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[ 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇'𝐒 𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐆𝐄 ]

𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕤𝕝𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕝𝕪 𝕘𝕣𝕦𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖, 𝕤𝕠 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕗𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕥 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕤; 𝕓𝕖𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕖.

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Naturally, the humans were shocked. For a few seconds they couldn’t even comprehend what they were being told.

Kill one another?

It didn’t make sense. Why should they kill each other? Didn’t you kill for food? Why…

But the confusion passed and then they were soon angry. How could he possibly ask them to kill each other!

The previous leader was the first to start growling, waving his arms in protest. Even baring his teeth and taking a threatening step forwards like he intended to fight. He was smart and knew that the others would back him up if he started a fight with this villain. He wasn’t wrong. The others started to surround the Crying Ghost in preparation to take him down.

Glee filled the old leader’s heart. He had always been miffed about the fact that his position was taken but there was now an opportunity to take it back! With a wide grin on his mouth he-

SHICK!

‘???’

The old leader didn’t even manage to think a final thought before his head rolled off his body, blood gushing out of his neck as his body collapsed.

“EEEEARRH!”

The humans screamed in fear, running back from the corpse of their old leader and his killer.

Crying Ghost flicked his weapon causing blood to fly out and stain the grass.

With a sinister grin on his face, he bent down and began to feast on the corpse of the old leader, striking terror in the hearts of the viewers. Unfortunately, not all were disgusted. It suddenly occurred to them that if other predators can use them for food, why can’t they eat each other if need be?

Some of them actually had the light of greed shine in their eyes as they watched, but they didn’t dare to act, the power of Crying Ghost terrified them far too much.

But when Crying Ghost finished eating, licking the blood on his fingers and stood up in satisfaction, pointing towards them and signifying them to partner up and fight - the greedy ones suddenly understood and became excited.

Just like that, the culture within this clan of humans was undergoing a massive shift.

Under Crying Ghost’s oppressive coercion. They all fought to the death, leaving only 4000 members alive.

The ghastly sight of thousands of clansmen dying caused everyone to pale but Crying Ghost only watched with delight etching his face.

He had discovered a new activity that pleased him very much, and that was to watch ‘fools’ kill each other like beasts. A desire that would cause the hearts of millions to quake with fear.

Crying Ghost then indicated for victors to eat their fallen victims. A shocking but predictable action, taking his motives into consideration. He was trying to raise warriors after all.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much resistance here. They were all hungry, they were all scared and there were no morals to keep them from completing this action. No one to tell them that what they were doing was cannibalism and therefore unethical.

So they ate.

And as they ate, they quickly discovered the rising power in their bodies. This caused them to moan with delight with the fear within them rapidly decreasing. They ate and sucked every last bit of essence from their own brethren.

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Finally experiencing what it meant to be full and the new power in their body, they looked at their leader with reverence. Vowing to obey whatever he said.

It was a pity but they were a primitive species at the moment. They lacked the mental capabilities to deny the instincts of their bodies, so when their instincts told them that following this new leader would grant them benefits, the idea of disobeying didn’t even exist.

A few hours later a new round took place. Leaving only 2000 clan members alive.

Although there was fear in the beginning, that was only because of the fear of losing and consequently dying. They still ended up complying in the end, their minor sense of guilt being consumed by their rising strength.

The next day, the process repeated.

This time there was no hesitation and only 1000 fierce and vigorous ‘humans’ were left alive. At this point, all of them had a ring of red around their eyes causing them to look extremely terrifying.

In this entire process, all of them had become strong. However, they had also become quite vicious. Viewing human life as nothing but potential resources.

If they had morals, this could have been avoided even if they repeated the act 10 more times. But there were no morals here. Only instincts dictated their lifestyles, and their instincts had told them that their fellow clansmen were better off dead and in their belly.

Even so, they didn’t dare to covet their leader. They knew how strong he was and none of them believed that they had the ability to take him down. More importantly, he might have more tricks to help them get stronger.

And he did.

From then on, he boldly started to hunt on the other species of the forest along with his other clansmen, causing panic to spread out without restraint.

In this process, the ‘humans’ became stronger and stronger, but at the same time, they became a lot more vicious. At this point, even if Crying Ghost didn’t order them to kill anymore, they would still go out to perform mass genocides. The reason being the fact that their instincts told them so.

At this stage of their primitive lives. Instincts developed and vanished like rain in a storm. So it was understandable for them to so easily forget their foraging lives and move on to the path of executioners.

And this was extremely terrifying because instincts were a living being's foundation. No matter what morals you developed in the future, it would always align with your instincts in some way. So when you have a sinister instinct like: kill anything, even your own family for power, lives are just resources - you can only turn out to be an evil person.

Like this, life continued and terror spread across the entire forest.

Soon, the magical outburst arrived, causing grand changes to the human marauders that seemed to make it their mission to destroy peace, and it went without saying that there was no way these fiends could end up remaining regular humans.

Crying Ghost roared out in pain as massive changes occurred in his body.

First, his skin peeled off, an eerie pale skin replacing the old. Next, his nails and teeth sharpened like that of a beast. His body started to grow, reaching a whopping 2 metres tall. His hair became the colour of crimson blood and last but certainly not least, his eyes became completely red. Not only were they red but they even shone like stars, causing any viewer to shiver with fear.

This transformation repeated itself in all of his followers, only, they didn’t grow like him, nor did they gain red hair. But they all gained the red eyes, pale skin, sharp claws and shark-like teeth of their progenitor.

Behind him was the vague illusion of a blood-curdling red sea. This was the hair-raising result of Crying Ghost establishing mana using the blood element and entering body refining stage 1. (First realm of human cultivation)

When their transformation was over, they all looked at one another, feeling the slight intimacy and affinity of blood that they each had, then they looked at their now extremely handsome progenitor that made this all happen.

They then started to scream out loud in celebration, respect and reverence in their eyes.

If they knew how, they would probably be prostrating themselves.

After that, they continued to hunt. However this time, it wasn’t just to become strong. It was for pleasure. Yes, they now found pleasure in the act of killing as if it were a game. Definitely the influence of Crying Ghost.

All of them had sinister looks in their spine-chilling eyes as they cut down their prey and sucked out their blood and disregarded the flesh. Something they did after the taste of blood became like nectar to them, making the taste of flesh dogshit in comparison. Thanks to their new constitution, they didn’t need solid food to survive anymore.

As a matter of fact, not only could they live on blood. Their efficiency in absorbing essence from blood had become 90% (Only Crying Ghost had 100%). This was a dramatic increase from their earlier 5%, causing their strength to rise stupendously.

Although other species could absorb the essence in blood, it was woefully inefficient and caused about 95% of it to be lost. No one with brains would do that. But this was how these fiends came to be and in the end, it paid off. They were now gifted with 90% efficiency in absorbing blood.

What a terrifying thought.

As these evil creatures ran around the forest causing most of it to be coloured red with blood, only one thought came to Eridel who watched the sequences of events from the World Archive.

‘Blood Fiends...’