Shi got up and headed out to find Daisan and Hyousuke. He found them eating in the dining hall and sat across from them. "I know this sucks, but we gotta prepare the men to move out. We don't have the time to wait around, the Eikyo family will learn of their defeat soon enough, and we don't have the manpower to deal with another assault like that." Shi said.
Daisan and Hyousuke nodded in agreement before heading out to gather the soldiers. Shi looked around and saw the mage trio eating at another table. Shi went and sat across from them.
"You earned my respect in the last battle, what are your names?" Shi asked them. "I'm Akio." The thin man said. "I'm Yoshiko." The female mage said. "I'm Daichi." The broad mage said.
"Good," Shi said, "We're going to be heading out soon, we need to take more land before the Eikyo family realizes that they lost." The trio nodded and headed out to the gates.
Shi went out to all the places he had fought the previous day and retrieved his kunai, returning them to the sheaths on his calves. When he returned to the castle, the army was assembled outside of the gate.
They headed north and arrived at a castle in a week. Shi activated war cry and started strolling towards the gate. "I don't have much time right now, so can you just give me this castle without me having to kill anyone?" Shi called up.
"I can't imagine a situation where we'd even let you through the gates, much less gi-" The guard's sentence was cut off as Shi chopped off his head with a wind blade. "Just get me your leader, I'd rather not keep killing idiots who just want to run their mouths."
One of the soldiers ran off and came back after a bit with a dozen men. One of the men stepped forward, "I'm Koji Eikyo, nephew of Hikaru Eikyo, ruler over this area. Now get out of here before I kill you."
Shi jumped up onto the wall and looked at Koji, "Only a nephew huh, well, even if you were one of his sons I don't think I'd make him any madder by killing you." Before any of the men could react, Shi slit Koji's throat.
The men around him rushed Shi, Shi turned the area around him into white flames. He dropped the flames after a few seconds, leaving 20 charred corpses around him. "Now, do I have to kill more of you."
The soldiers on the walls rushed Shi, but Shi launched a blast of ice at them, freezing them solid. Shi launched a wall of air, bursting the frozen men into pieces. The rest of the men on the ramparts backed off at the sudden deaths of half of their men.
"Open the gates," Shi ordered the remaining men on the ramparts. The men hesitated, then rushed to the gates and swung them open. Shi's army came through and spread through the city, securing it.
Shi left enough men to keep the city secure before starting to head north with the rest. They reached the next castle in a month, but this castle was different than the other ones that Shi had taken so far since it was built in the center of a large city that also had a wall around it.
Shi approached the walls, activating war cry. As he came in close, he jumped up onto the wall and flooded the top of it with lava. The men nearby Shi screamed as they were boiled by the lava.
"You know, I used to ask first before stooping to this, but people have been dumbasses every time so you know what? I'm just gonna kill you all and take this city by force." Shi said, more to himself than to the people charging him.
Shi sighed, then shot a beam of hyper-compressed water out and swept it across the ramparts, cutting through both the men and the stone walls around him. The line of men behind the recently bisected soldiers took a step back in surprise.
Shi raised a line of steel spikes, stabbing into the soldiers and raising their bodies into the air in a grisly display, some of the soldiers having their entrails wrapped around the spike they were impaled on.
Shi summoned the reaper and set it loose on the remaining men on the wall as he jumped off and blew open the gates, letting his army in. As the army flooded in to take control of the outer city, Shi headed towards the castle at the city's center.
Shi didn't slow as he jumped 50 feet up to land on the castle ramparts, blasting ice in all directions as he landed. He followed up the ice blast with a storm of glass created by superheating his sand magic.
The soldiers in Shi's vicinity all were either shattered to bits or cut up so much that they barely resembled people anymore. Shi stormed into the castle, slashing the throats of the two guards at the entrance who tried to stop him.
As Shi went through the castle he killed all of the guards he came across, either slashing their throats or punching a hole in their chests with lightning. After searching for a while, Shi found a man who looked like the leader in the throne room.
Shi heard thunderous footsteps approaching as he faced the leader. 5 people came out and stood next to the man, Shi could sense their green cores and he sneered at them. Shi drained 3 of the green core mages, sucking greedily at their mana. The mages tried to keep ahold of their mana but Shi's pull was more insistent so they shriveled up and died in front of their friends.
As the other three men gawked, Shi summoned as much water as he could, compressing it with all the mana he could use. Shi put himself in zero gravity and rested on the ceiling, before allowing the water to escape in all directions but up.
Water shot out in almost every direction, whirling around and throwing the mages off of their feet. Screams turned into gurgles as everyone caught in the whirling flood was unable to reach the surface.
Shi poured more power into the water, completely filling the halls up for a solid 15 minutes before he absorbed the water back into himself as mana. Shi found the nearest window and lept out, lightening the gravity on himself right before he hit the ground making it so his 300-foot fall had almost no impact.
Shi stood up, watching his men slaughter the remaining soldiers, then headed out to find his generals.