Hello, my dear readers! Here's chapter 55 with the more graphic bits. Maybe I'm too sensitive to that kind of content and you'll think it's nothing...
Anyway, I'm slowly getting back into a 'normal' pace of writing, despite having a few busy days this week, so that's pretty cool. I also lowered the price of the available subscription on patre0n. I'll probably set up different types once I finish Book 1. We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime, enjoy the chapter!
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Damovotsk, Molkovia, Earth.
Demian's P.O.V.
At their current running speed, the rare pedestrians walking on the street were incapable of noticing their presence, especially with the sparse lampposts lighting the street and their dark clothes. Only some small sounds were audible, coming from their body moving the air around. However, with the car noises blaring all around, the duo was easily able to reach the tall metal gate without being found out. Once there, the two jumped simultaneously and with their hand outstretched, grabbed the horizontal bar located around 3m50 to 4 meters from the ground and right under the barbed wire running along the property. As the two previously planned, Demian held her body from the side, freeing her two hands which she used to swiftly grab the wire in front of her. With his Divine Sense deployed, he noticed the spike in her energy signature signaling the activation of her special state. Then, with a deceptively light twist, the wire broke quietly. The only downside was that some rips appeared in her thin plastic gloves.
The fact she was not injured at all despite how sharp those metal wires were, brought a discreet sight of relief from the young man who kept watching her perform the same action a few times until there was enough room for the two of them to pass through without the barbed ripping through their clothes. "I'll give you a push." Demian whispered which was only answered with a slight nod from the muscular woman who grabbed the horizontal bar again, while her body tensed in preparation. The raven-haired young man then moved his right hand slightly around the back of her knee before halting his movement and exclaiming in a low tone. "Put your foot on my hand." Immediately after the young woman followed his instruction, he gripped the metal bar tightly before flexing his upper body and using a great amount of strength to throw her heavy body over the gate.
Before his breakthrough, that would have been an impossible feat, especially in the position he found himself in. However, it seemed almost effortless now. Not letting that thought distract him, he instead focused on the slight noise the metallic gate made from the counterforce of their little stunt. Thankfully, it was both heavy and seemed to be of good quality, meaning the sound it emitted was minimal and could have been attributed to a random person randomly hitting a metal can on the sidewalk. 'I can't believe that having quality stuff would be a bad thing in case of a break-in. Life and its wonders.' He briefly pondered as he observed the redhead's body fly in a silent arc before falling down silently on her feet after making a front flip. 'Impressive!' Was his inner reaction as his brain started coming up with a plan to join his cousin on the other side without alerting the house's inhabitants.
A second later, he jokingly thought. 'Let's see if my abs are as good as I think they are.' He then pushed 'lightly' against the gate with his feet while pulling his body upward until he found himself upside-down with his hands grabbing tightly the top metal bar and his feet facing the sky. He was only in that posture for a brief moment, though, as his momentum quickly brought him toward the other side. After he felt his body reaching a sufficient distance, he let go of the metal bar and, with a half flip, found himself in a similar crouched posture as his cousin who moved slightly to the side as soon as she landed on the ground. Turning her blue eyes, which were strikingly similar to his, in his direction, she whispered. "No camera on this path, and they don't seem to have been alerted."
Nodding his head, he replied in a similar tone. "I've only found one facing the garden, but I don't think anyone's watching it. By the way, here." He added as he held a new pair of black plastic gloves to her. "Thanks." She claimed while grabbing them. She then immediately switched hers for the new ones and after a few brief seconds, she declared. "I'm ready." Nodding his head, he instructed. "Two men are training in the garden. I'll deal with the one on the right while you take the closest one on the left." "Okay." Since the two were ready, Demian started following the paved pathway leading toward the garage and the garden in the back. The whole property was relatively big, especially for Damovotsk's inner ring, and, from his experience, was not something that someone could get with just money.
In any case, it worked in their favor so he would not complain about it. As they were about to reach the building's corner, he signaled her to stop before throwing a gaze in her direction and whispering. "On 3." Before moving his gaze back forward and displaying his tightened fist in front of her. He then calmly lifted his index finger, followed by his middle finger a second later, and finally his ring finger. Immediately, the two cultivators exploded in movement, their legs bringing them at an incredible speed toward their respective targets. With his Divine Sense scanning everything all around him, Demian felt confident enough to be able to deal with any unexpected situation and thus focused on the brown-haired man a few dozen meters away from him.
It may have been the fact that the two were very close to the Chi Gathering Rank, but they seemed to intuitively feel that something was wrong, or at least, that was what the young man gathered as he noted the worried expression appearing on the two's faces. He could even see their gazes moving very slowly in their direction. Nonetheless, the fact was that they were still at the Body Strengthening Rank which meant that every attribute of theirs was abysmally inferior to the two cousins' own. Especially with the fact that Bryn had activated her special state which boosted her already great strength and himself who, from some previous observations and educated guesses, concluded that he would be able to crush average First Level Chi Gathering easily, due to the effect his perk had on his cultivation.
Those thoughts, however, disappeared as soon as they surfaced as his body was already in the ideal attacking range from the slow-moving man. His training then took over. First, a strong hook to his left floating ribs, the aim being to cut off the opponent's breath and block him from calling for help. Then a strong hit to the throat, the goal being to crush it and kill the target without too much noise or blood. What he did not expect, though, was the effect of his first punch on the Peak Body Strengthening pseudo-cultivator. The power he put behind it would have, from his experience, only pushed Brynhild away slightly without creating any visible injury. The result for the much weaker man, however, was incredibly more devastating. The kinetic energy traveled through his entire torso, literally crushing all his ribs, and internal organs on the way before throwing what was now essentially a corpse flying through the air like a video game rag-doll until it fell down on the ground a few meters away.
The blue-eyed teenager froze for a few seconds as his mind registered the previous gory scene that he unwittingly created. Despite being acquainted with the act of taking another's life, he was far from being prepared for such a 'graphic' takedown, and the blood still dripping from his clothes did not really help his mind cope with it. Only when his Divine Sense caught what happened to Bryn was he able to 'shrug' the uneasiness away. As he took a deep breath, to calm his agitated mind, a realization struck him. 'No wonder cultivators are banned from going against untrained mortals. It wouldn't even be a fight. Unless they had strong firearms. Even then, they'd have to be quick enough to use them.' Shaking his head slightly, he turned his body in the redhead's direction and started walking toward her.
Unsurprisingly, the redhead had a similar reaction to his own, with one exception: The almost imperceptible shaking. Her unconscious reaction did not overly surprise the young man whose sight was greeted by the incomplete body lying on the ground. Unlike his own target, the man had his whole body undamaged up to his head, which was completely missing. Only some bloody residues could be found on her hands and around the body's neck, with the latter facing away from the two cousins. Gently patting her shoulder, he asked in a concerned voice. "Are you okay?" His touch elicited a strong shiver from the giant woman, who then proceeded to deep breaths for a while in a bid to calm her frayed nerves. Only a minute or so later, did her trembling abate completely. Appearing relatively calmer, she turned her head and met his worried gaze. Narrowing her eyes as she noticed his current bloody state, she asked in a somewhat weary voice.
"How... How do you do it?" It took him a brief moment to understand what she meant before he began pondering over how to phrase his answer. With some hesitation in his voice, he stated. "I think... You, Sera, and Auntie... The three of you are my most precious people in this world... If anything were to happen to any of you..." He unconsciously stopped his sentence halfway as a shudder coursed through his body from the terrible image that briefly surfaced in his mind. Shaking his head to shove that horrifying thought, he continued with much more determination in his tone. "In my mind, anyone threatening you girls' and my safety needs to be eliminated." Turning toward the corpse on the ground, he explained. "To be honest, now that the two of us have reached the Chi Gathering Rank, I lost any apprehension about those guys. But Auntie and Sera are, unlike us, too vulnerable. So, those people must be dealt with permanently, and I won't let any emotions like guilt or mercy stop me."
Pausing for a second, he then moved his gaze in her direction and added wryly. "Even if I know I'll feel like shit afterward." His words seemed to have some impact on her, however, they could not linger too long in their current situation, even if it was about something as important as their mental health. After all, they had already killed those two people and, from the lack of practice noise, the people inside the house were sure to notice that something had gone wrong. As if to prove his assumption, his Divine Sense caught someone walking toward the partially opened patio door separating the garden from the house. Fortunately, the curtains were drawn closed, so the two of them were still 'invisible' from the inside. Nonetheless, they had to move now as their presence would be known in the next few seconds. "We can talk about that subject at length later if you don't mind."
Once those words left his lips, he dashed toward the door before leaning his back on the wall right to the side of the opening, waiting for the unknown armed woman walking his way. A second later, he heard the curtains being drawn half opened, followed by an exclamation. "Uh?! Where the fuck are those two?" Since the inside of the house was fully lit, her sight needed a brief moment to adjust, moment that Demian knew he had to use to deal with her. Thus, without wasting any more time, the young man's right arm flew toward her throat before squeezing just enough to cut off her breathing, but not enough to crush her throat and make a mess as he had learned how to adjust his strength after his previous 'blunder'. Once he had her neck in hand, he pulled her body out of the house and to his side, so that she would be hidden from view. He then squeezed as hard as he could, the result being almost as bloody as earlier.
Noticing the life leaving the woman's eyes, he could not help himself from reflecting. 'I'm becoming a monster, aren't I? I wonder why taking a life can be so easy and so hard at the same time?' Letting out a helpless sigh, he decided to follow his own advice and shove that inner questioning to the side of his mind and refocus on the present situation. As he let the corpse down quietly, he noted his cousin's presence beside him, prompting him to declare. "Don't pay attention to the three upstairs and those two sleeping downstairs. We'll deal with them afterward. Those other seven are our first targets." Throwing a brief glance toward the silent woman beside him, he noted the stony look in her blue eyes, the latter directed toward the inside of the house.
Since she did not mind him taking charge, he instructed. "You'll deal with those in the living room and I'll take care of the kitchen and bathroom. If everything goes well, I'll also take care of those in the bedrooms." 'So that you won't need to bloody your hands more than needed' was what he thought, despite knowing how naive that particular train of thought was. Letting out a discreet sigh for what seemed like the hundredth time this evening, he stated. "Remember that if we don't take care of them first, they will do their best to hurt our family." Whether that particular statement was for her ears or his own was unknown. In any case, since the bullet was already out of the barrel, there was no use in worrying. "Let's go!" He exclaimed before the two bolted inside the building, ready to unleash a massacre on their unsuspecting targets.