He and Ian snatched up the spatial bags from all of the Integration level experts that had died in the battle, many villagers following suit as they looted the corpses of the soldiers around them to better equip themselves for the battles that lay ahead. Only a hundred and fifty-three people remained on their side that were fit to fight, with eighty-five casualties whose terrible wounds shrouded any prospects for survival in a haze of sombre uncertainty.

  They quickly led a force of about fifty people to the nearest conflict where several dozen soldiers were in the midst of slaughtering everyone within one of the villages closer to Talen. Everyone that Nolan had taken along with him was at the sixth level of Profound Entry or higher, the rest having remained at the battlefield to see the wounded safely back to Talen.

  With him and Ian leading the locals they were able to wipe out the entirety of the enemy presence within the small village in a matter of minutes, the hundred-strong force having met a horrible end within a fraction of an hour.

  “How could they?” grated Benn, his eyes glistening with the sort of universal human grief that only true tragedies give life to.

  Wooden doors lay in splinters where intruders had forced their way into lifeless homes where fathers and mothers had struggled in order to protect their children, nearly none managing to do so with success. Carts lay broken throughout the dirt roads that connected the dense sprawl of basic infrastructure, produce and grain scattered throughout the blood-stained scenery alongside over two hundred fresh corpses.

  Despite the regularity of his relationship with bloodshed and death Nolan felt sick to his stomach as he observed the bloodcurdling depiction of true barbarism. What thrill was there to be had when the people one killed were of the good and innocent sort? The only time taking the life of another was acceptable was when the individual in question was despicable, evil, lost beyond hope.

  Nolan gave his head a harsh shake. He didn’t want to start thinking about battle in the way that Ian did, for he knew that although his friend detested needless confrontation the young scion of the Varai clan truly enjoyed the competitive aspect of war. He’d also noticed this tendency in a lot of the people from his friend’s homeland during the invasion of the Towering Eaves clan, and in many other places since his arrival in this warped yet wondrous world.

  “Leave their belongings,” Ian snapped. Dozens of people in the midst of looting dead soldiers just as they had in the aftermath of the previous battle suddenly paused in place with hesitant hands. “Don’t you care about your countrymen?”

  “He’s right,” yelled Benn, who was covered in bloody cuts and blackish bruises. He raised the Essence Fusion sword that Nolan had given him with an angry snarl and incensed eyes. “On to the next town!”

  Twenty more adults and teenagers joined up with them as they set off toward the nearest instance of conflict, a larger battle in the countryside on a similar scale to the one that they had initially participated in just outside of Talen Village. It appeared that several of the count’s smaller armies were conjoining as they spread throughout the land like a lethal contagion, though their huge mob was quickly putting out the fire that was this occupying force.

  The impression that he and Ian made on their allies this day was irreversible.

  None of those present would ever forget the blinding flashes of golden light that signified another mass bisection at the hands of Ian’s simple yet devastating martial skill. He employed it with impeccable timing borne from the hundreds of life-and-death situations that he’d survived over the past several years, whether against people or savage animals and demonic beasts.

  And then there was Nolan, whose misleading cultivation base of the fourth level of the Profound Entry stage had shocked many as he easily took the lives of countless trained soldiers at the peak of the same stage. Despite his low cultivation he was able to use an offensive martial skill that was just as deadly as the one employed by his friend, who was an entire stage ahead of him, not to mention an incredible high quality movement skill that enabled him to take on people like Algrave and his Enforcers. Most incredible in the eyes of his allies was his use of the needles that he had acquired in Three-River Valley, as well as the conservative platforms of spiritual energy that he summoned all throughout the successive conflicts.

  They went on to systematically wipe out all of Algrave’s soldiers which had conveniently begun to group together after dispersing all throughout Malben. Nolan and Ian killed hundreds of people as the hours trickled by in tense intervals of sweat-slicked slaughter. The sun mocked the martyrs below as it followed its daily pilgrimage across the afternoon sky with silent indifference, countless thousands of people dead by the time they closed in on the last bastion of outsiders within the valley.

  The final confrontation took place within the palace that lorded over the landscape from where it loomed over the surrounding infrastructure from the centre of the capital city of Scane. Several hundred people affiliated with the count remained holed up within the lord’s walled estate, though these fortifications were mostly unguarded and quickly fell to the thousands of citizens that had gathered to expel their much hated enemies in the most permanent method possible.

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  “Make sure to leave some of them alive!” Nolan yelled over the tumult, his voice infused with inner essence.

  They managed to breach the front gates of the massive manor by hurling heavy stones at the walls and repeatedly smashing the trunk of a downed tree into the obstinate doors of the building, many swarming around the residence and entering through open windows and unlocked doors. Once inside they rushed to engage in eliminating the remaining enemies in the same ruthless fashion that their families and friends had been subject to earlier in the day.

  Once the last of the count’s affiliates had been killed—all of them fashionably dressed in rich robes of thick material of varying colours—Nolan tapped Ian’s shoulder and nodded in an indication to follow. He quickly maneuvered through the congested halls of the manor’s third floor until he arrived at a grand bedchamber with over ten metres of space between the triple-doored wardrobe and the large four-post bed. The floors were impeccably clean, the bedsheets freshly made and the red velvet canopy showing recent signs of dusting.

  He crossed over to the wardrobe with long strides and quickly tugged open a drawer of polished oak to find several spatial bags arranged in neat order. Each one was a light teal colour with greyish-silvery string tied around its neck.

  “Awesome,” Ian panted. He held a superior spirit stone in his left hand. “You sensed these?”

  “I sensed the spiritual arrayment around it. It’s a weak ass barrier, like even I can do better.”

  “Hah, so we were going to get paid regardless of what villagers gave us.”

  “It only makes sense that the nobles would have more wealth than the free people, and this way we look like good guys so—”

  “I had more near-death moments today than most people do in their lives,” Ian snorted. “Look at us, Nolan. After all of our risks and struggles we damn well better be good guys.”

  Now that the purge of the palace had been completed every single one of the allied combatants began to scour the estate for signs of their loved ones. They eventually found a large dungeon that was only accessible from a discreet pantry room that was one of many within the large basement beneath the building.

  All of the cells were empty aside from four others, the bare planks that served as resting places empty in hundreds of other cells.

  Two of the young women that lay curled up on the bare wood of their rigid beds had been dead for at least a week. The other two girls were barely alive, though much to the surprise of the residents of Malben these girls were completely bereft of cultivations and didn’t seem to understand the Universal Language. They weren’t in any condition to speak so they were hurriedly removed from the dungeon and carried over to a doubtlessly overworked physician.

  Once it became evident that the kidnapped women were nowhere to be found, Nolan had everyone gather in the fields outside of Scane and decreed that seeing to the wounded and assessing the damage throughout the valley currently took precedence over finding the missing girls. He reasoned that there were people that needed help even now, and unlike those girls these people were here before them where they could actually make a difference. He promised that he would get to the bottom of the missing people in the meantime, at which point he, Ian, Benn and several dozen others from Talen villagegathered on the well kempt lawns of the palace grounds where ten of the richest looking enemies that had been residing within the estate had been gathered.

  A young man volunteered all that he knew as soon as they promised to spare his life in exchange for the information. According to him up until last week all of the girls had been residing within the estate, though one night all of them were carted off to some obscure location and he happened to see the pitiable procession. Later the next day they were summoned and told that they had achieved the task that the Red Mountain King had assigned them and that they were permitted to return to the king’s court back at Red Mountain.

  Apparently they never planned to keep the county, but were instructed to capture all of the people once they had succeeded in capturing a set amount of women. They intended to send the rest of the residents to another territory owned by their king. They initially planned to take a gradual approach, a few hundred here and a few hundred there, though the insurrection in Talen Village caused them to act early. After hearing that two experts had supposedly been hired by the people of Talen, he feared that the other locals would surge to support their countrymen once they heard that there were powerful cultivators spearheading their cause. He quickly ordered his forces to exterminate everyone within the valley in whatever ways they saw fit and then sent a large force to meet the villagers head on so as to gauge the strength of the enemy experts.

  After revealing all he knew the young man was taken inside of the palace where he was brutally murdered by a dozen men that had been kept there for that very reason.

  “He knew quite a bit,” Nolan said with a level voice. “But not enough. I’m curious what you guys might be able to tell me.”

  Every one of the prisoners died in the end, not because Nolan was overridden by emotion and rashly ordered their deaths but because even though he appeared very powerful and intimidating to the locals there was nothing that he could do or say to prevent them from venting their rage upon those that had participated in the ruining of their lives and taking those of their loved ones.

  A rare medicinal pellet. According to the last nobleman, an old man with a well-trimmed beard of thick, peppered hair, the reason that all of those women had been captured was so that Algrave could create a certain medicinal pellet for his liege, or rather so that some mysterious strangers could concoct it for him. He was doubtlessly referring to the disciples of the Bloodhand Sect that Nolan had encountered. Supposedly the composition of inner essence differed between genders and the particular energy that resided within women was necessary in order to create this abominable medicine.