42- Falco
[WARNING: Gross SCENES ARE CONTAINED IN THIS CHAPTER! Be careful when reading! You've been warned!]
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A thin, rigid face is framed by black, straight hair. His vicious look was cast over the children in front of him by his fixated hazel eyes.
A sword mark runs from the bottom of his right cheek to the left side of his lips and ends on his right nose, marking the site of a recent fight.
This is the face of Falco, who was standing in front of the altar where the children were assembled for a blood sacrifice.
He was a mortal who was born and raised in a small family that was part of a small mortal merchant association.
It was then that he met Hans, who became his best friend.
Even though Hans could cultivate, he kept it from Falco because they were the same age and he didn't want Falco to develop an inferiority complex as a result.
But Hans was eventually brought away from Falco due to his family's interference. Making them not meet for decades was Hans's, as he was a cultivator and Falco was still a mortal back then.
He lived as a mortal and was worry-free, until he was approximately fourteen years old, when his life took a turn for the worse.
He lost his family as a result of a conflict that wiped out the whole merchant association.
It wasn't really a war, but rather a one-sided massacre.
It was against a cultivator who cultivated the energy cultivation system, at the high stage of the second step.
With nothing but his mortal talents, he had to live in a world where the strong dominated the weak.
He refused to die in such a world, so he held firm with his determination. He decided to work as a cultivator's servant.
He had firsthand experience of the cultivation world's cruelty. He'd served a cultivator who was on the first step, and who had brought some random female mortal to abuse every weekend.
Many female mortals' lives were ruined as a result of this, and Falco's mindset slowly changed to resemble that of the cultivator's.
When he worked hard on the jobs assigned by the cultivator, he would occasionally acquire a female mortal for himself to enjoy the fleshly pleasures.
This went on for a long time, until that cultivator died as a result of unintentionally offending a cultivate who was stronger than him.
He was supposed to die at that time, but fate had other plans for him.
Back then, the cultivator didn't kill him; rather, he took him in and treated him the same way the other cultivator did.
Time repeated itself, and that cultivator died in the same manner as the previous one.
But this time, instead of being that cultivator's servant, who was in the early stage of the second step of the body cultivation system, he'd been dragged along with a couple of other mortals to an inheritance ground that was only open to mortals.
He'd been frightened to tears. After all, he was only a mortal at the time, and lacked the strength to defend himself against a cultivator of the first step in the energy cultivation system, much less someone who cultivated the body cultivation system.
He was at a loss for what to do, but he didn't want to die. As such, he stood firm in his resolve.
Fortunately, he was successful in gaining the inheritance.
It was a "favor" from a fiend cultivator, and it required him to murder people and absorb their energies.
How did he come out the winner? Easy.
Somehow, the inheritance sensed his intense will to live and gave him the technique beforehand, allowing him to absorb the bodies of other mortals who took part in the inheritance ground, allowing him to become a cultivator utilizing this method.
However, it wasn't exactly a perfect technique. Almost everything has a disadvantage, and this cultivation method is no exception.
The "favor" he had to pay was to exact vengeance on the fiend cultivator's enemy—an intelligent beast—once he reached the fifth step by cultivating his technique.
It dumbfounded Falco. Fifth Step? That's two steps higher than anybody on this continent, and it was an intelligent beast at that!
Of course, Falco was oblivious at the time that the princess had a master. As such, he was unaware of any cultivator on this continent who had advanced beyond the third step.
The flaw in the technique is that as you progress through the steps, your ability to control yourself reduces.
Falco was well aware of it, but didn't care at the time because he needed strength in any way he could to stay alive. Regardless of the repercussions, a man's desire to live drove him forward.
After slaughtering all the mortals, his strength skipped over the first step and went directly to the second, empowering him to kill the cultivator who had led him here.
His arrival here could be considered both a blessing and a curse:
The blessing was him being able to cultivate, and protect himself; the curse was having to exact revenge on the one who passed the technique to him.
As for what cultivation pathway he pursued, it was the soul cultivation one.
Only because of this could the cultivation technique and its disadvantage be so terrifying. Then again, the other cultivation methods had no effect on one's state of mind.
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Falco killed the cultivator as soon as he left the inheritance grounds.
He could easily kill a second step cultivator with the strength he possessed, despite him only recently becoming a cultivator. He was cultivating the soul cultivation pathway but was also a fiend cultivator.
Soul cultivators were, moreover, more powerful than body cultivators.
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Falco was able to advance so quickly on the inheritance grounds because the first step was easy, especially for fiend cultivators.
To advance to the next step, he had to commit a more heinous act: killing babies and children to absorb their energies and empower himself.
He was able to consistently learn formations over the years until he fully mastered them.
Then again, he was still a weak fiend cultivator at the time. He needed to hide his presence by concealing his energy fluctuations from others, and the formations would do so rather than him keeping watch every time he went for a massacre.
Hence, he continued to murder mortals from town to town, earning the nickname "Provider of Doom," as many cultivators from the second step attempted to stop him only to meet their death...
Before killing both of them, he enjoyed himself with the women before their husbands, since he had fully adapted to his sadistic side...
He murdered the inhabitants of the towns, but his true objective was to capture the children and babies...
As a consequence, he accumulated a significant amount of negative karma, which he was completely unaware of.
He continued his slaughter until today, when he ran into Hans, who reminded him of his childhood and parents, and made him recall that he needed to take revenge for them by killing that cultivator...
Before continuing his slaughter, he lied to Hans and urged him to leave because of a natural calamity that was approaching the town...
But as he was about to kill the children and absorb their energies, he was interrupted by Adel...