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Death Mark
Ch. 8: The Spy and the Resolution

Ch. 8: The Spy and the Resolution

Seeing the puzzlement of his disciple, Rayleigh said.

"I won't say much about it, as with your present strength you won't be able to cultivate those techniques. However there is something much more important that I want you to understand, in this world there are millions of techniques.

Some of them can even let you move mountains and vanquish seas, but all of that is useless if you don't have any principles.

You would just become a heartless killing machine without any values.

There are cultivators who, in their pursuit of strength, choose to sacrifice their emotions and become as heartless as the Heavens are.

But are they right, is that what it means to be a cultivator?

Always remember that you don't fight for power but for yourself and those who you care about."

"I will listen to your advice, Master."

Listening to his master's voice, Dante could hear that there was some regret in his tone, what was the cause of it?

After thinking about it, Dante chose not to ask. A day would come where his teacher would tell him.

After a moment of silence Dante chose to finish his preparations for the night, then he asked his teacher about something which had been puzzling him for a while.

"Teacher while I was nearing the caravan, I felt a deep sense of foreboding which I still can't explain to myself.

What troubles me even more is that it disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, without leaving any clues for me."

After a moment of silence Rayleigh replied.

"Look at that bow Dante, I wonder if that elf can kill a moving target two kilometres from him."

Dante firstly looked at the bow. No shit that should at least be a Phantom grade bow, it would be easy play even killing a four kilometres moving target, not mentioning a two kilometres one.

Dante already had a bad premonition.

Then he looked at the archer. Remembering that thick killing intent coupled with that near General level power, Dante had no doubts about the elf's archery skills.

A chill ran through his spine.

After a while Dante asked again, voice trembling with fear.

"Master what would have happened if that archer had shot me?"

After a moment of silence Rayleigh replied with an enigmatic smile on his face.

"There are no ifs in this world, boy. You will know when the time is right."

After that, Rayleigh refused any of Dante's questions on the argument.

Finally surrendering to his teacher's stubborness, Dante chose to calm his mind and recount the happenings of the day before going to sleep.

Dante felt that he had forgotten something important.

After entering the battlefield, the leader of his troop had decided that infiltrating the enemy's ranks would have been easier if they split up.

Dante lost connection with the rest of the troop shortly after, thinking that they had all died he decided to hide himself under a corpse at the border of the battlefield.

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Waiting for the battle to end, Dante paid attention to his surroundings, waiting for an opportunity to escape.

He thought that the battle would last for a long while, but after only a couple of minutes, he felt the everything freeze and a deathly silence enveloped the battlefield.

"It should be at this moment that the three Necromancers acted."

But why do I feel that I forgot something?

A spy told them of our arrival...

A spy...

"Fuck."

Dante now knew why his teacher thought that he was slow-witted.

"If I am not the spy then who was it?

Could it be someone from the Lytal Republic?

Doesn't seem likely, the Republic's soldiers have a bone-deep hatred for the Lank Kingdom.

That leaves only my troop, but they all died..."

Dante was lost, he didn't know how to wrap his head around this problem.

He could have asked his Teacher, but Dante didn't want to always rely on Rayleigh's wisdom.

He wasn't willing to do that, Dante wanted to prove his worth this time.

So he kept thinking.

"I lost connection with all of them, one after another. I still remember that the connection seemed to be broken abruptly for all of them...

No that's not right, now that I think about it the connection I had with the Commander..."

Dante began to boil with anger.

He still remembered what the instructor had taught them during the Dungeon's training, at that time they had to create a mental connection with their teammates.

At the end of the practice they had to break the mental connection voluntarily.

The instructor heavily emphasized the difference between a mental connection deliberately broken and one broken by the death of your teammate.

"In the first case you will feel as if the connection was cut by a blade, the connection will break like a snapped rope.

In the second case you will feel the connection being corroded, if they met a sudden death the connection will simply vanish."

"In the midst of the battle I didn't feel the difference, only now I see..."

After the initial anger, Dante felt sad about his discovery.

"But why did he do that? He looked like someone you could rely on if I were in danger...

Was it worth it to betray your teammates? What did they offer you?"

But after a little thinking he understood.

"Now I see, it's always for power isn't it? Probably he was the only one in our troop who had the qualifications to trade with them.

In the end our Dungeon was only a third rated one..."

Resolve replaced Dante's sadness, his desire for power burning more than ever.

He didn't tell his findings to his Master, he decided to keep all of this for himself.

One day he would kill that bastard.

It was a quiet night for Dante, but the same couldn't be said for others...