Chapter 105: Murder Is A Habit [III]
Klaus stepped through the ruined archway with his iron sword resting casually at his side.
The forward operating base was a sprawling courtyard filled with heavy canvas tents, weapon racks, and burning iron braziers.
Over thirty elite soldiers were stationed here and they were heavily armored veterans, wearing thick, fur-lined plate mail and carrying halberds, broadswords, and crossbows.
They had survived the Haunted Winterlands so naturally they were seasoned killers but as they rushed out of their tents and formed a defensive perimeter, raising their weapons toward the lone, dark-haired intruder standing in the snow, they didn’t look like veterans.
They looked like prey...
Klaus smiled.
"Skills... Just one more good one." Klaus whispered to himself.
He didn’t wait for them to charge. Klaus blurred into motion, using a burst of wind magic to launch himself directly into the center of the closest infantry formation.
"Fire!" a commanding officer yelled from the back.
Three heavy crossbow bolts whistled through the freezing air but Klaus didn’t dodge. He merely tilted his head and shifted his shoulders. Two bolts sailed harmlessly past him while the third bolt grazed his upper arm, tearing a thin line through his dark shirt and drawing a bead of blood.
Klaus ignored the stinging pain entirely. His Beast’s Vitality and Frostblood Aura worked beneath his skin, keeping his body operating at peak efficiency.
He closed the distance to the vanguard. A massive, bearded soldier swung a heavy broadsword in a wide horizontal arc aimed at Klaus’s neck.
Klaus stepped smoothly under the blade as he brought his own iron sword up in a vicious perfectly angled thrust.
SHLUCK!
The tip of his blade pierced the vulnerable gap beneath the soldier’s armpit, driving straight upward into his heart.
The man’s eyes rolled back with a wet gasp escaping his lips. Klaus didn’t pause to watch him die.
He placed his free hand flat against the man’s breastplate as he ripped his sword free.
[Target Soul Harvested: Tier 2 Human Warrior]
The soul vanished into his inner domain and Klaus spun on his heel, carrying the momentum of his strike into a devastating backhand slash.
SLASH!
His iron blade cleaved cleanly through the throat of the soldier standing next to the first. Hot, bright red blood erupted into the freezing air, spraying across the pristine white snow.
Suddenly, a small, shimmering figure materialized in the air floating just behind Klaus’s right shoulder.
It was Valeria.
The Chibi figure appeared in her tiny, elegant dark dress with her bare feet kicking happily in the freezing air.
She was completely unaffected by the soul-biting cold of the Winterlands and her miniature eyes were wide with unrestrained joy as she watched the carnage unfold.
"Ooooh~ My King! Yes! Look at all this blood!" Valeria cheered with her tiny musical voice echoing exclusively in Klaus’s mind.
She clapped her small hands together as Klaus ducked under a spear thrust and severed the attacker’s hands at the wrists.
"Slay them all! They are nothing but stepping stones! Make them suffer for daring to point their weapons at you!"
’I plan to...’ Klaus replied internally with his smile widening.
He moved like a grim reaper through the snowy courtyard.
He wasn’t fighting for survival... He wasn’t fighting out of desperation, or to protect anyone... He just needed to grind.
A spear-wielding guard thrust his weapon at Klaus’s back and Klaus didn’t even turn around. He pointed his left index finger over his shoulder.
Phantom Finger Gun!
THWIP! SQUELCH!
The compressed sphere of wind mana shot backward, punching a neat, bloody hole directly through the guard’s steel visor and into his brain as the man collapsed instantly.
Klaus stepped over the falling body with his hand hovering over the corpse for a fraction of a second.
[Target Soul Harvested: Tier 2 Human Spearman]
The slaughter continued... The elite guards of the noble house were being dismantled.
They tried to coordinate their attacks, forming shield walls and overlapping their spear thrusts, but Klaus was too fast and too ruthless.
He used the environment to his advantage, kicking a burning iron brazier directly into a cluster of soldiers.
CRASH!
Screams filled the courtyard as hot coals and burning oil splashed over the armored men. Klaus dashed through the smoke with his blade flashing in the firelight.
He severed hamstrings, punctured lungs, and decapitated anyone who managed to stand their ground.
[Target Soul Harvested...]
[Target Soul Harvested...]
[Target Soul Harvested...]
The notifications spammed his peripheral vision in a satisfying stream of blue light.
A heavily armored knight, wielding a massive morningstar, charged at Klaus from the flank.
Klaus sidestepped the crushing blow, but the spiked iron ball smashed into the frozen ground, kicking up a shower of ice and rock that battered against Klaus’s ribs, leaving a deep painful bruise.
Klaus frowned, annoyed by the minor damage.
He stepped inside the knight’s guard and drove his sword straight through the man’s knee joint. As the knight collapsed with a scream, Klaus grabbed the man’s helmet and twisted violently.
SNAP!
The knight’s neck broke as Klaus banished the soul.
[Target Soul Harvested: Tier 3 Heavy Knight]
[Please select ONE of the following Skills to extract: Iron Skin, Heavy Momentum, Crushing Blow.]
Klaus didn’t hesitate.
’Heavy Momentum.’
[Skill Selected: Heavy Momentum. Skill Slot 4/4 is now FULL.]
A surge of heavy dense energy settled over Klaus’s muscles, turning his skin as hard as tempered steel as he rammed and killed more soldiers.
But as the notification vanished, a much larger, more brilliant blue screen materialized directly in the center of his vision, accompanied by a loud resonant chime that echoed in his soul.
[Ding!]
[Milestone Reached!]
[Total Souls Harvested: 55]
[The Soul King’s Domain expands... You have consumed enough raw soul energy to begin manipulating your internal vessels.]
[New Feature Unlocked: Skill Swapping]
[Description: The host may now discard previously extracted skills to free up limited Skill Slots. Warning: Discarded skills are lost permanently unless extracted from a new soul.]
Klaus stopped moving as he stood in the center of the bloody courtyard, surrounded by the moaning dying bodies of over two dozen elite guards.
He stared at the blue text with a rumbling chuckle escaped his lips, slowly building into a full laugh.
The one thing holding him back... the agonizing limitation of only having four skill slots for the rest of his life was gone.
He could adapt...
He could evolve...
He could farm skills like equipment, discarding the useless ones the exact second he found something better...
He was practically a god among NPCs...
"Congratulations, My King!" Valeria giggled while flying excited loops around his head. "Your soul is growing stronger! Now, let’s find some better toys to play with!"
Klaus’s dark eyes scanned the remaining survivors in the camp.
Most of the infantry was dead or bleeding out but near the back of the courtyard, standing frantically outside the largest, most lavish canvas tent, was a small group of stragglers.
Among them was a woman wearing flowing blue and white robes, holding a wooden staff topped with a glowing green crystal.
She was a Healer though not from the Erell Emire... She was currently kneeling over a heavily bleeding guard, her hands glowing with soothing restorative mana as she desperately tried to close a massive slash wound Klaus had left across the man’s chest.
Klaus’s eyes locked onto her.
"Perfect..." Klaus whispered.
He lowered his sword and broke into a full sprint.
"Stop him!" a guard yelled, stepping in front of the Healer with his shield raised.
Klaus didn’t slow down. He coated his left fist in a thick layer of condensed wind magic and threw a devastating punch directly into the center of the heavy steel shield.
BANG!
The shield buckled inward, shattering the guard’s arm. Klaus followed up with a brutal kick to the man’s chest, launching him ten feet backward into the snow.
Klaus stepped over the groaning guard and loomed over the terrified Healer.
The woman looked up at him as her eyes went wide with terror. Her hands shook violently, her healing magic sputtering out as the wounded man beneath her bled out into the snow.
"P-please," the Healer begged, tears streaming down her face. "I’m just a medic! I don’t fight! Please, have mercy!"
Klaus looked down at her and he saw the genuine human fear in her eyes.
He saw a woman who probably had a family, who had spent years studying just to end up bleeding in the snow but he didn’t care.
Klaus raised his iron sword and brought it down in a clean, merciless arc.
SHLUCK!
The blade severed her collarbone, cutting deep into her heart...The Healer’s pleas were cut short with her body collapsing over the very man she had been trying to save.
Klaus placed his hand on her back before her body even hit the ground.
[Target Soul Harvested: Tier 3 Human Healer]
[Please select ONE of the following Skills to extract: Mana Barrier, Rapid Cellular Mend, Detoxify.]
Klaus navigated the new, updated system interface with his mind as he selected the healing skill, and then accessed his internal slots.
’Swap out Heavy Momentum and equip Rapid Cellular Mend.’
[Skill: Iron Skin has been permanently discarded...]
[Skill Selected: Rapid Cellular Mend. Extracting...]
A rush of cool soothing emerald-green light flooded Klaus’s body. The sensation was entirely different from the passive heat of Beast’s Vitality as this was an active explosive burst of concentrated healing magic.
Klaus watched in morbid fascination as the deep bruise on his ribs from the morningstar completely vanished.
The shallow crossbow cut on his upper arm stitched itself closed in a matter of seconds, leaving behind unblemished, smooth skin.
All the minor aches, the burning fatigue in his muscles, and the stinging cuts from the chaotic melee were completely erased.
He flexed his hand, feeling entirely refreshed. He was back to one hundred percent combat efficiency.
"Oh, that is a very useful skill, My King!" Valeria praised, sitting casually on the hilt of his bloody sword. "Now you don’t even need that blonde Church girl anymore! You are entirely self-sufficient!"
"I always have been..." Klaus murmured.
Before Klaus could turn his attention to the final remaining guards, the massive canvas flaps of the main command tent were violently thrown open.
A figure stepped out into the freezing blizzard, radiating an aura of intense overwhelming power.
It was Lord Varhem.
He didn’t look like a soft, pampered noble who spent his days sitting in a palace.
Varhem was a tall, incredibly muscular man with sharp aristocratic features and long braided blackish blue hair.
He wore a suit of masterful, heavily enchanted silver plate armor adorned with blue sapphire inlays.
In his right hand, he held a beautifully forged longsword and the steel blade glowed with latent mana.
But it wasn’t the sword that caught Klaus’s attention.
Floating just over Varhem’s left shoulder was a basketball-sized orb of pure, volatile blue electricity.
The Lightning Spirit crackled and hissed, small tendrils of electricity sparking off it and scorching the snow beneath its master’s boots.
Varhem stood in front of his command tent with his blue eyes sweeping over the devastated courtyard.
He looked at the shattered gates, the burning tents, and the butchered, bloody corpses of his elite military force.
Finally, his gaze locked onto Klaus.
Varhem’s face twisted into an expression of utter disgusted fury as the arrogance rolling off him was palpable.
"A commoner," Varhem spat, his voice echoing with magical amplification sounding over the howling wind easily. "A filthy, uncrested rat wanders into my camp and slaughters my men like sheep... I don’t know how you managed to kill them, boy, but your luck has just completely run out."
Varhem raised his longsword, pointing the tip directly at Klaus’s face.
"I am Lord Varhem of the Capital," he declared, his lightning spirit buzzing aggressively. "I am a Tier 3 Mana Swordsman and I am going to peel the skin from your bones and leave your carcass for the frost wolves."
Klaus didn’t say a word.
He didn’t offer a witty retort, and he didn’t introduce himself. He just raised his blood-stained sword, getting into a loose relaxed stance.
Varhem sneered at the blatant disrespect.
"Die..." Varhem commanded.
Varhem vanished.
He didn’t run.
The high-tier Mana Swordsman moved with a burst of speed so explosive it kicked up a massive crater of snow where he had just been standing.
He crossed the fifty feet of the courtyard in less than a blink of an eye.
Klaus’s Thermal Perception caught the blur of heat, but his physical eyes barely tracked the movement.
Varhem appeared directly in front of Klaus with his silver longsword swinging in a blindingly fast horizontal decapitation strike.
CLANG! Klaus brought his iron sword up just in time to block.
The impact was monumental... The sheer physical force behind Varhem’s strike sent a shockwave through Klaus’s arms, nearly dislocating his shoulders.
Klaus was pushed backward with his boots carving deep ten-foot trenches into the frozen earth as he struggled to absorb the momentum.
Before Klaus could recover his footing, Varhem’s Lightning Spirit acted.
The crackling orb of blue energy surged forward, unleashing a thick, jagged bolt of pure lightning directly at Klaus’s chest.
ZZZAP!
Klaus threw himself to the left, narrowly dodging a direct hit but the lightning bolt grazed his right thigh.
The intense heat instantly scorched his dark trousers, burning the flesh beneath and sending a violent agonizing spasm of electricity through his nervous system.
Klaus gritted his teeth, stumbling slightly as his leg temporarily gave out.
"Too slow!" Varhem roared, pressing the advantage instantly.
Varhem unleashed a relentless, overwhelming flurry of strikes. His sword moved like a blur of silver light, thrusting, slashing, and hacking with the refined deadly precision of decades of high-class training.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Klaus was forced entirely on the defensive, desperately parrying the blows. His sword was already heavily notched and groaning under the strain of clashing against enchanted steel. Varhem’s speed was incredible, bolstered by his mana and the constant threat of the Lightning Spirit shooting errant bolts of electricity made the fight a chaotic dance.
Klaus took another hit with a shallow cut across his cheek then a heavy kick to his stomach that sent him flying backward into a wooden weapon rack, shattering it into splinters.
CRASH!
Varhem stopped his assault, letting Klaus pull himself out of the debris. The noble stood tall, brushing a flake of snow from his pristine silver armor, looking completely unbothered.
"Is that it?" Varhem mocked, his voice dripping with aristocratic condescension. "Is this the extent of a commoner’s desperate flailing? You swing your sword like a drunken tavern brawler. You have no technique, no refinement, and no class...You are nothing but an insect."
Klaus stood up. He wiped a trickle of blood from his cheek. He looked down at his burning thigh, mentally triggering his Rapid Cellular Mend.
The green light washed over the burn, healing the scorched flesh instantly, though his trousers remained ruined.
Klaus looked up at Varhem as the smile slowly returned to his face.
Varhem was fast. His mana capacity was huge. But Klaus hadn’t even started trying yet.
"Refinement?" Klaus echoed softly.
He reached deep into his core, bypassing his elemental wind magic entirely, and tapped into the massive terrifying reserves of his Soul Vessel.
The air in the courtyard instantly changed and the howling wind of the blizzard seemed to completely die around Klaus.
A thick heavy, pure white aura erupted from Klaus’s body. It didn’t crackle like lightning, and it didn’t burn like fire.
It looked like dense, liquid smoke, wrapping around his arms, his chest, and flowing down the length of his sword.
The ambient temperature around Klaus plummeted, but not from the Winterlands.
The crushing gravity of the Soul Mana was so intense that the snow beneath his boots instantly melted, then immediately flash-vaporized into steam.
"Ooooh! It’s time!" Valeria squealed, doing a backflip in the air. "Show this arrogant mortal the power of the Soul King!"
Varhem’s mocking smirk vanished.
His eyes widened slightly as he felt the oppressive suffocating pressure radiating from the boy.
His Lightning Spirit buzzed nervously, floating lower and hiding slightly behind Varhem’s armored shoulder.
"What is that magic?" Varhem demanded, his grip tightening on his sword. "That isn’t elemental mana."
"It’s the magic that’s going to kill you..." Klaus said.
Klaus moved.
With his body physically reinforced by the raw overwhelming density of Soul Mana, Klaus’s speed completely bypassed his natural human limits.
He didn’t just match Varhem’s speed; he bypassed it.
Klaus appeared directly in front of the noble, his white-coated iron sword swinging in a brutal, blindingly fast downward strike.
CLANG!!!
The collision of their blades created a massive shockwave that blew the snow away from them in a perfect thirty-foot circle, exposing the bare, frozen earth.
Varhem blocked the strike, but the crushing weight of the Soul Mana forced the noble to his knees.
The stone beneath Varhem’s boots cracked under the pressure.
"Gah!" Varhem grunted with his arms shaking violently as he tried to push Klaus off. The Lightning Spirit shrieked, firing three rapid bolts of electricity at Klaus’s face at point-blank range.
ZZZAP! ZZZAP! ZZZAP! Klaus didn’t dodge.
The lightning bolts struck the thick white barrier of Soul Mana coating his body and completely fizzled out, dispersing harmlessly into the air.
"Impossible!" Varhem yelled, his eyes wide with genuine panic.
Varhem desperately channeled all his mana into his legs, violently kicking Klaus in the chest to create distance but Klaus slid back a few feet, completely uninjured.
Varhem scrambled to his feet, his composure entirely shattered.
He was panting heavily, his silver armor dented, and his pride severely wounded. He, a high noble of the Capital, a Tier 4 swordsman was being physically overpowered by a nameless commoner in a snowy wasteland?
It was unacceptable...! It was humiliating!
"I will not be humiliated by trash!" Varhem roared, his voice cracking with fury.
He raised his silver longsword high above his head.
He commanded his Lightning Spirit to fuse with the blade as the orb of electricity stretched and wrapped around the steel, turning the weapon into a blinding, crackling pillar of lethal, high-voltage energy.
The ambient mana in the courtyard spiked dangerously as Varhem prepared his ultimate strike.
"Lightning Strike Arts: Celestial Execution!" Varhem screamed.
Varhem lunged forward, throwing his entire body weight, his mana, and his pride into one single, devastating downward slash designed to cleave Klaus and the entire courtyard in half.
The attack was incredibly fast. It was blindingly bright. It was a flawless execution of high-tier magic but it was still a sword strike.
...And a basic sword strike was the one thing in this entire world that no one could ever beat Klaus at.
