The civilians were too close to the actual soldiers for him to wave his normal weapons around without causing unneeded damage, but Kain had other tools at his disposal for more… hands on brawls. Of course, he could just have rushed in with his armored fists, but he wasn’t in the mood for bashing faces in with a good punch of kick, and he didn’t really want to deal with the gore that would undoubtable cling to his gauntlets and armored boots.

That wasn’t because it would put him off or because it would be a pain to clean, as neither were the case, no, instead he simply wanted to use a different weapon to show these arrogant pricks that their ‘elven nimbleness’ was nothing compared to someone like him. Sure, they could swing their swords and knives in elegant, agile, graceful motions while still doing some decent damage, but there was a world of difference between ‘blade dancing’ and trying to kill your foe.

Then again, he wanted to make a point while also bringing fear and despair to the civilians. A single slash across the throat was impressive, and it could almost certainly kill, but it wasn’t as spectacular nor as fear-inducing as using a knife to gut a man before giving him an equally fatal set of stabs to the face. Their armor, or what little they had, would avail them nothing, as his weapons would easily be enough to cause fatal damage, if not near-mortal harm.

He easily passed over the civilians, having sped up to a point where he created a small pulse of pressurized air as he neared them and leaped over them, before landing amidst the soldiers that had come to this place. Even though the average elf (all variants included) stood taller than the average human, Kain towered over both species, and this only added to his intimidation factor.

A swift movement from his arm was all that the elf he killed managed to see before a knife big enough to make Jim Bowie blush rendered his eyes nothing more than bleeding wrecks, and a quick jab to the underside of his jaw reduced that elven soldier to a corpse in less than a second. Less than a second after that, Kain had slit the stomach of three more elven soldiers, quickly following up with a stab to their backs that cut their heart open and deflated a lung in each one simultaneously.

As another second passed, Kain increased the tempo, hamstringing five elves in a single motion before reversing and severing their necks from the back all the way to just before their carotid arteries. By now, the elves were beginning to move, but Kain had already started onto his next few targets. A limb or three went flying here, a lung or four were deflated there, and intestines began to roll out of the stomachs of a few others, and despite an attempt being made, no one could catch Kain as he showed these ‘sword-swinging ballerinas’ what a true Blade Dance looked like.

With his mix of ungodly speed, strength and accuracy, the act of dismembering and demoralizing all around him proceeded as per his expectations. Not one single elf here could match him in terms of power, nor could they hope to touch him with their weapons unless he wanted them to. However, the effortless slaughter began to grow boring, and so Kain switched up his tactics.

Merely using two oversized knives wasn’t going to cut it. While he was indeed demoralizing and cowing the people around him, the civvies were not of the mind to run just yet. For whatever reason, while he had gutted the spell casters that had buffed their courage to such a high degree, the civilian mob simply would not run. Yes, they were beyond terrified, but while they either fell o their asses or merely took a few steps back here and there, they always regained some semblance of bravery and tried to move to attack him, or at the very least block him.

Every increasingly gruesome kill only caused a delay in their movements, so his current method of ending lives needed to be discarded and replaced with something altogether more graphic, gruesome, and overly flamboyant. He plunged the knife in his right hand down through the shoulder blade of the nearest elf before wheeling around him and driving his left-hand knife into the back of that foe’s skull. Griping that knife in his dominant hand, he forced it up and then over the top of the elf’s skull, before forcing it down and through the front of the elf’s skull and then through his lower jaw.

Finally, he wrenched the knife free and then plunged it until the now-dead elf’s back, lifting him up in front of everyone before grabbing the other knife that was lodged in the dead man’s shoulder and proceeding to use dozens, then hundreds of stabbing motions to keep the corpse up above his head. Finally, he increased his speed even further, discarding the knives that he had used up till now and shoving his gauntleted hand into the heavily wounded back of his dead target. Another swift motion afterwards tore the cadaver apart, sending gore in a myriad number of directions.

And what do you know; the tactic worked. This time, the armed civilian mob was left utterly dumbstruck for far longer than before, with some of them (though not many) outright refusing to move in any direction save for ones that led them away from him. This was all the confirmation that he needed, and with his hypothesis being proved correct, Kain now set to doing his violent, gore-soaked, and highly graphic work.

He stood tall as the ‘hardened’ and ‘elite’ elven both knowingly and unknowingly took steps backwards, clearing a small ring around him. Kain swept his gaze over the people around him in a slow but purposeful display of his power. He didn’t fear them, and he didn’t expect that they could do anything to harm him, and they knew that.

Kain smiled and listened as one of the elven soldiers overcame his fear by pure force of will, rushing towards him and trying to slice him in twain. He ignored the fool, letting the elf think that could do anything to him up until the master-crafted blade landed a blow on him and did absolutely jack shit. Kain barely responded to this, merely twisting one edge of his mouth up in a show of sadistic mockery even as the brave yet foolish elf desperately swung at him over and over, his fellows watching in a mixture of shock, horror and despair as their ancient, artisanal weapons did no damage to the man who had just so easily butchered so many of them.

Finally, the elf stopped, panting furiously in an attempt to catch his breath and resume the attack. Kain, however, merely turned around to face the idiot who had thought that he could kill him with a cheeky backstab and proceeded to literally punch a hole straight through the elf’s face and out the other side. The skull clung to his forearm rather stubbornly, and in a move that any around would consider to be even more sadistic, Kain spent the better part of ten seconds trying to remove the elf’s head from his wrist before giving up and simply ripping his forearm free, spraying gore everywhere.

Kain shook off his hand before addressing the horrified crowd that was around him in a tone that conveyed his view that they were most certainly not a threat to him.

“Well, that was fun. Alright, who’s next?”