Avan stared into the crackling campfire. The only armed woman of the former captives sat across from him, watching him as she probably went about her own thoughts.

She had insisted on this because, although she was grateful to the group for the rescue, she also wanted to do something and did not trust that a single person would suffice as a night watch. Even when Dani and Jen had tried to convince her that Avan, in particular, was more than enough and would be a small army with his magic (without betraying his abilities, of course), she had remained stubborn and wouldn't have it any other way.

So now she sat by the fire, the spear over her lap, and stared at Avan, who in turn stared into the fire as if hypnotized and lost in thought.

Unnoticed and out of sight of the woman, midnight black and invisible ropes of mana floated all around the clearing, while these ropes themselves were once again accompanied by a black haze. Avan had stretched his forms directly around the sleeping people in the small clearing and had set up other of his forms in mist form as an addition to them. At the same time, he concentrated on controlling his headache, which became more and more oppressive and severe as his sphere of influence expanded.

Where before it had been relatively quick and fast, his sphere of influence now reached five times its previous size in the gold rank. Fortunately, the expansion had started so slowly in the dungeon that Avan hadn't even noticed it, but now it was taking on larger and larger dimensions and his radius was growing faster and faster.

Passive Skill: Celestial Sphere

You are a Dungeon. You are nurtured by the tremendous amount of ambient mana that encircles you. You can harness and use ambient mana in your sphere of influence at will. Your Sphere of Influence is sphere-shaped, with you as the anchor point and heart of the dungeon.

Your celestial power now radiates from your dungeon and can illuminate you surroundings with light. Only the highest beings can distinguish and sense your Dungeonheart. But be always beware of your higher mana density.

[Bronze] Range is multiplicated by 5. (50m)

You are now able to store various mundane materials and keep them physically stable inside your sphere of influence. You have unlocked an anchor point.

[Silver] Range is multiplicated by 5. (250m)

You are now able to store advanced materials and keep them physically stable inside your sphere of influence.

[Gold] Range is multiplicated by 5. (1250m)

You are now able to store magical materials and keep them stable inside your sphere of influence.

You are like a demi-god and no one can hide from you; the vast majority of methods to conceal objects or beings in your sphere of influence is negated and you sense things as they actually are.

Its growing radius was now approaching the 1 kilometer mark and would soon reach the maximum of 1250 meters. Avan's sitting there staring into the crackling flames was only due to the fact that it calmed him down and helped him to flicker and sort out the new impressions in his gigantically grown perception. He did not want to know how many blades of grass existed, or which vermin were cavorting in the earth realm. As before, he wanted to try to adjust his senses so that everything that was "normal" and "natural" was faded out. His head and thus his body was simply not made to absorb so much information in every fraction of a second and was permanently flooded with it. So what the woman sitting skeptically opposite him interpreted as carelessness was the complete opposite. Avan simply KNEW too MUCH. He sensed, saw, felt, and knew everything that was within his sphere of influence. 1250 meters in all directions, with him in the center. And in addition, magic beasts and everything previously less perceptible now revealed themselves since he had reached the gold rank.

And all this was only intensified by the fact that he perceived a band of bandits at the edge of his 1000 meter growing range, but was so focused on blocking out impressions that he could not devote himself to them just yet, although he wanted to do it from the bottom of his heart.

The bandits were not normal, but had magical items with them, and in large quantities. Invisibility enchantments, and slave rings that Avan knew only more than well himself. Captured men, women and children were crammed into a five meter long prison wagon, while the bandits themselves drank in their silent bubble and invisibility enchantments in a small clearing off the path and roasted a large wild boar.

But what made Avan more than furious, and why he wanted to immediately run and kill them all in agony, was not only the slave rings, but also the fact that the probable leader of the bandits wore a dark blood steel sword on his hip.

The bandits were undoubtedly the suppliers of slaves and prisoners for the vampires, and made use of the slave rings to deliver the prisoners without much resistance.

Avan was seething with rage inside, but he had to hold out and get a grip on his sphere of influence before he could storm off and do something.

Except for the bandits themselves, who seemed to have stopped after the dragon's appearance and sighting, there were normal forest dwellers in the entire area, but they were all in their dens or nests after the dragon had done its thing here.

Dragons themselves, the woman had told him earlier in a short small talk, were not so rare to see in the sky here on Eos, since they lived in the mountains in the northeast and this continent was one of the few on which they were native at all. These creatures were considered the true gods of this world and were many times older than the other deities, around whose rise and appearance many stories entwined. While some gods had simply appeared, it was rumored that they had been all mortals at one time.

In contrast, dragons were considered to be almost immortal forces of nature that existed even before any civilization on Aorus.

And so Avan also knew that when he was finished and would take care of the bandits, their camp here would get through the night without any problems, even without his presence and probably without any night watch.

Another half hour passed, and even though the headache had been so gigantic in the meantime that Avan had had the feeling his head would burst, he had finally covered the new maximum range of his sphere of influence and had gotten used to it. He was wiping sweat from his forehead with his own blanket, and it froze him briefly in the cool night as he looked over at his night-watch partner. He knew that she had been looking at him askance the whole time, and was not in the least surprised that she was still doing so.

"I found bandits on our way." Avan's first sentence came out of his mouth, and the woman looked at him in shock for a moment. More for the reason that he suddenly spoke, and only then because he came out of nowhere with this information. "W-what?!" She stuttered, her brain not quite prepared for what he had said, as if he were describing the weather.

"Bandits. On our way. I'll take care of it. Our camp here is safe, there are no monsters or predators for miles. I'll be back soon." He explained again, in an equally toneless but controlled voice, as if it were a walk in the park he was describing, only short and crisp.

[Cook - 54]

The woman was about to jump up with her spear and was about to open her mouth to say something, when suddenly she heard a lot of noise around the camp. Where there had been nothing before, suddenly golden-silver glowing wire ropes materialized and a golden-silvery shining haze that looked like it contained miniature black holes that seemed to suck in any light between all the glow. The woman took a gasping breath as she saw this suddenly all around her, and her eyes became perfectly circular plates as all these things began to liquefy and fly toward Avan. It was an unearthly and heavenly sight as all the celestial mana flew towards him in luminous pure form like streams and rivers of water.

The woman's mouth opened and closed incessantly, but no sound would come out.

And with a single leap, Avan was at the edge of the forest on one of the more stable branches, and another took him far over the treetops toward the small town of Tria.

The woman who stayed behind had an expression on her face that spoke volumes.

Avan himself leaped from tree to tree, while his robe and the now midnight black haze of his Akkalon's forms helped him with gravity and enabled him to move so rapidly with leaps.

A few minutes later, he stared down at the bandits' camp while looking crystal clear through the invisibility spell stretched in a half-dome over the camp. His haze flew past him and spread over the floor of the bandit camp so that no one could see an accumulation of the mist and sound the alarm.

The bandit leader, after enjoying himself with his subordinates, was having fun in the largest of the tents with a woman who, of course, also wore a slave ring around her throat.

Snippets of conversation among the bandits around the campfire indicated that their boss was damaging the "merchandise" and that they would get fewer coins for it from their employers, but that everyone was allowed to have a go at it later and could enjoy the "merchandise" that was then already used, so no one complained about it.

When Avan heard the bandits' flippant conversation and how they talked about raping one of the women, something inside him snapped.

But he had learned from this, and in contrast to the previous times, such as in Cyntha when he had simply stormed off, or as in the dungeon of Haipu when he had cruelly killed the torturer, now a calculating coldness spread through him.

His forms, disguised as a haze, were spread throughout the camp, ready to strike. But Avan wanted to enjoy it, and teach these scum a lesson before their demise.

Unseen by the camp's guards, some of the mist gathered in a small cluster on the ground next to their leader's tent, and a small pile of black wire ropes materialized at the site a few seconds later.

These flew through the seams of the tent effortlessly into the interior and Avan watched all the time with gritted teeth what was going on inside. The woman whimpered and pleaded, but the leader only laughed and grunted as he sank his stinking part into her, only to sporadically strike his victim's naked skin with his leather belt and produce cries of pain that only further aroused him.

While he was about to lash out again with his makeshift whip, something suddenly prevented him from swinging his arm, and a split second later he was jerked backwards and away from the whimpering woman by an invisible force. Avan's wire ropes tightened around the man, binding his arms with brute force across his back and dislocating both shoulders as the arms were simply jerked backward. Around the legs, hips, chest and neck were more wires, which had pulled the surprised man backwards away from his victim, and the leather belt fell to the ground with a soft sound.

"What the fuckin' abyss?!" He cursed loudly, but was immediately muzzled by a piece of cloth that represented his own carelessly thrown underpants on the floor. "Mfhrfckr!" Came an upset but muffled voice from him, but none of the other bandits outside heard anything, or if they did, thought nothing of it.

The woman on the floor, on the furs that made up the bandit leader's bed, looked up at her tormentor in tears, only to look at him in surprise and with widened eyes. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw paper-thin wires, shining here and there, binding the man and holding him upright, while a brown piece of cloth was stuck in his mouth. Wide-eyed, she crawled backward away from the man as she tried to cover her nakedness and make sense of what was happening to this bastard.

Much to Avan's satisfaction, the woman had so far made no sound and remained silent. Grinning wickedly and expectantly, as if he were the bloody hell himself, Avan stood on the branch just outside the camp and closed his eyes as he watched exactly what was happening.

With another command, another of his forms flew into the tent and materialized into a jagged black pair of scissors right at the eye level of the bandit leader, who was still standing. His eyes looked confused and he continued to scream incomprehensible stuff into his gag, while the woman watched silently, wide-eyed and frozen.

The jagged scissors themselves had serrations that looked like they could belong to a shark, and turned straight down with the scissor ends flying slowly toward the man's cock, which was just subsiding.

As if he knew what was about to happen to him, the man suddenly threw himself back and forth in panic and with his eyes widened in terror, while Avan just cursed a little at the force and added two more shapes as wires that helped to keep the panicked man bound.

With eyes almost popping out of his sockets, he suddenly screamed into his gag and the white of his eyes came strikingly to the fore as he screamed with pain that one wouldn't wish on almost any man.

The serrated scissors slowly and steadily severed the penis in the most painful way possible, and then lifted it up in a new form of a black hand between two fingers at eye level in front of the man. Blood dripped onto the floor of the tent, and the woman continued to watch with open mouth and wide eyes, but now with a look of satisfaction that gladdened Avan's heart.

The man was mad with pain and could only see his former limb floating blurry in front of him, while he continued to scream, shriek and try to free himself almost powerlessly.

Suddenly he was pulled back against his will, and directly out of the tent entrance into the open.

The bandits on guard looked confusedly at the naked back of their leader, while even the roar around the campfire slowly died away as everyone looked at their boss one by one.

Slowly, the body of their boss turned around, and each of the people present was shocked to see the bleeding part still hovering in front of his face, and then looked down at the bloody stump between his legs.

Wild panic and fear spread among the bandits as they saw their otherwise nefarious leader standing in front of them, crying and screaming in pain into a gag, seemingly motionless, while his severed part floated in front of him by a black hand.

Only to suddenly witness something even more cruel as their boss's screams went from muffled to loud. The gag magically came out of his mouth and the man's crying and hoarse screaming could be heard echoing through the camp, held back only by the semi-dome of silence.

Even the other prisoners stared with fear-widened eyes at the sight of the mutilated man. The children were quickly pushed to the back of the prison wagon and the adults stared at the scene. Suddenly, the woman behind the boss stepped out of the tent, covered only by the furs she held to her body, seemingly fearless but interested to see what suffering her tormentor would now have to endure from this invisible force.

One of the guards, furious with rage, stepped toward his boss, his sword drawn. "You whore! What have you done! I'll kill you, you wretched witch!" He shouted. But before he could take his third step toward the woman, he fell silent.

And his entire body fell to the ground in finely cut pieces of flesh.

The other bandits trembled so much at the sight that they dropped their weapons, and only one of the other two guards tried to flee toward the forest, only to meet the same fate as his comrade.

Avan grinned diabolically and had such an inner fun when the dark beast in him that had been dormant since his experience in the tower of Haipu reappeared.

The still screaming leader of the bandits sobbed and cried until he suddenly had to choke. The piece of flesh that had previously been floating in the air had flown mercilessly into his mouth and no matter how hard he tried, he could not spit it out. On the contrary, another invisible force pushed his jaw up and closed his mouth, so that he inevitably had to bite it.

The sound of retching and vomiting was heard, not only from the boss himself, but also from the bandits who wet their pants and stared again at their leader, only to witness the next horror scenario.

Escape was impossible, and they could only watch the terror before their eyes.

Some of the adult prisoners in the wagon watched enthusiastically, but the men in particular also had to gag when they saw the sight.

After a few seconds, the first of the bandits at the campfire suddenly fell headless to the ground, a clean cut having separated his head from his shoulders. As if a dam had been broken, the other bandits suddenly crawled away from the corpse and hastily tried to flee in panic, only to watch each other die as one by one they were also decapitated.

In the end, the bandit boss was the only one left standing in the camp, his eyes crazy with pain, terror, watching all the others effortlessly slaughtered before his eyes.

Suddenly, he also felt something dripping from his throat, slowly cutting into his windpipe. In contrast to the other bandits, however, much slower, inch by inch, to drag out the last seconds of his life.

Finally, his head fell to the ground, rolled a few meters, and a piece of bloody flesh peeked out of his now open mouth.

To the amazement of all the prisoners, the bars of the prison wagon suddenly lifted up and were neatly separated at the bottom of the wagon. With a squeak and a loud thud, the bars landed on the side of the wagon on the ground. The prisoners stared stunned to the side at the bars. Only the woman, who had covered herself with the skins, immediately ran and called out a name, "Nio! A small black-haired boy with a slightly dirty shirt, linen pants and leather shoes came out from behind the other still stunned adults and looked wide-eyed at the running woman, "Mama!"

The two fell into each other's arms and the woman cried while hugging her son.

Suddenly, everyone except the woman herself spun around in the direction of another muffled sound and stared at Avan, who had landed on the ground wearing a midnight black robe. He had discarded his previous design and chosen the black version, while pulling his hood deep into his face and explaining everything to the captives.

The woman sat at the now burned down campfire, but did not want to go to the edge of the forest to look for more firewood, because she was alone on guard duty and was still subject to a trauma in the darkness, after everything she had to go through with the vampires.

Suddenly there was a rustling, and she jumped up, the spear gripped so tightly that the white of her knuckles came out, pointing in the direction of the rustling.

A few seconds later, a man stomped out of the darkness, accompanied by a single glowing magic ball floating behind him. The woman expelled her bated breath and gratefully dropped back on her butt, staring at Avan as he walked to the fire and sat down as if he had just gone for a walk.

"Problem solved..." He murmured, while something seemed to sparkle dangerously in his eyes for a moment, but was gone in the next heartbeat. The woman just stared silently at the mysterious rescuer who had freed them all from the dungeon, unable to understand what had happened, and preferring to remain silent.