In the Northern sector, the massacre was absolutely complete.
Dawinton—now fully occupying the terrifying physical vessel of Peter—stood entirely alone in the freezing mud, completely drenched in the thick, black blood of his 250 victims. The crimson liquid dripped from his muscular frame in steady rivulets, pooling at his feet like a dark offering to the cold, indifferent earth. His tanned skin was slick with gore, his black hair matted and heavy with the viscera of the slain. Around him, the corpses lay in grotesque heaps, their limbs twisted at impossible angles, their faces frozen in expressions of eternal terror.
The moonlight filtered through the skeletal branches above, casting pale, ghostly shadows across the carnage. The wind whispered through the trees, carrying with it the metallic scent of blood and the distant echoes of screams that had long since faded into silence. Peter stood motionless, his chest rising and falling with steady, measured breaths, his green eyes scanning the field of death he had created.
He slowly raised his blood-soaked right hand toward the dark canopy. The gesture was almost ceremonial, a priest offering a prayer to an uncaring god. Tapping into his profound Merchant's Dao, a massive pile of highly condensed golden coins violently materialized from the void. They shimmered with an ethereal light, their surfaces engraved with ancient runes that pulsed with the power of absolute transactional law. Each coin was a fragment of his soul, a piece of his essence, a currency that could purchase anything—even miracles.
Peter closed his green eyes, perfectly visualizing the concept of pure, cleansing water. His mind reached out through the void, negotiating with the fundamental laws of reality itself. The Merchant's Dao was not merely a technique—it was the very fabric of existence, the thread that wove together all things in the grand tapestry of creation.
Equivalent exchange, Peter thought, his consciousness resonating with the cosmic balance of commerce. Everything has its price. Nothing is free. Even the simple act of washing away the blood of my enemies requires payment in kind. Such is the nature of this cruel, beautiful world.
The massive pile of golden coins instantly violently combusted, turning into absolute ash. The flames were cold and silent, consuming the currency in a heartbeat. They burned not with heat, but with the very concept of transaction—the exchange of value, the payment of debt. In their place, a large, heavy wooden canteen dropped perfectly into his waiting palm. The wood was dark and ancient, banded with iron, its surface warm to the touch despite the freezing air. It radiated a gentle, soothing energy, as if it contained not just water, but the essence of peace itself.
Peter casually uncorked the wooden bottle. The scent of fresh, clean water wafted from its opening, a stark contrast to the metallic stench of blood that saturated the clearing. It smelled of mountain springs and morning dew, of life and renewal. He lifted it high above his head, allowing the freezing, crystal-clear water to violently cascade over his black hair, washing the sticky gore and brains completely off his shredded, tanned body. The water ran down his muscular frame in rivulets, each droplet carrying away the evidence of his brutal work.
The sensation was almost religious—a purification ritual performed in the heart of a charnel house. Peter stood motionless, letting the water cleanse him, his eyes closed, his breathing steady. For a brief moment, he was not a killer, not a monster, not a god of death. He was simply a man, washing away the sins of the night. The water traced paths through the contours of his muscles, carrying with it the weight of every life he had taken, every soul he had extinguished.
After drinking the last few drops to quench his absolute thirst, the transaction was complete. The wooden bottle violently dissolved into nothingness, returning entirely to the void. The ash of the golden coins scattered on the wind, carried away into the darkness like the souls of the departed. They danced in the moonlight like fireflies, beautiful and terrible, a final tribute to the lives that had been claimed.
Peter stared at his empty hand. The terrifying absolute power of commerce dictated the laws of reality. The Merchant's Dao was not merely a technique—it was the fundamental truth of existence itself. Every exchange, every transaction, every deal struck between mortals and gods was governed by its unyielding principles.
The entire world operates on the absolute view of transactional value, Peter thought, his green eyes darkening with bitter wisdom. He looked down at his empty palm, at the faint traces of blood still clinging to his skin. Even my own flesh and blood—my pathetic son—tried to kill me for political currency. Absolutely everything in this world has an expiry date. For kingdoms, it is collapse. For empires, it is ruin. For trust, it is betrayal. For love, it is loss. And for every single living being... the absolute, final expiry date is death.
A cold, bitter laugh escaped his lips. The sound echoed through the forest, a hollow, broken thing that spoke of decades of pain and betrayal. He had lived so long, schemed so much, given everything to those he trusted—and in the end, they had all turned on him. His son. His allies. His own blood. They had traded his life for power, his existence for position, his love for cold, hard currency.
But now, he thought, clenching his fist so tightly that his knuckles turned white, I am the one who decides when the expiry date arrives. I am the collector of debts. I am the one who demands payment. And I will collect from every soul that has wronged me, every heart that has betrayed me, every hand that has raised itself against me.
The moon cast its pale light upon his face, illuminating the cold determination in his eyes. He was no longer the fat, cunning merchant who had schemed in the shadows. He was something new, something terrible, something that the world had never seen before. He was a god of commerce, a deity of death, a collector of souls.
Suddenly, the profound communication artifact pinned to his collar violently buzzed to life. The device crackled with static before a voice erupted from its speakers—a voice raw with desperation and barely contained hysteria. The sound shattered the silence like a stone thrown through glass.
It was Victus, his voice entirely ragged and completely hysterical. The sound of a man pushed to the very edge of his sanity, a man who had seen too much death and felt too much pain. His words came in gasps, each syllable dripping with terror and rage.
"You motherfuckers!" Victus screamed through the artifact, his words punctuated by ragged, desperate breaths. "We asked for absolute backup! Are you just going to leave us here to violently die in our own suffering?!"
Peter pressed his artifact, his voice perfectly calm and measured. There was no urgency in his tone, no concern for the frantic pleas of his comrade. He was a merchant, and merchants did not panic—they calculated, they assessed, they dealt. "Hey, Rayn. Why exactly didn't you go save them? You explicitly said you were repositioning to back them up."
Miles away, in the completely decimated Eastern sector.
A hand with pure, milky-white skin casually reached down. The wrist was adorned with a heavy silver bracelet, its surface etched with intricate, otherworldly runes that seemed to writhe in the moonlight. They told stories of ancient pacts and forbidden bargains, of deals struck with entities that predated the very concept of time. On the index finger sat a pitch-black ring that seemed to absorb the ambient light of the world itself, drinking in the very essence of the darkness around it. It was a void given form, a hunger given shape.
The white hand casually picked up a communication artifact beside the severed head of a dead bandit lying in the mud. The head was still attached to a body—or rather, what remained of a body. The corpse was a mangled wreck of torn flesh and shattered bone, its armor reduced to twisted scrap metal. Blood still oozed from its wounds, pooling in the frozen mud like a dark mirror reflecting the cold, indifferent stars.
In his other hand, Rayn held his terrifying Crimson Sword. The blade was entirely flooded with thick blood, violently emitting catastrophic, crackling crimson lightning. Each arc of electricity that danced along its edge was a testament to the carnage he had wrought. The lightning was hungry, alive, a manifestation of his rage and power. The kinetic pressure radiating from the blade felt as if the entire world were violently suffocating around it, the very air groaning under the weight of his presence.
Rayn casually rested the flat of the crackling blade against his shoulder. The lightning licked at his skin but did not burn—it recognized him as its master, its creator, its god. It purred against his flesh like a contented beast, feeding on his hatred, growing stronger with each passing moment. He brought the stolen artifact directly to his lips, his movements unhurried, almost lazy. There was no urgency in his actions, only the cold confidence of a man who knew that victory was inevitable.
"Victus," Rayn said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly cold, demonic register. Each word was a blade, sharp and merciless, cutting through the night like a guillotine's kiss. "Could you please shut the absolute fuck up? I am currently in a highly serious situation. Just hold on for exactly two minutes. I am coming for you, and for the bodies you piled up."
Rayn puts the artifact in his pocket, severing the connection. The body of a bandit crumpled like a paper. Rayn throw one body into the muddy river and the body, where it sank into the bloody earth, a final, contemptuous gesture of dismissal.
He slowly looked around the clearing. He had completely turned the Eastern sector into an absolute, apocalyptic meat grinder. The ground was no longer frozen earth—it was a churning sea of crimson mud, churned by the boots of the dying and the dead.
Scattered across the frozen mud were the violently butchered, dismembered remains of exactly 400 heavily armored bandits and 100 elite magic users. Their bodies lay in pieces—arms separated from torsos, heads severed from necks, limbs stacked in gruesome piles. The ground was so thoroughly soaked in blood that it had become a quagmire of crimson mud, each step producing a sickening squelch. The air was thick with the stench of death, so heavy that it could almost be tasted on the tongue.
Not a single enemy had escaped. Not a single soul had been spared. Every last one had been claimed by the blade, their lives extinguished like candles in a hurricane. Rayn stood in the center of the carnage, his body splattered with the blood of his enemies, his crimson eyes gleaming with dark satisfaction.
Rayn flashed a dark, heaven-defying smile. The expression was utterly devoid of warmth, a predator's grin that promised only death and suffering. It was the smile of a man who had seen the abyss and had decided to make it his home. He raised his left hand, aiming the pitch-black ring at the massive pile of 500 corpses.
The Gambler's Heart violently awakened. A massive, gravitational spatial rift tore open in the air before him, a swirling vortex of absolute darkness that seemed to hunger for the flesh of the dead. The rift pulsed with a malevolent, hungry energy, its edges crackling with otherworldly power. It was a maw, a mouth, a gateway to a realm of infinite hunger.
With a horrific, wet suction sound, all 500 bodies were violently teleported directly into the chaotic void of the ring. The corpses were pulled through the air in a grotesque torrent, their limbs flailing, their blood spraying in all directions. It was as if the very earth itself was vomiting up its dead, offering them to the darkness as tribute. The sound was indescribable—the wet crunch of bones, the tearing of flesh, the final, desperate gasps of the departed.
Inside the spatial cage, the fleshy, grotesque entity of the Gambler's Heart let out a horrific shriek of absolute joy. The sound was ear-splitting, a cacophony of primal hunger and savage satisfaction. It was the cry of a beast that had been starved for eons and was finally being fed. Massive shadow-tendrils violently lashed out from the entity's core, aggressively devouring the corpses. The tendrils wrapped around the bodies, pulling them into the entity's maw with wet, sucking sounds.
The entity's form pulsed and swelled, its surface rippling with the accumulated flesh of the slain. With every human body it consumed, the monstrous entity violently expanded, growing larger and more terrifying. Its hunger was insatiable, its appetite boundless. It was becoming something greater, something more powerful, something that would shake the very foundations of reality. The darkness of the ring grew deeper, more absolute, as if the entity was drinking in the very light of the world.
The conditions are nearly met, Rayn thought systematically, his mind cold and calculating despite the horror unfolding within his soul. He was a gambler, and every gambler knew when to push his luck. The entity demanded three tributes to unlock its true power. First, the brains of two hundred men. Second, the brains of one hundred women. Those are absolutely fulfilled.
Rayn's crimson eyes narrowed, their glow intensifying in the darkness. The final absolute task: fifty gallons of mixed human blood from men, women, and children. Blood. The essence of life itself. The price of power. The currency of the abyss.
Deep within his soul, the inner demon Silas let out a dark, booming laugh, profoundly satisfied with Rayn's absolute descent into madness. The demon's voice echoed through Rayn's consciousness, a constant whisper of corruption and temptation. It was the voice of the abyss, the call of the void, the seductive promise of ultimate power. Yes, boy, Silas purred, his words dripping with malevolent delight. Embrace the darkness. Accept the price. Become what you were always meant to be. Let the world drown in the blood of the unworthy.
The Gambler's Heart pulsed in violent agreement, its hunger never satisfied, its appetite never sated. It was a beast that could never be fully fed, a hunger that could never be quenched.