Chapter 9 – Enjoying life

They were on the way to the villa.

The carriage was driven by the nobleman's servant, while Kai, Sophie, the nobleman and his bodyguard were sitting inside.

The bodyguard was actually just a temporary mercenary hired by the nobleman only for the trip to the forest village and back, so he had no deep connection or sense of duty towards him. That was a good thing, since due to Kai's willingness to compromise the mercenary could keep his life without feeling much quilt about not totally earning his pay.

There was also another thing.

What did Sophie think of Kai now? Let's take a look back at the events that happened.

The fight had started with a good reason. She was about to be enslaved with a binding contract, when Kai easily freed himself and fought back against their captors. However, though she was thankful to Kai fighting so tenaciously, she was being saved by him yet again.

Now, though the battle had started off with a good reason, it soon turned into a one-sided massacre. Kai's skill and power was overwhelmingly greater than those of the opponents'. From the side she could see that the bandits were also fairly skillful, but it didn't compare to Kai.

Kai's killing method was gruesome. He only aimed for the neck in order to decapitate them, or was aiming for the head in general. Heads flew off, and some had their skulls crushed with a pommel strike, causing brain matter to splatter around.

But where did his power come from? He might be magically strengthened by support buffs, but he seemed to be enjoying this slaughter, as a smile had appeared on his face. It was as if he was possessed by a demon, only longing for blood and death.

That was when she was tried to be used a hostage but to no avail. Her last sight of Kai at that time was of a bloody whirlwind that cut apart everything in its vicinity. And the next moment she saw him he was still covered in blood. She didn't immediately realize it was Kai and tried to defend herself against the monster before her. Then, after she had calmed down a little, Kai had proceeded to calmly start asking questions from the nobleman.

Why was he interested in such things? Saying that it's like an event... Just what was going on in Kai's mind? She couldn't comprehend Kai's personality at all – mostly he's carefree, he might tease her in some ways, but when he gets irritated he easily blows up, and in battle he is a killing machine sparing no mercy towards his opponents, but then doesn't care about the nobleman, who was the reason all this happened in the first place.

On one hand Kai was truly mysterious, but at the same time his unpredictability made him frightening. Sophie decided that, for now, she would keep following him and try to find out what kind of person he really was.

Anyway.

At some point on the way the mercenary departed and went his own way, thus the ones still heading towards the villa were the nobleman and his servant, and Kai and Sophie. The purpose was... still the same, Kai was hoping for something interesting to happen.

It took a few hours. When they reached their destination it was starting to get darker.

The place was maybe about 2 hours of walking distance away from capital, which they passed on the way. It was located inside a forest, there was a big garden and the whole place was surrounded by a fence to keep wild animals out.

There was guard post at the entrance with one guard on duty. The nobleman said that he needed to get out of the carriage for a moment and show his face to proceed. He was clearly acting suspicious, but it didn't really matter. And as soon as he got out of the carriage he ran off, telling the guard,

"They're intruders! Hold them off as long as you can!"

Which was another suspicious thing. Was the guard so strong that he'd able to go against Kai, or was there another reason to keep them busy?

Since there wasn't much need to kill him, after a short bout the guard was knocked unconcious by Sophie.

"So, what now?" she asked.

They were standing before a large mansion. There weren't anymore guards, at least, they couldn't see any at this moment.

"Eeh, I guess first we'll just walk in the front entrance..." Kai said.

So he did.

From outside it was visible that the lights were on, but no movement could be seen, so it could't be determined if someone was there or not.

There was noone in the lobby, but chatting voices could be heard from the room next door, there was also some kind of disturbing sobbing-like noise coming from there.

Kai kicked the door and opened it with a loud bang, followed by shouting quite loudly,

"GOOD EVENING--! I'M IN THE HOOUUUSSSEEE--!"

At first sight one could see a few men eating and drinking, like a banquet. They were naturally surprised by Kai's sudden appearance.

"Who are you?!" one of them asked.

"IT IS I! ME!"

"What?"

"What?" Kai asked back..

"Get lost, you have no business here! GUARDS!" the man called out.

While Kai was standing there importantly, Sophie peeked through the crowd and saw a quite horrible sight.

Three naked women. One had her hands tied and was hanging by the rope in the air, she had been whipped until flesh had been shaved off and bone was visible. The second was nailed to a table and her body was cut in various places, her guts were slightly hanging out. And the third was... already dead, with her arms and legs broken, and her neck probably too.

Sophie immediately threw up, causing Kai to direct his sight towards whatever Sophie had been looking at and notice the tortured victims too. What was his reaction? He smiled.

"My, my, what do we have here?" he began speaking dramatically, "How could you do this to these poor and pitiable women?"

"Kh, it has nothing to do with you."

"Oh, but it does, you see-"

That was when another two guards came.

"Take these two intruders away!" the man commanded.

Needless to say, the average guard was now match to Kai nor Sophie. This time when one attacked Kai, he didn't straight up murder him, but like Sophie did, he knocked him out.

It was easy to judge the situation – the people there were probably some twisted nobles, who enjoyed torturing others. And today just happened to be one of those 'events', where they had gathered together to satisfy that 'need'.

The men hadn't anticipated any violence directed towards themselves, so when the guards were taken care of in a moment, they got afraid. They, too, tried to first threaten Kai and Sophie, after that then turned to bribes, but both were useless.

Kai calmly walked up to the tortured women and inspected them. They really had been treated horribly. It was disgusting how before the they were happily torturing the women to death and now, facing a man who could easily kill them, they started quivering and wanted to save their own hides, at least that's how Sophie saw the situation.

"There's something amiss..." Kai quietly said.

Sophie wondered what he meant by that, but then suddenly there was a wave of unease that ran over everyone. It was something familiar to what she had felt just recently. It was the same as she and Kai confronted the demonic minotaur, that feeling of being in the presence of something strong and terrifying.

Then the ceiling broke and someone fell down. The shadow stood up, its height about 3 meters, it had a humanoid body, but after the dust cleared he looked more like a demon. Its armor was black with glowing red lines running along it and it was holding a twohanded sword. Sophie remembered a chapter from the book "Guide to Greater Demons", and recognized the being in front as Dread Knight.

It didn't say anything, but just glanced at Kai, who was standing the nearest to it, and attacked without notice. Kai took the blow, amazingly the sword didn't cut, but he was blown away. The demon didn't stop and now cut the nearest noble in half. It started laughing.

"Hahahahaa--, it's been too long since I've tasted good blood. I'll make you all a sacrifice to the great God of War!"

The only ones in the room who might perhaps be able to fight against such a demon were Kai and Sophie. Actually, the latter wasn't so sure about that. Though she was somehow able to get into a battlestance, the demon's presence itself was horrible and her legs started to shake a little. She knew from that that she couldn't possibly defeat such an opponent.

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Then, something unexpected happened – she suddenly felt a surge of power, it was so incredible that her head started to spin from the overwhelming energy.

"Sophie, I don't think it's a good idea for me to get into a battle right now. You'll have to beat the demon yourself. You can do it with these buffs, right?" Kai said while sitting near the wall which he had crashed into.

So the reason for this power was his buffs, but how? However, this was no time to be thinking about such things.

"Hey demon!" she yelled, drawing the target's attention.

"Huh? A worthy opponent!"

Strong beings could usually estimate other's power. If the demon judged Sophie to be of equal strength, then how much stronger did she really get? It was true that at the moment Sophie felt incomparably stronger than ever before, the power was overwhelming, she was confident.

The demon was first to make a move. As it came dashing towards Sophie, she could see his movements. There was a sword slash and she could easily parry it. Not only were her reflexes enhanced, so was her physical strength. When the blow would have broken her stance before, she now was able to redirect it smoothly.

When she tried to counter-attack, the demon managed to deflect her strike as well. The opponent had very high abilities as well. Thus began an exchange of strikes and parries.

Both had good stamina, though Sophie's was in an enhanced state, so the continuous strikes lasted for a few minutes. Incredibly, the demon's defense started faltering first. The buffs Kai had given also removed fatigue and increased recovery rate.

After some vicious blows there was an opening in the demon's defens, which Sophie quickly took. Her sword pierced straight through the platemail into the demon's body. It should be mentioned that her sword was also a special one – it was made of light and durable mithril and it was enchanted with increased cutting power.

After the first successful hit there were more and more openings, and before long, there was a fatal one and Sophie managed to cut the demon's head off. Sophie emerged victorious.

"You did well," Kai complimented her as he came towards her.

"Yeah, thank you..." the excitement of the high-speed fight disappeared as she took a deep breath, "But, I couldn't have done it with your help," she regretfully admitted.

"Well, if you weren't skillful enough, it could have ended worse, you know," Kai tried to comfort her.

"Anyway, while you were busy, I gathered and tied up the nobles, they must have their retribution."

Now that Sophie looked at it, the men were really tied up and gathered into the corner of the room. Though she hadn't noticed, the nobles had tried to escape during the clash, but to their misfortune Kai was still capable of moving, thus the result.

"What do you mean by retribution?" Sophie asked. She wasn't asking 'why', but rather 'how', because she as well thought that they deserved some punishment.

"We'll see about that..." was Kai's answer.

The two tortured women were conscious and had seen everything. Because they weren't thinking very clear, they shivered at the sight of Kai approaching them.

"How are you?" Kai asked.

Was it a stupid question? Seeing their condition one should have a quite a good idea of how they felt. Still, it was just out of consideration. They stayed quiet, without light in their eyes, they were taking their last breaths before death.

"Do you want to live?"

When he said those words, he saw a glint of hope in the women's eyes. They hadn't totally given up hope, they didn't want to die.

Kai raised his hand to which the women flinched. However, the opposite of what they expected happened – when Kai held his hand towards them, they were overcome by warmth and energy. Their wounds quickly disappeared and left no trace. They looked at themselves surprised, and then looked back at Kai, and tears started flowing. Their quiet sobbing was their expression of happiness over living and gratefulness towards Kai.

It took a moment until they calmed down. After Kai gave them some blankets to cover themselves, he asked,

"Now, this is a chance, a chance to pay back everything that was done to you. What will you do?"

How strong were their feelings of hate towards the noblemen who had tortured them? Did they hate them so much as to wanting to kill them? Absolutely. However, in the end they didn't do it. Was it because the men were too resilient and the women too weak, or perhaps due to some unconcious reason? They sure gave them as much of a beating as they could with their relatively frail bodies, but they stopped in a few minutes after getting tired and calming their rage. It was enough.

That was when there was another unexpected occurence.

The dead demon's body burst into flames. However, rather than burning to ash, it started moving. It slowly stood up and spoke these words.

"You stand before the God of War, Walhgor!" he turned towards Kai, "You have done well, mortal. I've been observing you ever since you killed my minion at the Olec outpost. You are quite strong, prove yourself to me and I will make you my apostle and grant powers beyond your imagination! What do you say?"

"A god of this world, huh, interesting..." Kai quietly muttered. Then, with a wry smile, he responded "I have no interest in being a lowly messenger." He continued with a strong tone, "Rather than being just a minion, I will come and conquer your domain, and I will succeed you. I will become the God of War!"

"You dare threaten me!!?"

"Heh, there's nothing to dare even... If you think you have what it takes, come take me yourself!"

The demon burned even more intensely and with a roar of rage disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but ash.

Everyone besides Kai, who stood there calmly and relaxed, were stunned.

Just now a true god had manifested itself before them and had offered a mere human to become its apostle. It was an unbelievable chance. But what was more staggering was the fact that the human refused the offer, and then even went on to threaten and provoke the god. That was pure insanity!

"What were you thinking, provoking a god like that!?" Sophie yelled.

"Ee, nothing really. I just didn't like his arrogant attitude."

Kai's response left Sophie's mouth gawking, she couldn't underestand him at all.

Then the next moment there was an explosion somewhere nearby. The building shook and almost collapsed. The ceiling burst into flames and they were spreading very quickly.

"Get outside, quick!" Sophie reacted quickly.

Noone bothered to carry the noblemen with them, if they were to die there, then they deserved it. Perhaps burning to death in the flames of hell was a suitable punishment for scum like them.

When they got outside, they saw what had happened. A meteorite had fallen onto the house and blown away half of it, leaving the other side burning. They were lucky it didn't fall directly onto them.

So, what now?

As for the women, they can head back home, and because the nobles who had them captured have died, they don't have to worry about being come after again. At least, hopefully...

As for Kai and Sophie, they'll be heading to the capital, Camberth, where they'll rent an inn for the night and continue their journey the next day. This was what Kai decided straightforwardly without any care for the recent incident. His words were, 'The event has ended'.

So, as the sun was setting, the four were on their way toward the capital.

- - -

PS

This story (Silent Wrath) will probably be discontinued, or perhaps updated very rarely.

Okay, after some heartwarming feedback I won't be dropping this entirely. However, I will update when I have an idea how to and the time to do it, i.e infrequently.

I've been trying out different writing styles and will be posting a complete new story soon. Look forward to it!

Best wishes!