Though Drake had fought many battles, killed many demons, and seen many people die, he had never killed anyone before. He knew that these bandits were ruthless murderers themselves and yet, there was something within him that was repulsed by the idea of taking another person’s life.

Drake looked around to see Blaze, Sylvia, and Helen, finishing off the last few bandits.

‘How could they do this?’ he thought. ‘How could they kill people so easily?’

After a few minutes, all the bandits were dead.

Blaze approached him.

“Let’s get going,” he told Drake, patting him on his back.

Syliva walked past Drake, glancing at him curiously, but didn’t say anything.

Helen sighed, “Let’s go master Drake.”

The carriage was quiet for a while. Drake was silently contemplating how it could ever be okay to kill people.

After some time, Sylvia wanted to change the mood and started a conversation.

“Do you guys know, there used to be a powerful bandit group in this area in the past.”

“Really? I had no idea,” Blaze replied.

“Me neither,” Helen added.

“Yes, it was a group of hundreds of bandits, with many steel body martial artists, and peak, tempered body martial artists. Their leader was a late-stage steel body martial artist. In other words, they were far more powerful than this group.”

Sylvia glanced at Drake before continuing.

“The group raided numerous villages, killing the helpless villagers mercilessly. Even the children weren’t spared. They would toy with the women for a while, before getting bored and killing them off too. They ruled this area for many years, making it extremely difficult for anyone to pass through for a long time.”

Drake listened to the story but didn’t say anything, choosing to look outside the carriage, at the vast, grassy plains, lost in his own thoughts.

“What happened to them?” Helen asked, worried. “Are they still around?”

“Not sure,” Sylvia replied, furrowing her brows as she tried to recollect the information. “Something happened a couple years ago, not sure what, but almost the entire group was found dead.”

Blaze and Helen looked shocked.

“Maybe they encountered some powerful cultivator that finally put an end to them,” Blaze suggested.

“Maybe, but they weren’t just dead,” Sylvia explained. “They had clearly been tortured, either while they were alive, or their corpse after their death. Most likely the former.”

“Oh wow,” Helen gasped. “Could it have been the work of some dark mages then? Or maybe one of their previous victims, seeking revenge?”

“It’s possible,” Sylvia replied, nodding. “Nobody knows, but after they died, many smaller bandit groups started rising up, trying to fill the power void, one of which must be the ones that attacked us.”

“I see,” Blaze and Helen responded. Everyone else also looked outside, admiring the view while contemplating the story.

While Sylvia’s story was mostly correct, she didn’t know a key piece of information.

…

Four years ago.

“Theo!” Derek screamed as a dagger was pushed into his chest by a red-haired young boy.

He had found the boy two years before, hiding under his mother’s bed as he killed her. Derek found the boy interesting. He was very gifted with martial arts too, so he asked his leader if they could recruit the boy.

To their surprise, the boy was extremely happy to join the bandits, even though they had just laid waste to his entire village and killed his family in front of his eyes.

Later, they found out the reason why.

The boy was sick.

Not physically, but sick in the head.

He enjoyed killing and relished it.

Whilst Derek liked killing people too, the boy was on another level. It was almost an addiction to him, as if murder was the boy’s sole source of joy and purpose in life.

Derek didn’t understand, nobody in their group did. However, he was extremely strong. Theo cultivated the steel body at just eleven years of age and was one of the strongest individuals in their group.

Hence, they kept him around.

However, that night, Theo and their leader were having an argument in his tent. Theo felt rage building up inside him. The leader turned around and waved his hand, rudely dismissing Theo.

But instead of leaving, Theo took the opportunity to stab the bandit leader in the back.

The attack was completely unexpected so the leader couldn’t defend himself and ended up dying.

Derek, who was passing by, heard his cries and entered the tent, only to find the leader lying in a pool of his own blood. He panicked and rushed to the body, so was taken by surprise as Theo attacked him from behind as well, severely injuring him.

They fought for a bit, but due to his injuries, he wasn’t Theo’s match, resulting in the current situation.

Derek saw his life flash before his eyes as he took his last breath and fell to the ground.

The last thing he saw was the same, wicked smile plastered on the boy’s face.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I should have… killed you that day…

…

Back to the present.

Drake’s party returned to Basindale. They gave their report to the receptionist, who was surprised to learn that there was a pseudo-commander class demon monkey in the camp, as well as the bandit attack. As compensation, they doubled their reward for the mission, and gave a bonus for dealing with the bandits, which made everyone happy.

Drake, who had returned to normal now, asked the others to take out the demon monkey corpses. Demon corpses, due to their special physique, were often useful. They could be used to make tools, weapons, artifacts, pills, and much more.

Drake kept a couple of corpses for his pill refinement practice, and the rest were sold to the hunters guild. Everybody took their share of the sale and the reward money.

They also took this opportunity to help Sylvia register in the guild. She was a late-stage warrior mage and a late-stage tempered body martial artist. She also formally joined their party.

News soon spread across the town of the appearance of a young dragon and dryad, and that they had formed a hunting party together. Temporarily, the crowd in and around the hunters guild increased, as people roamed the area to see if they could catch a glimpse of the legendary dragon and faerie races.

Blaze and Sylvia didn’t mind the attention, or care much about the random people.

After registering, Drake and Helen also took Blaze and Sylvia to the inn they were staying in and to book rooms for them as well.

The innkeeper was so shocked upon seeing them that he just froze, unable to process what to do. Never in his wildest did the innkeeper imagine that he’d have dragons and faeries staying in his inn. Saying that he felt like he could die happy now, would be an understatement.

After booking the rooms, everyone realised how tired they were from the journey. So, they retired to their rooms to rest.

Arriving in his room, Drake, unlike the others, did not attempt to relax. Instead, he took out the various rank one pill recipes from his storage pouch and began studying them in detail.

‘Interesting,’ he thought to himself, before picking out the recipe he felt was the easiest. It was a basic mana recovery pill.

Then, he took out various materials from his storage pouch such as demon corpses, herbs, ores, and more.

Drake also took out the elven alchemy book given to him by Ray which he had read multiple times now, and kept it open for reference.

“It’s time to begin.”

…

Later that night, in the battleground, Holy Capital

A thick scent of blood and death hung in the air.

But if you were a cultivator, what you would notice the most, was not the scent, but rather the extremely chaotic mana throughout the several kilometre-wide battlefield.

The mana was concentrated on several individuals at the centre, who were surrounded by numerous craters on the completely charred and destroyed ground.

Five people were kneeling together in a group, gasping for air. While they all looked different, they had one thing in common – all of them were looking at a woman with an expression of horror.

An old woman dressed in black robes was standing in front of them. Her robes were tattered and she was bleeding from several wounds, but she looked fearsome and imposing.

Behind the woman were three black, headless horsemen wielding cone-shaped lances, and on either side were two humanoid figures composed completely out of water, holding a trident. Clutched in her hand was the throat of an old man who was struggling to breathe.

The old woman looked at the group of mage emperors before her. With a wicked smile, she clenched her fist and the old man gasped, and then completely stopped moving. Dalia dropped his body and took out a jade box. She removed the lid and everyone felt huge waves of mana pulsing outwards. Reaching into the box, Dalia carefully took out a glowing sphere and held it high. Waves of mana from around the battlefield spiralled into the sphere. With each passing second, the pulses of mana the sphere released increased.

After a little while, she placed the sphere back into the box and smiled.

“Not too bad, guess this trip was worth it after all,” she mumbled to herself. “I finally got the soul of a mage emperor and a lot of other mages and martial artists.”

“You! I can’t believe you killed him!” one of the mage emperors yelled at Dalia.

“Oh, what are you going to do about it?” she asked coldly, but the mage emperor couldn’t respond.

Dalia smiled. “In that case, I’ll get going then.”

She summoned a powerful wind spirit and prepared to leave. The mage emperors looked at each other, hesitating whether they should try to stop her.

They thought about how all six of them had confronted her together and lost. One of them had even died. Their morale was completely shattered so they just watched as she rose into the sky and left.

Dalia glanced into the distance, in the direction of Duskville.

‘I wonder how he’s doing,’ she thought. She wanted to join Henry again, however, she had just expended a lot of mana and was quite injured. She didn’t want to make another move until she was fully recovered.

‘Hope you don’t disappoint me,’ she thought, as she retreated into the night.

The immortals watched this battle seriously.

The immortals from the side of the Order were elated, whereas the ones from the Myriad Sword Palace looked gloomy. They had just lost a mage emperor and five more were severely injured. This was a huge loss to them. None of them expected Dalia to be so powerful.

That bitch has gotten even stronger! one of them thought.

“Haha, seems like it’s your loss this time,” the Order’s immortals laughed.

The Myriad Sword Palace elders looked at each other and sighed, “It seems so,” they replied.

However, a smirk appeared on their faces as they suddenly jumped back.

‘Something’s wrong!’ The Order’s immortals immediately became wary.

The next instant, a ginormous aura appeared in the building.

“Sword of Calamity!” A loud voice reverberated throughout the clouds.

A mountain-sized sword materialised out of thin air and attacked the order’s immortals.

The two immortals condensed barriers to block the sword attack at the last moment. An unbelievable amount of energy was radiating out from the clash, far more than the energy released by all the mage emperors from before, combined.

Boom!

The sword and the barriers exploded simultaneously, releasing another large aura. The two immortals from the Order spat out blood, injured from the clash. They looked up to spot a third, bearded immortal, who had now joined the Myriad Sword Palace side.

“You! How dare you launch a sneak attack on us!?” they exclaimed.

“Haha, we don’t need to play by the rules when dealing with you dark mages,” one of them replied.

Three against two - the odds were not in their favour!

The two immortals from the Order looked at each other, but instead of worry, a smile slowly crept up their cheeks. They turned to face the trio and spoke.

“Well, looks like you guys just beat us to the punch.”

The Myriad Sword Palace elders frowned, before feeling an unbelievably powerful aura descend into their room - one that completely dwarfed all of theirs.

“Warrior immortal mage!” the immortals exclaimed. All three of them immediately turned around and fled.

“Not so fast!” A voice boomed.

Any mortal looking on from below would have seen the clouds suddenly start churning violently, with occasional rumblings of thunder. Many of them felt that a storm was approaching and tried to find shelter.

They were unaware of the clash between immortals happening in the sky that would affect the two gigantic factions in this part of the Holy Capital.

…

The next morning, Basindale.

Drake woke up, still tired from the long night. He had spent most of the night refining pills but had no success. But, if he wanted to be a mage again, he didn’t have a choice and needed to master alchemy.

Still thinking about pill refining, Drake mindlessly went through his routine, brushing his teeth, showering, and changing out of his pyjamas.

After getting ready, he decided to meet everyone else for breakfast downstairs.

Helen and Sylvia were just getting a table as Drake joined, followed soon by Blaze.

The group ordered their usual breakfast, which was delivered even sooner by the enthusiastic innkeeper, eager to please his special guests. The innkeeper had ordered all his staff to prioritise anything requested by Drake’s party immediately, dropping whatever else they might be working on.

Soon, four plates of the best and most carefully cooked meals arrived at their table. Drake’s group were chatting and catching up while enjoying their breakfast.

“What are we going to be doing today?” asked Helen, drinking a spoon of delicious soup.

Drake thought for a moment and suggested, “Why don’t you show Sylvia around town? Maybe do some shopping?”

“That sounds wonderful,” Sylvia replied and looked at Helen while chewing her food. She swallowed and asked, “Can you?”

“Sure, of course I can,” Helen replied cheerfully.

“Great, then maybe the two of us can do a bit of exploring ourselves Blaze,” Drake said, looking at Blaze.

“Cool… great…,” he responded while emptying a bowl full of gravy into his mouth.

The group finished their meals and split up.