."
After Faust finished putting on the shackles, the young guard opened the jail door and checked the restraints to see if they were properly locked. After checking, he guided Faust upstairs.
Upstairs, the headquarters were different. When Faust had seen it before, the tables were scattered, and there was alcohol and cards lying everywhere. Now, the tables were properly organized, and the place was completely clean. There were also two people present who were clearly held in higher regard than the others.
One of them was an old man. He wore the guards' uniform but with an iron plate and carried a long sword. He was standing with a serious expression beside a seated figure. The other was a beautiful woman—light brown skin, deep black eyes, long black hair. She wore a long, dark blue dress. It was the lord's wife, Klara.
As Faust was guided by the young guard, the other guards kept glancing at him nervously. He was then placed in front of Klara and forced to kneel by two guards standing at his sides.
"Who is that?" Faust thought as he looked at the woman. He found her extremely beautiful—but haunting. She had an air of mystery about her.
"That is our lordship's wife, Klara. Be respectful, you grunt," the old man said almost as he read Faust thoughts.
"Haha, calm down, Captain. No need to be rude towards the child," she replied, raising one of her hands to signal him to calm down.
"Alright, my lady. I apologize," he said, taking one step back.
"It's fine, Captain," she said, her eyes deep as the ocean as she looked at Faust. "Now, young man, I'm the one responsible for interrogating you. I hope you were not treated too harshly," she said, noticing Faust's bloodied appearance.
The other guards started to sweat.
"She is the interrogator?!" Faust thought.
He felt nervous for some reason; a bad sensation crept over him. His body tensed instinctively. He had only ever reacted like that when he felt his life was in risk. She was dangerous.