Chapter XL: Blood Bath

"Help! Please don't kill me!"

The bandit begged as he crawled to the ground.

Khalid's eyes were as dark and empty as the sky; no life could be seen in his eyes that were similar to the undead, and there was no possibility that he would show mercy on the man who treats children as live stocks on the black market, selling them as slaves and treating them as bait food for the beast.

He walks closer to him slowly as if he were taking his time. Khalid was surely entertained to watch him limping and trembling around.

"Hey, help me, please!" 

He pleaded with the boy behind him.

'This is already the sixth time.'

Akil had thought as he just watched Khalid step on his feet before chopping off his thighs.

The bandit screamed in pain; his groaning voice had eaten the whole place while he slowly chopped off every part of his body without mercy.

'If I play dead, he would not kill me.'

The man lying on the corpse of his companion had thought while playing dead as a rat, without knowing that Khalid had saved him for last, approaching him while blood dripped on the tip of his knife.

"You there."

He called as he froze, not on purpose, but it seemed like his body had become stiff; he could not even move his fingers.

"Look at me in the eyes if I were talking to you."

He trembled along with his eyes, which were shut, yet he could not stop his eyeballs from shaking.

Just as he was about to open his eyes, he found himself flying straight into the wall when Khalid kicked him hard, like a ball.

'How can a mere kid have this unyielding power?!'

'He's no ordinary kid. He is a monster! '

"Ge-get away from me! "

His mouth was immediately shut when Khalid stabbed the bayonet between his thighs, which almost took half of his life.

"AHHRGH!"

"Where's the kid?"

He calmly asked, yet the bandit could not stop his leg from turning into jelly.

"What, ki-kid? I don't know what you're talking about!"

Watching the same repeated scene, Akil could not bear it any longer and decided to walk closer beside him as he looked into the bandit's eyes.

"Hyung, I think he's stating the fact-

He was startled when blood showered on his face as soon as Khalid slashed his throat before he could even notice.

"I bet too."

It made him frown as he let out a deep sigh.

Khalid's appearance was a mess; his dress was ruined, and he was already rubbed with the smell of blood, covering his body from head to toe as if he'd just taken a blood bath.

When Akil wipes the blood off of him, a new carriage arrives, though this time it is not an ordinary carriage. It is another carriage that the bandit has ridden, and it would probably be the seventh time that he would be showering with their blood.

"Hehehe. Look what we have here!"

They laugh stupidly, while both of them just stare at their annoying faces.

'How many times have we heard that today? ' 

Akil had thought and simply left another sighed, as other victims of them had fallen on their hands.

As soon as they arrived at the place, with the same run-down tavern and the same pungent smell of rusty blood, Khalid was in the same loop of making a feast with the bandit's bodies, killing them one by one just by seeing them tremble without answering his question.

"Argh! Spare me!"

Akil shook his head.

'I need to do something before things get worse!'

He thought as he tried to get Khalid's attention.

"Hyung! Nothing better will happen if we just kill them before they can even answer. I think it's better to stop now."

Hearing his voice from behind made Khalid stop, but when he looked back to face Akil while wiping the blood that splattered on his mouth, he was staggering, walking towards him as the fiery red-ish aura covered himself and left Akil no choice but to bear it, gripping both of his hands tightly as Khalid unconsciously took his breath away.

'He's wasting a lot of his mana already.'

He then left another deep sigh as the red liquid from his hands dripped down on the ground, where dead rats, corpses, and even the bones of the bandits that Khalid had devoured were left scattered on the ground.

'This won't do; if Hyung continues to use his mana, then there is a guarantee that he will pass out again this time.'

As he tightens the grip of his hands, the more he feels that he is slowly running out of breath, as if he were drowning in the ocean, making his face look paler than the corpse, but remembering what Reinhardt had entrusted, he would not just stand there and watch Khalid hurt himself more than what he did in the past.

"I will leave his safety to you; you must not let him act recklessly as he was already. It might not kill him, but it will put his life in danger."

Reinhardt had stated, standing in front of Akil with a cold expression on his face as he gave him a continuous tap on his shoulder.

'Isn't it the same? '

Akil then struts towards the door without responding to any of the words they've said; he could even hear Erwin's sassy voice before he could step out of the room.

"Can you at least answer properly? Don't you have a tongue?! Huh!"

He threatened while Reinhardt blocked him with his arms, laughing as he tried to punch Akil straight in the icy face. And by making things worse, Akil looks back just to give him a serious poker face right straight on his face that made him go furiously wild like a boar.

"I swear, that brat!"

As he remembered all those things, he couldn't hold back his faint smile as he swiftly blocked the man with his body.

"It's not what I think. Is it?"

Khalid's cold gaze pierced his eyes.

"I don't think what you're doing right now is right either. If you continue to act this way, then I guess you have no choice but to kill me too."

Hearing it come out of his mouth with a high tone of voice. Khalid knows that he was so sure to risk his life that he would rather find it amusing.

"Ha! You leave me no choice then."

Akil didn't even flinch; instead, he looked at him straight in the eyes when he threw the bayonet in his direction.