Disaster Strikes from All Sides

Under the dim moonlight, two hunters were looking around with sleepy eyes as they cursed their luck for getting selected for the night watch. After all, this learning trip was planned to last for two days which meant not all the hunters will have to be sentries.

While the sentries of Mayton's group were dozing off, there was a faint movement in the forest. A huge wolf was moving towards the edge of the forest step by step. It really was a bizarre sight for such a huge beast to move without making almost no noise. When it finally reached the edge of the forest, it's leg muscles tightened as it got ready to leap forward. It clearly knew that it had limited time once he moved out of the forest and got detected by the hunters.

'' Hey Mayton .. Mayton wake up..''

Mayton felt someone poking him and heard Ghorzhang calling his name anxiously.

''What's going on? Is there a problem?'' said Mayton as he turned towards Ghorzhang and yawned. They were sleeping side to side in the tent they set up together. Other youngsters slept in groups of three, but Ghorzhang's body was just too big for an extra person to fit in the tent.

''I .. I think something is near us. It feels … hostile.''

Ghorzang sounded unsure. But Mayton immediately remembered the incident where Ghorzhang seemingly sensed the same thing with Old Mert even faster than Old Mert at that. Thus he didn't think Ghorzhang was talking nonsense.

''What is near us? Can you tell how far it is? Wait, no, this isn't the time for this we must ale-''

''Be careful!''

''AAARRRGGHH''

''You damn beast!''

'What is happening?''

Before Mayton could finish his sentence, several voices came from outside. Mayton and Ghorzhang hurriedly went out of their tent after hearing the urgent shouts of the hunters outside.

Outside of the tent, one of the guards who was on guard duty tonight were thrashing around while holding... what was left of his right arm. He got his arm ripped off from his shoulder, and only a stump was left. There were lots of blood splattered around. It was a really gruesome scene. It was not something to be mentioned when you compared it with the old man who framed Mayton's slaughter of the guards and priests though.

The hunters were panicking as they searched for an enemy in the darkness of the night. Finally, Old Mert shouted as he started running towards the forest;

''Damn it. It's that dire wolf again. You all return to the village. I'll put an end to this scourge.''

When he finished his sentence, Old Mert was already at the edge of the forest and in a moment, disappeared among the trees.

The hunters stopped the bleeding of the injured hunter's arm with a piece of cloth they used as a tourniquet. Mayton thought that it would be a waste to use the medicine they got from young master Renas for this injury since unlike those wondrous medicines from legends, it can't possibly regrow an arm.

After using about one third of the medicine in the pouch for healing Zgar, Old Mert entrusted rest of the medicine to Mayton saying that, it was thanks to Mayton's shamelessness they got the medicine in the first place thus it was up to Mayton whether he used the medicine or not. With Old Mert giving the medicine to Mayton even though there were some hunters who didn't think it was appropriate no one dared to object to Old Mert's decision.

After Old Mert's departure, the group of hunters had a brief discussion about what to do and decided to spend the rest of the night here at the camp before returning to the village the next morning. Everyone was downcast because this trip went way worse than how they anticipated it to be.

They didn't have any real harvest from the trip, maybe except for the pouch of medicine Mayton got, and one of the hunters lost his right arm. Zgar also got injured, even though it wasn't as serious as losing an arm, he still needed a month or two for complete recovery despite the help of the medicine.

While Mayton's group of hunters selected a new pair of sentries and went back to sleep, nine young men in black robes with a blood red ouroboros symbol on their clothes were moving towards Mayton's village in a neither slow nor fast pace.

''Damn it, this is already the fifth village. How many more villages are there in this desolate place? Even the souls we got from the villages we raided are mostly low quality. What a waste of time!''

one of the young men with a hooked nose and big ears said to no one in particular.

The young men in black robes were getting impatient to return to their cult. After their supervisor gave them instructions and left on his own, it has already been more than a week. They were to find a person with a strange fiery soul around this part of the wilderness according to the instructions they were given. But this place was just too desolate.

How was it possible for such a unique soul to exist at a backward place like this? Even their supervisor sounded like he was not too sure about the existence of such a unique soul. This coupled with their own unwillingness to waste their time around the wilderness made them more and more ruthless in their search.

After all, checking the souls of every villager they encountered one by one took way too much time. If they, instead of checking the villager's souls one by one, just slaughtered the entire village and sucked the villagers' souls into their soul collecting orbs, it took a lot less time.

They could also earn some money after selling these orbs full of souls to the devils. Even though villagers' souls were low quality and normally not worth the effort to collect them, since they were going to waste time here either way, it was better to gain something out of it.

These soul collecting orbs were black, fist sized orbs which changed color depending on the type of soul they absorbed. For example, if you absorb someone's soul who used water type demonic cultivation techniques into the orb, its color changed to blue. The reason for that was even though the qi cultivators absorbed mainly stayed in their body, it still caused some changes to happen to the soul.

As for the color of the orbs which were used to absorb souls from people who had no cultivation whatsoever like the villagers, it became a murky white because people who didn't cultivate still absorbed qi and purified it slowly.

But since this purifying process was rather slow, there were still some impurities in the qi normal people got in their body, at any given time. These impurities caused the orb to be murky white, unlike the pure white color it changed into if the soul of a divine cultivator, who also got pure qi in him, got absorbed.

What about the consequences of wantonly slaughtering entire villages? They didn't care about that at all. Their cult was specialized in soul trade and they were no strangers to being brutal. If somehow word got out about their actions, it also didn't matter to them. As members of a cult trading in souls, they had no good reputation to lose in the first place.

They were only afraid of some self righteous prick meddling in their business. But since the closest city to these parts of the wilderness was the Flaming Heart City which was too far away, it was unlikely for anyone to come to rescue the villagers in time. When someone finally came to investigate this place, the young men would already be at the cult, counting their profits.

''After checking this village, why don't we just return and say to Supervisor Bartolomeo we couldn't find it? It is not like he will reward us generously, even if we did bring the special soul to him. Everyone knows Supervisor Bartolomeo is stingy.''

said another one of the nine young men who were searching for the fiery soul. Others assented to returning after this village is 'searched' with nodding their heads.

''All right everyone we will proceed to do things as we have done in the last village. Dranas, Ayst, and Chaun will be responsible for securing the perimeter by setting up the formation and cutting down any escapees. Rest of you will follow me inside the village to harvest the souls. We can disperse after entering the village since there is no reason to fear those savages. ''

The man with the hook nose, who complained earlier, ordered. He was named Delun and obviously was the leader of this group.

'' Hmph, we already know what to do. Stop posturing like you are some kind of commander.''

answered Chaun, obviously dissatisfied with Delun being the one in charge. He still started to get ready to do as he was told though. Those men were all arrogant, and they absolutely weren't an obedient bunch. But still Delun was ordering them around like this because of a simple reason, he had the capability to do so.

The phase of cultivation after qi sensing was called qi gathering phase and it had five sub phases. Namely; initial, early, mid, late and peak phases of qi gathering. This didn't change for types cultivators. For example, a divine cultivators qi gathering phase was called divine qi gathering phase.

Most of the young men in this group were in the early or initial phase of qi gathering. Only ones who had higher cultivation were Chaun and Delun, who were at mid phase of qi gathering just like Old Mert. But Delun was a little bit stronger than Chaun because of a powerful battle technique he cultivated thus he was the leader of the group.

Setting up their formation didn't really took too much time since it was a low level formation which only had the function of slowing down anyone that tried to leave its boundaries. Coupled with the soul capturing orbs function of sensing the general location of any soul in the vicinity, this formation was enough to prevent a bunch of villagers escaping.

Cultivators at qi gathering phase can run as fast as galloping horses, depending on their cultivation level and technique. Normal villagers can't even get close to this speed. Thus it wasn't hard for the trio who were stationed around the village to set up the formation to catch any villager who tries to sneak out.

'' Now since the formation is ready, let's make haste and finish this as soon as possible. Don't forget, we shouldn't let anyone escape. If the fiery soul was here and it ran away from under our nose, that would really be a pity.''

said Delun as he rushed towards the village. Five of the young men followed after him.

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Meanwhile, in the village, it was Babrak's and a middle aged hunter named Jay's turn to be sentries. Babrak and the five hunters who were left to watch over the village were taking turns to do guard duty as groups of two.

It was already the second day of the departure of the hunting party and they were supposed to return this evening. Usually, attacks on the village whether by bandits or ferocious beasts happened during the night and since they were expecting the return of the hunting party together with Old Mert before tonight, they relaxed considerably.

''Jay, why are you here shouldn't you stay at the other side of the village? Don't forget our families security is at stake here. What if something happens when you are absent from your post?''

Babrak asked, clearly displeased. He was known as a serious person in the village. Especially after getting handicapped. People often made fun of him and told him to relax, but he always thought that if he was a bit more careful when that dire wolf attacked the village, he could save a few more lives.

'' You really are too serious Babrak. You should relax a little. Who in their right mind would attack at noon? Even beasts aren't that stupid. We can see any attacker coming from miles away.''

Jay said as he shrugged his shoulders clearly not taking Babrak seriously. He didn't like Babrak because of Old Mert's blatant favoritism towards Babrak's family. There were other disabled people in the village who got none of that favoritism. Since the villagers didn't know Old Mert's self blame about the dire wolf incident, there were a fair amount of people who thought like Jay. Actually, Babrak wasn't sure why Old Mert behaved the way he did either.

''Aarghh''

''No, spare my child! Please spa- ''

'' Help! Someone help! We are under attack! ''

Just when Babrak was getting ready to chide Jay for a bit, screams and shouts were heard from the side of the village that was supposed to be under Jay's surveillance. Babrak threw an angry glare as he rushed towards the voices. But since Babrak's leg was disabled, Jay who got stunned for a second easily overtook Babrak.

While moving as fast as he possibly can, after a minute, Babrak realized something which terrified him. The voices of people dying and pleas for mercy were moving towards him faster than he was moving towards them!

The villagers' houses had barns, pens for poultries and vegetable fields in between them. So the village was actually big relative to its meager population. This meant that there was a fair amount of distance between the opposing ends of the village. This made Babrak stuck in a dilemma. He could either rush to help the villagers who were getting slaughtered or he could rush towards his own family instead, to help them escape this calamity.

''I .. can't abandon the villagers after all. I am sorry dear, Angeza, please be safe. ''

Babrak muttered to himself as he continued to rush towards the villagers after a brief pause.

When he finally reached the origin of the sounds or more accurately when the origin of the sounds reached him, he saw a grim spectacle. There were dead villagers everywhere, but strangely there wasn't a single drop of blood. The villagers just lied down on the ground without a hint of life. If not for shouts of rage and pleas of mercy resounding around, an onlooker might think the villagers were just asleep.

Babrak also saw Jay's corpse among the corpses of the villagers. From the position of Jay's corpse at the ground, it was obvious he died while he was running away from the enemy. Six young men in gray robes were strolling around the corpses of the villagers while occasionally waving their hands towards the villagers they encountered.

Whenever they waved their hands, an orb they held in their hands shined for a moment. With that the villagers nearby got white smoke pouring out from their orifices and into the orb as they collapsed lifelessly. Strangely, even though the young men looked like they were having a walk in a park for relaxing, not a little bit hurried or anxious, they were still faster than the villagers by quite a lot. This snuffed out Babrak's last hope for seeing his family once again.

Coming to terms with having no chance to survive this encounter, Babrak drew his bow as he aimed at the closest of the six young men. Even though he knew he would die here, he still wanted to die while trying to protect people who are precious to him.

As the arrow flew from his bow, the hook nosed young man he aimed at looked to him with ridicule in his eyes. The hook nosed young man slapped the arrow to the side effortlessly as he waved his hand towards him. Babrak felt pain spread all around his body. It felt like someone stripped his skin from him as he slowly lost consciousness.

''Haha, even these ants don't respect our esteemed commander Delun! What a joke.''

This was the last thing Babrak heard.