Timeless Prominence

In the space of a few hundred heartbeats, all the mercenaries were snoring. Rein saw the innkeeper frown at the group of mercenaries slumped over the table, but there was nothing the innkeeper could do, and so the innkeeper simply left for his personal nest. It was not as if the innkeeper could drag a bunch of burly mercenaries around. Or wake a bunch of thoroughly drunken men in the depths of their beautiful dreams.

Rein stood up, and in a flash, he appeared beside these drunken mercenaries. He wrapped the head of the heavy hammer with cloth to decrease any noise that might alert other inn dwellers.

With the heavy hammer held high, Rein took aim and smashed down onto the first head. Then a second, eventually Rein lost awareness of his surroundings, only repeatedly bringing hammer-to-skull, and by the time he regained awareness again, there were fifteen headless bodies in the inn. He was but a butcher slaughtering pigs.

He was at first surprised at the sight that greeted him when he regained his awareness. He had lost control, overtaken by a state of gleeful release. He had gone much further than he intended, and had thoroughly crushed many of these skulls with his hammer, and done so multiple times to the point where the heads of these mercenaries were severed from their bodies through blunt force.

An overflowing pool of rapidly darkening blood leaked through the floorboards, and Rein could even hear a dripping sound in the basement underneath. Marred brain matter coated in sticky blood naturally decorated the floor and the drinking table.

Despite his dazed culling frenzy, luckily for Rein, the cloth dulling the sound of hammer against skull helped prevent this bloody event from drawing any attention as of now.

Rein froze for a moment but then smiled upon seeing the results of his actions. His expression appeared extremely twisted with blood sprayed across his face, especially in combination with his red-tinged eyes.

As he took a deep breath, he discovered that the room that now reeked of iron, and though part of him wanted to vomit, he quickly convinced himself that he should be enjoying the smell of his dead enemies.

Internally, he began thinking of how his father had always repeatedly warned him to drink in moderation, or risk being taken advantage of in business dealings. Looking at these corpses around him, he found it hard to imagine that these fools had played a role in massacring the Golden Desert Town...but, perhaps, only fools would be tricked into such a mission in the first place.

He then returned to his observation spot on top of the overhanging roof of the building next to the inn, attempting to plan his next steps. Initially, Rein came to the Wolf Syrup Town to find an advancer recruiter, but after killing a total of sixteen mercenaries in town, this was no longer feasible. As an unrecognizable face, he would look suspicious to the authorities here.

That was not much of an issue though. He simply needed to move to another town. These mercenaries might have worked and satisfied high society figures in the past, and developed some rapport with influential figures, but Rein did not have much fear of consequences-- although these mercenaries might be known, it should be quite impossible to identify and find him.

Regarding the factions, mercenaries could take unsavory jobs, yes, but ultimately those missions were approved through the higher ranks of the Minhr Nation. It did not necessarily mean the ruling clan approved of such missions, just that one or two officials might have pulled some strings to get a questionable mission approved. Additionally, each province had their own dukes that had their own independent agendas, and do, to a certain extent, have a degree of freedom over their regions.

Rein knew that he was thoroughly unknown in the advancer world, and could even be considered a corpse lost within the Golden Desert Town. The Golden Desert Town was essentially wiped off the map, so how would any of these officials even find him even through mortal records? Currently, he was very much akin to a ghost.

Rein smiled in satisfaction upon this thought. His strike at these mercenaries was swift. There were definitely no clues that he could have left behind, apart from the fact that their heads were smashed in by a heavy hammer.

Still, Rein knew that the imperial forces in Wolf Syrup Town would definitely search for a killer once these corpses were discovered, which would be anytime now. The beady-eyed man’s wife would soon realize something was wrong. In Rein’s eyes, the imperial forces had abandoned the Golden Desert Town, so they would probably have an interest in these mercenaries that had returned from the Golden Desert Town massacre.

This pointed at only one path-- Rein needed to leave the Wolf Syrup Town!

Rein now appeared on a dark street a hundred feet away from the inn. In truth, he could have simply focused his gaze and teleported back into the forest outside the town, but part of him felt that this town, as the start of his journey to slaying those who had ruined his life, was quite meaningful. He could not help but wish to walk down one of the streets for a moment in order to etch the feeling of his night in this town into his mind.

He finally understood what people meant when they said ‘reveling in the moment’. Rein had long heard stories of madmen that would leave a sign or signature of some sort to signify their achievement. He figured that this must have been how they felt. He himself had long been dissatisfied with his parents’ exile from the main family line early in his life. And now, they had lost their life in the Golden Desert Town’s destruction. Tonight served as a release for Rein’s heart.

He turned a corner, before looking into a hut that still had candlelights on. His expression turned into a big grin. Inside the hut was the scarred right cheek man being served soup by a young boy that looked to be around seven to ten years old. He felt he had absolutely made the right choice walking down the street now that he had found one of the targets that he could not keep track of earlier on.

Yes! He felt that it was his intuition that pointed him to this mercenary!

He had the hammer slung on his back with a strap, and formed a circle of his hands, readying himself to enter the hut once the small child left his father’s side. The scarred right cheek man, comfortably drinking his soup in the safety of his home, would doubtless let his guard down.

The scarred right cheek man looked down at his warm bowl of soup. It was nothing extravagant, a simple bowl of bean curd and vegetable soup. However, he felt it was truly a blessing that he would always get to drink warm soup made by his son every time he returned home, especially after the Golden Desert Town mission that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Being a mercenary was all he had known his whole life. When he was young, his family was destitute, with both his parents gambling any earnings away. Eventually, he left and joined a mercenary group. Many newly recruited younglings were more or less meat shields, but he had luckily earned the favor of the leader, and was somewhat taken care of.

Eventually he found a wife, who died from childbirth… leaving him with a son. Today’s completed mission would give his son a much better future. The scarred right cheek man had long disliked killing for money, which was often required for well paid mercenary jobs.

However, he wished to support his son, particularly because of his own disappointing parents. Thus, since he grew up a mercenary and since that was all he knew how to be, he had to keep doing it for a better future, even if he had doubts about his actions. He once considered entering the imperial forces, but that required discipline that he felt he did not have.

Meanwhile, Rein readied himself, ordering himself to be patient. This was just another target!

As the child returned to the kitchen, Rein held his breath before soundlessly teleporting behind the seated scarred right cheek man. As the man slurped his soup, Rein raised his heavy hammer above his head, ready to bring down his fury.

All of a sudden, a woman’s scream echoed through the town, causing the scarred right cheek man to look around with alertness.

Without delay, Rein brought down his heavy hammer, knowing full well that he had made a mistake and overstayed his welcome in the town. The ease with which he had dispatched the other sixteen mercenaries and made him careless. That scream must have been that woman discovering her husband’s death.

The man turned at that moment and noticed the hammer coming down toward his skull, and barely tilted his head in time to avoid an instant death. Fortunately for Rein, his attempt was still rewarded with a loud crunch as the heavy hammer sunk into the man’s right clavicle, thoroughly pulverizing the man’s upper right chest and shoulder.

The scarred man groaned in agony, trying to stabilize himself by reaching out with his left hand. However, the man’s body was in a state of shock, and his left hand grasped nothing, instead knocking the bowl of soup off the table, sending it shattering against the ground with a resounding clatter, as the soup spilled across the wooden floorboards.

Unable to hold himself up due to his pain, the scarred man slumped sideways and crumpled off his chair onto the ground with a dull thump. Rein wanted to deliver a decisive blow before he left the town. The man looked up at the mature-looking teen, only seeing his crazed yet focused expression and red-tinged eyes.

As the heavy hammer came down at him again, the man barely summoned the will to resist the pain and rolled to the left by a smidge, only just avoiding the hammer that crashed onto the ground with a dull thump at the spot where his head was a blink of an eye ago.

Rein instantly realized that this scarred man would not go down so easily if he kept aiming for the head. He knew he would need to adjust.

Once again, he raised the heavy hammer and aimed for the head. However, this time, it was just a feint, and when the hammer came down, it changed course and flew directly at the scarred man’s midriff.

With his right shoulder area pulverized, the scarred man could barely move, and he only avoided the previous hammerblow because it was so obviously coming for his head. Although he once again tried to shift his body, he was not mobile enough, barely able to slightly shift left when the hammer switched towards his midriff.

The sound of a number of right lower ribs being crushed could be heard as the heavy hammer head slammed into the scarred man’s right abdomen, causing the man to first cough up saliva, followed by rasps of bright crimson blood.

Another blow to the chest, and Rein knew with collapsed lungs, this man had lost the ability to even breathe and would soon lose his life, even if the man’s eyes rolled in a final desperate struggle.

That was too close. But, Rein had successfully dispatched yet another target despite that woman’s unintended warning. 

A boyish scream suddenly reverberated in Rein’s ears, and he turned to see the son of the scarred man, whose face was white and pale.

When Rein looked into the young boy’s eyes, he suddenly felt incredibly afflicted as a sense of queasiness assaulted his chest.

The young boy had a light tan oval birthmark on his right upper forehead, appeared similar in age to Jein, and his expression was similar to what Rein could see on Jein’s face when he found Jein beside his parents’ corpses. This moment passed in the blink of an eye, but felt like eternity from Rein’s perspective.

Rein found his mind chaotic. He could not discern his current mental state, for innately, he had a sense of fear upon gazing at this young boy. He simply wanted to leave and escape immediately.

The young boy now fished a small dagger out from somewhere unseen by Rein, and charged toward Rein in a frenzied rage that Rein recognized immediately as the same rage he saw in himself when looking into the cracked mirror before leaving Blacksmith Tiehr’s forge.

He urgently strapped his heavy hammer back onto his back, and formed his hands into a circle. Looking out a window of the hut at a tree line barely visible above the town wall, Rein activated his teleportation skill..

As Rein activated the skill, he felt a man's hand firmly grip his left ankle as if trying to hold him in place, and the young boy, now positioned to his side, had thrown the dagger, sensing that he was attempting to leave.

In a single breath, Rein found himself in the air surrounded by trees, but before he could stabilize himself he was pulled downwards by a firm hand clutching onto his left ankle, not to mention, a glint of metal flew forth from the middle of the circle formed by his hands before the skill fully deactivated. The dagger had followed through and flew into the darkness of the forest in front of Rein. Luckily, the teleportation channel formed by his hands also served as a defense of sorts. Else, the dagger might have struck his torso.

As he plummeted downwards, dragged by the weight of a man’s body that had inadvertently teleported along with him through the man’s grip on his ankle, Rein completely lost control of his body and was repeatedly whipped by branches and leaves throughout the descent.

He tried his best to slow his fall, clutching at whatever branch he could on the way down, but his efforts were thwarted by the firm grip on his left ankle.

Luckily, the man finally lost his grip and Rein managed to grab onto a low-hanging branch, which slowed his fall. This branch then bent dangerously and finally snapped, and he landed onto the forest floor on his left side. His vision went white for ten heartbeats as the final fall completely winded him.

Rein struggled to stand up, crawling onto his knees. Rein saw the body of a disfigured man barely visible under the forest canopy beside him, but he could not quite recognize who this man was.

Squinting his eyes, he shockingly found out from the man’s form, that it was the scarred right cheek man, only that the whole surface of the man’s skin was now being eroded by a blackish-purple aurae.

Rein stood up, hoping to move closer to the body to take a better look. However, he suddenly felt dizzy and faint, and collapsed back onto the ground. When he sensed that his aurae reserves were completely empty, he had an epiphany. It must have been the cost of teleporting the man that had gripped his ankle.

Then, his consciousness dimmed and he drifted into his dreams, his body thoroughly exhausted.