It was a quiet night, the moon shining dimly onto the world, providing just enough light to see a meter or two ahead.
"Hey, I'm taking over you can go to sleep."
"Finally, it's so dark and there is nothing to do, I was about to fall asleep on duty."
They looked like the lowest leveled bandit scum that was assigned watch duty, the ones that fed on the scraps the higher-ups left after themselves.
"Hahah, who would attack us, everyone knows we are a branch of the WindWolf bandits, the leader of the group is Rank 2, nobody around here dares to mess with us."
"It would probably have been fine even if you fell asleep."
It was obvious that this bandit group was infamous around, they even had branches spread around to distribute resources and as a backup plan. It was a Rank 1 area, so a Rank 2 was a hidden weapon, like a snake in the shadows ready to strike. Nobody from the righteous fanatics would provoke him without a certain chance to win, as they valued their lives even more than bandits.
Reputation is nice, but life is much better.
Just as the guards were chatting and joking around, in the Darkness not far behind them, a pair of crimson eyes, that looked like they were the gateways to Hell, and let to the ends of the Abyss, opened.
They were the eyes of a predator looking at prey, waiting for a chance.
'There is a Rank 1 in this place, as it's a really rundown branch, I don't think he would be anything more than low Rank 1.'
'I'll still act from the shadows and if he is stronger I'll just keep lurking in the shadows waiting for my chance.'
'This is the place, a supply point of a large bandit organization, both existence points and gold, two birds with one stone.'
'I won't kill them both, just to be sure nothing goes wrong.'
Cautiousness was even more pronounced in Lucien, after the situation in the previous area, if the Rank 2 had a method to track him down, it would have been a disaster.
After chatting and laughing a bit, one of the guards went back to sleep and the other stayed out there to watch.
After a couple dozen minutes, the guard was already on the verge of falling asleep.
'Let's probe and see the reaction of the bandits if one of them disappears, maybe I get to see the level of the Rank 1.'
As the guard was dozing off, he suddenly blanked out. If someone was looking at him it would be as if he was just sleeping on duty.
Then a boy with an aura of a predator walked out from the shadows.
'It seems my brute method of sending Darkness Particles into the brain works much better if the person receiving the attack is off his guard, and since my Soul is at least 7 times stronger a peak Rank 0, it last for quite a while.'
Walking up to him, the boy broke his neck, it was completely soundless.
Couple of seconds later, both the boy and the bandit were gone, it was as if all of it was an illusion, and never happened.
The following day, Lucien just stood in his makeshift residence, which he had blocked with his rock door method. He already had his meal and finally realized that he should have gotten the Soul Devour Path much earlier.
The conversion list displayed by All Existence hanged in his iris.
-Common Soul: 100 existence points-
-Rank 0 Soul: 300 existence points-
-Rank 1 Soul: 1000 existence points-
-Rank 2 Soul: 2000 existence points-
-Rank 3 Soul: 5000 existence points-
-Rank 4 Soul: 10 000 existence points-
-Rank 5 Soul: 15 000 existence points-
This only applied to humans, as described by All Existence, Soul Devour Path is path completely aligned with evil, if an animal was practicing it, it would only accept animal Souls, it had to be the Soul of the same species to be able to grow your own Soul.
'That Rank 0 bandit was worth about 700 points without the Soul Devour, the amount rose by more than 1/3, to a 1000.'
'And it stole away 1/10 of his soul during the conversion, as a catalyst to grow mine, my Soul stat rose to 71.00, that is 1.00, it would have taken half a month with the Darkness manual methods.'
'No regrets, if I start regretting and doubting my Path, it will crumble, what matters is that I have it now, and it will help me progress further.'
'I will go out at night and check what reaction they had, after one of them went missing.'
With his ability to cover himself in the Darkness and lurk, Lucien could have been a fearsome assassin back on Earth, even without the overpowered stats by Earths standards, nothing would have been able to stop him.
The amount of patrols were higher this night, it was obvious they noticed their missing comrade and were sure he didn't suddenly go on a vacation.
With his much stronger Soul, Lucien could barely feel their Ranks, but still no inkling on the Path, only when a Darkness Path practitioner walked by, Lucien could clearly feel the Darkness Particles surrounding him.
'They are all peak Rank 0s.'
All of the guards were moving in groups of minimum 2, and nobody was dozing off, it was a completely different sight from the night before.
Even if the WindWolf bandits were a major bandit group around here, they were not a hegemony, they had enemies of the same size and all kinds of undercurrents and conflicts happened, because of clash of interests.
If it came to a fight between two gangs at this branch point, it was not sure how many of the Rank 0s, would come alive out of it. It would mostly be decided by the Rank 1 and Rank 0s would be just fodder.
'I've always liked the fishing in troubled waters strategy, now that they are alert, lets make the waters troubled.'