Chapter XLIV: Idiots Never Learn V

The Great Plateau Near Shizukana Gake

Month of the Tortoise 2, 172 ,328 DE

As the report form Vorn's last shot reaches my ears, I hold up my hand in his direction in a gesture to stop.

Bang! Bang!

I may not be fast enough to dodge bullets, but I easily dodge the aim of the idiots. When they pull their triggers, I sway to the side. As they try to correct their aim, their hands jerk, and the bullets fly wildly past me.

While speeding up, I bend down and grab a pair of rocks poking out from the dead leaves and weeds. Twisting one way and back the other, I use my entire body like a spring and hurl the rocks at the two with the drawn pistols.

Crunch! Crunch!

Before the two with pistols can do more than gape in shock, the rocks crush their faces, driving bone shards into their brains. The corpses start to collapse to the ground in slow motion.

I accelerate to my fastest speed, and except for Miura, the rest of the noble retards just gape in wide-eyed astonishment. Whether or not most of them can actually follow my movements is anyone's guess. Miura's eyes follow me, but he reacts in slow motion. To me, he looks likes he has suddenly slowed to half his normal speed, which is still, at least, twice as fast as the rest of noble idiot trash.

Closing in on the noble morons, I target Miura. Dropping to a crouch and sliding across the ground, I spin in a two-hundred-seventy degree cricle and drive my shin into his knees.

Pop! Crunch! Crack!

Miura flips head over heels and lands on his right shoulder. As the bones break, his shoulder deforms into a badly twisted mess of broken bones. Without treatment from an exceptional healer, he will be a cripple for the rest of his life. Cultivation is a contrived system created by the Daos and the Dragon Gods. That type of injury could easily put an end to any hope for him to ever progress beyond his stage.

"AAARRRRRRR!" While screaming like a bitch, Miura hugs his ruined shoulder with his opposite hand and rolls around on the ground. With the pale girlish skin of his face turning almost purple, his face twists into an ugly mask of pain, rage, and hate. As I smile down at Miura, his glare intensifies. If looks could kill, I would have already died a thousand deaths.

The rest of the trash halt in their tracks. Since I dropped Miura as quickly I did, they are at a loss for what to do. The sour stench of fears pours from the still standing noble imbeciles. As they look from the screaming Miura to one another, none of them so much as show any intention to make the first move. They even look too scared to try to flee.

Looking at the noble idiots, bloodlust flows out from my Soul. They are nothing more than prey. I want to hunt them, to kill them. My shoulders hunch forward, and my predator's grin feels like it is going to tear my cheeks open to my ears.

Unconsciously, the noble morons start to inch backward, each one trying to put someone else between me and themselves. One of them catches my attention, a girl in a kimono. Matsuda Sakura, the girls behind the little rape party for Aoi. As she stumbles backward with hesitant steps, she shakes her head, as though denying the scene in front of her. Fear fills her eyes and her scent. Her normally pale features look completely bloodless.

I spring forward. Before Matsuda Sakura has the chance to react, I grab her by the front of her kimono. She has yet to even break into Qi Condensation. For all practical purposes, there is little difference between her and a common human. With a casual toss, I send her flying in Aoi's general direction.

Without giving the remaining noble idiots a chance to flee, I tear into them. As I hammer kicks into the legs of one after another, they fall to the ground in slow motion, with long drawn out screams of pain. After becoming a Triune, my strength has grown so much that the idiot trash pose no threat or even any challenge.

The ease with which I destroy them drives home how much my strength had been suppressed by my mother's seal and the fusing of my Mana, Psi, and Ki to my Body, Mind, and Soul. Now that Trinity has replaced its component Powers, I have evolved into what I should have always been and stepped into a new realm of strength.

I look around at the noble moron trash on the ground, and a sense of satisfaction flows through me. To say I never liked any of them would be an understatement. I hate them far more than I do the general run of humanity.

"Time to abuse the weak and the strong. All of you are the weak, in case you haven't figured it out yet."

Revealing a nasty smile, I move among them crushing their limbs and destroying their joints.

"I'm sorry!"

"Let me go!"

"I only came because I was afraid of what Miura-sama would do to my clan!"

I do not reply to any of the moron trash. As I continue to cripple them, I enjoy the satisfaction of finishing business left to long unresolved.

"Please! We have no unresolvable differences between us."

"No! Arrr!"

"Please! Aiiee!"

"Don't! Argh! Bastard! I'll get you! Just you wait!"

I stare down at the noble imbecile. I do not recognize him. He is not a student of the Academy. "You're running mouth? What makes you think I won't just kill you?"

The imbecile glares up at me. "You wouldn't dare."

"You idiots never learn. I don't even know who you are, but you attack me. What makes you think I won't' dare to kill you?" I stomp on the imbecile's throat.

With his throat crushed, he cannot speak, but the unreconciled hatred in his eyes tells me everything he wants to say. He manages to hold on for almost a minute before dying. He was among the noble morons that were in the Qi Condensation realm.

"If your idiot clan comes after me, I'll be sending them to join you."

Seeing me kill one of their own, the rest of the idiots finally shut up. As I continue to cripple them, they cannot stifle their screams of pain, but they do not dare to beg or threaten me.

With the hunters and other mercenaries routed, the six mercenaries that turned on the rest pull jugs of alcohol out of their packs. The exterior dimensions of the packs are nowhere large enough to hold a couple of the wine jugs they take out. Their packs have spatial properties? Sitting cross-legged on the ground, they start drinking.

Seeing my gaze focused on them, the leader raises a jug in my direction. "Don't mind us. Prince Vorn paid the bill. We're just gonna enjoy the show. You have quite a reputation for brutality."

With an involuntary shake of my head, I go back to crippling idiots. After I finish with the rest of the noble trash, I squat in front of Miura. "I don't understand you. We never had conflict or dealings of any sort. The same applies to you and Aoi. Why did you go after her? Why come after me because I saved her? Did you think I would just cower and take what you gave out because of the Miura clan name?"

With hatred filling his eyes and his scent, Miura glares at me. "You're nothing but commoner trash. If you didn't have that old freak protecting you, you would have been put down like a dog years ago."

I grin. "But I do have that shitty old man protecting me. The older generation doesn't dare to get involved, so I can do whatever I want to you idiot trash. Does being the victim instead of the bully make you feel bad? Do you feel like less of a man? Enjoy the feeling. I'm going to hurt you so bad, your clan will abandon you as useless trash."

Stomping on Miura's good shoulder, I turn it into another ruined mess.

"AAAARRRR! You bastard! I'll kill you!"

"Kill me? What's to stop me from just killing you? Here? Now?"

"My clan-"

"Fuck your clan!"

I look toward the trees behind the remaining steamer cars. "Your getting awful antsy in there. You've been watching my like voyeur for a while now. Why don't you show yourself?"

In a gap between two trees growing close together, the air shimmers, and a man appears. In terms of mortal ages, he looks to be in his early forties, maybe a little older. The man's kimono has the symbol of the City Lord woven into the left breast. There should be a much larger version on his back. The non-blood retainers of most large clans in the Sengoku Empire and the Heian Kingdom often have their clothing marked in such a way. However, this man looks to be at least half gaijin.

With an involuntary frown, I stare at the man. "I don't know you. What's your business here?"

The man shows a very slight smile that does not reach his eyes. "I know you, Raymon-san. At least, I know about you. These idiots are the next generation of clan leaders and elders for Shizukana Gake. Can you show the City Lord some consideration and let them go?"

The man is a Cultivator. I cannot determine his level of Cultivation, but I have the feeling, it should be the highest of anyone present. All six of the smug cat's mercenaries stare at the man with contemplative looks in their eyes.

Both conscious and condescending, my new frown pulls the corners of my lips down. "I don't recall anyone like you showing up when I've been outnumbered and alone against these idiots. You sure as fuck weren't there when they dragged out Aoi out of the city for a little rape party."

Something flickers momentarily in the man's expression. It might be embarrassment, or it might not. "We were unaware of the girl's situation, and even had we been, she is just a commoner showing no significant talent in Cultivation. As for you, have you ever needed help? On the few occasions you lost, you escaped and returned for revenge. And you have Grandmaster Jones to watch over you."

After I give Miura a kick, breaking four or five of his ribs, I give the stranger a condescending smirk. "So just pretend you're unaware of what I'm doing to these morons. They're crippled, but I'm not killing them. They can't suffer if they're dead. If their clans want to fix them, it can be done. They just need to spend the money for the healers and medicines to do it."

The stranger shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I can't do that. I am taking them all with me, with or without your consent. You are not strong enough to stop me."

From the feel of the stranger's Yuan Qi, he is probably right. At the very least, if I remain in my human form, I cannot stop him. If I unleashed my real form, I doubt he could beat me, but that would reveal me for what I am.

Extending his left foot, the stranger sinks down on his right leg. Waving his arms through the forms of a martial technique, the main form a faintly glowing grey colored pattern in the air. I do not recognize what type of technique it might be, but he does not appear to be attacking me. I do pick up any hostility in his scent.

As the stranger completes his setup, the pattern of his martial technique expands, covering the entire field of the battle. Strands of grey power extend downward from the pattern and wrap around all of the noble morons. After the strands of Power lift the idiots into the air, the pattern contracts until the idiots all hang in the air near the stranger.

With a pout, Aoi stares at the now naked Sakura floating among the other noble imbeciles. "Aoi likes Pervert Master's present. Aoi doesn't want to give up her toy."

The stranger glances back and forth between the naked Sakura and Aoi a few times. "Little girl, you have rather perverted tastes."

With narrowed eyes and puffed-out cheeks, Aoi glares at the stranger. "Aoi is not a pervert! Pervert Beast Master is the pervert!"

Raising one eyebrow, the stranger looks at me. "I feel like I should pity you."

Frowning, I return the man's look with a cold stare. "Who are you?"

A bitter smile twists the man's lips. "No one who matters. I am just a hidden elder of the City Lord's house. Hopefully, we will not have to meet again."

"If you want those rabid rats to live, keep them in their cages. Next time, I'll just kill them before you have the chance to save them."

For a few moments, the stranger stares at me with a complete lack of expression. "I understand. I would do the same. If they are smart, they will give up on vengeance."

"They idiots."

"True." With a snort, the stranger glances at the floating noble morons before walking toward the woods. The pattern remains centered on the stranger, carrying the imbeciles with it.

After the man disappears into the trees, Vorn steps out from the woods to the north and lower a fire-powder rifle as long as he is tall. He has been there since before the man appeared. He stares at the trees where the man could last be seen. "He's a Martial Lord. We don't know who exactly he is, but he should be blood-related to the City Lord."

A Martial Lord. That would make the stranger one of the two strongest men in Shizukana Gake. There only known Martial Lord in the city is the City Lord. There might be a few others, who never revealed themselves, but they should be weaker than the City Lord. The City Lord's control over the city would not be as solid as it is, if he had too many men as strong as himself to deal with.

Vorn looks at me. "What now?"

I grin. "I rebuild my new airship into a warship. We still have to hunt down your bitch aunt."

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