"Humans"
Just then, the word on the wall changed, more texts appeared on it after a pause.
"Why don't you just listen?"
Followed by the texts, the shadows which the wall comprised rapidly broke down into javelins which shot at the three men at terrific speed.
Without hesitating, the man in the middle took out a shield, the man on the left retreated, took out a sword from his spatial ring and assumed an alert stance.
The last man, the man on the right, got behind the man in the middle and put his hand on the shoulder of the latter.
It is to ensure that if the middle man falls short, he can promptly send in his mana to reinforce the defensive artifact. The man who retreated is on the lookout for possible sneak attacks.
The formation these three men immediately took showed just how experienced they were at fighting together.
The middle man channeled his mana into the shield, which started glowing before the light expanded to form a large pale yellow energy barrier.
The javelins reached the energy barrier in less than a second, given the speed at which they were moving. But, as if the energy barrier never even existed in the first place, the javelins pierced through it easily.
The man behind the middle man had no chance to even reinforce the strength of the energy barrier with his mana before it was pierced through.
The javelins touched the bodies of the man who stood in the middle and the one behind him.
The last man standing with a sword executed a sword technique to defend against the javelins coming at him.
But unfortunately, the previous situation repeated, and the javelins went through the sword as if it never existed and hit the man's body.
Surprisingly, their bodies went still as soon as the javelins touched them, before they went unconscious. It basically knocked them out.
A blonde man soon came out from the shadows and caught the rapidly descending bodies.
He looked at them and thought,
'I was only told to block the people above low rank entering and not kill them. Killing people I don't know the background of might also cause unwanted problems.
I will leave them in the wild when the young master leaves the mountain.'
He stored away the bodies in the shadows and retreated into the darkness.
*****
'Humans. They were all humans. All the four people I killed were humans.'
Thought Clarence as he continued walking randomly.
Humans were another hegemonic force in this world. Along with the demons, they both stood at the top of all races.
But that also made them bitter enemies who kept clashing, from small skirmishes to big wars.
There were several differences between them.
Demons had an advantage when it came to physique. So when a human and demon who are at the same rank fight, most of the time, a demon will easily come out on top.
Even if the demon was at a rank lower, it's unsure who will win the spar.
This is also the reason the three humans who were chasing Clarence earlier started lagging as soon as they stopped using their mana to reinforce their bodies or execute movement arts.
Although Clarence was just a rank 1 demon, his physique was on whole another level. Being from the Royal family, he had never been short of training resources.
Even he himself never neglected his training. The last thing, their Verity family wasn't called the Royal family of the demonic empire for nothing.
Their whole lineage had always been blessed with extraordinary strength in both physique and soul.
Till date, no one has been able to find out the reasons behind their powerful soul despite being demons.
Humans had an advantage when it came to souls. They had stronger souls, which made their cultivation speed faster.
This is also why the average cultivation base of the human population is higher than demons.
The one and only way to differentiate them was that the demons had a trident shaped mark on their forehead, while humans didn't. It wasn't that they were imprinted with it, but that all the demons were born with the trident shaped mark. The rest of their bodies basically had no differences.
You cannot differentiate them based on strength of physique or soul because there exist treasures which can strengthen them.
Clarence soon found a cave upon walking for quite a while. He entered the cave, and this time placed a rank four illusion array at the entrance.
As the rank in arrays goes up, it's either because more features were added to the array or the array was upgraded to make its original feature more powerful.
In this case, the illusion array Clarence placed came with extra features of blocking mana, sound and smell, along with its original use of displaying an illusion instead of the actual sight inside it.
Clarence walked up near a wall opposite to the entrance and sat down while leaning his back to the wall.
He took out the rank five snake's corpse and cut it into pieces. As soon as he was done, he prepared a bonfire above which he cooked the snake pieces.
After the pieces were thoroughly cooked. He put them on a plate he took out from his spatial bracelet.
He then took out several condiments from his spatial bracelet and nicely sprinkled it over the pieces.
Although he told his father that he won't bring in any food, he reasoned to himself that condiments should still be allowed or he'll go insane tasting bland food for a month.
After all the preparations were complete, he took out a glass and a bottle of wine.
'Yea, wine doesn't count in food either, definitely.'
He placed the glass beside the plate and filled it up with wine. After the glass was half full, he stopped and placed the bottle aside.
He leaned his back to the wall, his legs straightened up in front of him and held the plate in his hand.
He took a fork from his spatial bracelet, stabbed it into the meat, and gently picked it up to place it in his mouth.
'Ah, Delicious. Higher level beasts indeed taste better.'
He was tired of eating the rank one snake's meat which he first killed upon entering the mountains.
Just as he was chewing his first bite, suddenly thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed. He was almost on the verge of taking a defensive stance when it started raining.
After staying still for some moments, he relaxed and leaned back on the wall while continuing to eat the food when he realized it was really just raining.
'Ah, such a beautiful moment. After experiencing a thrilling fight, resting in a cave, eating delicious food while gazing at lush green forest with rain complementing the scenery.
Not to mention a fine wine to top it all off. Beautiful indeed.'
The rank four illusion array blocked all sound, smell and mana, so the smell of the food won't waft over outside, nor will the sound or mana.
The illusion also displayed a different image, in this case, a common landmass to the outside viewers, but from the inside, Clarence could still see everything going on outside easily.
After he was done chilling. Clarence cleaned everything and put the items back into his spatial bracelet.
He then walked up to the array and replaced it with a boulder. Putting the array back in his spatial bracelet, he took out a defensive array and set it up behind the boulder.
Done with the security part, he took out a mattress, pillow, and a bedsheet from his spatial bracelet and set it up deep near the end of the cave.
'Yep, they are definitely not artifacts, just normal everyday items.'
For the last time, he took out a cooling array from his spatial bracelet and set it up around the mattress.
All set to sleep. He sat down on the mattress and started stretching his arms and legs while yawning. He then laid down and closed his eyes.
But even though he was sleeping, his sheath never left his waist and was in a light sleep, so that he could wake up immediately in case of emergencies.