Damon cursed his low charisma and erected an earth wall to block the oncoming arrows. Next, he cast smog, sandstorm, shadow meld, and lessen reflection. A thick and heavy black fog filled everyone’s lungs and slightly scared them off since they were unaware of its effects. Plus, inside such insidious looking fog, sand blurred their vision and sullied their mouths. To these elves who weren't used to sand, nor magic. This was enough for them to back off and gave enough space for Damon to escape without issue. Although he didn’t care much for these elves, he still couldn’t kill them. They had suffered too much in these past years. As such, he ran away without a word, in search of the ones who killed his lover and ruined his standing with the tribe.

Damon ran towards the location of the purple mouth tribe. For a day and a night, he ran without sleep, fuelled on rage and the desire to kill whoever carried out the attack. Thankfully, after spending these past few days in the forest he’d learned the layout of the land. If not, it would have been a lost cause.

Four days later, a few days before reaching the purple mouth tribe, Damon saw a group of elves walking in the distance. The warriors’ spears were tainted a dark brown. No doubt dried blood. Damon activated his shadow meld and shadow agility, climbed a tree and followed them.

The group seemed to be led by a woman. Excluding her there were two hunters and sixteen arches. Damon continued to follow them atop the tree canopy till the moon rose high in the sky.

When the night’s cold breeze prompted most of his targets to sleep, Damon cast the smog spell. Unlike the members of the Lotus tribe who had seen magic before. These people didn’t think magic existed, or at least didn't of it's existence within the forest. As such, the elves on guard duty didn’t question the phenomena and only stood slightly more on guard. Perhaps thinking it was a rare natural occurrence. But no matter, Damon jumped down the tree above the leader and went straight for her neck. He soon disposed of everyone else who had closed eyelids.

Next Damon moved on to the five guards sparsely placed fifty metres away from the fire camp. Since the lookouts weren’t on guard for an elf which could travel atop the canopy, but beasts such as crocodiles. They only looked out into the swamps. As such Damon didn’t have a great deal of difficulty in killing them without alerting the others. But he did make sure to keep one alive.

#

“What tribe are you from.” Damon shoved an archer to the ground. Her long black hair sprawled into the mud and twigs. He kept his forearm pressed to her neck and pinned her arms beneath his knees. “If you don’t talk, I’ll kill you like I’ve killed the rest.” Damon showed her the decapitated head of her leader. Her eyes widened and she started to tremble.

“a.a.a...a” Her mouth clattered as she tried to speak.

“Speak.” Damon pressed, “If you do I promise to keep you alive.”

She gulped down her saliva, closed her eyes, and ignored her leaders blood which trickled onto her chin and down her muddy and sweaty neck, “I… I come fr… from the Norman tribe, but we came here under the orders of the purple mouth tribe. If we didn’t do it, they would have done the same to us. Please spare me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll spare you.” Damon let off some force applied to her neck. “Tell me who else is a subordinate of the purple mouth tribe.”

“They might have more, but I know of the Dorée, and Guillaumette tribes. That’s all I know, I’m sorry, please spare—”

Damon reflexively covered her mouth. He had enough of her whining and desperately wanted to kill her, yet he needed someone to guide him to those tribes.

“Can you lead me to the Norman tribe?”

The woman furiously shook her head but did not speak.

“Don’t worry I just want to talk to them.”

The answer did not change. Now that he thought about it, he should have reached out to them as a neutral party. They had no way of knowing that a dark elf lived in the Lotus tribe. Well, he couldn’t have resisted the urge to kill them anyways.

“Then you will lead me to the Dorée and Guillaumette tribes first. If you do so, I’ll let you go.” Damon put his sword on her neck. “If not, your time will end.”

The woman’s eyes dimmed, and she spoke, “Then let me die now instead of in a week.”

“I said you won’t die; I don’t care about whether or not you survive.”

“If you don’t care about me then why would you keep me alive, it’s better to just kill me now.” She said now awfully determined to die. Yet I couldn’t let that happen.

“Look, you won’t die because I’ll make you my sex slave.”

As if. Can you just accept your role and lead me to them?

“And then you will kill me eventually when I’m no longer beautiful.”

For fuck’s sake is she just gonna say, “We’re all going to die in the end so kill me now.” One second, she wants to live and the other she is more than ready to die. Did I catch myself a bipolar elf?

“But didn’t you want to live?” Damon had to play her games. He didn’t want to go through the pain of finding another guide.”

“Yes, so please let me go. I already told you enough information.”

“If I let you go, won’t you just go inform the purple mouth tribe? Even if I’m strong, I can’t possibly kill an entire tribe. Don’t worry, I promise not to attack any tribe. I just want to talk.”

The woman hesitated and nodded. “You promise to let me go and not to attack any tribes?”

Damon sighed, “I promise to let you, and the tribes live in peace, so please lead the way to the Norman tribe.”

When she heard this, she nodded, and Damon slowly released her from his grasp. After taking her bow, quiver, and making sure she didn’t have any hidden blades he followed her to the Norman tribe.

For three days and two nights Damon stayed up to make sure she didn’t run away. His eyes were rolling our of their sockets and his feet trailed far behind his slumped head. Finally, when they reached the Norman tribe, Damon didn’t dare lay a finger on them. If he did, she’d certainly run away or smash her head against a tree.

“OK, you can lead me to the next tribe on the list.”

“Aren’t you going to speak to them?” Her forehead was soaked and her hands trembled.

“Oh, no I couldn’t. That would take too much time, I’m doing this to help you. Since you’ve been such a good guide, I want to finish this mission soon to let you go quicker.”

Three days later they reached the Dorée tribe and finally the Guillaumette tribe a week after that.

The elf pointed to a moat wall. “That is the Guillaumette tribe.” After saying this quick sentence, she started to back away. “Now, since I’ve guided you to the three villages, I’ll—.”

Unfortunately for her, Damon swung his blade through her neck. There was no way he’d spare someone complicit in Fabienne’s murder and the massacre of his tribe.

Finally, alone, Damon climbed up a tree not too far from the village and fell asleep. He didn’t know how long he had slept, however, when he woke up the moon was high in the sky.

It was time to infiltrate the village. Damon descended the tree and scaled yet another dirt moat. Once inside the village a sense of emptiness permeated the entire village. It resembled the Lotus tribe after the successive attacks. Perhaps it was due to the reduced number of people breathing in their sleep, or the echoes created by empty huts. Although they might have kneeled to the purple mouth tribe to live another day, their spirits were long gone. Damon went ahead and killed every one of fighting age and above.

He did the same with the Dorée and Norman tribes. He had served out just punishment.

#

Now without a home, without people to converse, pervasive thoughts assaulted him. His inability to lead, his strength, which although great, could only be described as magnificent and great amongst rats haunted his dreams and flourished in his nightmares. Perhaps he could head the Véronica tribe, claim that he escaped an enemy ambush, and live a quiet life until he levelled up his Dark and Earth magic skill. But this region of the forest wasn’t for him anymore. He wanted to forget everything about the wood elves and his blunders. He grabbed his trusty bag he’d placed on a nearby tree and left to explore the depths of the swamp.

In these lands Damon discovered that the beasts had territorial delimitations, although they were somewhat blurry.

Having forgotten about the guide Stolas had packed in his bag due to the tribe debacle, he pulled it out and checked the map. And yes, the whole southern part of the forest was one giant swamp. There were islands and patches of earth. One of these was where the tribes lived. Now with more experience he found these mounts of dirt to be more akin to archipelagos than anything else. He found that each little mount of dirt was home to a different species, from the giant frogs to the crocodiles, and even some kind of small snake he discovered later on. However, the salamanders were omnipresent. Damon wondered if they weren’t an invasive species. Even when he’d gotten the hang of spotting them, he almost got had a few times.

Damon continued his journey and a week later he found that the trees had become denser and the air heavier. It resembled Stolas’ mana discharge. In his studies he’d learned that areas with dense mana were either the residence of legendary beasts or dungeons.

Since no one had ever spotted a legendary beat in the area. Especially since the local wood elf population would have encountered it by now, Damon guessed that it was a dungeon. Since the wood elves didn’t have mana, and mana interacted with mana, they wouldn’t have felt its presence as people without the system. Damon looked at his surroundings. Dungeons were the accumulation of mana into a dungeon core. Since dungeon cores-controlled mana and used it to create beasts, they were classified as living beings. They were birthed in spots of mana accumulation, usually in subterranean cave systems and often reflected their environment. This caused some dungeons which spawned near cities to have humanoid beasts or forest dungeons to be populated by man-eating trees and plants.

However, since this region wasn’t very dangerous. Damon guessed that there shouldn’t be any problem in exploring it.

However, before doing so, he opened his status screen. Since this Universe’s God didn’t like power levellers for some reason. Damon’s status screen rarely changed, and he had forgotten about its existence. He pitied any future heroes sent here to defeat a demon king. Unless they were given two centuries as a grace period, they’d probably end up as fish food in a week.

Damon Asmodeus LVL. 18 (130/7720)

Charisma

Intelligence

Perception

Agility

Endurance

Strength

Mana

21 (+2)

44 (+1)

36 (+2)

31 (+3)

19 (+2)

20 (+2)

131 (+5)

All humanoid language acquisitions Arithmetic’s Lvl.6/7 Black magic Lvl.3/10 Dark magic Lvl.3/10 Dark spirit communication Lvl.3/10 Detect diseases and viruses through smell Lvl.3/5 Earth magic Lvl.3/5 Improved memory Lvl.3/5 Medium disease tolerance Night vision Telepathy Lvl.3/10

Damon’s eyes bulged. He didn’t know how his level increased so drastically. Then he quickly remembered all the elves he’d recently killed. He’d forgotten that everything in this world gave Exp. The only reason genocides didn’t happen every day was because you couldn’t tell who was a mage and a few mid-levelled villager mages could still pack a punch. This whole swamp was one large Exp farm. Damon felt a light urge to go on a massacre. However, he held back due to humanitarian reasons. Anyhow, if he did so, his intelligence would stagnate. As such, the elves could thank his intelligence for their lives.

Before Damon thought of more ideas, he entered a small crack in the cavern wall where the mana was the thickest in the region. He would go dungeon diving for the first time.