The 'Genius'

It was dark already, and within a village with very well over a few dozens and dozens of houses, with some buildings here and there that were particularly slightly larger than any other house and had a much different design both from the inside and out. The sky was dark, deep blue.

On the roof of the by far largest and widest house, one that used to belong to someone else for sure, Ciemnosc was lying with his stomach against the wooden roof. While the yellow light reflecting within one of its rooms with the window opened was quite striking for anyone to see from the dark outside which had no street lights or torches installed anywhere.

‘... Mmmggh,’ Ciemnosc growled mentally as he had closed his eyes hard and visualized anything but darkness, then opened them and looked through the roof just below his body as if trying to either carve a pair of holes through it or actually see through it. None of them seemed easy, as Ciemnosc had been trying to do this for a bit over an hour already to no avail, other than slightly getting a glimpse of his target studying some records of Craftspeople.

‘Why can’t I sense much? I can only smell a lot and imagine, but my eyes can’t see that well. Uuggh, now I gotta get this menso out of the ho- oh.’’ Ciemnosc was thinking on the roof, his belly now skywards as he turned around, letting his bum rest on the cold floor and immediately sensing a comfortable sensation, there was a bit of wind too so he was more than relaxed.

And just as he was thinking of the way in which he would be getting his target to come out, a cute young girl appeared in the distance, which Ciemnosc had scanned a couple of times while he did a quick run with his Spirit Sense all over the village quite a few times. And every time he visualized her, she was the flower of everyone’s day, making them smile while helping others with their daily menial work a little.

Like the beauty and number #1 villager of the village that if one didn’t love her then their mind had to be dead and their heart even deader, Ciemnosc’s Spirit Sense felt the Conflagrate realm 4th stage cultivator hidden within the largest house of the village not realize who was about to cross through his window. And Ciemnosc then smoothly moved away as he pushed his body slightly off the roof and seemingly slid down through it and the walls in the direction that the young girl was coming.

Ciemnosc had already killed the other 2 targets he picked for the sake of being recognized by the Rocaloi Academy, their severed heads with obvious cuts and stabs on their faces, eyes, nostrils, ears, and so on - in his Covert Space bags. It was natural for confirmation, all Ciemnosc had to care for was that they still had their skin around even if just a little, and some blood. While the rest of their bodies were in his Covert Space of course, for a snack later on like this one would be.

From the 3 targets of assassination, the 1st one was at the 2nd stage of the Conflagrate realm and was an old man who had incredible battle experience having even killed once an enemy with a stage higher than his with just his tools when he was at the Spirit Gathering realm. A stroke of luck and it was one that had come from the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect to try and spy as well as set bases for the alliance.

Ciemnosc wasn’t filled in about the incoming war. He only knew it was coming and fast and that nothing else but such could ‘interest’ him. The 2nd person was a female, an almost middle-aged looking woman with the cultivation base of the Conflagrate realm 3rd stage. She had once been lost in the middle of a battle, behind enemy ranks, and in one of the many flash battles that would occur between the major organizations around the borders.

When she reappeared, the severed heads of 3 core believers who practically were the masterminds behind the battle that occurred it was a pyrrhic victory for the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect before knowing of her feats. And when she came back with those heads in her hands, it became a worthwhile bloodshed and meat grinder.

Both of them had 7 meters long Spirit Sense range, of the 20 meters maximum that the 2 most powerful cultivators had back in their times. On the other hand, the guy that was still alive but not for long and that Ciemnosc was walking away from the house he stole from the villagers was at the 4th stage of the Conflagrate realm and was also the youngest of them 3 with his young man’s appearance and his actual age not more than that of 200 years.

For a Conflagrate realm to reach the realm in question before 350 years of life was already considered one of the most amazing feats in the world, and this young man did it just before being 200 years old. And, right now, this young man was still not 200 years old. It could be seen how ambitious he was with how he took for himself the task of spying and setting up a base for the alliance - all 3 of them especially belonging to the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect…

Also, it was this young man who had the most urgent bounty in his head or body, with the Rocaloi Academy not only funding their needs on whatever profession they were good at for a whole month. They would also give 5 Supreme Powerful Stones to whoever killed him. Or a total of 100,000 Inferior Powerful Stones instead, which was double the amount of the former, but someone who wasn’t straight-up dumb would know the value of the former.

And so, Ciemnosc set on acquiring those more than welcome Supreme Powerful Stones. He was going to need them if he intended to continue cultivating in this world. Inferior grade Powerful Stones obviously also helped, but using so many of them does not compare to their respective value. 10,000 Inferior ones were not the same as Ciemnosc as a single Superior one.

“Hey, lady?” Ciemnosc walked up to the pretty young girl who despite everywhere being so dark, looked around with a smile and even showed her contentedness by smiling within the very same darkness. When she heard Ciemnosc, she turned her head, and her face became a bit troubled. Everyone was so aware of the sudden cultivators, who came storming into their village and stole so many things… She was lucky to be too cute for the leader of the cultivators’ group to prohibit anyone from doing anything to her since she was such a nice scenery to see every morning, and so on.

Despite the warnings and prohibition, that didn’t stop some of the other cultivators from trying to grope her daily though, and it has been weeks since they arrived while they were also not allowed to go out for any reason. So the restocking had been a problem that already ended a few tens of lives, yet she had her smile still there.

“Y-ye- yes?” She asked with her one word, tremblingly before adding as a warning. “If you do anything to me, I’ll shout to your boss a-an- and you’ll see! His house is right there!”

“... Hm,” Ciemnosc nodded and placed his hand in his pants’ pockets. He didn’t give any other word other than his proposal. “If you want to get rid of these cultivators, would you do it if it requires your cooperation?”

“!?” The pretty young girl jumped a few inches, her feet separating from the ground momentarily. She then closed her cute little head towards Ciemnosc’s head and whispered as if she didn’t want to be caught being naughty. “What is it? What is it?”

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Ciemnosc smiled and bumped her forehead. Naturally, he didn’t burst her head in a blast like a watermelon and just made her jolt backwards harmlessly. He took out many small things that fell all in a bag along with a notebook that also fell in that bag. It was a bag made out of some animal’s hide in the young girl’s eyes, but she very well knew what the little stones might be and even more so the notebook!

Ciemnosc looked into her eyes and calmly said, not blushing a tiny wee. “If you want these, which will be given to you or to your village, depending on whatever you might want. All you need to do is drop your dress and reveal your all very quickly before grabbing your dress that had suddenly fallen from your shoulders right in front of that ‘mister’s’ window.”

“Eh…” The pretty young girl blushed right away in shame. Then her eyes twinkled and reignited as the previous images before these cultivators arrived went about inside her mind, the deaths of way too many peaceful villagers because of food also being quite constant in her mind every day. In the end, after thinking for a little, she nodded her cute little head, and then she looked at Ciemnosc with her eyes wide open and worried.

“I will be around. You just run the moment something- anything; happens.” Ciemnosc ‘comforted’ then added after thinking about the entire village’s well-being after he did what he was ‘bout to do~. “It would be better for you all if you left. These people don’t care about ordinary ones like you, and whether they come back or not could be your end.”

“...” The young girl looked at Ciemnosc, and only when she saw him disappear into a nearby building’s darkness walking between houses did she turn around and look for a place to hide her finding. She couldn’t appear naked and with a crazy sum of riches in her hands, right?

Of course, Ciemnosc had to also take care of wherever she put that bag, lest a cultivator nearby under the Conflagrate realm acting elder suddenly found it with the smell of pure energy and he ended up not paying a young girl for flashing a grown-up young man almost 200 years old. That would be embarrassing for the future Ciemnosc, indeed.

… Step, step, step, step…

“... Ah~~!” Everything had already started Ciemnosc was in position, right on top of the largest and widest house’s rooftop with his belly sprawled all over it with his face looking below at the walking young girl who let out a kinda sweet surprised moan. It was as if she suddenly felt her body being grabbed, but grabbed by her light green dress, which suddenly fell, tickling every unnameable part of her small body.

Within the large house’s lit room, a not so handsome young man turned his head and saw just that, small and almost nonexistent— a piercing attack towards this young girl —pair of breasts and a very flat body without much growth, still so obviously underage. But the young man’s eyes brightened, and seeing her look in his direction before slowly recognizing him and then quickly grabbing her dress back up - he was already on his feet and walking towards the house’s door.

When he was out, the young girl was already trembling in the middle of the night and to the side of ‘his’ house. And all reasoning from the young man about why such a honeyed trap would be here was gone as he already envisioned himself holding her in every position.

“Don’t be afraid, I know it was not your attempt at seducing me - or something, hahaha.” The young man said and laughed out loud, the young girl stopped trembling momentarily before continuing, and Ciemnosc gritted his teeth in cringe. In his head, he thought as he patted his chest, making a little noise on the rooftop. ‘It’s so good to be direct. Why bother with these acts? Good thing I never did them, my~ gosh.’

“Mn, are you feeling well?” The young man asked, his right hand already tracing over her left upper arm’s skin which was brunette, so tantalizingly even at night, washing away all sorts of caring about the fragility of her body and his nostrils flaring up even more. That was when he suddenly felt the floor beneath him quake, just one, which made him feel as if he was suddenly on a trampoline made out of wood but with his body barely moving up.

“!” The young girl got the hint and, without mistaking her thoughts for a single second, ran back exactly to where she had kept the bag hidden, hoping for nothing more but for nobody to have found it. But only she, who knew about it, could discover something that was hidden by Ciemnosc’s arrays.

K- kka- kaboom!

On the other hand, the young man felt something move very fast from behind him right towards where ‘his’ house was, through the air and in an arched trajectory from the air to down below at his back! He immediately turned around and his left hand was covered by transparent Power Energy which formed a small trident-like image with 3 prongs, 2 extending sideways and the last one projecting from the middle of the other 2.

The trident was about to fly away whatever and whoever was coming at him. But instead of finding someone with a weapon, he only found out a net became bigger and bigger within just moments as a sudden heavy weight was on him as soon as a dark net struck his front body!

Yet, before the young man could bring himself up, below the ‘wood trampoline’ which was of a rather thin but very long rectangle shape, cracking sounds began happening that he couldn’t tell from where it could come from. Before the young man managed to even half-stand up, he suddenly felt very pure energy below his feet begin to go berserk, which only gave him a couple of seconds to react as he covered his whole lower body with his Powerful Energy!

“Noo- ah!-” The young man could only let out a single little scream before it was cut off, either by the explosion or by the sound of it. It could very well have been all the same. A little blast of pure energy manifested itself from below, with the young girl who was far away enough to see could witness a tiny little hole dug in very recently shining with a transparent, translucent beautiful whitish form of energy explode from that tiny hole and suddenly become a monstrous blast.

…whooosh- THUD.

Engulfing the young man for only half a second, the young man’s body then could be seen flying upwards with might, but not on his own accord. He directly flew into the chimney of the house he stole. The chimney directly began crumbling apart with bricks and splinters slowly falling with the shockwaves of the impact going up and down.

On the other hand, the young man was bleeding all over his lower body, especially considering the way that his 2 feet were long gone, replaced by an image on both legs of a cone-shaped bone that was barely protected by his own Power Energy, but that also made his legs look like he was a stick figurine and with the tip of his legs’ bones even charred, as he rapidly fell from the chimney and began to bleed all over from his legs and not on as his shins.

His back against the chimney, his footless legs projected forwards as if stuck with the way he impacted the chimney, splinters fell on his head, burying themselves a bit into his skin and eventually waking him up somewhat. As the young man continued falling and looked up, he woke up right away with his eyes looking at a nice and complete brick falling down towards his head!

Whoosh- fwaah~. Thud… … kkkk- ka-boom!

The young man’s right hand swiped above his head and grazed slightly against the chimney. But the brick and splinters and all other falling objects higher up were directly flown away, and he kept himself away from harm. But as soon as the young man saw he was safe from above, from below, his legs and bum directly took the brunt of his fall for he could not get himself to fly in these conditions and could only endure the hit as his body fell right on the rooftop!

Yet! The young man was completely dazzled as his upper body, so far the only parts of his body that weren’t hurt like hell, twisted and seemed close to actually getting a seizure. He couldn’t notice the familiar sound of something breaking, cracking, and becoming purely a stench that came from pure energy and any cultivator would know of. Unless they were on the long path run where they just rely on their bodies taking pure energy from the world without using any Powerful Stone.

Directly with the poor young man not having a way to defend himself this time, the chimney on his back began bloating as if becoming pregnant and recording it with picture-motion over the entire year. There even seemed to be paused growth, as if the chimney was actually trying to contain the bloating, but in the end… it all went off…

“AAAHHHHH…!!” The young man’s scream could be heard trailing off into the near distance. The already lit up houses began to sound with doors opening fearfully and some even excitedly. While other houses’ doors were already open since long ago when the young man, aka their boss, was flown backwards with his back struck against the chimney and began falling down.

His sounding out scream echoed for a little, and all that the crowd, the entire village could see was a small and thin black thingie going from the rooftop of the larger house in the village flying ‘once again’. But this time, it was 20 meters away and towards the west, while the first explosion occurred to the east of that one house.

…