The upgrade of his Agility to 40.00, brought his cruising walking speed to 40km/h. The next area was closer to the capital, and about 400 kilometers from the first area, since stronger bandits operated closer to the capital, where prosperity and economy is more pronounced. The distance would have taken Lucien 10 hours to cross, but he took his time, absorbed soil and cultivated at night, so it was stretched to 2 days.
After entering the area, he began his usual routine. Finding more about the bandits and then sneak attacking them, he mostly focused on Rank 0s, since it was easy kills, and continued accumulating points for his Soul upgrade.
A week passed with no incident, and it was a normal day for Lucien, he had just found his next target, it was a duo of Rank 0 Fire Path practitioners, they were out scouting for potential targets for their group, it was the best opportunity for him.
Walking out of the bush still concealed by Darkness, he sneak attacked one of them, finishing him off before he even realized.
Just as he was about to strike and finish off the other bandit, there was a shout from the distance.
"Hold your hand, little bastard."
The first word sounded from far away, but by the time the last word sounded, it was already really close.
'This might be troublesome.'
Lucien didn't stop his strike and finished the vastly inferior enemy that might have posed some trouble in the following fight.
"Hahah, little worm, I finally got you, you have been going around killing my underlings."
"I little bit more and that old bastard would have been on my tail."
'Shit, not good.'
'His Agility is really high, and my Soul is barely Rank 1, I can't do Darkness Interruption on him.'
Lucien didn't hesitate and turned to run away, once speed was high enough it would make him very hard to hit, the enemy would be a punching bag.
"Hahahah, there is no where to run, little rat."
"I'll take you alive and see what background you might have, getting a nice ransom for you."
'So he still uses his brain, a little boy killing 2 Rank 0s is definitely out of the ordinary.'
As Lucien ran, he suddenly felt a chill going up his back.
He didn't hesitate to roll away.
Looking back he saw that there was a hole on the spot he was moments ago.
'So running away is not an option, I just hope he is not Rank 2 in any stat.'
"Finally gave up running, huh."
Looking at the enemy, he saw a middle-aged man, he was pretty skinny, and he had small wind currents all around his body.
'So Wind Path, which means he probably has only high Agility and Soul stronger than mine, I'll try Darkness Interruption once later, but I won't count on it.'
"Heh, I killed you subordinates, what makes you think you are gonna survive, you little ant."
Seeing a brat mocking him like that, after running away, just fanned the anger that was build up, making it explode out.
"So you do have a death wish, I was only going to kidnap you, but forget it."
The bandit didn't hesitate to rush and attack, Lucien was able to follow following his figure, but after a couple of swing of the dagger, it finally bypassed the spear and headed for his flank.
The dagger stabbed into Lucien, but to the surprise of both of them, it barely left a scratch on his skin.
'So 50x common strength does this, even a sharp dagger that I assume is Rank 0 has hard time piercing into my body.'
The bandit was even more surprised, as he hadn't expected Lucien was Rank 1 with both Agility and Strength, Darkness was best at concealing, if Lucien didn't want, it was hard to know his Rank or stats.
He had already noticed that his speed was beyond Rank 1 and that shocked him, but this made the greed in his eyes explode out.
"It's impossible, how could a kid like you be Rank 1 in two attributes?"
"WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?"
"Give it to me and I'll leave you with a complete corpse."
"Hehehe, you bag of bones, what makes you think I'll leave your corpse intact."
"I'm going to make a wine bowl out of your skull."
"You can at best scratch me, if I get one hit in, you are dead."
"Let's see if you die after a 1000 scratches, brat."
"I'll get the secret off your cold body."
The fight continued with Lucien defending and the bandit attacking, with an attack from Lucien here and there. All the attacked by Lucien were evaded, the Darkness Interruption didn't work, the Soul of the Bandit was stronger, he didn't even feel the Interruption and that same Soul improved his reaction enough to be able to evade every attack.
On the other hand, Lucien kept accumulating more and more scratches all over his body.
The tipping point was the moment the scratches got to about 150, the bandit noticed that the first scratch he inflicted, was already healed, with no scar remaining, just soft skin.
"It can't be, you have to be kidding me, what kind of Demon are you?"
"You are all rounded Rank 1 in all stats."
"You are training in a minimum of 2 Paths."
"What a bloody disaster, I can't kill you, I can't capture you, I can't do anything to you."
"If I leave you alone, you will come for me, but I can't do anything to prevent it."
"I guess I will have to tell the old man and let him handle it."
'Now!'
The moment the bandit hesitated on attacking and decided to retreat, there was a spear, covered in Darkness that escaped his perception, just for a millisecond, piercing his heart.
"Hehehe, you scum of the world, you asked me what kind of Demon I am?"
Lucien didn't pull out the spear, to keep the man alive for a couple more moments.
"I'll show you then, heh."
After saying this, Lucien bent and started eating the man alive, from the arms.
"AHHHHHH, stop it, what are you doing!"
"You devil, you won't get away with this, my old man will avenge me!"
The screams continued for a while and then died out.
Looking at the bloody mess, Lucien was a bit startled by himself.
'Why would I do this, it gave me no benefits.'
'I was just overexcited from understanding how strong I am.'
'I think all these Paths aligned with evil are changing me subtly.'
'I have to control my emotions better, what if someone was here and saw it.'
'He was probably around 60 on the Agility, if he was higher, just with the speed, he would be able to slice me open.'
'I'm a bit worried about that last thing about his old man, sounds like it's an old Rank 2 father, who just lost a son. I should watch out a bit more.'
'But the points, he was around 70kg, at Rank 1, that is 3500 existence points. It was worth the trouble.'