Unfortunately for the leader, even though low-level Mind Energy could affect one's own body — which allowed the pigs to fly using psychokinesis — it couldn't affect anything else in the physical world.

To protect itself from the darts, it would have to use its subordinates as meat shields, as it had previously done. However, Aaron maintained two distinct lines of attack, one very close to the other, but far enough away that the leader couldn't defend itself on both sides by sacrificing just one pig. Aaron used curved pitches to make sure both lines would hit the leader if they went through.

That forced the pig to erect two separate pig barriers and replace the pigs ceaselessly as they died, while the darts continued to come. At the same time, it also tried to escape. That was a perfectly natural reaction.

And a stupid one.

Mind Energy had expanded its mind enough that it had developed very elementary sapience, but that was the extent of it. Its tactical decision didn't consider the pigs' terrible mobility while flying. It just a beast with some reasoning ability; it couldn't calculate the perfect path for pigs all around it to stand between its moving body and the darts.

So, it reacted instinctively, like someone putting their arms out in front of them to defend themselves from a punch. The pigs were like its arms, being ordered to throw themselves in front of it. However, with no clear paths to take, they got confused and hit each other as they flew clumsily to stand between the leader and Aaron.

That same inferior flight ability allowed any experienced fighter to predict the path the leader would take and define two new lines of attack to intercept it. That's what Aaron did.

The conclusion of the brief fight was no surprise. The leader's defense was poor, while Aaron's attacks came with surgical precision. Furthermore, the attacker only needed to hit a single dart while the defender needed to defend itself from all darts without a miss.

Only the pig's sheer luck made Aaron fail to hit it seventy-five times!

Finally, the seventy-sixth dart reached the leader and completely penetrated its skull.

It died instantly.

But Aaron didn't stop. Beings that specialized in mental abilities rarely died when their physical bodies perished. No, it was common for them to invade and take the bodies of nearby living beings. That was even more common when dealing with beings like the leader of that group of Psychotic Pigs, which had subordinates already mentally enslaved and vulnerable to its possession.

As expected, Mind Energy left the leader's body and went towards a nearby pig — which was immediately killed by a dart.

Shortly after the leader's death, all the pigs grunted in terror and lost their flimsy cohesion, which only got worse when Aaron released his death aura again. They ran everywhere without control, and Aaron had no more trouble killing any pig he wished with one or two darts at most.

The heap of Mind Energy that was the leader didn't give up and turned to another pig, who also died before the heap reached it. The heap turned again, and a pig died again. And so it kept happening for ten pigs until, finally, the heap got into a new pig.

This is exactly what Aaron wanted. That pig was perfectly positioned to receive precise attacks from him.

Nine darts penetrated the meat of that pig at non-vital points. It grunted in such pain that even Aaron felt a slight pity, but to kill mental beings, it was necessary to mentally stun them first. Unfortunately, pain was one of the best tools to accomplish it.

Finally, Aaron's tenth dart killed that pig.

The heap of Mental Energy left the body, but this time it took a few seconds after the pig died; clearly, the leader's consciousness had been weakened. The other pigs were in a racket and had fled the possessed pig, which had grunted in enormous pain from the torture. The heap tried to reach another pig, and Aaron once again killed it before it arrived.

And finally, when it failed to reach the fifth pig, it simply vanished.

Although Aaron was pleased to be rid of an enemy, that anticlimactic death made him frown.

This was not how minds died!

A mind outside a body should explode in Mind Energy upon death, rather than simply ceasing to exist so peacefully. The king, a Psion, had been the commissioner of the mission to retrieve the Sky Splitter Sword, so Aaron could guess what had happened there.

The king had used a skill to infect a Psychotic Pig with a false mind and left it there to kill those who went after the sword. The mind hadn't died in an explosion of Mental Energy because it wasn't a true mind. It was a mere skill that had faded away.

Each of his interactions with the king and his subjects left Aaron more dissatisfied with the man.

He couldn't wait to kill the king with his own sword!

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The king was holding his Sovereign Scepter, wearing royal robes.

In front of him, his two Three Star Royal Protectors, both in heavily enchanted plate mail, stood on standby to protect him from any physical attacks that came his way. On his left side, a Two Star Sorcerer formerly from the Arcane Circle protected him from magical attacks. Finally, on his right side, a Three Star Healer was ready to take care of any physical injuries the king might suffer despite his defenses.

He hadn't brought a Priest with him to the battlefield because there was no need. He was acting in favor of the Goddess of Light and there were enough of her Priests in the area. If he still suffered a spiritual attack while in the middle of so many of them, an extra Priest wouldn't make any difference.

The ruins of the House of the Guardian Sword clan were right in front of the king and his guards.

Although "House" was the official name for a clan headquarters, their House was a vast territory full of buildings, large enough to occupy a tenth of the capital of ten million inhabitants.

Almost two hundred thousand people had lived there under the influence of the Guardian Sword Clan. Now, the territory had already been divided between the king and the other participants in the battle. The former residents of the place were dead, had sworn allegiance to other forces, or had fled.

The House's main entrance had been known for having a huge sword statue made of pure glittering gold. It had disappeared at the start of the battle, stolen by someone sneaky enough not to be detected doing it. The remaining treasures of the extinct clan had either been looted or were now waiting to be discovered by the new owners of their respective territories.

Kneeling in front of the king was the leader of the fallen clan. The man who had commanded a gigantic force was now covered in blood, his magical armor was full of cracks, and he had lost one of his arms.

Behind the king, the other clan leaders who had contributed to the battle formed a semicircle. In the end, another two of the Big Five had joined the battle. Only the fifth of them, the Dark Cloud clan, had refused to help the Temple of Light due to having friendly relations with the Guardian Sword.

It had been a much shorter battle than expected. The combined forces of the king and the Sublime Light were already something against which the Guardian Sword couldn't hold themselves, and when the others joined too, like sharks smelling blood at sea, a large-scale massacre took place.

The leader looked with absolute anger towards the king.

"Traitor! We had an agreement!" he shouted and looked at the other leaders of the Big Five present. "We all did!" Finally, he turned to the Devouts of Light present there. "And what kind of Goddess of Light is it that you follow?" He spat on the floor. "It's more like the Goddess of Death, killing innocents who did nothing to deserve it! Innocents who followed the law and suffered for it!"

Those were his last words before being silenced by a soldier's spear. It pierced his throat on one side and left on the other.

The people present hadn't come to argue with a beaten dog. They had come to witness its execution to ensure. They wanted the dog for good, not around to cause problems in the future.

Debating on the morals of a battle was a privilege reserved for the winners.

But for the king, that death had a much more important meaning. Since he had fought alongside the other clans, he would now have an edge negotiating for allies to fight against the Arcane Circle, especially after they had tasted both victory and the spoils that came with it. Still, there was wisdom in the words of the recently deceased leader of the Guardian Sword.

The clan had offended Aaron Ironblood, and the wrath of the Temple of Light had toppled it. But the king himself had also offended Aaron Ironblood, and now he would discover the truth: had his actions been enough to appease the Goddess of Light to the fact that he had previously ordered the death of the Herald of Light? Sovereigns always needed to beware of the gods.

A few hours earlier, the king had believed everything was under control. He had already been planning on gifting the Temple of Light a lot of money, personally. But after receiving a Heavenly Message, he had become concerned.

So worried, in fact, that he had even left the message floating there, on the corner of his eyes for him to remember it and act on it.

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[Skill Update: Mental Parasite]

Your Mental Parasite has been destroyed.

Original target: Three Star Psychotic Pig

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It was a simple message, but full of meaning. After all, the parasite had been destroyed just one day after Herald of Light entered the caves.

Coincidence? Or had the parasite attacked the Herald of Light and paid for it with its life?

The simplest solution to avoid immediate problems with the Temple of Light was to kill all the Devouts of Light within the capital, but even if he succeeded, he couldn't protect himself from the other angry armies that would march from the Temples of Light from the nearby kingdoms to seek revenge. More than that, there were Temples of Light even in the cities close to his capital, and he would have to deal with a civil war of an unimaginable scale in his kingdom while he was already at war against another kingdom and the Arcane Circle.

Even though he had betrayed the Thenor Empire by allying himself with the Yarns Empire — something that had yet to be revealed to the public — he had never even considered the possibility of making a goddess his enemy, much less the Goddess of Light. Especially not while he was still in the empire that was the Capital of the Light in the World!

He sighed, turned, and went straight to the Temple of Light. At the same time, on the other side of the city, a man with a mental parasite was going to the Temple of Shadows.

It was time to create plans within plans.

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Tia woke up with a sore body from sleeping on the floor in an uncomfortable position.

The first things she felt were the metallic smell of blood and the unpleasant odor of guts exposed to the air for a long time.

She opened her eyes and saw a campfire close to her. Alys sat on the floor to one side of the fire, Lana to the other side, and the ligurus were behind her. Aaron was on the opposite side of Tia, half-hidden by the flames, holding a huge metal spear with three spiked pigs, turning them over the fire.

Pigs! Psychotic Pigs!

Tia remembered the last thing she had seen before passing out, and all drowsiness left her. She sat up quickly and looked around fearfully. What she saw made her heart sink.

Corpses. Hundreds of corpses of Psychotic Pigs everywhere. Once again, Aaron Ironblood left a trail of death in his wake.

She could overcome the death of humans because she had learned so well from her family that humans were inherently evil. She didn't even trust herself to always do the right and fair thing, even if she had formed an Honored Unit. Proof enough of her hypocrisy was that she had chosen to follow Aaron, even though he was a murderer, over returning to her family.

But Psychotic Pigs were just innocent beasts!

They had attacked her, yes, but that was just their instinct. They weren't evil, just irrational!

Worse still, a group of ten Psychotic Pigs with severed antennae was close to her, inside a pigpen made of long swords. Without their antennae, they became incapable of using Mind Energy, so they couldn't fly away. However, that was an act of incredible cruelty!

They were fine for now, but in a few days, the accumulated Mind Energy in their brains would make them suffer a slow and agonizing death.

She turned her resentful eyes to Aaron, ready to speak some harsh truths to him, but to her surprise, as soon as she did it, he threw a dagger by her feet.

"In this group, each one kills their own food," he said.

She felt her stomach burn with injustice. Wasn't it enough for him to hurt the poor beasts like that, he still wanted to force her to kill them?

"Monster!" she shouted with resentment.

How she regretted having recruited him! If only she could go back in time! Even leaving with Logan back to her family would've been better than this!

"It wasn't a suggestion," he said. "You passed out before raising an alarm, which makes you useless to me. I saved your life, which makes you owe me. Therefore, to show that you have at least the potential to be useful, so I can allow you, who owe me your life, to keep following me, I want you to kill a pig and stick its body in this metal spear in my hands. And then, eat its roasted body."

Tia's eyes widened in shock. He was just like her father! No, worse! Her father only made her look at his cruelties, he never told her to act personally!

His words didn't even make any sense. How did killing a beast and eating it proved she had any potential whatsoever?

She crossed her arms. "I refuse."

Suddenly, he threw a dart close to her head. It grazed her left cheek, leaving a thin line of blood on it.