W1.A1-20: What Just Happened?

As we stood in the shadows in silence, the young waiter who had come to deliver the tray of food had already gone back. The door was also closed, as the man inside had probably accepted the tray.

"Is it really a master swordsman?" Lena asked. "A peak one too?"

"It is," I replied while thinking about something.

"Well, it's still alright, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, you alone could take him down easily, so what's the problem?" Lena asked when she saw my pondering expression.

"There was something wrong with him," I said. "To be exact, his aura, his mana signature, was a bit strange."

It also felt a bit familiar somehow. I thought inwardly. But I was not too sure.

"Strange? How?"

I thought for a while before shaking my head. "I don't know exactly, but it'd be better to act carefully."

Looking back towards the closed door, I said, "Let's go."

Suppressing our mana signatures and biological signs until they were almost undetectable, we moved forward cautiously.

Although I was being careful, it did not mean that I was afraid. Quite the opposite, actually; I had full confidence in handling the situation by myself. Moreover, given the reliable partner I was carrying within my body, my confidence was boosted even further.

Oh, there was also Lena.

Keeping ourselves alert, we advanced towards the closed door carefully.

Although I was not completely sure, the guy inside was probably our target.

Arriving closer to the room, I gestured for Lena to stop while I continued heading forward until I was close enough to touch the door.

Closing my eyes, I focused my senses to detect my surroundings.

I didn't circulate my mana, as that would have altered the person inside.

Instead, I ran an empty circulation that would attract the surrounding mana. But that too had to be done at a slow pace, as master-class experts were quite sensitive to the mana in their surroundings.

As my consciousness attained a connection with the surrounding mana, I began to detect other presences that were capable of absorbing or exuding mana.

One such being was just behind me.

I could feel Lena's minute mana signature. Although our close distance was a factor, given her expertise, any other master-class expert might not have been able to detect her.

My attention then shifted to the room in front of me. There, I could feel the presence of an entity that was disturbing the flow of mana by subconsciously emanating its aura.

Gauging the intensity of that aura, I was now sure that the person inside was actually a master-class expert.

But that was not the only fact I had found.

The aura sure had reached the level of a peak master-class expert, but it was not stable enough. It had a hollow feeling, the result of a lack of control over mana.

It was the same as stuffing someone with food beyond their digestion ability. Indigestion will be the only result of such an act.

But that was not the case with this man; he clearly seemed to have used some method to first forcefully raise his level of mana before stabilizing it using similar means.

It made me further assured of the success of this mission, as this person was just a phony expert. He couldn't even be compared to the great bull I killed in the morning.

But I still remained careful, as humans were different from beasts. They had a higher level of intelligence and were capable of using weapons and tools.

I could probably deal with whatever situation might pop up, but I preferred to complete my missions without causing much commotion. So a bit of extra preparedness and caution was nothing.

Just as I was contemplating my plan of action, a sudden buzzing came from within me.

Hearing the content of the information that was being transmitted to me, I frowned at first before my expression eased as a smile appeared on my face.

Under Lena's dumbfounded gaze, I suddenly raised my hand before giving a knock on the door.

"What are you doing?" she whispered lightly. But didn't look much after her initial surprise. Having worked with me on many missions, she trusted me enough to know that I wouldn't be doing anything without reason.

After the knock, we both waited for a few seconds before the door was opened once more.

"What do you want-" An irritated voice was heard as the man from earlier opened the door. He was using his hand to wipe his mouth as he talked, probably because he was eating at the moment.

But before he could even finish his sentence, I stretched my hand and simply grabbed him by the neck.

"Khiek!"

Not expecting someone to suddenly attack him, the guy was totally caught off guard. Not that it would have made any difference had he been alert.

Alarm shone in his eyes as his languid manner disappeared. A serious expression overcame his face, but just as the idea to strike back had occurred to him, he suddenly felt a foreign mana entering his system.

The man panicked. He had realized that I was trying to immobilize him. Forcing himself to act, the man tried to resist by sending out his own mana to fight back.

But how could someone like him, who had only raised his strength using irregular methods, compete with my mana, which has been refined through training?

Just like that, his hollow mana was swept away easily before my mana took control of his body and immobilized him completely.

Horror appeared in his eyes as he tried to speak, but my grip on his neck only enabled him to let out weird grunts.

Just as Lena thought that it was over, a violent fluctuation of energy suddenly appeared from within the imprisoned guy.

To her surprise, she could feel the presence of a completely different type of mana emerging from him. One that was too violent for it to belong to a human.

A shiny black light appeared around him, while his sclera began to turn black. His muscles began to squirm as if he were about to escape my control.

A smug look had also appeared in his eyes as he looked at me. It was as if all his previous reactions had only been an act.

But before Lena could panic and the guy could live with his happiness a bit more, my body also began to emit a distinct fluctuation.

A dark light emerged from within my chest before it traveled to my hand.

Although both were black in color, my mana was so dark that it seemed to be absorbing the light itself.

Colliding with the black mana coming out of the guy, my dark mana simply crushed it like paper. Not stopping there, the dark mana entered the guy's body.

As that happened, his body began to twitch violently. His pitch black eyes began to recede back to their original form as the black mana surrounding him disappeared entirely.

When his body finally stopped shivering, the guy had already lost his breath. As I released my hand, his still-warm carcass fell to the floor with a thud.

"What just happened?" Lena finally came to her senses and asked as she turned to look at me, puzzled.