Kale was sitting opposite to the stoneman Fynn, they were facing each other, the latter was tightly tied down to the limit where he couldn't even move his body.
A scripture with a contract engraved on it was lying between them, right now, the red lines of the contract were radiating a red glow, in the next second, a familiar red smoke came out of it and floated above the contract.
Both the bandit boss and Fynn were curiously looking at the contract, they didn't sense any mana fluctuation when it activated, although they weren't mages they should still be able to sense it a little. Moreover, the pattern was completely different from what they had seen until now.
Kale didn't bother to observe their expressions, he gently waved his hand and the red smoke floated towards Fynn, the smoke tried to infiltrate his body the second it came in contact with his skin, he was about to resist but then Kale's calm yet cold voice echoed in his ears "Your resist, you die,"
Fynn eliminated the thought of resisting, he had a feeling that Kale will really kill him if the process failed, although he was a slave, he still wanted to live, no one wants to die, as long as there was the slightest hope he would try to survive.
Under no resistance, the red smoke seeped into his body like it was pulled by a vacuum, Fynn felt a cold chill in his body that made his bone's shiver, he couldn't comprehend that feeling but if he had to give it words, it was like his life was not in his control anymore, it was way more fearsome compared to what he felt when the slave seal was implanted on him.
Kale sensed a faint connection forming between him and the stoneman, at the same time, he also sensed the burden on his soul slightly increasing, making a slave of the humane race was more burdening than other creatures especially when that variant human was at the peak of Enlightened Mortal Stage.
{Can you hear me? Simply nod if you can,} Kale transmitted his thoughts to him.
An expression of shock appeared on the stoneman's face, he slightly nodded.
"Are you done, now heal me," The bandit boss said, his body was hurting all along, but the pain of losing the slave he spent so money on added to it and made it worse.
"Heal? Hehe…" Kale gently smiled, his smile made the bandit boss tremble, Kale focused his attention on Fynn again "Here is your first command, go and bring all the sleeping bandits here,"
He threw a bottle of health potion as he said that.
Fynn caught it and nodded, he quickly headed down the mountain, he was feeling a burning sensation in his body, it was like if he refused or delayed, then his life might end, right here and right now.
Kale then walked back to the bandit boss plopping on the floor "Now, I ask again, where is the inheritance?"
The bandit boss's eyes turned red from anger, even a fool would understand that he was tricked by now "You scoundrel, I won't tell you even if I die,"
"Haha… I hear that a lot," He laughed then took out a short knife similar to the ones used by surgeons during operation from his bag "Now, now, where should I start?"
In a matter of few seconds, the top of the mountain was shrouded in painful screams echoing in the cold night.
When Fynn who was gathering the bandits heard them, he couldn't help but further increase his working pace, challenging his limits out of fear.
He didn't even have the leisure to think how such a young-looking man can have such a cruel and ruthless heart.
***
After around one hour, Fynn finished gathering the bandits making a heap of living flesh, he then headed to the place near the tent, where Kale was present.
On his arrival, the sight he saw was something that might become his nightmare for the next few nights.
Kale was sitting beside a corpse, it was an almost butchered corpse whose appearance was almost unrecognizable, at that moment, he saw the slight trembling of the corpse and realized that it wasn't a corpse and there was still life in the figure.
"Who told you to lie to me before, whatever, you did have an impressive will to survive, though you lacked guts, now it's time to confirm the ethnicity of your information," Kale muttered in a low voice as he cleaned the blood on his knife with a calm expression on his face, he then reached out his hand and placed it on his head "So, the inheritance is located at the deepest part of the mine, which you discovered due to the hole dug out by a snake beast, that turned out to be Blood & Bone Snake?"
'Soul Search'
Kale activated Soul Search as soon as he finished speaking, the bandit boss's body started to continuously tremble,
‹Soul Search› was a famous widely spread technique in the world of Kazeer, it allowed the user to extract a random fragment of the target's memory, as long as the user has higher soul strength and good control over it they could use this technique. The bandit boss was of higher life form level but his soul strength was still inferior to Kale, the only advantage he had was to limit the size of the memory fragment getting extracted.
Even so, the technique was not that awesome, as the fragment of memory extracted was random, but there was a trick to it, the random fragment of memory extracted was very likely to be related to what the target was thinking, it was why Kale asked the question before using ‹Soul Search› and used technique when the bandit boss was thinking about the answer.
"Looks like he spoke the truth," Kale said in a soft voice, he then raised his head and saw the Ghost Lady came flying from afar, her thoughts were transmitted to him as she came, earlier after getting the location, Kale had sent her to investigate while he confirmed the information using ‹Soul Search›.
The Ghost Lady then went back into the body of the woman who was laying limp on the ground.
Kale closed his eyes and savoured the information, an image of a cave area appeared in his mind, the cave was lightened by the shining stones artificially embedded in the walls, two bookshelves filled with books, and a ledge present near the cave walls, accompanied by a broken table and chair on the ground.
In the centre of the cave was a pit, hundreds of white oval-shaped objects resembling chicken eggs were arranged in the pit and a gigantic white snake with yellowish eyes was sitting while swirling its body around the pit.
'A real Rare-Grade Blood & Bone Snake? It's a little troublesome, going by its thickness and size, it should be indeed Tier 3, but that is only considering that this isn't its real size, fortunately, it has laid eggs and is probably in a weakened state,' Kale calculated.
A Rare-Grade Tier 3 magic beast was without a doubt fearsome, even if it was weakened the bandit boss didn't take the risk to kill it, one reason was if the fight broke out inside that cave, the inheritance might get destroyed as a result, and another reason was, the beast in question was a snake type, meaning it can spit out lethal poison.
Blood & Bone Snakes are parasite type snakes, it is because at an early age they don't live alone and stick to a host like leeches, they suck their blood to feed themselves. At that time, they aren't poisonous but as they grow up, they develop poison glands, and due to that their host dies, by that time they awaken their innate magic ability to manipulate their size. During their adulthood, they can swallow their whole prey as dinner and can easily digest all their blood and bones into nutrition.
Normally, the first host those baby snakes choose is none other than their mother, at that time the mother snake is also in a very hungry state so the only possible outcomes are, either the mother eats a good number of the baby snakes to fill her stomach and help remaining ones to get their host or the mother snake lets the baby snakes use her as host until her last moment.
'If I am right, this bandit was waiting for the eggs to hatch, no matter the outcome, he would have a chance by then, if the snake brings away the younglings then it was fine but even if it doesn't, the young snakes aren't poisonous and can be easily dealt with as long as he is careful enough,' Kale thought.
He then turned to Fynn who was staring at the dead bandit boss lying on the ground, due to his distorted face it was hard to predict his expression before his death.
Kale walked past him and arrived at the place where the heap of sleeping bandits were present, from the looks of it, the bandits were about 30 to 40 in numbers, he reached out his hand into his bag and took out a net pouch, several formations engraved beast core with square papers attached to them were present inside the pouch.
He dug small holes around the heap then buried the formation engraved beast cores into the ground.
Kale snapped his fingers signalling Fynn to come over, Fynn obediently came taking long steps on his way "You have five minutes, kill them all,"
Fynn was stunned, he looked at Kale with wide eyes, he couldn't speak but the meaning was very clear.
Although they were bandits but what Kale was asking him was a human slaughter that had no meaning, at least to him, according to him, if Kale wanted to, he could give them to the guild and get great benefits, he didn't seem to have any personal enmity with them either so why the slaughter?
"You have a question?" Kale asked.
Fynn nodded. He searched his pocket to take out a pocket diary and a charcoal pen to write but at the time, Kale came walking to him with a smile on his face.
Suddenly, Kale attacked, he struck three points on his chest at lightning speed with his fingers.
Fynn was petrified for a moment, but just then, he felt great pain in his stomach like his inner organs had turned upside down, he squatted down and groaned in pain.
He couldn't use any defence against Kale, as a result, his normal fleshy body couldn't stop the attacks.
"When I tell you to do something, you do it not ask some meaningless questions, understand?" Kale said in a cold tone, Fynn was in so much pain that he couldn't respond "Brat, when your future got connected to me, you became my man no, a tool, no you are not even qualified for that, your temperament is not too shabby, it is your only plus point.
Now listen carefully, from now on, you will train and work under me. There are only two outcomes for you, you either die during the training or become strong enough to make me call you by your name. Get up and kill them under five minutes, or they will become the last five minutes of your life,"
Kale, or Lancer in his previous life, was a man who singlehandedly raised a whole legion of elite assassins without any big forces noticing, moreover, he still kept his status as the leader and appearance secret till the last day of his life.
His definition of life was way different from others.
Showing mercy to a slave? It depends if you have the qualifications!
If Fynn was the type who started begging for his life the moment he saw his previous master getting defeated, Kale would have killed him without considering anything, the only reason he took him in as a slave was because he found his temperament was passable.
Fynn stopped groaning after a while, he supported his body with his sword as he stood up, he panted a few times before dashing at sleeping bandits with ruthless light flashing in his eyes.
Kale slightly nodded in acknowledgement, he wasn't going to invest in babysitting someone, there was a second reason why he decided to take a slave, it was to help him clear dungeons, doing it alone was hard while teaming up with others while hiding his real capabilities wasn't that beneficial especially when they have to share the rewards.
As Fynn started killing them, a change he couldn't see was taking place around him, Kale smiled as he saw the countless vague silhouettes and light specks, that were flooding the area.
Unexpectedly, the humanoid silhouettes were the least in numbers, he saw all types of creatures, starting from bears, spiders, snakes and the likes crashing into each other only to become nourishment for their opponents.
'The mystery of reincarnation cycle is really deep, I wonder if these will also turn into those light spheres with a soul in them and reach that place…' Kale was lost for a moment, he then regained his focus and signalled the Ghost Lady occupying the woman's body to act.
The woman stood up and left, she was heading into the mine, to reach the place where the inheritance was really located, and also the Blood & Bone Snake.
Kale then looked at the Fynn, he was observing his blades soaked into red blood, all the bandits were already killed by him.
Kale ignored him and the fight going on around him, he touched the dead body of a bandit and softly muttered.
'Grey Plague Assimilation'