Chapter 328: I will be your hunting hound!
The extremely tall figure was gradually revealed beneath the illumination of the torches as the mocking laughter rang out. It was a handsome, young man with a strange and evil smile. The young man was around a meter and ninety something centimeters tall. When he stood there, he was like an unsheathed sword, giving people an intense visual impact.
An azure warrior uniform emphasized his refined physique. His mouth showed a faint smile that gave off an aura of playfulness, like an eagle in the sky planning to toy with a rabbit that was frantically running away on the ground. He seemed both confident and at ease.
The frightened bandits hurriedly looked around when the young man revealed himself, as if they thought that there were more people behind the young man, which caused their nervousness and wariness to peak.
“Stop looking around. There’s only me!” Han Shuo explained with a faint smile, then stopped looking at the bandit leader that clearly let out a sigh of relief. He merely set his gaze on Dorcas, who was standing stiffly amongst the crowd, and asked, “Do you think these bandits, who only know how to enjoy themselves and are unable to achieve anything, will be able to help you to exact revenge?”
Dorcas revealed an indifferent expression. Then after a moment of silence, he looked at Han Shuo, “That is none of your business. You came for the fifty thousand gold coins, right?”
Han Shuo shook his head with a smile, then continued to fix his gaze on Dorcas, while saying dashingly, “No, fifty thousand gold coins might be a huge amount of money in the eyes of these bandits, but not in mine. The reason I followed you guys was not for the fifty thousand gold coins, but for you, Dorcas!”
Dorcas had a sudden change in expression and stared hatefully at Han Shuo, as if wishing to firmly commit Han Shuo’s appearance to memory. Then he smiled sadly, “I hadn’t that the two families would still have the desire to come after me after so much time had passed. I never would have thought that I would be worth so much. Ha!”
“Stop the bullshit. You’re just a single man and you dare to block our path. You’re just seeking death!” Laxie, the bandit leader, wanted to hurry along to the Full Spring Garden. He suddenly roared loudly after confirming that Han Shuo was indeed alone, unable to suppress the urgency in his heart.
The other bandit leaders all agreed after hearing Laxie’s roar. It seems like their lust had caused them to be unable to withstand the situation any longer. Under the orders of the bandit leaders, their underlings, equally urgent, quickly surrounded Han Shuo while wielding worthless weapons.
Han Shuo had a smile on his face from the start. He was completely indifferent towards the actions of these bandits, who only thirsted for the smooth skin of women. He continued to gaze at Dorcas and shook his head slightly. He finally decided to explain upon seeing Dorcas’ confused expression, “You might be both worthless and a hot potato to others, but you are worth far more than fifty thousand gold coins to me. I will explain to you in detail later, after I clean up these bandits. Then, I’ll take my time to discuss with you your true value.
“Prideful fellow, you are asking for death!” Laxie gazed at Han Shuo with rage. He waved his hands and shouted, “Kill him! He’s definitely that evil necromancer. Close in on him and don’t give him the chance to chant any spells.”
“Aha, he is the new city lord of Brettel City! Just look at that space ring on his hand. He’s definitely a fat target!. Brothers, take the space ring for me, I can already imagine the wealth within the space ring!” Bandit leader Tuca cawed weirdly in excitement. He raised the broad, double-edged battle axe in his hands and stared greedily at the space ring on Han Shuo’s finger.
“Dong… Dong dong…”
Just as the bandit underlings were about to tear Han Shuo to shreds, the sound of dull footsteps suddenly rang out.
“What’s that?!” Laxie’s messy eyebrows tensed, becoming two irregular triangles as he looked around and asked loudly.
The underlings had been about to make a move, but looked around in confusion when they heard Laxie’s shout.
“Dong… Dong dong… Dong dong dong…”
As the dull footsteps neared, several branches with sparse leaves began to shake, notifying these third rate bandits that even the ground was slightly shaking. However, even if they had a torch, the distance that the torch could illuminate was still very limited on this pitch dark night. This was why the bandits could only hear increasingly loud footsteps drawing closer to them, but they were unable to see what it was no matter how hard they looked around.
“That, my friends, is the sound that the metal hooves of the fire-spurting steeds of the evil knights make. Everyone, no need to look around, you’re all doomed!” Han Shuo suddenly explained with a smile in the midst of being surrounded by the bandits.
“Damn it, he already summoned his undead creatures! Kill him immediately! As long as he dies, the undead creatures won’t be too much if a threat without his orders!” The light adept mage, who had been hired by the bandits with a lot of gold, quickly exclaimed as he lost his calm.
The bandit leaders were frightened and unsure of what to do. They all yelled at their underling loudly when they heard the light adept mage’s shout, “You idiots, kill him quickly!”
The underlings swung back into action when they heard their leaders give them the same order to kill. They brandished the weapons in their hands and charged Han Shuo, trying to kill him before the undead creatures arrived.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Under the flickering red light of the torches, long, thin, black bone spears shot of from Han Shuo. These bone spears flew out with extreme speed and were like rays of life-reaping black light. The unending bone spears actually seemed to be connected to each together, causing Han Shuo to look like a strange, black peacock with its tail fully opened.
“Ah.. Ahhhh….”
The bandits, who’d charged over, let out a dense series of terrible howls, sounding like firecrackers. When Han Shuo opened his “tail”, the bone spears either easily pierced their armor, which was only worth several silver coins anyways, or penetrated deep into the gaps between their bones or guts, sending blood flying everywhere.
The bone spears didn’t diminish in power as they pierced the bandits’ bodies. They had enough momentum to even string up the bandit behind the first one, making this sort of tremendous impact truly terrifying.
In the blink of an eye, the roughly thirty bandits that had charged forward had all been fatally pierced by the bone spears amidst their terrible wails. The blood covering the ground became strangely beautiful under the illumination of the torches that had fallen to the ground. The dense smell of blood instantly spread into the noses and mouths of the bandit leaders.
“Not-Not good!” Laxie’s lust was gradually extinguished by the bone-piercing cold as he saw Han Shuo slowly rise from the mounds of corpses and blood. An intense flame of fear incinerated everything in his mind.
“Dong dong…”
The dull footsteps pounded on the hearts of every single bandit like beating drums. The “things” that they had only heard but couldn’t see, now appeared behind them one by one. These “things” did not have eyes. Instead, their sockets were filled with flickering flames. Under the illumination of their burning eyes, enormous figures gradually appeared from the darkness.
Tuca’s lips suddenly became strangely dry. He couldn’t even speak smoothly as he muttered softly, “Everyone. T-those are Evil Knights, run!”
The hands of the two light mages trembled as they held their staffs. They had been hired with a lot of gold. However, purifying light magic at their current level of strength was truly limited. What’s more, there were actually more than ten evil knights in front of them. Thanks to the blurry light, their sharp eyesight could see many more shadows behind the evil knights.
These bandits had indeed heard of the rumors that Han Shuo had obliterated the bandit Troda and others at the foot of Mount Tali. However, they’d thought that it had been done by the many soldiers of Brettel City, as well as Fulkin’s mountain people.
There was no way that they would have factored the appearance of an archmage necromancer with mental strength on par with a grand magus, as well as a bone staff that doubled the number of summoned undead creatures. Just how many could Han Shuo summon?
“Sorry, we don’t want the wages anymore!” The light adept mage turned around and looked towards Dorcas, then said to the other light journeyman mage, “Give them back the gold coins!”
The two light mages poured out roughly a thousand gold coins from their money bags. The adept mage bowed slightly towards Han Shuo in the distance and said in fearful yet respectful tone, “This doesn’t have much to do with us. Please allow us to leave.”
“You two despicable mages! How dare you actually run away first! I’ll kill you myself!” Dorcas’ bandit leader roared and then charged at the two light mages who wanted to retreat.
“I don’t know why, but I’m starting to dislike light mages more and more. Also, I really hate your actions of defecting at the last minute, I think it’s better if you stayed,” Han Shuo gazed coldly at the two mages, who only knew how to save their own skin very well, and responded plainly.
Due to the wave of dense bone spears, none of the bandits dared to draw near to Han Shuo. All of them stayed as far away from Han Shuo as they could. However, there was still a large number of undead creatures behind them, so they were still dead no matter how they looked at it.
“Pierce!”
A bandit right next to an evil knight was pierced through by the evil knight’s enormous bone spear and hoisted up high. The slaughter began the moment this bandit’s corpse hit the floor. The ten evil knights slowly drowned the bandits with endless death along with the roughly thousand different undead creatures.
The night was as dark as ink. The torches began to extinguish as the bandits were killed one by one, and the darkness of the night gradually affected the bandits’ vision. However, the undead creatures were like fish in water during the night. They silently slaughtered everything in front of them, not knowing what mercy was.
Dorcas had also revealed a terrified expression when all sorts of terrible howls started ringing out, standing out for his peculiarities as he held the torch amongst the crowd of people. Evil knights and zombies walked past him, as if they didn’t know that there was a delicious human body standing beside them. He didn’t seem to exist to them as they only slaughtered the living around him.
When the stark straight Dorcas noticed that none of the undead creatures attacked him, the fear in his heart gradually resided. Due to the treachery of the bandit leaders earlier, even though Dorcas had originally been their comrade, he felt a hint of joy as he watched them die.
“Good riddance, good riddance, that scum should have been dealt with ages ago.” Dorcas muttered to himself as he looked at the bloody slaughter with indifference.
The two light mages were the first to receive the brunt of the bandits’ attack after Han Shuo’s merciless refusal. The two light mages, who’d originally been able to threaten the undead creatures a bit, nearly drowned in the furious attacks of the bandits. After the bandits had done away with the light mages, they were then consumed by a wave of undead creatures. As time passed in the pitch dark night, the terrible, unending screams gradually came to a halt.
After a while, only Dorcas, holding a torch with an indifferent expression, was left. There was also a ground covered in corpses apart from him, as well as a few ghouls munching on the corpses.
“That was a bit gory, but I hope you don’t mind.” Han Shuo floated towards Dorcas with a smile. He didn’t seem gentle at all as he smiled amidst a ground full of corpses. Instead, there was another sort of terror and sinister atmosphere about him. The fact that the ghouls feeding on the ground all left Dorcas’ side when Han Shuo neared only emphasized that all of this horror had resulted from this young man with a strange and evil smile.
Dorcas took in a deep breath and forcefully stopped himself from vomiting. He placed his focus on Han Shuo in an attempt to soften the hideous scene painted around him. “What do you want?”
“Hehe, I know some things about you, and I can also understanding the endless anger in your heart. I want to give you a chance. A chance to release your vengeance,” Han Shuo offered this extremely alluring suggestion with a smile.
This wasn’t something that anyone could bestow on him!
Before Han Shuo displayed the savageness of slaughtering all of the bandits, Dorcas wouldn’t have thought that the lord of Brettel City, someone who’d found it hard to keep himself safe, could give him any sort of chance.
However, Dorcas now had reason to believe that, as long as Han Shuo was willing, the revenge that had seemed impossible to take was nothing difficult in front of this man as savage as a demon.
Due to this, Dorcas only hesitated for a moment before nodding, “As long as you can take revenge for me, I can do anything for you.”
Han Shuo shook his head and said slowly with a smile, “It’s not that I will take revenge for you, it’s you who will take revenge for yourself!”
When Dorcas frowned, Han Shuo explained with a smile, “I will give you the chance to take revenge with your own hands. With your talent, the two families will be dancing in the palm of your hand sooner or later. Hehe, isn’t torturing them to death bit by bit with your own hands much better than letting someone else kill them?”
The girl that had fallen in love with Dorcas had now become his enemy’s plaything. Due to the girl’s relationship with Dorcas, her fiance treated her savagely. The pitiful girl was completely helpless as she washed her face with tears everyday.
Although the girl’s family was unhappy about this, there was nothing nothing they could do about it as their daughter was already married. What’s more, her husband’s family was of a higher position, so her father could only blame all of it on Dorcas. He did not hold back in his pursuit of Dorcas. It could only be said that Dorcas possessed great luck to be able to survive the chase for so long.
The Dark Mantle knew about all this, but in the world where nobles ruled, even though the commoner born Dorcas was shockingly talented in militaristic affairs, it was not enough to change these unwritten rules that had existed for several thousand years.
The Dark Mantle would only kill the nobles that had betrayed the empire. However, nobles occasionally bullying a few peasants wasn’t a huge matter. It was even more negligible if the bullied peasant didn’t have any backing. The Dark Mantle had countless other things to do. They naturally would not waste their effort on minute matters like these. The fact that they had a note of this in their records was already due to Dorcas’ strategic talent. Otherwise, there probably wouldn’t even be a record of his name.
“I am a fugitive, how could I possibly use my power to kill my own enemies!” Dorcas was clearly moved by Han Shuo’s suggestion. However, since Dorcas had shone with brilliance in the Imperial Academy, he was naturally not a fool. He looked at Han Shuo and asked after pondering for a while.
“Whether you are a fugitive in Brettel City or not is decided by me, the city lord! I know about your identity and hatred. The fact that I dare to accept you means that I am not afraid of your identity as a fugitive,” After saying this with a slight smile, Han Shuo raised a finger and pointed in the direction of the seven duchies, then said enticingly, “Aside from intense hatred, I can also see arrogant ambition that cannot be concealed in your eyes. Brettel City is a hunting ground for the seven duchies. However, they are also a hunting ground for me. Are you willing to become a hunter like me?”
Dorcas gazed deeply at Han Shuo. After a while, he prostrated himself towards Han Shuo without any regards to the blood on the ground and said solemnly, “Sir Count, I am not a hunter, but I will be your hunting hound!”