Chapter 129
Carnage of Death
Leo ran speedily between the trees, his eyes glimmering with gold.
He had the location where the voice came from pinpointed, though he still spread out his awareness as far as he could, fearing an ambush. He battled the voices within that tried compelling him to relax, alluding to how 'easy' every 'fight' was for him. Hubris, ultimately, was not something he wanted in his life, especially as his common sense was still extremely shot.
A frown appeared on his face as he came to an abrupt halt, narrowly dodging an ethereal, spear-shaped array of light that streaked just a few inches from his nose. It burst through the nearby tree and momentarily lodged itself into a crater it dug out within the ground, disappearing into ash a moment later.
He swiveled his gaze west, where he spotted a silhouette turn to shadow and flee back in the same direction that he was heading. Leo didn't pursue, knowing well enough that it was a trap. He was being lured to a place where they had likely set up arrays and formations, and as someone who had effectively zero knowledge of them, he wasn't about to walk into one (or a few) willingly.
Instead, he darted in the opposite direction, still heading toward his original destination but taking a rather roundabout route.
On his way over, a few more spears were aimed at his head, all of which he dodged with relative ease, though giving way to every subsequent one—the one that he just dodged speared past his nose at an inch of a distance. He made it seem as though they were getting harder and harder to dodge, wondering whether he could lure them into a trap.
At some point, however, they stopped coming, and he grew a bit worried—but never stopped himself.
Ten minutes or so passed by in a flash, and he came upon it—a vast, rectangular clearing housing some hundred or so structures with slanted, gray rooftops and walls made out of wood and brick. At the front, there were rows of figures, bound in a half-circle as they quickly drew around him, with a man standing at the very center, a few bits away from the rest.
He had rather similar features to the woman, though he was less... oafish-seeming, if it could be quantified. The look in his eyes was fierce and sharp and full of hatred, veins on his arms bulging, his fingers curled up into two fists.
Leo's frown deepened, not because of the welcome party, but because of the stench--blood, seared flesh, and rot permeated the air, and he could see the strewn hordes of bodies some ways back behind the welcome party.
"You're the mongrel who killed my dearest sister?!" The man at the front roared, hardly bothering to hide his bloodlust.
"..." Leo remained silent, pouring more Qi into his eyes and blocking the light from the blaring torches, peeking toward the center of the settlement. "Are those kids?" he asked rather softly, having noticed an array of children tied up against a strange-looking building.
"Not anymore," the man grinned, and before Leo could so much as utter a protest, a pillar of flames jutted out from the position, far into the sky, consuming everything in its wake. Leo felt a pang of rage bubble within him, though he quelled it quickly, still never looking at the man. "That bitch-boy that used to kiss the soles of my Sister's feet must have warned you about me, huh? Cowards, the both of you."
"You just killed twenty helpless kids," Leo said. "But, yes, I'm the coward. Sometimes, the stupidity is just so astounding... there are simply no words."
"You want to speak of stupidity to me?" The man cackled rather strangely. "And yet you dared walk here, all by yourself? Ha ha ha, very well, you brilliantly minded one. We shall see if your bravado and intellect remain when I skin you alive and boil your skinned flesh until you are begging for the sweet release of death."
Leo sighed, wondering, ever for a moment, would his life now become... this? Running around the forest, culling whatever mad thing woke up from its slumber, staining his hands and mind a bit further with each passing day. And yet, he felt if he didn't do precisely that, there would be even more bloodshed in due time.
He caught himself and almost grinned--was this how it began? A just cause born of necessity, slowly growing corrupted over time as more and more excuses are born, all beginning with the simple: It would be even worse if it weren't for me.
"What? Did you go mute with fear?"
"Did you kill all the other Clans?" Leo asked.
"What, you curious?" The man grinned. "This was merely all as it was written—the weak should bend their knees and allow themselves to be consumed for the betterment of everyone else."
"So, you haven't," Leo sighed ever so faintly, looking up toward the sky. It was ashen, still, bolts of black lightning occasionally flashing across its tapestry.
He felt it fading—the feeling within his veins and his meridians, just as with the woman. It was like there were worms trying to dig in and crawl through him, but they were meek and staggering. A single flush of Qi through his system obliterated them all as he looked away from the sky and toward the man, facing his eyes for the first time.
A tremor pulsed through him but did little else—it was suffocated in his depths, turning vanishingly small until it simply... vanished.
The man's eyes were eerie and strange—they had no static color or even shape, dancing between several to no irises, shining yet dimming all at once. His pupils dilated and compressed in a rather rhythmic fashion, almost like a consistent pulse, colors emerging and fading from them like vapors.
With each pulse, Leo felt a tug from invisible threads trying to pull him, but all he had to do was stir his Qi ever so slightly to shatter those connections—whether it was one lonely tug or thousands swarming him from every which way.
It wasn't because he was immune to the charms or because he knew the perfect technique to dispel it—he was brute-forcing it, after all, and it was possible because of just one thing: the staggering difference in their Qi. Not the quantity, no, but the quality. Or, rather, type.
The man used 'ordinary Qi', while Leo's was entirely Primordial. It was a fact he held close to his heart and hadn't told anyone, allowing them to assume he was similar to Yue and Liang—that he had these tiny clusters in him that were made up of Primordial Qi, but that the majority was still comprised of the ordinary sort, like the rest.
This was a test of sorts for Leo, whether his ability stemmed entirely from the system's gifts or something more innate to him. Well, in fairness, his having the Primordial Qi was still a system's gift, but it was a central part of him.
A thing culpable for all the world's changes churned within him like a dormant volcano, burning away whatever alien thing dared enter. As the seconds ticked in silence, the man's expression began to distort bit by bit, darkening, while the look in his eyes grew more confused, as though none of it made any sense.
Well, to him, it rather didn't--Leo didn't have a special physique, and he wasn't executing any one martial art, or combating with his own innate bloodline, or doing anything on the 'visible' spectrum of things. It was as though the man's Qi simply disappeared in Leo, like a drop of water being tossed into an ocean.
"W-what... what are you?" the man asked. "Are you even human?" Leo couldn't help but smile; there was something serenely beautiful about the sincerity, about the godawful acting, and about the most childish attempt to get him to say a magic word.
"Do you think me saying that word will change anything?" Leo quizzed as the man flinched. "I--ah..." He sighed, swiftly took out the sword from the ring, and stabbed backward without even looking.
A yelp echoed out into the dark night as the thud of a body followed.
He felt the pang, but he buried it. Justifications would have to do, even if they were the chains that would come to bind him.
"It doesn't matter. Let me ask you this: have you captured any of the Spirits?"
"K-Kill him!!" he didn't get a reply and instead saw shadows descend upon him.
Not those that had welcomed him and formed a circle around him, but those that hid in their shadows. They appeared like phantoms and swarmed him, numbering in the hundreds, but they were... slow.
Leo executed the movement art and, in a flash, appeared in front of the unsuspecting man, inches away from his face. He was so close, in fact, that he could see his reflection in the man's strange, ever-changing eyes. The man that stared back from that reflection was... a bit unfamiliar. There was apathy to him that numbed Leo for a moment, forewarning what he always feared he'd become if he headed down this path aggressively.
He didn't say he was sorry or offer some words coated in self-pity—he merely stabbed forward and through the man's heart, piercing it with no problem.
Those starry-like eyes danced violently for a moment, becoming so bright that they were nearly blinding, almost like stars themselves during their last hurrah. And then they dimmed, all color and luster in them vanishing, turning dull and gray as the trace of life and awareness faded from them.
The body limped backward as Leo took out the blade, falling unceremoniously to the ground.
As though in response to it, just as the body hit the ground, a bolt of thunder ripped out from the sky above, tearing through the space between and slamming at the very center of the settlement, tearing open a massive crater and causing a rippling torrent in the shape of an ethereal wave to wash out outwardly. The black mass could not be seen through, and before Leo could even react to it properly, it had already washed over him and onward—but all it did... was replenish the bit of Qi he'd spent thus far.
As it settled, and as he looked around, he couldn't help but gasp—everyone save for him... was gone. Well, their clothes were still there, but their bodies were not. There weren't even traces of them, not in the shape of flesh or bits or ashes, just... nothing.
And yet, the strangest part of it was something that transpired just as the bolt cracked the earth—Leo heard it. It was faint, it was dull, and it was distant, but he heard the sound of thunder, something that had never happened before.
What the hell is happening? was the only thought he could muster whilst staring at the unbridled destruction around him, as though death itself had swept through, leaving carnage in its wake.