The only ones who knew about him killing the forces of the Blood Order in the dark were those extremely close to him, including his master, his brother, his fiancée, and his best friend. Nobody outside of that group knew at all, not even his own father.

As for witnesses, he had ways of being absolutely sure that nobody managed to escape from him.

‘They can’t kill me without starting a war that they currently can’t win, but they can kill those close to me. But just how did they figure out that I was the one doing it? Is it a guess? Or was one of the highest ranked members at one of the camps I destroyed and I didn’t manage to sense them?’

Questions were flying through his head left and right, and he considered every possibility, but nothing seemed to be likely enough to be the case.

Finally, he got sick of thinking about it and pushed it to the back of his mind, quickly arriving near the meeting location.

There, he scouted around the entire area, and finding nothing unusual, waited until the scheduled meeting time.

After the time passed, it soon became night, and he headed into the meeting area, only to be met with the intense smell of blood.

Heading further in, he began to see bodies strewn about all over the ground in the forest, drenching it in blood.

Every single body had either been burned, cut to pieces, or some combination of the two.

He knew that these were soldiers from his own kingdom’s army, and he wondered why such a slaughter had happened here and why they picked such a location for a meeting.

Finally, he sensed a change up ahead, and he proceeded warily towards it, constantly checking his surroundings for traps and other people.

Each step he took, he felt that something was wrong, but he didn’t have a choice in this meeting if he wanted to keep his fiancée alive.

He knew that the enemy didn’t dare to kill or capture him, but he also couldn’t recklessly attack the enemy and put his loved ones in danger.

In this way, the meeting would be stressful and full of tension for both sides, yet there should theoretically be no danger.

Yet he still couldn’t shake this odd feeling that he had that something would go wrong here. His instincts had never been wrong before, but this time he truly couldn’t avoid the confrontation and had to meet it head-on, ignoring his instinctual warning.

However, this would become the worst decision of his life, and he didn’t even know it yet.

FInally, he met the figure lurking in the forest ahead, deepest in the area filled with the most bodies.

It was a person wearing draping red robes that brushed against the ground, looking like flowing blood.

‘High Blood Priestess at the very least.’

She had an enchanting face, to say the least, but there was nothing beautiful about her horrifying power. She was an existence on par with the strongest of the previous kings and queens of the country.

‘She’s highly ranked even among the High Blood Priests and Priestesses. She’s probably at the ninth stage of the Spirit Realm, and she is someone that I can’t fight or even run away from.’

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He himself was only at the half-step Spirit Realm. He could at best fight against those at the fourth stage, and run away from those at the seventh or eighth. However, against someone at the ninth stage, everything he had aside from life-saving talismans was useless.

‘It looks like a peaceful outcome is the only outcome for this conversation, and she knows it too. She won’t dare to hurt me, but I also have to fulfill her terms. What a shitty situation.’

Then, they began their talk.

*Meanwhile, a short distance away from the meeting*

Cedric and his team were moving through the forest, looking at the dead bodies around them and checking for survivors. They were able to tell that all of this damage was likely done by a single person that practiced the elements of metal and fire.

Eventually, Cedric made a sudden gesture with his hand for them to stop and get on the ground. Every single one of them did it without hesitation.

And in the next few seconds, they were looking for why he did that. And finally, they found it.

Just at the edge of the forest’s visibility range, they could see Damien and the High Blood Priestess talking, but nobody could hear what they were saying.

They were very clearly able to tell that it was Damien and not someone else due to his unique aura that they had encountered many times.

‘Due to the illusion formation in front of us, he can’t see or sense us, so there’s no chance of getting caught here. And the others can draw conclusions even without my urging. Everything is going perfectly according to plan!’ A smirk appeared imperceptibly in the corner of Cedric’s lips.

“Is that Damien? What’s he doing meeting with a High Blood Priestess?” One of the soldiers whispered to the others.

It didn’t take long before one of them came up with a bold assumption. “Wait. The bodies were all killed by fire and metal, the same element that Prince Damien uses. Could it be?...”

Hearing this, something seemed to click in the minds of all the other soldiers, and their thoughts ran wild as they watched the meeting end and Damien run away as if nothing happened, followed by the High Blood Priestess.

All that was left behind was a bunch of soldiers with wild thoughts and the leader of said soldiers who wanted to encourage such thoughts. Obviously, there wasn’t a happy ending in store for Damien.

Harboring such ‘important news’, the group of soldiers headed directly back to the castle as quickly as they possibly could and hoped to get there before Damien.

Luckily for them and unluckily for him, Damien had decided to go think things through and figure out what his instincts were trying to warn him about.

An hour later, he finally realized what he had been missing, and that it could’ve been a trap to frame him. However, his realization came far too late, and by the time he got back to the city, warning bells were ringing and all the guards were looking out for his face and his power.

Knowing what would happen next, he instantly tried to rush towards the castle where his fiancée was, but the moment he fully activated his power, the guards started to swarm over.

‘They gave up on me so easily. These are no longer my people; they are obstacles.’ He didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a second after seeing them attack him, instantly causing him to see them as nothing more than enemies to slaughter.

With that thought, a golden lion head formed on his fist as he punched out, and the next moment a massive explosion sounded as more than twenty guards were killed in an instant and even more were injured. A five foot deep crater was left in the ground, but he was already gone.

More explosions rang out, and more people went flying or died.

Closer.

Closer.

Closer.

The closer he got to the castle, the stronger the resistance was, and by the time he finally reached it, he was completely held up by more than ten fourth stage Spirit Realms.

Seeing no other option, he yelled out with all the force his lungs could produce, backed with the full lifeforce of his body and the full force of his power.

“Mei! Get out!”

Then, for a split second, he saw his father appear in front of him, a face filled with unnaturally powerful anger clouding his judgment entirely.

Then, everything went black as his body was slammed into the ground with enough force to send cracks into the foundation of the castle and cause several walls to crack and break.