Chapter 95: You Live On The Edge

Elias could hear the cannibal whisper words beneath his growling, and he thought it sounded like a name. He was saying it as if he were in a trance, almost worship-like.

Worshipping of a higher power except the Ascendants was not forbidden, but it was frowned upon, and Elias tried to listen to what the man was saying, if he recognized the words, but it was a language he had not heard before.

He straightened from his previous position, and his eyes tracked the circling man.

“Drip… Drip… Drip…”

The sound of the blood dropping from Elias’s claws was suddenly loud in the silence of the clearing, and the growling cannibal heard it, and he flinched before he looked at Elias’s face, and he found eyes that were surprisingly clear, almost as if this red phantom had not just butchered all of his brothers a moment before.

Suddenly grinning and showing bloody serrated teeth, the cannibal must have seen his death in Elias’s calm gaze, and he decided that waiting to die was far more torture than charging ahead.

The cannibal surprisingly stopped circling Elias and walked towards him, and even standing straight, the man was barely five feet; Elias towered over him. At the moment, it was almost as if he were a subject approaching his king.

Licking his lips, the cannibal feints high with his knife, but he strikes low. Elias didn’t bite; he had seen this move coming from a mile away, and he caught the wrist mid-strike, stopping the blade an inch away from his skin, while noticing that this cannibal had not placed as many points into his physique, and wondered if he had placed them in his Will.

“Not impressed,” Elias whispered, and he squeezed. He had barely used half his strength before he could feel the bones underneath his grip pulverize, and the dagger dropped from an unresponsive hand.

The man screamed while crying out in a strange language that was oddly pleasant to listen to, like music. Elias almost wanted to hear him cry out for as long as possible, but he was in a time-constrained environment, and the cries of the cannibal were surely drawing others to this position.

“Good, perhaps I would have a greater challenge.”

Elias pulled the screaming man close, and the eyes of the cannibal widened in horror as the forehead of Elias drove into his face. The headbutt shattered his nose and teeth, crushing half of his face.

The shock from this pain made the cannibal lose power in his lower limbs, and he sagged against Elias’s grip.

Smelling something foul, Elias looked down to see urine pouring down the leg of the cannibal whose bloodied eyes were looking up at Elias with horror. Sighing, Elias let him fall, then stomped once on the throat, dealing a final, crushing blow.

In the blessed silence, Elias could hear the sounds of life in the distance, and he figured that the Commander must have dropped him at the edge of the forest, and he must have caught the last stragglers who managed to escape whatever was happening ahead.

Remembering the woman and her two children, Elias frowned as he wondered how they had been able to flee for so long before they were caught.

Anyway, whatever happened before did not really matter; he was just here to kill, and if his actions helped the people of this oasis, then that was a plus, although he hoped there were survivors, since he did not know the full scale of the attack, or if he alone was going to make a difference.

He had not seen any cannibals at the Mist Phantom level or higher, and he knew that he should be able to take one, at most two at a time; any more and they would tear him apart. However, he was a hunter, and at this time, he was better at killing from the shadows like an assassin than fighting head-on; it was only that the opposition he was meeting was far too weak for him to bring out the big guns.

Elias was not worried about meeting stronger opponents; he had not met any cannibal with a talent or at a higher stage than Fury Forge, and he wished to meet them, or he would begin fighting with his eyes closed just for him to feel anything.

He was just realizing how much he had liked hunting stronger prey as a mortal, where, despite his healing factor, a well-placed blow would explode his head like a balloon.

From the beginning, he had always been living his life on the edge, and his Elder Talent seemed to have been perfectly made for him. If he did not know how to control his urges, death would be the best thing that would happen to him.

It was this knowledge that he was being observed closely and everything he was doing was being taken apart that kept him relatively sane. He had given up too many secrets already, and the last thing he wanted was for the Commander to think that he was too insane to be trusted.

Sanity was overrated as far as Elias could tell, but it was still important to be able to fit into a group.

With all of these in mind, Elias began to move deeper into the forest after he absorbed the bodies of the cannibals he had just killed. Along the way, he began to see the half-eaten bodies of people and even cannibals. These people were not all helpless, and they had been fighting back, and if he was correct, he had been dropped at the edge of the fight, and now he was getting closer.

“BOOM!”

A loud sound like an earthquake resounded in the distance, and Elias felt the earth shake as the forest swayed around him. It was as if a mountain had just collapsed ahead of him, but he knew better; that must have come from someone who should at least be at the peak of Mist Phantom, maybe even higher!

The first thought in Elias’s mind was, “Can I kill them?” and the second was, “Do I need to release all the power that I have been holding inside me to transform my body?”

Forcing this errant thought aside, Elias knew that whatever had made that commotion ahead would crush him with a single blow, and he did not know if he was expected to fight and kill such an individual.

This was most likely not the case, but Elias knew he would not be satisfied if he did not try to at least see what that person was capable of.

He already had a plan; he should kill enough of these cannibals until he gathered enough Lumina and Souls to reach the Fury Forge level, and then he would release the advancement that was waiting for him into his flesh.

With all this power ups, should he not be able to fight someone at the peak of the Mist Phantom level?

Even as he was thinking all of this, Elias was still moving forward… he always had a problem with fear. It was not as if he did not feel it, but instead of causing him to flee, it invited challenge from his heart.

Along the way, he must have passed by fifteen bodies, and he was roughly moving in a straight line, meaning he had missed many bodies before he reached this point.

Still, what he found ahead of him made him frown.

He must have crossed half the forest, and he should be near the center, and what must have been the site of a terrible battle, because he was seeing bodies in their hundreds, if not thousands; it was hard to tell when they were piled up in this manner, and moving across them, and feasting must be at least fifty cannibals.

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