Chapter 127: Wild Assassination (2)

♦️ You have killed a Bone Giant, a creature with an artificial soul of the lowest order. You have gained +10,000 EXP.

A notification sounded.

Ray’s eyes narrowed.

His landing had been cataclysmic, putting many undead to eternal rest, but he didn’t get any points for that. Not even a single notification. However, killing the bone giant had provided him with EXP.

Ray could only guess that it was because they lacked souls, while the bone giant had one, even if it was artificially made.

This meant that he had been right all along about the source of experience points.

They didn’t come out of thin air.

The system refined the souls of the beings he killed to produce experience points!

And the reason it didn’t work in the tower was because anyone that died there had their souls captured by the tower for some unknown purpose.

The act itself was nefarious enough.

The purpose couldn’t be anything good—it had to be something dark and twisted.

“A bone giant defeated in one move?!”

The Flying Serpent had seen Ray in action too many times, so it wasn’t surprised to see him take out the bone giant in a single move. But the same couldn’t be said for the Necromancer.

The bone giant was comparable to a small group of elite Bronze Rankers working together. Seeing it fall effortlessly, the Necromancer was shocked to the core, thinking the Mad Chieftain had grown far stronger than the last time they sparred.

The Flying Serpent turned toward the Necromancer and said, “There’s your proof. That madman has betrayed us!”

His words were like adding fuel to the fire.

The Necromancer’s eyes, like a pair of burning coals, widened further, flickering between rage and disbelief as he felt the sting of betrayal sink deep into his chest like a dagger.

One of his own had turned against him, for god’s sake. He couldn’t help but feel such encroaching anger that his sanity and rationality began to waver.

He didn’t yet know how heavy the price of that betrayal would be, but he knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

His flawless plan was beginning to fracture before his eyes, and his hatred for Ray—who was disguised as the Mad Chieftain to fool and anger him—burned hotter than ever.

What he didn’t know was that the target of his ire couldn’t care less what he thought. Even if the Necromancer’s hatred for him was as deep as the ocean, it wouldn’t stop Ray from carrying out his plan as intended.

In the end, who lived and who died would be decided by their abilities.

“Kill him!” the Necromancer commanded in his signature shrill voice.

At his roar, a massive portion of the undead horde broke away from the wall, performing a mad charge toward Ray.

Their movements were jerky, as if they were marionettes being pulled by invisible strings, but they were fast—like blood-crazed beasts. With thousands of them heading in a single direction, it was no different than a nightmare come true.

Ray, however, remained calm despite the mind-numbing sight before him.

“Yes, come closer,” Ray muttered, a faint grin curling his lips.

He was glad to see them drawing near.

The closer they were, the easier it would be to crush them into smithereens without sacrificing his disguise.

He raised his hand, and the warhammer flew back into his grip with a heavy thud. He had hurled it away to deal with the bone giant, and now it was snug in his hand once more.

He swung it around in a wide arc, smashing apart the lunging corpses. Their bodies burst into pieces the moment the warhammer connected with them.

Ray swung it again and again.

More and more corpses lunged toward him, and they met the same end as their predecessors. Blown into smithereens by the warhammer.

“Next!”

When he was done flattening the wave of corpses surrounding him, he shot toward the nearest cluster of undead abominations, blasting them into unrecognizable fragments with a single swing of his warhammer.

Then he moved toward another group. There were countless undead here.

Ray was tearing through their ranks like a storm, and the defenders were raining down volleys of arrows and spells from atop the wall, wiping out hundreds of them at a time with their coordinated assault.

The Necromancer’s army of the dead was thinning at an incredible speed, and its so-called flawless plan was being reduced to atoms!

Taking the Great Wall and opening a direct path to the backyards of the Three Kingdoms suddenly felt as distant as the stars.

“No… no, I can’t allow it to happen.”

Its dream of entering the good graces of the Bloodsuckers and gaining their help to evolve into an immortal Lich in the future was slipping out of its grasp like sand, and it drove the Necromancer mad.

“Satrap of Seven Shadows! Do everything in your power to make sure that fool dies before he causes any more damage to my plan!”

“As you command, my lord. I’ll tear him apart for you.”

The moment the order was given, the man sitting near the platform stood up and rushed toward Ray.

“Someone annoying’s coming!”

Ray’s sixth sense flared up. He was perceiving life-threatening danger. Whoever was approaching wasn’t going to be easy to deal with.

He looked around and spotted an odd figure in the distance.

Said figure was rapidly advancing toward his direction.

As it came closer, its outline became clearer.

It was a two-meter-tall man with a sturdy, well-built frame.

He wore a black robe that covered his body from head to toe. The hood cast a dark shadow over his face, making it impossible to see any distinct features. And from his sleeves, jagged bone shivs stuck out.

A cold killing intent that could freeze blood in veins rolled off him like a suffocating smog.

According to the intel Ray had been given upon his arrival in Veloria, this could only be the Satrap of Seven Shadows.

Every great terror had a team of powerful underlings that were tought to deal with.

The four brutes were the Mad Chieftain’s Generals.

The flying lizards were the Flying Serpent’s winged beasts.

And the Satrap of Seven Shadows… was the Necromancer’s executioner.

He was almost as dangerous as the Necromancer himself, capable of conjuring seven equally powerful shadow clones to fight alongside him.

In a fair duel, he could easily overwhelm his master, but the Necromancer never fought fair. He used endless dead to crush all opposition.

Not to mention, the Satrap was duty bound to the Necromancer by an unbreakable oath. He could never betray him.

“Mad Chieftain, I’ve always wanted to test my skill against you. To see how long it would take me to kill you. Today, I finally have the chance. Don’t expect me to go easy.”

The Satrap didn’t stop running as he spoke.

Ray never liked yappers, so he attacked while his opponent was mid-sentence.

The warhammer spun through the air, roaring as it hurtled toward the Satrap of Seven Shadows.

The Satrap whistled sharply. Shadows erupted around Ray, seven distinct silhouettes forming a circle around him.

Each shadow took a different form.

One resembled a wyvern, another a massive hound with three heads, one a humanoid armored knight, one a mantis-like insect, one a crawling mass of arms, another a floating specter with hollow eyes, and the last, a twisted mirror of the Satrap himself.

The Satrap could freely swap positions with any of his shadows at will. He swapped places with the least threatening one before lunging at Ray with the other six.

Everyone knew the Mad Chieftain required a medium to channel his powers.

He was a Runic Warrior who couldn’t twist even a fragment of the world’s framework without his Warhammer.

Now that it was no longer in his grasp, this was the perfect opportunity to kill him. It would take him a moment or two to recall it, and the Satrap was determined to exploit that window of opportunity to assassinate him with his shadows’ combined assault.

It was a perfect tactic—one that would have worked flawlessly… if he were truly facing the Mad Chieftain.

But Ray wasn’t the Mad Chieftain.

His skillset was completely different.

In the blink of an eye, Ray vanished from the Satrap’s line of sight.

The well-planned formation descended into utter chaos, mirroring the confusion in the Satrap’s own mind.

A split second later, Ray reappeared, directly in front of him.

The Satrap of Seven Shadows found himself face to face with Ray before he could even blink, and in that moment, Ray’s gaze was colder than the vicious clutches of death, holding no regard for life.

Feeling like he was staring into the abyss, the Satrap froze up in terror.

Ray didn’t give him a chance to recover from his fright.

He threw what looked like a powerless punch.

The moment it connected, the law of causality twisted as his [Consecutive Lucky Strike] trait triggered.

A tremendous amount of force transmitted over from his fist and wrecked havoc on the target’s body.

It was too much for the Satrap to endure. His body exploded into a crimson mist, flesh and bone scattering like petals in the wind.

Right then.

The seven shadows that had surrounded Ray collapsed and dispersed the instant their master perished.

A notification sounded, confirming his death.

♦️ You have killed a special mutated peak Bronze Ranker. You have gained +200,000 EXP.

♦️ You have gained an additional +25,000 EXP for defeating an opponent two minor realms above you.

Ray was no longer at the peak of Iron Rank. Bronze Rankers were no longer a major realm above him, so he couldn’t gain as much extra EXP from killing them as before.

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