"N-no, is this really the time to act, guys?!" My head slowly turned toward both of those people who might think these four guys were acting real as I tried to clarify, "M-maybe they are just trying to play a game of who sleeps faster; them or nobit—"
'!'
"Y-you bastard!" The old man's hands trembled, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he took a step back, his voice shaking as he yelled.
Indeed, his words and body language didn't align.
It was as if he wanted to yell at me, but at the same time, he was visibly shaken after seeing four individuals of such high cultivation levels fall to the ground.
To put it simply, he was as confused as I was.
"W-what have you done?!" he demanded, his voice cracking under the weight of his shock. His eyes darted between the bodies and me, as if trying to piece together what had just happened.
"You weakling!" Kyle, on the other hand, was not one to hesitate. His golden-crimson eyes burned with fury as his hand shot to the hilt of his sword. He snarled, his voice dripping with venom, "So, you've finally decided to show your fangs, have you?!"
'What fangs, you dumbass?!' Given that these men had already unlocked my handcuffs, I tried to lurch my body forward.
But since the handcuffs were loosened and not completely off, I struggled to remove them, which took slightly longer than expected, leaving me no time to explain.
"Y-young master, stop—!"
Before the old man could stop him, Kyle lunged forward, his sword flashing as it sliced through the air.
The blade moved with deadly precision, aimed directly at my chest.
His speed was astonishing—it was as if he had teleported, covering a distance of 10 meters in the blink of an eye as he swung his sword.
It was completely different from reading or watching such scenes in anime.
It was truly terrifying how quickly he closed the distance, and I braced myself for the sharp sting of steel piercing my flesh—it was similar to the feeling you get when someone stands in front of you with a gun and fires it.
But as the handcuffs finally came loose and my body lurched forward instinctively, the sword cut through the solid rock bed where I had been lying, splitting it in half.
'Shit!' Given I had already faced death once, I wasn't afraid of it. The real issue was the thought of experiencing it again and returning to that place from which I had somehow escaped.
That was not an option.
"See, Sir Prince Kyle, I—" Swallowing my pride, I placed my hand on Kyle's shoulder to clarify that I hadn't meant to harm those men.
But something extraordinary happened—something I definitely wasn't expecting.
Kyle's eyes widened in shock, and his body froze mid-strike.
His sword clattered to the ground as his limbs went limp, and he collapsed in a heap beside the dead cultivators. His eyes rolled back, and his body twitched once before falling still.
"Y-young Master!?"
The old man gasped, his face a mask of horror as he stared at Kyle's lifeless form.
"W-what… what have you done?!" the old man stammered, his voice barely above a whisper. He took another step back, his hands raised as if to ward off some unseen threat. "What kind of demonic power is this?!"
'I'm thinking the same thing.' Seeing the old man—the one who had brainwashed and trained Leon—now feeling surprised and mentioning demonic power, when according to the original plot, this old man was supposed to become a demonic cultivator himself soon enough, I just blinked with a blank look.
I stared at the scene before me, my mind reeling.
I had just killed one of the major characters in the novel after arriving here.
Considering that we were in the Azure Flame Kingdom within the Celestial Dragon Continent, which lies in the ninth realm at the lowest, yet Kyle had managed to ascend and reach the fifth realm, showed his qualifications as one of the major characters.
But now, lying on the floor, he was dead.
But how?
I had no cultivation, no special abilities—nothing that could explain this.
:: N-no!? Then why didn't you die?! ::
Suddenly, as I pulled my hands free sitting on the rock bed, I heard a voice from above my head, reminding me that I wasn't alone and that the devil woman was still with me.
Now, focusing on her words, it seemed she was asking why I hadn't died—why whatever she had done to me hadn't worked previously, but now it appeared her power had affected others instead.
'Did you try to kill me before?' It didn't take me long to reach the conclusion that this reaper, even before I woke up, had tried to use her power to kill me again.
But instead, it seemed her power had failed and, for some reason, had accumulated in my body, poisoning those who touched me.
:: Of course—Of course not! Why would I?! ::
My face, already blank from the situation I was in, twitched as I felt a tremor above my head, clearly realizing that this woman was lying.
She had indeed tried to kill me, in a way similar to poisoning my body until the concentration of poison became so intense that others who touched me died.
Of course not literal poison, but from her words, it was something similar, I guess.
'This idiot...' I felt my mouth twitch recalling how it was this idiot who was responsible for all this to begin with due to this habit of trying to kill anyone recklessly, and by killing these five, she once again screwed me over.
"Hey, old man, do you believe me if I said I didn't kill them intentionally?" I muttered, finally understanding why these five had died. I moved toward my legs, freeing them from the chains. The keys were still embedded in them, so I began trying to unlock them.
"Don't play dumb with me, boy. You've been hiding something all along, haven't you? Some kind of forbidden technique or cursed artifact. Speak! What is it?!" The old man's eyes narrowed, and he took a cautious step forward, his gaze fixed on me like a hawk.
"What?" I glanced at the old man, whose face was drenched in sweat as he looked at the dead bodies. His narrowed eyes and accusatory tone reminded me of a particular type of character in novels.
'Don't tell me he's the auto-plot-developing escape sidekick?'
Yeah, a type of side character found in most of the novels who on his own gave a escape idea or reached a conclusion even before the main character could give an answer, which yet clearly had no relation to the reasoning provided by this side character.
"Lies! You've been planning this all along, haven't you? You've been biding your time, waiting for the right moment to strike. And now… now you've killed them all!" The old man wasn't convinced. His fear was slowly giving way to anger, and his voice grew louder.
'...Does his brain have more wrinkles than his butt?' For a second, I thought about the structure of the brain, which has several lines curved on them. In the case of this old man, he had more curves than his wrinkled butt, given he was too fast with his conclusions.
After opening the chains, I stood from the bed.
:: Hey, don't be rough. ::
'Save it for another time.'
:: Y-you pervert filthy human! ::
'.....' I visibly felt how hard I wanted to punch that woman, given I meant for her to be quiet right now and let me think, but she, sitting over my head, was like some chatterbox piercing my eardrums while using her pea-like brain, which now had showed its true appearance by really turning into a pea in her small body.
"Pfft, I got caught, I guess," After reaching a conclusion about what I needed to do here, I chuckled with my hand covering half of my face, feet lifting and placing over Kyle's head as if crossing it over, "to think, a senile mortal would be this close to guess my true identity, how amusing."
:: So, you finally lost it! ::
'!?!'
"Y-you!?" Ignoring the mosquito buzzing in my ears, I looked towards the old man, who was visibly sick in his body, stumbling back, falling with eyes trembling as if he looked towards a ghost, before he took upon his plot development role, "D-don't tell me, so you are not Leon?!"
:: He is smart ::
'Yes, the same as you.'