The room…

No, the entire house turned silent.

Werber, now with a bowling-ball-sized hole in his chest, didn’t utter even a single cry of pain as he fell down to the ground, his guts and blood spilling out of the wound directly onto the wooden panels of the floor.

Tina gulped her saliva down, her eyes fixated on the corpse.

Leo held himself back from speaking up for just a little longer.

Tap.

To the side, Carol fell down on her knees before leaning forward and dropping on all fours as she started to cover the carpet of the living room with her vomit.

“Rob, Mark, step ahead.”

Taking the sight of his stepmother retching her guts out for the trigger that would shake everyone out of their shock, Leo addressed his brothers.

“What?”

Wide-eyed, Mark looked away from the corpse and at the Leo, somehow failing to figure out the meaning behind his words, as simple as it might be.

“There are two bandits left. And it’s the perfect time for you two to…”

“Do you really think we will just…” Werber’s lackey on the left stepped up, ready to scream some profanities… Only to stop in his tracks after making merely a single step, completely frozen in place.

“Sigh…” Leo shook his head and stood up from his chair, ignoring how Tina instinctively twitched and nearly turned her gun towards him.

‘It’s just a reflex. I should praise her for it rather than taking it to the heart,’ Leo thought, taking the notice but opting not to address it just yet.

“The world is changing. With the emergence of the portals, it’s only a matter of time before the authorities of this world will collapse,” he stated as he moved towards the center of the room.

Pac.

Back in the main corridor of the apartment, the other of Werber’s lackeys fell down to his knees, lacking the mental strength to even attempt to oppose his fate.

“How will those portals affect the world in its entirety? That, only a prophet can foretell. But everything going to shit is a fact. A fact proved by how the first thing this bunch did upon using the system to grow stronger was to challenge Tina.”

Leo turned his eyes over to the still gun-bearing woman.

“You were responsible for putting those guys away, right?”

Tina blinked her eyes, struggling to restore her peace of mind with the still-bleeding corpse decorating the wooden floor of the corridor.

“Y-yeah…” she muttered, the gun moving up and down as her hands trembled a little. “But..”

“If you are curious why your gun didn’t work as it should, it’s simple,” Leo explained before the girl could even ask the question. “An anti-projectile shield of sorts, I assume. And, judging by the timing of everything, they came here the first thing after obtaining their abilities from the portal.”

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Even though Leo didn’t use the alien circuit… no, the alien-based system himself, he already learned enough about it to start making some simple assumptions. And one of them was the fact that despite, apparently everyone around the world receiving the same circuit…

It was only when one stepped inside one of the many portals that appeared that they could level up and grow beyond their natural strength, gain the right to test various abilities to help them make a decision on what class they would adopt or to, ultimately, pick a class they were satisfied with.

‘If that wasn’t the case, the whole city would be up in flames by now,’ Leo thought, long-deprived of any unreasonable and outright naive delusions regarding human nature.

The civilization always followed the law of the jungle. The only reason why people thought otherwise about modern times, was because the way one projected their strength moved from crude violence to more complex, often hidden means of projecting power.

In modern times, it wasn’t about who could rally more men to their cause to beat up their enemies, but about who could throw more money at lawyers, lobbyists, scientists…

But with the coming of the alien circuit and the invasion of the portals, the world would inherently grow simpler, less complex, and much more direct. And with the value behind one’s personal strength…

‘Even if civilization… No, even if the society is to prevail, it will take a lot of blood and death for those with the strength to cull all those who want to misuse this new power.’

“What is it about Mark and Rob, then?” Gulping her saliva down, Tina took a quick breath before raising her eyes… only to look back towards the corridor as she fixed her aim on the two remaining threats.

“I believe they should be the ones to take those two down. It’s better if they get their first kill now, in a controlled environment, rather than having them do it when things are much harder to manage.”

When it came to the two bandits remaining, Leo could kill them with less effort than he would need to snap his fingers. Creating a small burst of condensed and air-seeking mana at their chest would replicate what happened to their leader, given how that’s exactly how Leo got rid of Werber.

But…

Save for solving the current predicament, there was no benefit for Leo to do so. And it simply made that much more sense for his brother to get over the mental burden of claiming the life of another human being now, than later, when the circumstances would likely be much harder for Leo to oversee.

“I will do it,” Rob spoke out, surprisingly calm as he stood up from his seat and moved over to the open frame that connected the living room to the corridor.

“Wait, are you for real?” Lagging behind, Mark asked with his eyes widening as he threw quick glances toward the bloody corpse… Still, before his brother could get far ahead of him, even the youngest of the three Pesterny brothers moved up and followed suit despite all of the reluctance painted all over his face.

“W-wait…” Still on all fours, Carol attempted to protest, only to turn silent when met with Leo’s empty yet somewhat domineering glare.

“They need to grow up. The world of today is no longer as kind to virgins like them as was the world of yesterday,” he stated, only to turn on his heel and approach the older woman before getting down on one knee and reaching out with his hand to help his stepmother up.

“I know you are against it, but this is something that will happen whether we like it or not. And I’m not going to let them die in some ditch, just because I didn’t have the mental fortitude to make them go through with it today.”

Leo’s hand left Carol’s arm the very moment he made sure she was now stable on her own two feet, only to turn round and move to where the two of his brothers stopped.

The two youths stared the bandits down. Even if they knew what had to be done, what had to happen… Just taking a step forward and beating another man to their death…

“Mercy… I beg you, I will never do anything like that again…”

One of the lackeys started to cry out.

“He forced me to come with him!” the other quickly joined. And as he was still unable to move, he could only use his eyes to stare down Werber’s corpse as if to desperately point at the man. “You killed him, so there’s no longer any bad blood between us! Rather than teaching them how to kill, teach them how to show mercy!”

Rather than listening to their pleading, Leo rested each of his hands on Mark’s and Rob’s shoulders respectively, pulling at them slightly to make them turn and face him.

“Granting mercy or forgiveness is between them and whatever god they believe in,” he stated, his face devoid of any emotion in particular. “Your job is just to arrange the meeting.”