Inside the absolute chaos of the bandit camp, the Supreme Leader stared in horrifying silence at the roasted human remains.
His face drained of color. He violently grabbed his assistant, Vanzant, by the collar of his heavy armor.
"Sound the absolute alarm!" the Leader roared, his voice cracking with panic. "Send out the flares! Make every single hunting group and patrol immediately pull back to the base! If they stay in that forest, they are going to get completely butchered by whoever is out there!"
Vanzant trembled, his eyes wide. "Sir... who do you think is doing this? The surrounding towns don't use psychological tactics like this!"
The Leader violently threw Vanzant to the mud. "Who do you fucking think it is?! It is that new, filthy Town Leader of Ashburg! Rayn!"
The Leader paced frantically, his mind flashing back to his interrogation of the amputated Vice Leader. "That motherfucker Matthew promised me this would happen. Before we left him to die, he spat in my face and said: 'You just wait until the bastard King of Ashburg returns. When Rayn arrives, it will be the absolute last day on land for you, and for the towns that hired you.' I thought he was just bleeding out and raving... but the bastard was right!"
Miles away, perched high in the branches of a colossal redwood tree, Rayn and the Executioners listened to the Leader's terrified ranting.
Rayn had planted a profound auditory artifact deep inside the Mountain Boar's skull before sending it in.
Hearing Matthew's final, defiant words of absolute faith in Rayn completely broke Victus. The newly becoming Phase 6 captain dropped his head, tears violently streaming down his ash-covered face.
Victus violently drew his broadsword. "I am going to completely butcher that Leader right fucking now."
Rayn immediately reached out, his hand clamping down on Victus's heavy shoulder with terrifying kinetic force.
"Stop, Victus," Rayn commanded, his voice cold but steady. "I understand that you want to rip his heart out right now. But we don't know his exact powers, nor the Powers of his hidden elite guards. If we completely charge the center of the camp now, we are blindly stepping into our own graveyard."
Victus's knuckles turned white on his sword hilt, but he slowly, violently forced himself to stop.
Vespera watched the interaction with profound puzzlement. This was the same Victus who had coldly orchestrated a plot to assassinate his own father without shedding a single tear. Yet now, he was completely blinded by rage over the death of the mentor who trained him. Mortals were incredibly fragile creatures.
Rayn turned to the group. "We stick exactly to the absolute plan. We dismantle their outer forces until we can confront the Leader directly."
Dawinton—now wearing the muscular, youthful disguise of Peter—stepped forward. "Rayn, it is time. We have to violently attack the remaining hunting parties before the Leader's retreat flares reach them. If they pull back behind those iron gates, we lose our absolute advantage."
"Peter is entirely correct," Vespera agreed, her golden eyes scanning the dark forest below. "We must butcher them before the warning arrives."
Rayn nodded. "Okay, Guys. We strike now. But remember my absolute condition: when you butcher these groups, you must drag their bodies into a pile. I have a very specific, absolute use for those corpses."
The team nodded, their Gnosis flaring as they prepared to drop into the dark.
"Wait," Rayn said, holding a hand out to stop Vespera. "You are not going into the mud."
Vespera frowned. "Why?"
"You are going to sit completely still at the top of this tree," Rayn ordered. "You will maintain absolute overwatch on the Leader. If we lose track of his movements, we might end up digging our own graves. I need your spatial senses locked entirely onto his core."
"Rayn, if you just give me absolute permission, I can teleport into his tent and violently end this entire mess in one minute," Vespera argued.
Rayn's expression softened for a fraction of a second. He reached out, gently rubbing the top of her silver hair.
"I know you can," Rayn said softly. "But I am scared of the absolute recoil. Do you remember when you said that when u were a small kid and used all your power that you unexpectedly kill the person that you like, and the spatial backlash completely shredded your own internal Gnosis? I need you to be careful. In this entire, brutal world, you are the only one I truly have beside me."
Vespera's eyes widened slightly. A warm flush crept up her neck. She silently nodded, melting completely into the shadows of the high branches to begin her overwatch.
As Rayn turned to leave, a dark, mocking voice echoed directly inside his mind.
"Oh, how touching. 'She is the only one you have beside you,'" Silas sneered.
Rayn mentally rolled his eyes. You only ever speak up when it is time to completely drain my energy, Silas.
"I didn't want to frighten you, Rayn," Silas laughed, his voice dripping with demonic amusement. "If you die out here, we might forcibly reincarnate again... or worse, we might finally get dragged down to absolute Hell for the horrific things we have already done."
Shut the fuck up, Silas. I have an army to butcher, Rayn replied coldly.
"I didn't come to mock you," Silas said, his tone suddenly turning incredibly sharp and serious. "I came to offer an absolute suggestion for your Power"
Silas whispered a highly specific, complex application of Gnosis directly into Rayn's mind.
Rayn completely froze on the tree branch. His crimson eyes widened in absolute shock.
Are you serious? Rayn asked his inner demon. Will that actually fucking work?
"The Power is bound only by your absolute imagination and your killing intent," Silas confirmed. "Try it."
Okay. Leave. I am going to take care of this, Rayn mentally commanded, cutting the connection.
Rayn turned back to the team. They were crouching on a thick branch, hiding from a passing bandit scout far below.
"This is the absolute roster," Rayn whispered. "Victus and Freddy, you are one team. Head strictly South. Peter, you are a solo team. Go completely North. I will personally take care of the entire East and West sectors. And again—leave the bodies in piles."
Victus glared at the muscular youth beside him. "Why do Freddy and I have to tag-team, but this random gets an entire sector to himself?"
Rayn flashed a dark smile. "Because it is my absolute order, Victus. Do not question Peter's strength."
Without another word, Rayn activated his Conqueror's vision. The entire forest lit up with the glowing, pathetic Gnosis signatures of thousands of bandits.
He jumped directly off the massive tree.
Using his absolute mastery of Wind Gnosis, Rayn glided through the freezing night air. He wasn't instantly teleporting like Vespera, but he moved like a completely silent, falling ghost.
He landed heavily in the Eastern sector, dropping directly in front of a heavily armed, seventy-man bandit group.
They froze, raising their torches.
"Hi, guys," Rayn said, an unhinged, demonic smile stretching across his face. "My name is Rayn. And I am the absolute executioner of your pathetic souls."
The ambient moisture in the air violently shattered. The Crimson Ice Sword materialized in his hand.
Rayn didn't just fight; he became a kinetic blender of absolute violence. He dashed straight through the center of the group. Heads, arms, and bifurcated torsos violently flew into the air. Thick, black bandit blood aggressively sprayed entirely over Rayn's white hair and his robes, soaking him in absolute gore.
Two Tier 6 magic users in the back desperately pushed a heavy wave of Fire Gnosis at him.
Rayn laughed. He violently kicked off a tree trunk, launching himself into the air. With absolute, terrifying kinetic pressure, he unleashed a concentrated wave of Conqueror's Gravity.
The two magic users were violently crushed to their knees. Rayn landed directly between them, his Ice Sword cleanly decapitating both of them in a single, flawless, horizontal strike.
Rayn stood entirely alone in a massive pool of blood. He wiped his face.
He raised his left hand, looking at the heavy, pitch-black ring on his finger.
"I promised to relieve your absolute hunger, didn't I?" Rayn whispered.
The ring violently pulsed. A terrifying, grotesque spatial rift opened directly from the gemstone. The Gambler's Heart—a horrific, hungry, fleshy entity living inside the ring—violently extended massive, shadowy tendrils.
The tendrils aggressively wrapped around the thirty bleeding corpses. With a sickening, wet crunch, the Gambler's Heart violently dragged all thirty bodies directly into the ring, completely devouring their flesh and leaving absolutely nothing behind but bloody mud.
Meanwhile, in the Southern sector of the dark forest.
Victus and Freddy were heavily breathing, standing back-to-back in a massive, muddy clearing.
They were completely surrounded. Exactly one hundred heavily armed bandits encircled them, their weapons drawn.
Standing at the absolute front of the mob was a terrifying Bandit Commander wearing dark purple robes. His hands were covered in glowing, metallic rings. He was known to the coalition as The Magician.
"Well, well," The Magician laughed, a cruel, sadistic sound. "Two pathetic Ashburg dogs. You really thought you could ambush the Southern sector? We heard the screaming from the West. Now, there are a hundred of us, and only two of you."
Victus didn't say a single word. He completely ignored the horrific odds. He tightened his grip on his heavy, serrated broadsword.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, seeing Matthew's severed stumps.
"Freddy," Victus growled, his Tier 6 Gnosis violently erupting like a volcano of pure kinetic rage. "Leave absolutely nothing alive."
Freddy roared in agreement.
The two captains didn't cast spells. They violently lunged directly into the 100-man mob like absolute, enraged beasts.
The Magician violently threw his hands forward. "Shred them! Razor-Wind Guillotine!"
Massive, invisible blades of highly compressed wind violently tore through the clearing.
The wind-blades violently slashed into Victus's heavy armor, aggressively cutting deeply into his shoulders and thighs. Blood violently sprayed from Victus's body, but he completely, utterly ignored the agonizing pain.
Powered entirely by absolute hatred, Victus completely bulldozed through the Razor-Wind. He grabbed a bandit by the throat and violently crushed the man's windpipe with his bare hand, using the dying bandit as a meat-shield to block the incoming arrows.
Freddy was an absolute meat grinder. He swung his massive broadsword in wide, catastrophic arcs. He wasn't aiming for clean kills; he was aiming to cause maximum trauma. He violently hacked through collarbones, completely severing men in half, his face entirely painted in the hot blood of his enemies.
"Kill them!" The Magician shrieked in absolute panic as the two captains violently carved through his men like wet paper. "Focus your Gnosis!"
Victus dropped his ruined meat-shield. He locked his furious, blood-shot eyes entirely on The Magician.
Victus violently charged. Four bandits stepped in front to block him. Victus didn't even slow down. He aggressively swung his broadsword, completely shattering their weapons and breaking their ribs with the sheer kinetic force of the impact.
The Magician desperately cast a heavy Fire spell, blasting a fireball directly into Victus's chest.
The armor melted. The flesh burned. But Victus didn't stop.
Victus violently tackled The Magician entirely into the mud. He grabbed the commander by his jaw, his massive fingers violently digging into the man's cheeks.
"This is for Matthew, you absolute bastard!" Victus roared.
Freddy violently leaped over a pile of dying men, raising his heavy broadsword high into the freezing air. With a terrifying, primal scream, Freddy brought the heavy blade violently down, completely splitting The Magician's skull perfectly in half.
The remaining bandits completely broke. Seeing their commander violently butchered, they dropped their weapons and tried to run.
But Victus and Freddy didn't let a single one of them escape.
For the next five minutes, the Southern clearing was filled entirely with the horrific, wet sounds of absolute, unadulterated slaughter.