Being a bystander was an interesting experience. Zane was an individual, but he slowly became a part of the crowd the longer he stood near it. His own emotions and thoughts were slowly swallowed by those around him.

The crowd watched as the battle between the human and the elven escalated. The crowd saw them draw their sword. The elven charged forward and delivered a slash to the man’s neck. The man failed to defend himself and lost his life.

Normally, Zane would recognize how strange the man’s death was. The man was more than capable of defending against the elven’s attack. However, his body had suddenly froze right as he was bringing his sword up to defend himself. Instead of analyzing the strange death, Zane’s mind and emotions was led by the crowd.

Shock rippled through the crowd as everyone entered a stunned silence. Even the elven that killed man was surprised by the outcome. Once the head fell to the ground Zane stunned state was swept away by a wave of rage that flowed through the crowd.

Logically, Zane shouldn’t feel so angry about the man’s death. After all, Zane didn’t even know the man’s name. There was no connection between them other than the shared anger they held toward the elven. Logic was gone and Zane was completely under the control of his emotion.

“Murderer!”

“It was only a spar! You didn’t have to kill him!”

“These elves are savages! They want to kill us all!”

“They don’t care about our lives, so why should we care about theirs!”

“We should kill them!”

“Slaughter them all!”

“Kill the elves!”

It didn’t take long for the crowd to be worked into a frenzy. Soon many people were rushing forward with their weapons drawn. Every one of them eager for blood and Zane was among them. His eyes filled with rage were focused on elven that were starting to gather together. He wanted to kill them before they could gather together, before they could kill anyone else.

“All of you! Get back here! Now!” Sophie shouted.

Without his control, Zane found himself backing away from the charging crowd. At first, he felt anger that someone was controlling him, stopping him from killing the elven. He broke free of the control and focused his desire to kill on the person that tried to control him.

Instantly, Zane desire to kill left him and his anger quickly faded when he focused his gaze on Sophie. He saw the concerned expression she wore change to relief once he calmed down. Next, she turned her focus to other members of the group to make sure they were okay.

Although Zane’s anger faded, it didn’t completely disappear. His anger was like an angry beast waiting to rear its head. Zane knew he had to carefully monitor the beast if he didn’t want to lose control of himself. He didn’t know why his anger and his desire to kill went out of control, but he knew he didn’t want it to happen again. After taking some time to calm himself down Zane started moving toward Sophie.”

“Sorry,” Zane immediately told Sophie.

“You don’t need to apologize,” She replied. “I lost control as well. I only woke up because I felt like you and the others were in danger.”

“Thanks for the assist.” Frank said. “What spell did you use?”

“It’s a class related spell.”

“Makes sense. Damn, that mob mentality is no joke.”

“What’s mob mentality?”

Frank only gave a brief explanation of mob mentality. Right now, everyone in the group were trying to stabilize their mental state. None of them were able to escape the influence and all of them started drinking mana juice to calm down.

In addition to stabilizing their minds, Zane’s group paid attention to the tense situation between the elven and the humans. Daughter created a barrier between the two groups before they could collide and commanded the elven to stop. Jade worked with a few other people to stop the humans from attacking.

“All of you need to calm down!” Jade shouted.

“Calm down.” Someone shouted. “They just killed someone, and you still want us to calm down.”

“The elven will give an explanation for the people that died. You all need to be patient.” She told the crowd. “Where’s Bruce?” She mentally asked Adam. “His skill is exactly what we need right now.”

“I’ve already sent a message, but I didn’t get a response.” Adam replied.

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“Why should we give an explanation? The human shamelessly attacked after the battle was over. If anyone deserved an explanation, it’s us.”

“You can’t be this unreasonable. Someone was killed.”

“I’m being extremely reasonable. That human provoked one of us and died because of his own lack of skill.”

Jade was slowly losing her ability to remain calm. She was doing her best to peacefully resolve the situation, but it seem like everyone was working against her. She could feel that her tenuous control of the crowd was rapidly disappearing.

“I always thought the council was useless, but I never knew how right I was until today.” Damien said.

Zane turned his head and was surprised to see Damien standing at the back at the crowd. He thought his group were the only people that managed to separate themselves from the crowd. The crowd split apart and created a space for Damien to walk forward. He continued to speak as he slowly walked to the front of the crowd.

“We gave them our village points on the condition that they would be able to maintain peace and organize strong defenses that can protect us. They have failed to do both. They have failed us on the battlefield, and they have failed us now. They tell us to be patient, to remain calm. But how can we be patient when we are suffering. How can we be calm when the elves can kill us whenever they want?”

“Damien!” Adam shouted at him when he got to the front of the crowd. “You’re not helping. The situation is complicated, and you have to think about the bigger picture. Right now, you’re only making things worse.”

“Fuck the bigger picture. I became an evil human because I wanted to follow my desires and do whatever I wanted. Since I want to kill then why should I hold myself back. Besides today I’m on the side of justice. Many people died because of the elves and it's time for them to be held accountable. Blood demands blood. A life for a life.”

“Blood demands blood. A life for a life.” A part of the crowd began chanting these words and slowly the entire crowd was chanting them.”

“STOP!” Jade silenced the crowd. “We can still talk things-”

“The time for talking is over, Now, it's time to kill some goddamn elves!”

Multiple spells came from the crowd and all of them were focused on one person. Daughter the leader of the elven. The attack came as a surprise, but she was able to react quickly. She shrunk the barrier she created until it was only protecting her and her immediate surroundings.

The moment the barrier shrunk, several more spells came from the crowd. Their targets were the elven that the barrier was no longer protecting. Simultaneously, many people separated from the crowd, charging forward with martial weapons.

Heads rolled. Blood flowed. Bodies collapsed. People roared. People screamed. People died. It was war. At least, it was a bitter bloody battle.

“What should we do?” Whitney asked.

“What can we do?” Zane said.

Zane could feel the anger within trying to take over, but he had no problem keeping it in check. It was urging him to charge forward and kill the elven. Turning his head he could see Shane, Brad, Britney, Luna and Lana were struggling to control their anger. They were gritting their teeth while wearing angry expressions. Occasionally they would open their eyes and Zane could see the hatred they held.

Diana and Old Saber showed no visible sign of the anger they were dealing with, other than a slight change to their eyebrows and clenched fist. The rest of the group was like Zane. They looked normal on the outside, but they were struggling with powerful emotions on the inside.

“We need to do something.” Sophie said.

“I don’t think we can do anything,” Zane replied. “The best we can hope for is being influenced by the crowd and we help them kill the elven. The worst is the elven and the humans killing us as we try to help them.”

“So, we stand here and watch all of them fight to death.”

“There’s no use fighting a mob,” Frank added.

“You mentioned mob mentality,” Sophie spoke to Frank. “Do you know a way to deal with it? We can’t fight them but there should be a way to calm them down.”

“I don’t know. The only thing I can think of doing is talking to them. Peacefully interacting with them and helping them calm down.”

“That won’t work,” Sam said. “Maybe we could calm them down by talking on our world, but I don’t think that would work here. Nobody walks into the middle of a gunfight and walks away without getting shot. We would die before we managed to calm anyone down.”

“You’re right. I don’t think a few words can calm them down. We probably need some magic to calm them down.”

Zane’s body shook when he heard Franks words. Suddenly he was aware of how truly strange the situation was. It was unlikely that the anger they felt was caused by them being influenced by the anger of multiple people. The source of the anger most likely stemmed from magic. Since magic was the cause, then it was likely that someone or something was controlling the magic.

In fact, Zane was able to think of a few weapons that could influence the crowd. Most of which Teacher Isabelle introduced to him. Zane started shaking his head as he rebuked himself for not realizing the problem sooner.

“Zane what’s wrong?” Sophie asked when she noticed his reaction.

“I should have recognized this sooner,” Zane answered. He explained his thoughts to everyone before he sat on the ground.

Skill: Magic Weapon Awareness

Level: 13, 78%

Tier: 1

Effect: Increase sensitivity to all magic weapons based on the perception stat.

Cost: 10 mana per second

Magic Weapon Awareness. Zane didn’t use this skill against the mana creatures he fought. He was able to sense their claws and teeth were which were treated as magic weapons because they were filled with mana, but it didn’t improve his ability to fight against them. The skill did improve his ability to fight against humans and elven. He could sense the magical weapons that they used and predict how they would use them to a certain degree. Zane guessed that the second ability came from his weapon affinity.

After activating the skill Zane immediately sensed a few magic weapons hiding in their surroundings. They were all approximately one hundred meters away from the group. He could sense that the magic weapons were magic staffs, but he couldn’t sense anything else about their physical appearance. He could sense their function which was to hide the user and influence the emotions of the crowd.

Suddenly, Zane’s eyes shot open before he quickly closed them again. He continued to stretch the range of his mind and noticed that the number of hidden magic weapons were increasing. Soon Zane’s mind had reached the fighting and he had already sensed more than fifty weapons.

Zane began to feel a strain on his mind and stopped using the skills. It took a lot of mana to increase the distance he could spread his mind. Also, the more weapons he sensed the greater the strain. Opening his eyes, Zane saw that a mixture of angry and calm gazes of his team looking at him.

“It doesn’t look good.”