Chapter 98: Arriving at the Village, Meeting Classmates
Wrath let out a grief-stricken cry. Seeing the Chief brutally murdered, his eyes turned completely bloodshot, glaring at the humans with absolute hatred.
"Oh ho, quite fierce, aren't we?"
The vanguard leader looked down at him mockingly. "Come on then, brat! Entertain me for a bit!"
"AWOOO!"
Wrath bellowed to the world and threw his entire weight forward.
[Conditions met. Obtained skill:
With bloodshot eyes and a surging aura, Wrath swung his thunder-attributed shortsword in a desperate cleave.
*BANG!* A sudden blast of wind magic slammed violently into Wrath, sending him flying backward to crash heavily into a pile of withered grass in the distance. Even though his strength had effectively doubled, his strike remained pathetically weak.
"Tsk, a mere goblin dares defy us? You clearly don't know how to spell the word 'death'." The archer let out a cold sneer, pulling a fresh arrow from his quiver and locking it onto his bowstring, aiming directly at Wrath.
*SHUUU!* The enchanted arrow sliced through the air like a flash of lightning, closing the distance to Wrath in a single heartbeat. Left with no time to react, Wrath's pupils contracted to pinpricks, his eyes overflowing with sheer terror.
*CLANG–*
Out of nowhere, a pitch-black longsword plummeted from the sky, planting itself squarely in front of the incoming projectile and effortlessly deflecting it into the snow.
"Who goes there?!" the archer barked, scanning the surrounding forest with absolute vigilance.
A tall, slender figure clad in a brilliant crimson robe materialized silently before Wrath's eyes, blocking the line of sight. The individual stood with his back to the mercenaries, his long red sleeves fluttering in the wind.
"Sasajima-kun, it's been quite a long time."
As the familiar profile of the red-robed youth came into view, Wrath's jaw dropped in absolute shock. "Shirazawa?!"
In the very next instant, a white-robed girl cascaded gracefully from the sky to land softly beside the youth. She raised a delicate hand to elegantly lower her white hood, offering a brief, dignified bow. Every aspect of her posture exuded an aloof, regal grace.
"Wakaba?!"
Wrath's eyes widened to near-bursting. He had never, in his wildest dreams, expected to cross paths with his past-life classmates in a place like this. Although their appearances had undergone a massive change compared to their days on Earth, he recognized their souls instantly.
The freezing mountain wind howled across the valley, tugging at the duo's shimmering silver hair and long robes, rendering their figures incredibly surreal beneath the crimson glow of the setting sun.
"How on earth did the two of you end up here?" Wrath asked, a wave of profound bewilderment flitting through his bloodshot eyes.
"We were simply passing through by pure coincidence," Shirazawa offered a light chuckle, though his gaze subtly shifted toward the surviving goblins still desperately fighting off the human attackers. *So the goblin settlement was targeted at this exact time? It aligns perfectly...*
According to the original path of fate, Wrath was supposed to flee the village alongside his little sister. Following their escape, they would be captured by a specific human noble—the commander who had originally raided the Elroe Great Labyrinth alongside the old wizard Ronandt. Shirazawa had entirely forgotten the man's actual name.
Once captured, an enslaved Wrath would be forced to forge powerful weapons day and night under a horrific mental curse. To force Wrath's strength to grow, the noble would eventually force him to murder his own adorable little sister with his own hands, and subsequently compel him to consume her flesh—thereby forcing him to unlock the catastrophic title [Kin Eater].
From that horrific moment onward, Wrath would completely lose his sanity, surrendering his entire consciousness to the unmitigated corruption of the Wrath skill to begin a long, blood-soaked crusade of absolute vengeance. It was only a full year later, after a chaotic sequence of events and a fateful encounter with the Demon Lord's faction, that he would officially join the Demon Lord's Army to march upon the battlefield.
"Who the hell do you think you are?"
"We claimed this settlement first!"
While Shirazawa was busy tracking the timeline in his mind, the leader of the adventurers aggressively barked out, violently severing his train of thought.
"Boss, why waste your breath on them? I don't feel a single trace of magic radiating from them. They're clearly just greenhorn adventurers playing dress-up."
"Slaughter the guy. As for the woman... hehehe..."
"I have genuinely never laid eyes on a woman that jaw-droppingly gorgeous."
The remaining mercenaries chimed in with a barrage of crude, self-assured commentary. Dealing with this tier of amateur travelers was an absolute routine for them. They would execute the men, enjoy the women until they grew thoroughly bored, and then sell them to the local slave traders to make a massive secondary profit. They were nothing more than laughably naive rookies harboring delusional fantasies about exploring the world—utterly pathetic.
Shirazawa's eyes narrowed into razor-thin slits. In a single heartbeat, a terrifying, suffocating aura exploded outwards from his body like an ancient, primordial predator awakening from its slumber. It was bloodthirsty, tyrannical, and saturated with an absolute intent for destruction.
Sensing the world-ending pressure radiating from Shirazawa's frame, the mercenaries' hearts violently seized with terror.
"Aze..."
A profoundly soothing, melodic voice drifted into his mind, causing the icy, murderous expression on Shirazawa's face to gradually recede. He turned slightly, his gaze flattening out.
"Tsk~ they're nothing more than garbage experience point packages anyway. They aren't remotely worth getting worked up over."
With a casual, elegant flick of his massive red sleeve, a colossal, intricate magic circle materialized out of thin air, instantly trapping the entire unit of human adventurers within its bounds.
*HUMMM–*
The magic circle ignited with a violent, crimson radiance, sending a heavy wave of gravitational force rippling through the area. Every single mercenary trapped within the boundaries felt as though they had been forcefully submerged in a dense swamp of solid lead, their muscles screaming in agony as their bodies were rendered completely immobile.
"Y-You... who in the absolute hell are you?!" the leader gasped with immense difficulty, his teeth grinding against the pressure. "Do you have any idea who I am?!"
"Heh~"
A razor-sharp, chilling smile curled along the edge of Shirazawa's lips as he let out a low, mocking laugh. "I couldn't care less who you are."
"Sasajima-kun, consider these pathetic insects a formal welcoming gift from us."
"They qualify as exceptionally high-grade experience packages. Delivering the final blows should trigger a non-stop level-up streak for you."
The exact second the words left his lips, the magic circle flared with an intensified surge of power, forcefully pinning every single adventurer flat against the blood-soaked earth under the weight of crushing gravity. With the field perfectly prepared, Shirazawa casually patted Wrath's scrawny shoulder, gesturing that the choice was officially his.
"This..."
Wrath looked up at him in an absolute daze, before his gaze slowly drifted toward the smoldering ruins of his village and the mangled corpse of the Chief. The residual sparks of anger in his bloodshot eyes instantly transformed into a raging, apocalyptic inferno of pure hatred.
"I will slaughter every single one of you... to avenge Chief!"
Wrath let out a guttural, demonic roar. His body transformed into a green blur as he forcefully closed the distance to the pinned leader, raising his thunder-attributed shortsword high into the air. At this exact moment, his mind retained absolutely nothing but raw animosity and boundless fury.
*SLASH!*
The razor-sharp edge of the enchanted shortsword cleaved clean through the leader's neck with absolute fluidity, sending his severed head flying into the air as a brilliant fountain of crimson blood erupted into the snow.
As the severed head tumbled into the dirt, the spray of hot blood completely saturated Wrath's field of vision. *So this is how it feels to kill a human being? It doesn't actually feel like anything special at all.*
"Don't kill us! Please, spare our lives!"
"Mercy... have mercy on us...!"
The remaining mercenaries unleashed a barrage of horrified, pathetic shrieks.
"Stay back! Get the hell away from me!"
The moment their leader's head hit the frozen earth, an absolute, paralyzing terror took hold of the remaining unit, plunging them into a sea of total despair.
*CRACK–SLASH!*
Without a single shred of hesitation, Wrath drove his blade through the throat of the adjacent mercenary, causing a violent torrent of lifeblood to hiss into the air. One strike, two strikes...
Ultimately, the shortsword in Wrath's hands was completely dyed in the crimson essence of his enemies, and his face was heavily splattered with residual blood, rendering his goblin face thoroughly monstrous and terrifying to behold.
Following the termination of these human pieces of trash, a profound sense of relief washed over Wrath's soul, yet his eyes grew intensely watery. He understood with absolute certainty that this reaction didn't stem from a fear of slaughter. It was simply...
Those innocent, kind-hearted kinsmen of his would never walk through the village gates again.
*THUD.*
Wrath collapsed heavily onto his knees in front of the wreckage of his home, letting out a hollow, grief-stricken wail as tears streamed down his face.
Witnessing his raw, unadulterated sorrow, Shirazawa and Shiro simply stood nearby, maintaining an absolute, solemn silence. *Every single tragedy in this universe is fundamentally caused by a lack of sufficient power on the part of the victim.* This was a brutal truth they had accepted long ago. It was the exact realization that had driven them to continuously grind through the absolute horrors of the Elroe Great Labyrinth, willingly sacrificing every basic luxury just to increase their strength.
"Brother~"
The little sister, Leest, quietly made her way to Wrath's side, crouching down to tightly wrap her tiny arms around his blood-stained sleeve.
"Leest."
Staring at his singular surviving anchor in this world, a wave of profound gentleness returned to Wrath's eyes, the blinding crimson tint of his pupils gradually stabilizing back into absolute clarity.
"Aze..." Shiro transmitted a soft, questioning thought. Personally, she couldn't entirely understand why he had deliberately delayed their intervention until after a portion of the villagers had already been slaughtered. They had clearly arrived at the area well ahead of schedule and possessed the capability to prevent the losses entirely.
Shirazawa simply shook his head, offering no spoken justification.
An ally that lacked the
Executing a rescue operation was an act of personal favor; refraining from intervention was the basic law of survival. Shirazawa was a thoroughly calculated pragmatist. If a specific path yielded zero long-term benefits, he simply wouldn't waste his energy on it.
*Now, if Wrath had been reincarnated as a stunning woman instead of a scrawny goblin dude, maybe I would have broken through a few minutes earlier to play the hero,* he inwardly mused. *What a shame.*
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LanLi: Based. Me too. I like fem Rimuru for the matter so...
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