18—Massacre

I ran straight through the capital and into the monster-infested Eastern Forest (which had a proper name but everyone just called it that), where Aina and I completed our missions every day.

The areas near the capital were regularly culled, their monsters sold in parts to tanners, craftsmen, butchers and alchemists, but the deeper zones were more dangerous, due to the incredible concentration of mana in the air, and the outliers constantly wandered into the outskirts, refilling them regularly with weaker monsters to cull.

Monsters bred and grew quite a lot faster than normal animals, by virtue of their higher concentration of mana, but such an ideal hunting ground where monsters never grew thin was pretty much impossible to come by elsewhere in the whole kingdom. In fact, it was one of the main reasons why the capital was established here in the first place, and why it grew to such an enormous size.

And now, as I fought against a giant worm-like thing, wormole, I believe it was called, who kept burrowing in the ground before trying to spring out right beneath my feet to eat me, I was using that seemingly infinite supply of monsters as dummies to improve my battle style, and it was working.

I was quickly adapting to my improved perception, marvelling at how easy it was to read the enemies' movements and predict their next attacks from the posture they took and the way their muscles contracted.

I was improving in real time, my moves getting more and more efficient. Only after two full hours of slaughter did I hit a bottleneck. As it was, there were no more easy-to-fix mistakes in my form. By then, it was already late evening, the sun rapidly hiding itself beneath the mountains to the west, so I quickly started making my way back.

But, as I was gunning for the gates, I heard some voices. They were quite far away, and I only picked up on them thanks to my enhanced senses. It sounded vaguely like shouting.

I made my way over there, only to find that mage girl... Nika, I believe, surrounded by ten men, some burly and some thin, all wielding plain iron or steel weapons, in various stages of disrepair, at her.

She was visibly trembling, looking around in a panic for a way out of the encirclement.

They were closing in on her slowly, saying things like "We will be doing the world a service by ridding it of disfigured scum like you.", "Don't resist, we'll make it quick if you behave.", or "You should never have stepped outside your filthy home with that hideous appearance." Followed by "Well, maybe you were kicked out because your mom couldn't stand looking at you anymore!"

To be honest, I had already heard this kind of thing all too many times when walking around at night with Aina, so I wasn't even surprised by it. I was still angry as hell, but I quickly quenched those feelings. These scum were not even worth my fury, and letting rage take over me would only hinder me if I ended up having to fight them.

That didn't apply to Nika though, as she became completely enraged, so much so that it overpowered her crippling fear.

I was about to jump in and deal with these guys when Nika lashed out, several spears of water condensing from the air around her and immediately afterwards freezing into pointed ice spikes.

"Chantless magic!? N-no way!"

"There's eight of them! Th-that's third layer parallel casting! Hide! Don't let them hit you!"

The grunts who said that were the least brutish-looking ones, who, like good background characters, helped with understanding the magnitude of the situation. That's right, magic was heavily based on visualization and the projection of one's will onto the world with mana as a medium, and chanting helped enormously with that.

However, it isn't necessary. Magic is much weaker without a perfect visualization, but casting it instantly is much more useful in battle. It barely affected bottom-tier spells, such as my Rinse spell, but the difference became exponentially more notable with more complex ones.

Parallel casting was an even more advanced concept, something only very powerful or very talented mages could pull off. The first layer simply allowed one to cast two spells of the same type at the same time, and, although it wasn't incredibly hard, it was quite an achievement.

The second layer meant you could cast four spells, and such a level was very, very hard to reach. Finally, the third layer, which allowed a mage to cast eight spells simultaneously, was ridiculously difficult.

There was even a rumored fourth layer of parallel casting, but there was no known mage who could achieve that.

Parallel casting would only work for spells one had perfectly mastered and knew inside out, and it consumed noticeably more mana than just casting them one by one, but for situations like this, it was perfect.

The eight spikes of ice finished forming after only two seconds, and, immediately afterwards, they were shot in all directions, aiming for the previous positions of the lowlifes.

But, unfortunately, most had already hid behind something or at least moved away, and the spikes weren't homing.

In the end, only two were hit, one pierced through the left calf and another square on the shoulder.

The remaining eight, who were still in fighting condition, came out of their hiding places and, nodding at each other, rushed towards Nika all at once.

She panicked, then started hurling Wind Blades, a very fast spell, towards the incoming men.

'Dual affinity? Rare.'

She hit one across the chest and made him fall down, but the man just got back up, the hasty magic not strong enough to cause more than a shallow slash.

The second one was less lucky though. The blade of compressed, sharpened air cut him across the neck, slicing open his windpipe and jugular, and causing him to fall down, struggling to contain the massive blood loss with his hands as he tried, and failed, to gasp for air.

The man had only a single health potion on him, and it shattered as he hit the ground.

He was going to die.

Nika panicked at the scene and fell onto her butt, her breathing unsteady and her whole body shaking.

It was easy to realize why she lost. She was simply too inexperienced in battle. Had it been me in her body, I would have instead started by picking them off with wind spells while falling back, using water magic on the floor to make them slip. She probably knew stronger magic too, just that the casting time was too long. In that case, I would use AoE magic once I had gotten a far enough away from the attackers.

But, more than anything, I wouldn't try so hard to aim at non-vital spots. I didn't like killing people, but these bastards had come to do just that, so they weren't deserving of mercy.

I sighed. The seven men that were still up were already reaching Nika, while the two injured ones were slowly healing with potions. 'I suppose I'll have to help her out...'

I jumped forth from my hiding spot, brandishing my sword and, in a clean and practiced move, instantly decapitating one of the more muscular attackers before he even noticed my presence.

The rest turned towards me at the sound of their comrade's death, their eyes flashing with a weary look for a moment before they collectively decided to deal with me first.

Six fully grown men charged at me, and I would have been quite intimidated if I couldn't see how unsteady their steps and how unbalanced their muscular structures were. My improved senses were really something else, and that was when limiting them so that my mind could cope.

I swung my extremely heavy sword with practiced ease, gracefully chopping the first attacker in two by the waist before driving my sword into the second one's chest. It came out his back, the dark purple surface unmarred my any blood or gore. A weak, basic enchantment, since orichalcum was not a good base metal for that, but much more useful than one would expect.

The other four noticed my strength and tried to pull back, but it took them a moment to cancel their inertia, which was long enough for me to shove my sword out of my last victim in a brutal upwards swing through his clavicle, and split another one's head in a follow-up swing.

Three left.

I used the chance to take out the man with an ice spike in his shoulder, who was busy trying to get it out without dying of blood loss and didn't notice the stab towards the back of his neck until he felt it snap his spine. Immediately, I leaped over to the one with a bleeding thigh, and ignored his panicked screams as I bisected his head.

It was all I could do to stop myself from retching at the sight of his brain matter and blood splattering on the forest floor.

Instead, I looked at the three who were still alive. They were running away, but I was faster as I chased one of them and slashed him into two with a heavy, diagonal slash, from his right shoulder to the left of his waist.

I was panting heavily, my arms and legs sore, but I couldn't stop.

Just two more.

Both were already quite far away, but even if they weren't a threat anymore, I couldn't let them leave. Even if they were the original agressors, I had just killed several people, and I wouldn't be able to escape punishment either.

There could be no witnesses.

I used the trees as footholds and almost flew over to one of the remaining men. He tried to shake me off by taking sharp turns, but I just took shortcuts towards him. I quickly reached him, and he turned just in time to see my sword make a beeline for his face.

Splat

Just one remaining.

The last one was very far away by now, and I feared he would get to the gate soon. To prevent that, I used my keen hearing to track his steps, then made my way towards him as fast as possible. He came into view as he was about to reach the edge of the forest. I would not be able to reach him before he did.

But my sword could.

I threw it like a tomahawk, and it wooshed through the air, rapidly spinning as it made its way towards its target. It pierced the man's back, driving him stumbling into the ground and killing him.

I picked my sword back up, and made my way back towards the clearing, dragging the man's body with me.

As the adrenaline faded, my body began shaking, my mind having finally processed the atrocity I had just committed. I boxed that thought for now, not wanting to deal with it until I had more time.